Death in the Fifth Position (6 page)

“I suppose she’ll be all right,” said Wilbur a few minutes later when he’d been advised of this casting. “She’s up in the part at least. I’d much rather have a dark-haired girl, but …”

“Garden should be very good,” said Mr. Washburn. “You’d better rehearse her and Louis this afternoon.”

“I’ll go telephone her,” I said, and I did. At first, she didn’t believe it but then, when she did, she was beside herself and I knew we were going to have a pleasant time … champagne in bed, I decided, as I hung up.

My second official interview with the Inspector went off well enough.

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-eight.”

“Where were you born?”

“Hartford, Connecticut.”

“In the service?”

“Three and a half years … Pacific Theater of Operations … Army.”

“What sort of work did you do upon discharge?”

“Went back to college … finished at Harvard.”

“Harvard?”

“Yes,
Harvard.
” We glared at one another.

“What sort of work after that?”

“I was assistant drama critic on the
Globe
until a year ago when I opened my own office … public relations.”

“I see. How long have you known, did you know, the deceased?”

“Who?”

“Miss Sutton … who do you think I meant? Mayor La Guardia.”

“I’m sorry if I misunderstood you, Mr. Gleason.” Oh, I was in splendid form, putting my head right into the noose, but what the hell … tonight there’d be champagne. “I met Miss Sutton the day I came to work for the ballet … yesterday afternoon.”

“As what?”

“As special public relations consultant … that’s what it says on that paper in front of you.”

“Are you trying to get funny with me?”

“Certainly not.” I looked offended.

“How well did you know the … Miss Sutton?”

“I met her yesterday.”

“You never saw her outside of work then?”

“Not very often.”

“How often?”

“Never, then.”

“Well, which is it, never or occasionally?”

“Never, I guess, to speak of … maybe now and then at a party before I’d met her … that’s all I meant.”

“It would help if you say what you mean the first time.”

“I’ll try.”

“Did she have any enemies that you know of?”

“Well, yes and no.”

“Yes
or
no, please, Mr. Sargeant.”

“No … not that I know of. On the other hand, I gather that nobody liked her.”

“And why was that?”

“I’m told she wasn’t very easy to work with and she was unpleasant to the kids in the company, especially the girls. She was set to be the big star when Eglanova retired.”

“I see. Does Egg … lanova look forward to retiring?”

“Wouldn’t you after thirty years in ballet?”

“I’m not in ballet.”

“Well, neither am I, Mr. Gleason. I know almost as little about this as you.”

Gleason gave me an extremely dirty look but I was full of beans, thinking about how I had handled Washburn.

“Was her marriage to Miles Sutton a happy one?”

“I suggest you ask him; I’ve never met him.”

“I see.” Gleason was getting a little red in the face and I could see that I was amusing his secretary, a pale youth who was taking down our conversation in shorthand.

“Now then: where were you at the dress rehearsal yesterday afternoon?”

“Backstage mostly.”

“Did you notice anything unusual?”

“Like what?”

“Like … never mind. What were your movements
after
the rehearsal?”

“Well, I went out and had a sandwich; then I called up the different newspapers … about the Wilbur business. I got back to the theater about five-thirty.”

“And you left it?”

“Not until after the murder last night.”

“Who did you see when you returned at five-thirty, who was backstage?”

“Just about everyone, I suppose: Mr. Washburn, Eglanova, Giraud, Rudin … no, he wasn’t there until about six, and neither was Miles Sutton now that I think of it.”

“Is it customary for all these people to be in the theater such a long time before a performance?”

“I don’t know … it was a première night.”

“Eglanova was not in the première, though, was she?”

“No, but she often spends the day in the theater … so does Giraud. He sleeps.”

“By the way, do you happen to know who will take Sutton’s place tonight?”

I paused just long enough to sound guilty; I kicked myself but there was nothing to be done about it. “Jane Garden … one of the younger soloists.”

But he missed the connection, I could see, and not until all the interviews had been neatly typed up and my fingerprints had been discovered on the shears would he decide
that I had cut the cable so that Jane could dance the lead in
Eclipse.

He asked me a few more questions to which I gave some mighty flip answers and then he told me to go, very glad to see the last of me, for that day at least. I have a dislike of policemen which must be the real thing since I’d never had anything to do with them up until now, outside of the traffic courts. There is something about the state putting the power to bully into the hands of a group of subnormal, sadistic apes that makes my blood boil. Of course, the good citizens would say that it takes an ape to keep the other apes in line but then again it is piteous indeed to listen to the yowls of those same good citizens when they come afoul the law and are beaten up in prisons and generally manhandled for suspected or for real crimes: at such moments they probably wish they had done something about the guardians of law and order when they were free. Well, it was no problem of mine at the moment.

I found Jane already downstairs in her rehearsal clothes. I gave her a big kiss and then, when she asked me if I had had anything to do with her getting the lead in
Eclipse
and I said that I certainly had, I got another kiss. She asked me all about the investigation.

“Everybody’s being pumped,” I said. “They just got through with me. You better go look on the bulletin board and find out what time they’ll want to see you.” We looked; and she was to be questioned at six o’clock.

“What did he want to know?”

“Just stuff. Where I was when it happened … who else was around, and gossip.”

“What did you tell him?”

“Not much of anything … in the way of gossip: it’s his job to find out those things.”

“I suppose it is.”

Wilbur and Louis appeared, both in work clothes. “Come on, Jane,” said Louis. “We got work.” He winked at me. “How’re you doing, Baby?”

I called him a rude but accurate name and marched off to telephone the newspapers about Jane’s coming debut as a soloist … it wouldn’t get in till tomorrow but then, perhaps, we might be able to get a few of the critics out to report on her the next night. Needless to say, we were scheduled to do
Eclipse
at every single performance until we closed. After I had made my calls and arranged for some photographs of Jane to be sent around by messenger, I left the building with every intention of going to get something to eat … I was getting light in the head from hunger and the heat. I was so giddy that I almost stepped on Miles Sutton who was lying face down in the corridor which leads from the office to the dressing rooms.

“What’s going on here?” were, I am ashamed to say, my first words to what I immediately, and inaccurately, thought to be a corpse, the discarded earthly residence of our conductor who lay spread-eagled on his belly in front of the washroom door.

The figure at my feet moaned softly and, thinking of fingerprints, I nevertheless was a good Samaritan and rolled him over on his back, half expecting to see the hilt of a quaint oriental dagger sticking through his coat.

“Water,” whispered Miles Sutton, and I got him water from the bathroom; he drank it very sloppily and then, rolling up his eyes the way certain comedians do when their material is weak, he sank back onto the floor, very white in the face. I trotted back into the bathroom, got another cup of water, returned, and splashed it in his face. This had the desired effect. He opened his eyes and sat up. “Must’ve fainted,” he whispered in a weak voice.

“So it would appear,” I said; at the moment there was very little the conductor and I had in common. I stood there for several seconds, contemplating him; then Sutton pulled out a handkerchief and dried his beard. His color was a little better now and I suggested that, all in all, it might be a good idea for him to stand up. I helped him to his feet. He lurched into the washroom; I waited until he came out.

“Must be the heat,” he mumbled. “Sort of thing never happened before.”

“It’s a hot day,” I said … it was remarkable how little we had to say to each other. “Do you feel O.K. now?”

“A bit shaky.”

“I don’t feel so good myself,” I said, hunger gnawing at my vitals. “Why don’t we go get something to eat across the street? I’m Peter Sargeant, by the way; I’m handling publicity. I don’t think Mr. Washburn introduced us.”

We shook hands; then he said, dubiously, “I don’t suppose I should hang around here. They may want me for the rehearsal.”

“Come on,” I said, and he did. Very slowly we walked
down the brilliant sunlit street; shimmering waves of heat flickered in the distance and my shirt began to stick to my back. Miles, looking as though he might faint again, breathed hoarsely, like an old dog having a nightmare.

“Must have been something you ate?” I suggested out of my vast reservoir of small talk.

He looked rather bleak and didn’t answer as we walked into an air-conditioned restaurant with plywood walls got up to look like the paneling in an old English tavern; both of us perked up considerably.

“Or maybe you got hold of a bad piece of ice last night.” This was unworthy of me but I didn’t care. I was thinking of food.

We got ourselves a booth and neither of us spoke until I had wolfed down a large breakfast and he had had several cups of coffee. By this time he was looking less like a corpse. I knew very little about him other than that he got good notices for himself and orchestra, that he conducted the important ballets with more than usual attention to the often eclectic performances of the Grand Saint Petersburg stars who have a tendency to impose their own tempo on that of the dead and defenseless composers. I disliked his face, but that means nothing at all. My character analyses based on physiognomy or intuition are, without exception, incorrect; even so I have many profound likes and dislikes based entirely on the set of a man’s eyes or his voice. I did not like Sutton’s eyes, I might add, large gray glassy eyes with immense black pupils, and an expression of constant surprise. He fixed me now with these startled eyes and said, “Did you talk to the Inspector?”

“Just for a little bit.”

“What did he ask you?”

“Nothing much … the standard questions … where were you on the night of May twenty-seventh kind of thing.”

“Such an awful thing to have happen,” said the husband of the murdered woman with startling conventionality; well, at least he wasn’t hypocrite enough to pretend to be grief-stricken. “I suppose everybody’s told him we weren’t getting along, Ella and me.”

“I didn’t,” I said, righteously, “but obviously he knows. He wanted me to say that you hated her … I could tell by his questions.”

“He practically accused me of murder,” said Miles; I felt very sorry for him then not only because of the spot he was in but because I was quite sure that he
had
murdered her … which shows something or other about mid-twentieth-century morality: I mean, we seem to be less and less aroused by such things as private murders in an age when public murder is so much admired. If I ever get around to writing that novel it’s going to be about this sort of thing … the difference between what we say and what we do—you know what I mean. Anyway, I didn’t make the world.

“Well, you are a perfect setup,” I said, cold-bloodedly.

“Setup?”

“Everybody in the company knew you wanted a divorce and that she wouldn’t give it to you … I heard all about it my first hour with the company.”

“That doesn’t mean I’d kill her.”

“No, but a cretin like Gleason would think that you were the logical one … and you are.”

“I’m not so sure of that.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, there are others.” He looked purposefully vague and I felt very compassionate; he
was
in a spot. “Who?”

“Well, there’s Eglanova.” That did it; my instinct was right. Miles had cut the cable and then planted the shears in Eglanova’s wastebasket. I wondered if he had managed to implicate her in his interview with Gleason.

“What did she have against Sutton?” Not that I didn’t know.

“She was being retired against her will and Ella was the only available dancer with a big enough name to head the company … All the others are either tied up with contracts or else cost more than Washburn will pay. With Ella gone, he would have to let Eglanova dance another season.”

“It seems awfully drastic,” I said mildly.

“You don’t know much about ballerinas,” said Miles Sutton with the exhausted air of one who did. “Eglanova doesn’t want to retire, ever; she feels she’s at her peak and she would do anything to stay with the company.”

“But that’s still going a bit far.”

“She hated Ella.”

“So did just about everybody; they didn’t all kill her … or maybe they did … formed a committee and …” But, no, this was getting a little too feckless, even for me. I subsided.

“Besides, who else could have done it? Who else would benefit as much by her death?” Well, you would, lover, I said to myself, you you you, wonderful you in the shadow of the electric chair. He must’ve read my mind,
which isn’t as difficult a feat as I sometimes like to think. “Aside from me,” he added. “So far as we know.”

“So far as I know, and I should know … I was married to her seven years.”

“Why wouldn’t she let you have a divorce?”

He shrugged, “I don’t know. She was like that … a real sadist. She married me when she was just a
corps de ballet
girl and of course I helped her up the ladder. I suppose she resented that. People usually resent the ones who help them.”