Death in the Fifth Position

CHAPTER TWO

1

I don’t know when I’d seen so many gloomy faces as I did that morning in Eglanova’s dressing room. Mr. Gleason of the Police Department had assembled the company’s brass there, with the exception of Eglanova herself and Louis, neither of whom had yet arrived. But the others were there … including Miles Sutton who looked as though he hadn’t slept in a week, his eyes glassy with fatigue, and Jed Wilbur who kept cracking his knuckles until I thought I’d go crazy and Mr. Washburn in a handsome summer suit, very grave, and Alyosha looking fairly relaxed, as well as the stage manager and a few other notables who stood about the room while Detective Gleason, a round pig of a man with a cigar, obligingly revealed to us the full splendor of the official mind.

“Where are those two dancers … Egg-something and Giraffe?”

Egg and Giraffe … pretty good, I thought, giving him an A for effort.

“They will be along shortly,” said Mr. Washburn soothingly. “After all, this is very early for them to be up.”

“Early!” snorted Gleason. “That’s a funny way to run a business.”

“It is an art, not a business,” said Alyosha mildly.

Gleason looked at him suspiciously. “What is your name again?”

“Alyosha Petrovich Rudin.”

“A Russian, eh?”

“Originally.”

The detective scowled a xenophobe’s scowl but made no comment. He had us where he wanted us but then again we were pretty hot stuff, too, and we had him if he got too frisky. I was quite sure that Mr. Washburn was in hourly contact with City Hall.

“Well, we’ll start without them. First, I think you should all know that there’s been a murder.” He consulted a piece of paper which he held in his hand. “Ella Sutton was murdered last night at ten-thirty, by falling. The cable which was holding her thirty-eight feet above the stage was severed, except for one strand, by a party or parties as yet unknown, between the hours of four-thirty and ten P.M.… We have, by the way, what we believe to be the murder weapon: a pair of shears which are now being tested for fingerprints and also for metal filings, to see if they correspond with the metal of the cable.” He paused and fixed us with a steely eye, as though expecting the murderer to burst into hysterical sobs and confess everything; instead it was I who almost burst into hysterical sobs, thinking of those damned shears and how I had handled them. I had several very bad minutes.

“Now, I’ll be frank with you,” said Gleason, who was obviously going to be no such thing, now or ever. “We could close down your show while we investigate but, for one reason and another, we’ve decided to let you finish up your last two weeks here, just as you planned, and we’ll investigate when we can. Believe me when I say it’s a real break for you.” I looked at Mr. Washburn, the intimate of Kings and Mayors, but he was looking very bland indeed. “I want to warn you folks, though, that none of you is to take French leave, to disappear from the scene of the crime during your last week, or later, if we haven’t wound this case up by then … and I think we will have, by then,” he added ominously, looking, I swear, right at me, as though he’d already found my fingerprints on what was now called The Murder Weapon. I felt faint. Love and a possible accusation of being a murderer need a full stomach, coffee anyway.

“To be frank with you,” said Gleason, obviously bent on being a good fellow, “it seems very likely that the murder was committed by someone closely connected with the theater, by someone who knew all about the new ballet and who had a grudge against Miss Sutton …” Bravo, I said to myself. You are cooking with gas, Gleason. I began to insult him in my mind … for some reason I was perfectly willing to let the murderer go undetected. Sutton was no great loss but then, of course, I am callous, having been an infantryman at Okinawa (wounded my first day in action, by a bullet in the left buttock … no, I was not running away; the bullet ricocheted, I swear to God, and I was carried from the field, all bloody from my baptism of fire).

“I will,” said Mr. Gleason, “interview each and every one of you, starting right now and continuing through the entire company, including the stagehands … every one, in short, who was backstage.” He unfolded a long sheet of paper, a list of names. “Here is the list in the order in which I want to see you people. Will you have it put some place where the other members of the company can see it?” Mr. Washburn said that he would and motioned for the stage manager to take it outside and put it on the bulletin board.

When the stage manager returned, he was accompanied by Eglanova and Louis. Eglanova looked very distinguished in a black lace dress of mourning with a white feathered hat on her head, while Louis wore a pair of slacks and a sport shirt like the Tennis Anyone? juvenile he occasionally resembles.

“So sorry,” said Eglanova, swooping down upon the Inspector. “You are the police? I am Madame Eglanova … this is my dressing room,” she added, intimating that we had all better get the hell out of there.

“Pleased to meet you,” said Gleason, obviously impressed.

“And I am Louis Giraud,” said Louis with great dignity, but it didn’t come off because Gleason was too busy explaining things to Eglanova who was carefully maneuvering him to the door, like a stalking lioness. In a few minutes we were all out of there and Gleason repaired to an office on the second floor to commence his interviews … the first, naturally enough, was Miles Sutton. I was number seven on the list, I noticed. Lucky seven?

I cornered Mr. Washburn outside in the street; we both had gone out, automatically, for the afternoon papers. “I’ve got something to tell you,” I said.

“I want to hear only good news,” said Mr. Washburn warningly. “I have had enough disaster to last me the rest of what, very likely, will be a short life. My heart is not strong.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, sir, but I think you should know something about those shears.”

“Those what?”

“The things the police thought the murderer cut the cable with.”

“Well, what about them?”

“It just so happens that I found them last night in the wastebasket in Eglanova’s room.”

“What were they doing there?” Mr. Washburn was deep in The Journal-American … we were still on the front page.

“Somebody put them there.”

“Very likely … I wonder why they always spell Eglanova’s name wrong? According to this account, it’s all a Communist plot.”

“Mr. Washburn, I moved those shears … I picked them up and I took them out of that dressing room and put them on top of the toolbox backstage.”

“Very tidy. You’d be surprised at the size of our bill for tools every month … especially things getting lost. By the way, the box office reported that we’re sold out until closing night. You better get that in the papers tomorrow.”

“Yes sir, but I …”

“You know this may not be such a bad thing … I mean, of course, it’s perfectly awful and God knows where I’m ever going to get a ballerina for next season … but it’s certainly put Eclipse on the map. Everybody will want to see it from here to San Francisco, a real draw.” At this moment, I found Mr. Washburn a trifle materialistic, even for an old-fashioned opportunist like me.

“Maybe Eglanova will go with the company again next year,” I suggested, forgetting my own peril for a brief moment.

“But she wants to retire and we should let her,” said Mr. Washburn, starting in on The World-Telegram and Sun; he made Eglanova’s retirement sound like her choice rather than his.

“I hear Markova is tied up with her new company.”

“True … she’s too expensive anyway.”

“And so are Toumanova, Alonso, Danilova and Tallchief,” said I, repeating what Jane had told me the night before.

“Editorial in the Telegram,” said Mr. Washburn gravely. “They want to know if Wilbur is a Communist.”

“I had forgotten all about that,” I said truthfully.

“Well, I haven’t. The Veterans Committee telephoned to say that their pickets would be back tonight and that they would have new placards, calling us the Murder Company as well as the Red Company.”

“That’s a laugh!”

“I am not sure on whom, though,” said Mr. Washburn, studying the Post which had by far the best and sexiest pictures of Sutton, and no mention of the Red menace.

“Is Wilbur worried?”

“He seems to be. I’m supposed to have a talk with him this afternoon. Well, that’s that,” he said, handing the papers to me.

Outside the stage door a policeman in plain clothes lounged; he looked at us suspiciously as we entered.

“An armed camp!” exclaimed my employer with more gusto than I for one thought proper under the circumstances; our roles were reversed now: I was the one bothered by the publicity and investigation while he was the one who was meditating happily on free promotion and the coming tour with the customers flocking to see the “murder” ballet.

“By the way,” I said, “who’s going to dance the lead in Eclipse tonight … you have it scheduled, you know, and I should get a release out for the morning papers.”

“Good God! Where’s Wilbur?” The stage manager, hearing this, went to find the beleaguered choreographer.

“How would this Jane Garden do? I’m told she’s very fine,” I said, getting in a plug for the home team.

“It’s up to him … after all we’ve got three soloists.”

“I think she’d be great in it.” Then, changing from my youthful, eager manner to that somewhat more austere manner which is more nearly me, I said, “About those shears that I found in Eglanova’s room.”

“What about them?” We went through the whole thing again and, for the second time in five minutes, he was upset.

“What I want to know is should I tell the police right now that I found the shears in her room and put them outside on the tool chest, or should I wait until the Inspector arrests me for murder, after finding my prints all over The Murder Weapon.”

Mr. Washburn looked exactly like a man being goosed by the cold horns of the biggest, roughest dilemma this side of the Bronx Zoo. Needless to say, between sacrificing his star and his temporary press agent, he chose yours truly, as I suspected he would, to be offered up as a possible sacrifice to Miss Justice, that blind girl with the sword. “You can do something for me, Peter,” he said, in the cozy voice of an impresario talking to a millionaire.

“Anything, sir,” I said, very sincerely, looking at him with honest cocker spaniel eyes … little did he suspect that I was contemplating blackmail, that my mean little mind had seized upon a brilliant idea which would, if it worked, make me very happy indeed and if it didn’t … well, I could always take a lie-detector test or something to prove that I hadn’t eased Ella Sutton into a better and lovelier world.

“Say nothing about this, Son. Not until the season is over … just a week away. That’s all I ask. I’m sure they won’t go after you … absolutely sure. You have no motive. You didn’t even know Sutton. On top of that … well, I have a little influence in this town, as you know. Believe me when I say there won’t be any trouble.”

“If you say so, Mr. Washburn, then I won’t tell the police.” I then asked that Jane Garden be given the lead in Eclipse (she was understudy anyway), and she got it. Perfidy had paid off.

“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.

2

“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.”

“Why didn’t you just go ahead and divorce her?”

“Too complicated,” said Miles, evasively, looking away, tugging at his wiry orange beard. “By the way, will you be at the inquest tomorrow?”

I said no, that this was the first I’d heard of it.

“I have to be there,” said Miles gloomily. “The funeral’s after that.”

“Church funeral?” I made a mental note to call the photographers.

“No, just a chapel in a funeral home. I got her a lot out at Woodlawn.”

“Very expensive?”

“What? No, not very … the funeral home handled everything. Awfully efficient crowd.”

“It’s a big racket,” I said. “I know, but it saves all sorts of trouble.”

“Open or closed casket at the service?”

“Closed. You see there was an autopsy this morning.”

“What did they find?”

“I don’t know. Gleason didn’t say. Probably nothing.”

“You know,” I said, suddenly struck by a novel idea, “it might have been an accident after all.”

Miles Sutton groaned. “If only it were! No, I’m afraid they’ve already proved that those shears did the trick. Gleason told me that the metal filings corresponded to the metal of the cable.”

A cold chill went up my spine, and it wasn’t the Polar Bear Airconditioning Unit for Theaters, Restaurants and Other Public Places. “What about fingerprints?”

“They didn’t say.”

“Fingerprints are pretty old-fashioned now, anyway,” I brazened. “Every kid knows enough not to leave them around where the police might find them.”

“Then Jed Wilbur could have done it,” mused Sutton. “He never got along with Ella.”

“But, as I keep pointing out, even in a ballet company dislike is insufficient motive for murder.”

“Maybe he had a motive,” said Miles mysteriously, kicking up some more dust. I’ll say this for him, if Miles did his act with the police the way he did with me he’d keep them busy for a year untangling the politics and private relationships of the Grand Saint Petersburg Ballet.

“Well, motive or not, he’s not the kind of person to endanger his career. That gentleman is the opportunist of all times. If he was going to knock off a dancer he wouldn’t do it on the opening night of his greatest masterpiece …”

“Even so,” said Miles, reminding me of the giant squid in those underwater movies … spreading black ink like a smoke screen at the first sign of danger. “And what about Alyosha Rudin?”

“What about him?”

“Didn’t you know?”

“Know? Know what?”

“He was Ella’s lover before she met me. He got her into ballet when she was just another chorine.”

“Well, I’ll be damned.” This was a bit of gossip I hadn’t heard.

“He’s been in love with her all these years … even after she married me.”

“Why would she marry you to get ahead when she had the regisseur of the company in love with her?”

Miles chuckled. “He wouldn’t help her … thought she couldn’t dance classical roles worth a damn … which was quite true, then. She was just another little girl who hadn’t studied enough. But he didn’t take into account her ambition, which I did. I got her solos in spite of him and she was always good. She was one of those people who could do anything you gave her to do well, even though you might have thought she’d fall flat on her face.”

“And Alyosha?”

“He was surprised how well she turned out.”

“And he stayed in love with her?”

“So she always said.”

“He seems a little old for that kind of thing.”

Miles grunted to show that I was too young to know the facts of age. Then we paid our checks and went back to the theater. A crowd of newsmen met us at the door. Miles scooted inside quickly and I paused to butter them up a little, promising them impossible interviews in my dishonest press-agent way; they were on to my game but we had a pleasant time and I was able to tell them about the funeral the next day; I promised them full details later, time and place and so on.

I watched the end of the rehearsal. I knew that, as a rule, rehearsals which involve just the principals don’t take place on the stage but at the West Side studio; in this case, however, Wilbur had insisted on rehearsing Louis and Jane on stage to the music of one piano. He wanted to get Jane used to the stage, immediately.

She looked very efficient, I thought, as I sat on the first row and watched her move through the intricate pas de deux with Louis; she acted as though she had been dancing leads all her life and I experienced a kind of parental pride. Wilbur seemed pleased; especially with the way she did her turns fifteen feet above the stage, scaring the life out of me as I recalled the night before … it was just possible that we had some homicidal maniac in the company who enjoyed seeing ballerinas take fatal pratfalls. If Jane was at all aware of any danger she certainly didn’t show it as she pretended to eclipse the sun with a transfigured expression that I had seen on her face only once before, that morning when she had slid blissfully into a hot bath.

“All right, kids, that’s enough for today. You’ll be fine, Jane,” said Jed Wilbur as she came floating down out of the ceiling. “Remember to take it a little slower in your solo. Keep it muted, lyric. Remember what you’re doing … when in doubt go slow. The music will hold you up. You have a tendency to be too sharp in your line, too classical … blur it a little.” And the three walked off stage. I headed for the office where we had the largest sack of mail I think I have ever seen … requests for tickets, for souvenir fragments of the cable, as well as advice from ballet lovers on how to conduct the investigation; I’ll say one thing for the balletomanes, they really know their stuff; they follow the lives and careers of their favorites with rapt attention and remarkable shrewdness. Many of the letters that I glanced at openly suggested that Miles Sutton and his late wife had not been on the best of terms … now how could strangers have known that? From the columnists?

Mr. Washburn summoned me into the inner office, a spacious room with a thick carpet and a number of Cecil Beaton photographs of our stars, past and present, on the walls. He looked fit, I thought, in spite of the heat and excitement.

“The police have been very agreeable,” he chuckled, handing me one of those special filtered cigarettes which I particularly dislike. I took it anyway. “They have consented not only to let us finish our season but, after the inquest tomorrow, to conduct the investigation a little more discreetly than had been Gleason’s intention.” Mr. Washburn looked like a very satisfied shark at that moment … one who had been swimming about all day in the troubled waters of City Hall. “There’ll be two plain-clothes men backstage at every performance and, of course, no member of the company is allowed to leave New York … and they all must be available at a moment’s notice, leave messages where they can be found.”

“What’s our policy about the funeral tomorrow afternoon?” I asked, after I had first assured my employer that his wishes were, as always, my command.

Mr. Washburn frowned. “I suppose the principals had better attend. I’ll be there of course … you, too.”

“And the press?”

He gave me a lecture on the dignity of death, the privacy of sorrow; after which he agreed that the press should be fully represented at the last rites.

Then I asked if I should give Jane the full star treatment and he said we should first wait and see what the reviewers would have to say about her … needless to say they were all turning up again tonight. After that, he gave me some routine orders, ending with the announcement that Anna Eglanova would tour another year with the company, her thirty-second year as a star.

“When did you sign her?”

“This afternoon. She changed her mind about retiring, as I knew she would.” He was very smooth.

Neither of us made any mention of the murder. Mr. Washburn had taken the public line that it had all been an accident, that no one connected with his company could have done such a thing but that of course if the police wanted to investigate, well, that was their right. In private he also maintained this pose and for all I knew he really believed it. In any case, his main interest was the box office and that had never been so healthy since Nijinski danced a season with the company a long time ago. If someone had the bad taste to murder a fellow artist he would wash his hands of them.

3

I was almost sick to my stomach during that night’s performance … experiencing double stage fright for Jane: first, because it was her big chance, as they say in technicolor movies, and second, because of that cable.

Everyone in the audience was also keyed up. They looked like a group of wolves waiting for dinner. There was absolute silence all through the ballet … even when Louis, who is after all a big star, came on stage with that pearly smile which usually gets all the girls and gay boys.

Jane was better than I thought she would be. I don’t know why but you never regard your lover as being remarkably talented; you never seem to think her able to do anything at all unusual or brilliant unless, of course, she’s a big star or very well known when you first meet her, in which case, you soon discover that she’s not at all what she’s cracked up to be … but Jane floored me and, I am happy to say, the critics, too. She lost the music once or twice and there was a terrible moment when Louis fumbled a lift, when she sprang too soon and I thought they would land in a heap on the stage but both recovered like real professionals and by the time she began her ascent by cable I knew that she was in, really there at last.

I don’t need to tell you that I watched her rise in the air, slowly turning, with my heart thudding crazily and all my pulses fluttering. Even when the curtain fell I half expected to hear a crash from backstage. But it was all right and there she was, a moment later, standing on the stage with Louis, the corps de ballet behind them, as the audience roared its excitement, relief, disappointment … everything, every emotion swept over that stage like surf on a beach. She took seven curtain calls, by herself, and received all four of my bouquets as well as two others, from strangers.

I ran backstage and found her in Sutton’s dressing room (now hers) with most of the company congratulating her, out of relief as well as admiration. I think they were all afraid that something might happen again.…

Then the stage manager ordered everybody to get upstairs and change and I was left alone with Jane in the dressing room, among the flowers and telegrams from those friends who had been alerted.

“I’m glad it’s over,” she said at last, her eyes gleaming, still breathing hard.

“So am I. I was terrified.”

“Me too.”

“Of that cable?”

“No, just the part. I didn’t have time to think of anything else. You have no idea what it’s like to come out on a stage and know that every eye is on you.”

“It must be wonderful.”

“It is! it is!” She slipped out of her costume and I dried her off with a towel … her skin glowed, warm and rich, like silk. I kissed here, here and there.

4

There is no need to describe my evening with Jane. It was a memorable one for both of us and, next morning, the sun seemed intolerably bright as we awakened, showered, got dressed, ate breakfast … all in a terrible hung-over silence which did not end until, of mutual accord, still without a word, we each took an Empirin tablet and together threw out the three empty champagne bottles (Mumm, Rheims, France); then I spoke: “ ‘April,’ ” I said thickly, “ ‘is the crudest month.’ ”

“This is May,” said Jane.

“And twice as cruel. I have a strange feeling that during the night the spores of some mysterious fungus or moss, wafted down from the planet Venus, lodged themselves in my brain, entering through some unguarded orifice. Everything is fuzzy and blurred and I don’t hear so well.”

“You sound like you’re still lit,” said Jane, putting on a pink negligee which she had once bought at a sale to make herself look seductive over the morning coffee. Wearing only jockey shorts, I posed like Atlas before the full-length mirror on the bathroom door.

“Do you think I’d make a dancer?”

“You’ve made me, darling,” she said.

“Shall I wash your mouth out with soap?”

“I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”

“Not even on alternate Wednesdays?”

“That’s matinee day … when I do Eclipse, twice.” And that was the end of our little game. In case you should ever have an affair with a dancer I recommend total resignation to the fact that the Dance comes first; not only in their lives (which is all right) but also in your life (which is not, unless you’re a dancer, too, or connected with it the way I am). After a time you will gradually forget all about the other world of Republicans and Democrats, Communists and Capitalists, Hemingway, the D. and D. of Windsor and Leo Durocher. I suppose in a way it’s kind of a refuge from the world, like a monastery or a nudist colony … except for the tourists: the lives of dancers are filled with the comings and goings of little friends and admirers, autograph hounds and lovers, and you never know who is likely to turn up backstage in hot pursuit of one of the girls, or boys. I’ve been very surprised, believe me, at certain respectable gentlemen who have unexpectedly revealed a Socratic passion for one of our dancing boys. If I should ever decide to go into the blackmail game I could certainly get some handsome retainers!

Midway through an analysis of her last night’s performance in Eclipse, the phone began to ring: friends and and relatives of the new star … so I left her to enjoy their admiration.

It was another hot day, windless and still, with not a cloud in the harsh blue sky. I walked to our office, keeping in the shade of buildings, enjoying the occasional blasts of icy air from the open doors of restaurants and bars.

The newspapers were very gratifying. We were still on the front page, or near it, and the Globe had a feature article on the life of Ella Sutton, implying, as did nearly all the other papers, that an arrest would soon be made, that the murderer was her husband … naturally, they all kept this side of libel; even so it was perfectly clear that they thought him guilty … all except the Mirror which thought it was a Communist plot. The Globe carried a six-column story of Ella’s life with pictures of her from every phase of what turned out to be a longer and more varied career than even I had suspected. Dancers are such liars (and so are press agents, God knows) that as a result the facts of any star’s life are so obscure that it would take a real detective to discover them, or else a good reporter with access to a first-rate morgue, like the Globe’s.

There was nobody in the office; except one secretary, another sack of mail, and so many messages marked urgent that I didn’t bother to look at any of them; instead, I just relaxed and read the true story of Ella’s life. I was surprised to note that she was thirty-three years old when she crossed the shining river so abruptly, that she had been dancing professionally for twenty years, in burlesque, in second-rate musical comedies and, finally, in the celebrated but short-lived North American Ballet Company which was to ballet in the thirties what the Group Theater was to the drama … only a good deal more left wing than the Group, if possible. There was a photograph of her at that time all done up like a Russian peasant woman with her eyes looking north to the stars. When the North American folded, she danced for a time in night clubs; then, just before the war, Demidovna emerged on our startled ken, to be rechristened the next year Ella Sutton, prima ballerina but never assoluta. It was a good piece and I made a mental note to call the Globe and find out who had written it … the by-line Milton Haddock meant nothing, I knew.

The next few hours were occupied with business … the ballet’s and my own. Miss Flynn implied that my presence in my office might make a good impression. I promised to drop by later. It wasn’t until I had finished my twentieth phone call and dispatched my eleventh bulletin to an insatiable press that Mr. Washburn phoned me to say that the inquest had been held without excitement and that I had better get over to the funeral home on Lexington Avenue where Ella Sutton was to make her last New York appearance.

All the principals were there when I arrived, including the photographers. Eglanova wore the same black lace dress and white plumed hat that she had worn the day before and she looked very cool and serene, like a figure carved in ice. Louis had broken down and put on a blue suit and a white shirt, but no tie … while Alyosha, Jed Wilbur and Mr. Washburn all managed to look very decorous indeed. Miles looked awful, with red gritty eyes and a curiously blotched face. His hands shook and once or twice during the ceremony I thought he would faint … now just what was wrong with him? I wondered. He seemed not always to remember where he was and several times he yawned enormously … one photographer, quicker and less reverent than his fellows, snapped Miles in the middle of a yawn, getting the picture of the week for, when they ran it the next day, the newspapers commented: husband of murdered star enjoying a joke at funeral. I don’t need to say that everything connected with the death of Ella Sutton was in the worst possible taste and, consequently, we had the most successful season in the history of American ballet.

The service was brief, inaccurate and professional. When it was over, the casket and at least a ton of flowers were carried out of the room by four competent-looking young thugs in ill-fitting cutaways and the long journey to Woodlawn began, three limousines transporting the funeral party. If Ella had had any family they did not choose to appear and so she was buried with only her un-grieving husband and her professional associates at her grave. I must admit that there are times when I hate my work, when I wish that I had gone on and taken my doctorate at Harvard and later taught in some quiet university, lecturing on Herrick and Marvell, instead of rushing about with side shows like this, trying to get the freaks in to look at some more freaks. Well, another day another dollar as the soldiers in the recent unpleasantness used to remark.

“How is the investigation coming?” I asked Mr. Washburn as we drove back to town; Alyosha sat silently on the back seat with us while two girl soloists sat up front with the driver.

“I’m afraid I’m not in Mr. Gleason’s confidence,” said Mr. Washburn easily. “They seem very busy and they seem quite confident … but that’s all a part of the game, I’m told … to pretend they know who it is so that the guilty party will surrender. Not that I, for one minute, think any member of the company is involved.”

Mr. Washburn’s unreality had a wonderfully soothing effect on me; I responded just like a prospective patron.

We both were rudely jolted out of this quiet mood when, upon arriving at the theater, a plain-clothes man announced that Gleason would like to see me. I exchanged a startled glance with Mr. Washburn who turned visibly gray, thinking no doubt of those shears, of Eglanova’s being involved in a scandal, of no season this fall because of no star.

Gleason, smoking a slobbery, ill-smelling cigar, looked every inch a Tammany man. His secretary sat at another desk, shorthand pad before him.

“Come in, Mr. Sargeant.” Oh, this was bad I thought.

“How are you today, Mr. Gleason?”

“I have some questions I want to ask you.”

“Anything you want to know,” I said graciously.

“Why didn’t you mention at our previous interview that you had handled those shears?”

“What shears?”

“The Murder Weapon.”

“But I don’t remember handling them.”

“Then how do you explain the fact that your fingerprints are on them … yours and no one else’s?”

“Are you sure they’re my fingerprints?”

“Now look here, Sargeant, you’re in serious trouble. I suggest for your own good you take a more constructive attitude about this investigation or …” He paused, ominously, and I saw in my mind’s eye the rubber hose, the glaring Klieg lights and finally a confession thrust under my bloody hand for that shaky signature which would send me to the gates of heaven for the murder of a ballerina I had never known, much less killed. It was too terrible.

“I was just asking, that’s all. I mean you never did fingerprint me …”

“We have ways,” said the Inspector. “Now what were you doing with those shears between dress rehearsal and the murder?”

“I wasn’t doing anything with them.”

“Then why …”

“Are my fingerprints on them? Because I picked them up off the floor and put them on top of the tool chest.”

Gleason looked satisfied. “I see. And are you in the habit of picking up tools off the floor—is that your job?”

“No, it’s not my job, but I am in the habit of picking things up … I’m very neat.”

“Are you trying to be funny?”

“I don’t know why you keep accusing me of trying to amuse you … it’s the last thing I’d try to do. I’m just as serious about this as you are. More so, because this scandal could louse up the whole season,” I added, piously, speaking the language of self-interest which men of all classes and nations understand.

“Then will you kindly explain why you happened to pick up The Murder Weapon and place it on that tool chest.”

“I don’t know why.”

“But you admit that you did?”

“Of course … you see I stepped on them and almost fell,” I lied: how many years for perjury? threescore and ten; can I get there by amber light? yes, and back again.

“Now, we’re getting somewhere. Why did you step on them?”

“Don’t you mean where?”

“Mr. Sargeant …”

I spoke quickly, cutting him short, “I’m not sure just where I was.” (This uncertainty might save me yet, I thought, watching that grim youth take down my testimony … well, I wasn’t under oath yet.) “Somewhere near the dressing rooms. I damn near fell. Then I looked down and saw those things at my feet and so I picked them up and put them on the box.”

“What time was this?”

“About ten-thirty.”

“After the murder?”

“Well, yes.”

“Didn’t you think it peculiar that a pair of shears should be lying out in the open like that?”

“I had other things on my mind.”

“Like what?”

“Well, Ella Sutton, for instance … she had been killed a few minutes before.”

“And you made no connection between the shears and her death?”

“Of course not. Why should I? For all we knew at the time, the cable might have broken by itself.”

“When you did discover that the cable had been cut, why didn’t you tell me at our last interview that you had handled The Murder Weapon?”

“Well, it just slipped my mind.”

“That is no answer, Mr. Sargeant.”

“I’d like to know what you want to call it then?” I was getting angry.

“Do you realize that you could be under suspicion right now for the murder of Ella Sutton?”

“I don’t realize any such thing. In the first place you’ll find that my fingerprints are on the cutting end of the shears, not the handle … also the fact that there are no other prints on it means that whoever did cut the cable had sense enough to wipe the shears clean.”

“How do you know there were no other prints?”

“Because you said there weren’t … and, in case you still aren’t convinced, I may as well tell you that I had less motive than anyone in the company for killing Sutton. I told you I didn’t know the woman, and that’s the truth.”

“Now, now,” said the Inspector with a false geniality that made his earlier manner seem desirable by comparison. “Don’t get hot under the collar. I realize that you had no motive … we’ve checked into all that. Of course it doesn’t do your girl friend any harm, having Ella Sutton gone, but that of course would hardly be reason enough for murder … I realize that.”

He was playing it dirty now but I said nothing; he had no case and he knew it. He was only baiting me, trying to get me to say something in anger which I would not, under other circumstances, say … something about Miles or Eglanova, or whoever they suspected. Well, I would disappoint him; I composed myself and settled back in my chair; I even lit a cigarette with the steadiest hand since the 4-H Club’s last national convention.

“What I would like to know, though, is the exact position of the shears, when you first stumbled over them.”

“That’s hard to say. The north end of the stage, near the steps which go up to the dressing rooms.”

“Whose rooms are there?”

“Well, Sutton’s was, and Eglanova’s, and the girl soloists share a room. The men are all on the other side.”

“Tell me, Mr. Sargeant, who do you think killed Ella Sutton?” This was abrupt.

“I … I don’t know.”

“I didn’t ask you if you knew … we presume you don’t know. I just wondered what your hunch might be.”

“I’m not sure that I have one.”

“That seems odd.”

“And if I did I wouldn’t be fool enough to tell you … not that I don’t want to see justice triumph and all that, but suppose my guess was wrong? … I’d look very silly to the person I’d accused.”

“I was just curious,” said Gleason, with that same spurious air of good fellowship and I suddenly realized, like a flash, that, motive or not, I was under suspicion … as an accomplice after the fact or during the fact or even before it for all I knew. Gleason was quite sure that I was, in some way, on the murderer’s side.

This knowledge froze me and the rest of our talk was mechanical. I do remember, however, wanting to ask him why he hadn’t arrested Miles Sutton yet. It was very strange.