Death in the Fifth Position

CHAPTER FOUR

1

Once a Lady always a Lady, as the saying goes; especially in the case of Alma Shellabarger of Chicago who married the Marquis of Edderdale when she was twenty and then at twenty-four married someone else and after that someone else and so on until now, at fifty, she had no husband, though she still uses the title of Marchioness in spite of all the other names she has been called along the way. No one seems to mind, however, because she gives great parties even though her income is not as large now as it was when she appeared in the fashionable world with a face like a bemused horse and all that Shellabarger cash, from slaughtered pigs and sheep. Nevertheless, her blood-drenched income is adequate … though there is no longer the Paris house or the Amalfi villa or the Irish castle … only the Park Avenue mansion and the Palm Beach house, where lavish parties are given, in season. I am told that at her dinners neither pig nor sheep is served, only poultry, fish and game … real sense of guilt as any analyst would tell you at the drop of a fee.

Mr. Washburn and I arrived before the rest of our company. As a rule, he waits until Eglanova is ready and then he escorts her; but tonight, for some reason, he couldn’t wait to get out of the theater. Both of us were hot in our tuxedos … his white and mine black, an obvious clue to our respective incomes. Fortunately, the house was cool … a gust of freshened air met us in the downstairs hall, a vast room with grey marble columns, marble floor and Greek statuary in niches. A footman took our invitations and led us up a flight of stairs where, so help me, a butler announced our names to a hundred or so decorative guests in a drawing room which looked like the waiting room at Penn Station redecorated by King Midas … the guests looked as though they might be waiting for trains, too, I thought, as we moved toward our hostess who stood beneath a chandelier at the room’s center, all in green and diamonds, receiving her guests with a half-smile and mumbled greetings as though she weren’t quite sure why she was there, or why they were there.

“Dear Alma,” said Mr. Washburn, beginning to expand as he always does in the presence of money.

“Ivan!” They embraced like two mechanical toys, like those figures which come out of old-fashioned clocks every hour on the hour. I bowed over her hand in the best Grand Saint Petersburg Ballet style.

“You poor dear,” said Alma, fixing my employer with yellow eyes. “What a disaster!”

“We must take the good with the bad,” said Mr. Washburn gently.

“I was there!” breathed Alma Edderdale, shutting her eyes for a moment as though to recall, as vividly as possible, every detail of that terrible night.

“Then you know what it was like …”

“I do … I do.”

“The ghastly fall …”

“Can I ever forget?”

“The end of a life … a great ballerina’s life.”

“If there was only something one could do.” That did it, I thought. Mr. Washburn would immediately suggest an Ella Sutton Memorial Ballet, sets, costumes and choreographer’s fee to be paid by that celebrated patroness, the Marchioness of Edderdale. But Mr. Washburn is as tactful as he is venal.

“We all feel that way, Alma.” Then he paused significantly.

“Perhaps … but we’ll talk of that another time. Tell me about him.”

“About whom?”

“The husband. The … well, you know what they say.”

“Ah … quite broken up,” said Mr. Washburn evasively, and I withdrew, moving toward the bar in the next room where, among other things, they were serving a Pommery ’29 worth its weight in uranium. I knocked off two glasses before Jane arrived, looking very young and innocent in a plain white dinner dress, her hair drawn severely back ballerina-style. She was like the daughter of a country minister at her first grown-up party, only she looked perhaps too innocent to be the real thing. She caused a mild stir, her appearance at least: this gang hadn’t absorbed her yet, made her a legend the way they had Eglanova who now stood, between Alyosha and Louis in the doorway, like some bird of paradise poised on the edge of a hen coop. In the excitement of Eglanova’s entrance, Jane and I met near the bar and toasted one another in Pommery.

“How did you like it tonight?” she asked, breathless and young, like a bride in an advertisement (and, like the model in question, well paid for her characterization).

“Wonderful party,” I said, enjoying myself for the first time, publicly at least, since my wild ballet season began. “Best stuff I’ve ever tasted. And the air-conditioning! Wonderful job … like an autumn day.”

“You misunderstood,” said Jane firmly, with the bright monomaniacal stare of a dancer discussing the Dance. “I meant my performance.”

“I’m afraid I didn’t catch it. I was at the office most of the night, before I came here.”

She rallied bravely. “You … didn’t see me tonight?”

“No, I had to get some pictures off to the papers … the new ones of you, by the way,” I added.

“I got eight curtain calls.”

“That’s my girl.”

“And three bouquets … from strangers.”

“Never take candy from strange men, little girl,” I chanted as we moved toward a tall French window which looked out on an eighteenth-century garden, all of five years old.

“I wish you’d seen it. Tonight was the first night I really danced, that I forgot all about the variations and the audience and that damned cable … that I really let go. Oh, it was wonderful!”

“You think you’re pretty good, huh?”

“Oh, I didn’t mean that!” She was anxious: nowadays in the theater good form (or actors’ notion of good form) is everything. Everyone dresses carefully and quietly, no practical jokes, no loud voices and, above all, no reference to self … just smile and blush if you are congratulated for having won a Donaldson Award, look blank when someone mentions the spread on you in Life, murmuring something about not having seen it yet. In a way, I prefer the grand old egotists like Eglanova: she hardly admits that there is another ballerina in all the world … and even Louis has been known to ask reviewers: “Who is this Youskevitch you talk to me about?” But anyway Jane had a storm of modesty which quickly passed and then, the Dance taken care of for the rest of the evening, we cruised the party.

About one o’clock we separated with an agreement to meet back at her apartment at two-thirty on the dot. Neither of us is very jealous … at least not in theory, and I wandered about the drawing room, saying hello to the few people I knew. I was pretty much lost in this crowd. It’s not the gang I went to school with, the sons of those dull rich families who seldom entertain and who traipse off to Newport, Southampton, Bar Harbor and similar giddy places this time of year; nor is it the professional newspaper and theater world wherein I sing for my supper … rather, it is the world of unfixed money: obscure Europeans, refugees from various unnamed countries, the new-rich, the wilder old-rich, the celebrated figures in the arts who have time for parties and finally the climbers, mysterious and charming and busy, of all ages, sexes, nationalities, shapes and sizes. It takes a long time to straighten everybody out. I haven’t even begun to see my way clear yet but I probably will in a few more years. Some people of course never do add things up right. Lady Edderdale is still among the more confused, after thirty years of high life.

Beneath a portrait of the lady of the house (the work of Dali) stood Elmer Bush with whom I have a nodding acquaintance … through no fault of mine I am not his bosom buddy: his column, “America’s New York,” is syndicated in seventy-two newspapers as well as being the New York Globe’s biggest draw on the subway circuit. He was of course too important ever to visit the office, so the only time I met him was at first nights when he would always come up to Milton Haddock and say: “It looks like a bomb from where I sit. What do you think, boy?” and Milton would grumble a little and sometimes I would be introduced and sometimes not.

“Hello there, Mr. Bush,” I said with more authority than usual since I was, after all, sitting in the middle of the best piece of news in town.

“Why if it isn’t old Pete Sargeant himself,” said Mr. Bush, his face lighting up as he saw his next column practically composed already. He gave a polite but firm chill shoulder to a blond middle-aged star of yesteryear who had obviously got the Gloria Swanson bug; then we were alone together in the middle of the party.

“Haven’t seen you in a coon’s age!” said Elmer Bush, showing a row of capped teeth: he has the seventh highest Hooper in television with a program called “New York’s America” which is, they tell me, a combination of gossip and interviews with theater people … I never look at television myself because it hurts my eyes. Anyway, Elmer is big league, bald and ulcerous, the perfect symbol of metropolitan success for an earnest hard-working boy like me trying to get ahead in “the game.”

“Well, I’ve been pretty busy,” I allowed in my best bumpkin manner.

“Say, what about that murder you got in your company?” and the benign features of Elmer Bush (“just a friend of the family in your own living room giving you some real stories about real people in the news,” … just old horse-shit Bush, I thought) shone with friendship and interest.

“Some mess,” I said, because that’s exactly what he would have said had our roles been reversed.

“Well, it keeps the show in the news … that’s one thing. Hear my broadcast about it Wednesday night?”

“I certainly did,” I lied. “Just about the best analysis I’ve seen so far.”

“Well, I didn’t really try to analyze it … just straight reporting.”

Had I blundered? “I mean the way you put it, well, that was some job …”

“Get the facts,” said Mr. Bush, smiling mechanically. “When are they going to arrest the husband?”

“I don’t know.”

“He did do it?”

“Everyone thinks so. He certainly had a good enough reason.”

“Bitch?”

“Very much so.”

“I saw the man who’s on that case yesterday. What’s his name? Gleason? Yes. Used to know him years ago when I was covering the police courts. He was mixed up in the Albemarle business … but that was before your time. Anyway, he made it pretty clear to me, unofficially of course, that Sutton would be arrested in the next twenty-four hours and indicted as quick as possible … while public interest is high. That’s the way they work.” And he chuckled. “Politicians, police … the worst hams of all. But I still don’t know why they’ve held off so long.”

“Pressure,” I said smoothly, as though I knew.

He pursed his lips and nodded, everything just a bit more deliberate than life, made sharp for the television camera. “I thought as much. Not a bad idea to string it out as long as possible either … for the good of all concerned. Are you sold out? I thought so. Take a tip from me! This will put ballet on the map.” And with that message he left me for a dazzling lady who looked like Gloria Swanson and who, upon close inspection, turned out to be Gloria Swanson.

“How’re you doing, Baby?” inquired a familiar voice behind me … needless to say I gave a bit of a jump and executed a fairly professional pirouette … never turn your back on the likes of Louis, as Mother used to say.

“I’m doing just fine, killer,” I said, showing my upper teeth.

“Such good boy,” said Louis, holding my arm for a minute in a vise-like grip. “Some muscle!”

“I got it from beating up faggots in Central Park,” I said slowly; he doesn’t understand if you talk fast.

Louis roared. “You kill me, Baby.”

“Don’t tempt me.”

“Come on out on that balcony … just you and me. We look at moon.”

“Not on your life, killer.”

“Why’re you so afraid of me?”

“Just two guesses.”

“But I tell you you won’t feel nothing. You’ll like it fine.”

“I’m a virgin.”

“I know, Baby, that’s what I go for. Last night …” But before he could tell me some lewd story concerning his unnatural vice, Jed Wilbur approached us, pale and harried-looking, like the White Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland. He too was got up in a dinner jacket … it was the first time, I think, that I had ever seen him in a suit, wearing a tie. I was not able to continue my sartorial investigation, however, for Louis broke off what had promised to be our big balcony scene and rushed off in the direction of the main hall, as though he had to get to the john real fast. I could see that Wilbur was in some doubt as to whether to chase his beloved and corner him in some barricaded lavatory or to tarry a bit with me instead. He chose the latter course.

“I wonder where Louis is off to?” he asked.

“Call of the wild, I guess.”

“What was he talking to you about?”

This was abrupt and I was almost tempted to remind Jed Wilbur that it was none of his business. But then he is the leading choreographer of the minute and I am, for this minute at least, a minion of the ballet and so I swallowed my thimble-sized pride and said, “Just idle chatter.”

“In other words making a pass.” Wilbur sounded bitter.

“But that’s natural. I mean for him it is. He has to get into everything he sees.”

“Male and under thirty.” Wilbur sighed and I felt sorry for him … unrequited love and all that. He fidgeted with his ready-tied bow tie.

“Well, that’s the way he gets his kicks,” I said, idly dropping into an Army attitude; while I talked to Jed I looked over his shoulder at the room, recognizing several famous faces, one of whom, belonging to a Senator, was talking very seriously to Jane who obviously had no notion of who he was. I smiled to myself as I recalled the day before when she asked me, very tenderly and shyly, whether Truman was a Democrat or Republican.

“Why does everyone at parties look over everyone else’s shoulder?” asked Wilbur suddenly, capturing my attention with a bang.

“Oh.…” I blushed. “Bad manners, I guess.”

“Some commentary on our society,” said Wilbur, in a voice which smacked a little of the soapbox. “Everyone trying to get ahead every minute of the day … rushing, rushing, rushing, afraid of missing a trick.”

“This is a competitive town,” I said with my usual profundity, sneaking a glimpse over his shoulder at Eglanova who was surrounded by some rich-looking bucks, laughing as though she was quite prepared to slip off a shoe and guzzle champagne from it.

“You’re telling me,” said Wilbur and he looked over his own shoulder in the direction that Louis had taken … but our Don Juan was nowhere in sight. No doubt he was having his way with one of the busboys behind a potted palm downstairs. Thinking of Louis always puts me into a good mood … that is when he’s not around to make me nervous … he just makes me laugh, for no particular reason. But then Lady Edderdale, surrounded by outriders, rode down on us, diamonds whispering against green satin.

“Mr. Wilbur? We haven’t met. I must have been in the other room when you arrived. I’ve so much wanted to meet you.”

Jed took her outstretched hand, bewildered. “Yes …”

“I am Alma Edderdale,” she said, smiling a blinding smile, like sun on a glacier; she withdrew her hand.

“We’ve met,” I said quickly, to cover the moment’s confusion. “With Mr. Washburn.’

“Of course. Can I ever tell you in words, Mr. Wilbur, my reaction to Eclipse?”

Wilbur suggested in a confused voice that she give it a try … stated more politely of course.

“It was my one wonderful, mystical experience in the ballet … not including the classics which I have seen so long that I can no longer remember how they first affected me. But in modern ballet … ah!” Words failed her. They failed Jed, too.

“It’s generally thought to be Mr. Wilbur’s best work,” I gabbled.

“And of course what happened that first night! Mr. Wilbur, I was there. I saw.” She opened her eyes very wide, great golden orbs, swimming in jaundiced tears.

“Very awful,” mumbled Wilbur.

“And to have had it happen then … at that wonderful moment! Ah, Mr. Wilbur …” The passage of several boisterous guests made escape possible; I slipped through them and wandered off to find Jane. But she had vanished … the Senator, too. I settled for Eglanova who was seated on a love seat with an old man and surrounded by younger ones, all rather sensitive I noted with my shrewd and merciless eyes … I can tell one of our feathered friends at twenty paces: a certain type anyway. The Louis kind nobody can spot until they’re coming at you … then flight is in order, if they’re bigger than you.

“My darling Peter!” Eglanova was mildly lit, not yet weepy and Czarist the way she gets when she is really gone on vodka … twice a year: at Russian New Year and backstage the last night of every season in New York … her last season, she always moans, so they say. She gave me her hand to kiss and, feeling good on all the Pommery I had drunk, I kissed it soulfully.

“I have had such good time with young men.” She waved to include them all. They giggled. “I never go home now.”

“It’s late, Anna,” said Alyosha, suddenly joining us.

“Tyrant! Tomorrow I do one pas de deux … no more.”

“Even so.” Then he spoke in Russian and she answered in Russian, both speaking rapidly, seriously, the good humor of the party-mood gone. I thought Eglanova’s face went quite pale though it was impossible to tell since her make-up was like spar varnish … perhaps, it was the way her eyes opened very wide and her face fell, literally sagged, as though whatever force had been holding it tight across the bone suddenly gave way. Then, with a stage gesture, she got up, swept a half-curtsy to her admirers and, without saying a word to any of us, left the room on Alyosha’s arm. I saw them at the door saying good night to Lady Edderdale.

I looked about the room for Jane but she was gone. I wondered if she had gone home early … or perhaps had decided in a puckish mood to have a Senatorial fling. Well, she could look out for herself, I decided, and went downstairs to the bathroom. I was just about to go in when I saw Mr. Washburn come trotting across the black and white marble floor.

“I was looking for you,” he said, stopping short, breathing hard. “We’ve got to get out of here.”

“Why? What’s the matter?”

“I’ll tell you outside. Come on.” He looked furtively about as though afraid the footmen were eavesdropping. They were not. Even so, as we went out the door, he looked back over his shoulder, like a man fearing pursuers; I looked, too, and saw no one except Louis coming out of the head with a blond footman, both looking pleased as hell. They did not see us.

We headed east on Seventy-fifth Street, toward Lexington Avenue.

“What’s going on? What’s up? Where’re we walking to?”

“It’s quicker, walking,” said Mr. Washburn grimly, prancing ahead of me like a fat mare. “But where?”

“To Miles Sutton’s apartment. He lives just the other side of Lexington.”

“What’s the matter?” But I knew: Gleason had arrested him at last, or was about to.

“He’s dead,” said Mr. Washburn.

I think I said: “Sweet Jesus!”

2

We walked up three flights of stairs which smelled of damp and cabbage; at the top of the third flight was an open door with a curiously formal card on it: “Mr. and Mrs. Miles Sutton” … obviously a Christmas present from an old aunt. The apartment was a three-roomed affair, very modern: you know the kind … two walls battleship gray and two terra cotta in the same room with fuchsia-covered furniture. This was where the happy couple had lived until the present season when Miles moved out, not returning until after Ella was dead.

In the front room several detectives stood, looking important as they always do in the presence of someone else’s disaster. They were very tough with us until Gleason, hearing the noise of Mr. Washburn’s protests, shouted from another room, “Let them in.”

“In there,” said one of the detectives, motioning to a door on the left.

We found Gleason in the kitchen. A photographer with a flash bulb was taking pictures of the corpse, from all angles. Two unidentified men stood by the sink, watching.

“Oh, my God!” And Mr. Washburn, after one look at the body of Miles Sutton, hurried out of the room. We could hear him vomiting in the bathroom. I didn’t feel so good myself but I have a strong stomach and I have seen a lot of things in my time, during the war, and I’m not easily upset … even so all the wine I had drunk that night at the party turned sour in my belly as I looked at Miles Sutton. It was one of the damndest things I have ever seen. He was slumped over a gas stove, his arms hanging at his sides and his legs buckled crazily under him … he was a tall man and the stove didn’t come up to his waist. But the horrible thing was his head. He had fallen in such a way that his chin had got caught in one of the burners on top of the stove … which might not have been so bad except for the fact that the gas had been lit and his hair, his beard and the skin of his face were burned until now his head resembled a shapeless mass of black tar. The room was full of the acrid odor of burnt hair and flesh.

“O.K.,” said the photographer, getting down from a kitchen chair: he had been shooting a picture from directly overhead. “It’s all yours.”

The two men by the sink moved forward and lifted the body off the stove. I looked away while they lugged the large corpse out of the kitchen into the living room. Gleason and I, still without a word to one another, followed the procession into the living room.

A moment later Mr. Washburn joined us, very weak at the knees. Without further invitation, he sat down in an Eames chair, careful not to look at Miles Sutton who was now laid out on a stretcher in the middle of the room. Detectives scurried about, searching the room, taking photographs.

Gleason lit a cigar and glared at us.

“How … how did it happen?” asked Mr. Washburn in a low voice.

“It ruins the whole case,” said Mr. Gleason, savagely chewing on his cigar. “Poor Miles …”

“It makes no sense.”

“Inspector, could you … would you please put something over him.”

“You don’t have to look at it,” snapped Gleason, but he motioned to one of the detectives who found a sheet and covered the body.

“That’s better,” said Mr. Washburn.

“We were going to arrest him this evening,” said Gleason. “We had a perfect case … in spite of everyone’s refusal to co-operate with us.” And he looked at me with bloodshot eyes … when Irish eyes are bleary, I hummed to myself.

“How could such a thing have happened? I mean … well, it’s impossible.”

“That’s our business: the impossible.”

“How could someone have got in that position … I don’t understand.” Mr. Washburn sounded querulous.

“That’s what we’re going to find out … the medical examiner here,” he gestured to one of the men standing by the door, “says that he’s been dead for about an hour.”

“It must’ve been an accident,” said Mr. Washburn.

“We’ll know after the autopsy. We’re going to do a real job, you can bet your life. If there’s been any monkey business, we’ll find out.”

“Or suicide,” suggested Mr. Washburn.

Gleason looked at him contemptuously. “A man decides to kill himself by lighting a gas stove and putting his head on the burner like it was a pillow or something? For Christ’s sake! If he was going to kill himself he would’ve stuck his head in the oven and turned on the gas. Anyway he was about to cook something … we found a pan beside him on the floor.”

“Unless somebody put it there … to make it look like an accident,” I suggested, to Mr. Washburn’s dismay.

The detective ignored me, though. “I wanted you to come here, Mr. Washburn, to tell me which members of your company were at the party tonight.”

“All the principals … Rudin, Wilbur … everyone.”

“Who?”

Mr. Washburn, unhappily, gave him all the names.

“Where was the party held?” When Mr. Washburn told him, Gleason whistled, putting two and two together in a manner marvelous to behold … there’s nothing quite like watching a slow reflex in action.

“That’s just a few blocks from here?”

“I believe so,” said Mr. Washburn.

“Anyone could have come over here and killed Sutton.”

“Now look here, you don’t know he was killed …”

“That’s right, but then I don’t know it was an accident, either.”

“Just how could anybody kill a grown man by pushing his head on a stove?” I asked.

“It could be done,” said Gleason, “if you knocked him out.”

“Is there any sign he was knocked out?” I asked.

“The examination hasn’t been made yet. In the meantime, Mr. Washburn, I want you to have the following people ready to see me tomorrow afternoon at the theater.” And he handed my employer a list of names.

“How soon will you know … what happened, whether he was knocked out or not?”

“By morning.”

“Morning … oh, God, the papers.” Mr. Washburn shut his eyes; I wondered why publicity should bother him at this point.

“Yes, the papers,” said Gleason, irritably. “Think what they’ll say about me? ‘Suspect killed or murdered on eve of arrest.’ Think how that’ll make me look!” I wondered if perhaps Gleason might not have political ambitions … Gleason for Councilman: fearless investigator, loyal American.

My reverie was broken, however, by the appearance of a dark, disheveled woman who pushed her way past the detectives at the door and then, catching sight of the figure on the floor, screamed and drew back. There was a moment of pure confusion. The woman was taken into a back room by the medical examiner who spoke to her in a low, soothing voice which had startlingly little effect on the sobs. Magda was hysterical.

“Was she at the party?” asked Gleason, turning to Mr. Washburn, the sobs muffled now by a closed door.

“No, no …” Mr. Washburn looked about distractedly, as though ready to make a run for it.

“She’s been sick,” I volunteered.

“I know she has,” said Gleason. Then the sobbing stopped and presently the door to the bedroom opened and Magda, supported on one side by the doctor, joined us. Whatever shot the doctor had given her was obviously working like a charm for she was in complete control of herself now … even when she looked at the sheet-covered figure on the floor, she remained calm.

“Now,” said Gleason, in a voice which was, for him, gentle, “why did you come here tonight?”

“To see Miles.” Her voice was emotionless; she kept staring at the white sheet.

“Why did you want to see him?”

“I … I was afraid.”

“Of what?”

“Of his being arrested. You were going to arrest him, weren’t you?”

“He was guilty.”

She shook her head, slowly. “No, he didn’t kill her … but I told you that once, when you came to see me.”

“What did you intend to do tonight? Why did you come?”

“I wanted to … to get him to run away, with me, the two of us. We could have gone to Mexico … any place. I wanted …” But she didn’t finish her sentence; she looked dully at Gleason.

“You couldn’t have got away,” said Gleason quietly. “He couldn’t have got away. You see, he was watched every minute; didn’t you know that? Why, there was even a man watching this building tonight.”

Mr. Washburn gave a start. “You mean …”

Gleason nodded, looking very pleased with himself. “I mean, Mr. Washburn, that at one-ten you were seen entering this building and at one-twenty-seven you left it, in a great hurry. What were you doing here?”

Mr. Washburn shut his eyes, like an ostrich heading for a sandpile.

“What were you doing here?”

“I came to talk to Miles.” Mr. Washburn opened his eyes and his voice was even and controlled: he was still the intrepid Ivan Washburn, the peerless impresario … he could take care of himself, I decided.

“And did you talk to him?”

“Yes, I did … and if you’re implying that I killed him you are very much mistaken, Inspector Gleason.”

“I implied no such thing.”

“Don’t even think it,” said Mr. Washburn coolly, as though he were saying: if you go after me I’ll see that you end up pounding a beat in Brooklyn. “I had some business I wanted to talk over with Miles. That’s all.”

“What kind of business?”

“His contract, if you must know. I told him that it would not be renewed. That we would tour without him.”

“What was his reaction to this?”

“He was upset.”

“Why did you tell him this tonight? Why didn’t you have him come to your office tomorrow? Or you could have written him.”

“I wanted to tell him myself. He was a friend of mine, Mr. Gleason … a very good friend.”

“Yet you were prepared to fire him?”

“I was indeed.”

“Why?”

“Because I suspected that sooner or later you would arrest him and that, even if you didn’t, too many people thought he was a murderer … too many of our backers, to be blunt about it.”

“I see … and you left in the middle of a party to come tell him this?”

“We both seem agreed that I did,” said Mr. Washburn.

“Could anyone else have visited Sutton this evening?” I asked, eager to get my employer off the hook.

Gleason ignored me. “Did you notice anything unusual about the deceased?”

“He was not deceased when I arrived, if that’s what you mean, and he was very much alive when I left.”

“I meant did he act peculiar in any way, say anything which might throw light on what subsequently happened.” Excellent sentence, Gleason, I said to myself; he was beginning to face up to the fact that none of his “deceased” talk was going to get him anywhere with this gang.

“He objected to my firing him and he said that he did not kill his wife no matter what the police thought and that he would welcome a trial.”

“So he told us,” said Gleason. “And we were perfectly willing to give him a chance to tell all, under an indictment, of course. But then what did you say?”

“I told him that I was convinced of his innocence, but that no one else was, that I would be only too happy to take him back after a trial, presuming he was acquitted.”

“You got the feeling, then, that Sutton was looking forward to a trial?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“But you said …”

“As a matter of fact, he was terrified of appearing in court. As you know he took drugs and he was positive that the prosecution would throw all that at him … I can tell you that he was not afraid of the murder charge … I don’t know why but he wasn’t; it was the drug thing that disturbed him: the idea not only of being sent to jail for it, or whatever the law is, but, worse, of having it taken away from him even for a few days during the trial …”

“He was going to give all that up when we were married,” said Magda in a tired, faraway voice. “There’s a place in Connecticut where they cure you. He was going to go there. We were to spend our honeymoon there.” She stopped abruptly, like a phonograph when the needle’s lifted.

“Then when you left the … Sutton he was alive and angry.”

“I’m afraid so … angry, I mean.”

“Did anyone else come to see him in the last hour?” I repeated.

“I’m asking the questions,” snapped Gleason. “Was that fire escape watched?” I asked, just to be ornery. “The one outside the kitchen window.”

“So you noticed there was a fire escape, eh?”

“I did.”

“Were you at the party, too?”

“Yes … remember, Mr. Gleason, I’m the one without a motive.”

Gleason gave me a warning or two about the possible dangers into which my insouciance might yet lead me.

While we had been talking, the detectives had ransacked the apartment and the photographer had taken pictures of everything in sight. They were now ready to push off. Gleason, receiving a signal from his chief lieutenant, stood up, rubbing his hands together as though washing them of the guilt of others.

“I will see all of you, tomorrow. Can you get home alone?” He turned to Magda.

“Yes … yes,” she said, stirring in her chair.

“You better see her home, Macy.” The detective in question nodded and helped her to her feet.

“I hope,” said Mr. Washburn, “that this turns out to be the end of the whole ugly business.”

“Or the beginning,” said Gleason darkly.

“I presume that you had a case against him. Now that he is dead … suicide, accident, who knows how he died? … the fact remains that a man about to be arrested for a murder has died and so the case … Oh, Lord, look!” Mr. Washburn leaped back and we all turned to stare at the figure on the floor. The sheet which covered him had caught fire from the still smoldering head and a yellow flame, like a daffodil in the wind, blossomed on the white sheet. I was not there, however, to see it put out; I had followed, as quickly as I could, Mr. Washburn’s blind dash down the stairs to the street outside.

3

For once I didn’t really want to see the newspapers; neither did my employer but of course we read them all, together, in absolute silence. “Death Company” … “Slain Dancer’s Husband Suicide” … “Mystery Death of Murder Suspect” … “Second Death in Jinx Ballet” … Needless to say, we had all the front pages to ourselves. When we had finished the lot we looked at one another. Fortunately, at that moment, Alma Edderdale saw fit to telephone and I left the office and headed for the Met.

A crowd had gathered at the stage door, for no particular reason … just to be as near as possible to a couple of murders and, better yet, to be near a murderer. I pushed my way through them and went immediately to Jane’s dressing room. She had been asleep when I got home from Sutton’s apartment the night before and she had been asleep when I left in the morning, at nine o’clock, to help Mr. Washburn with the reporters who had, for three hours, made our lives miserable at the office.

She was mending one of her costumes; the day was cruelly hot and she wore no clothes.

I gave her a long healthy kiss, tilting her chair back so far that she kicked the air gracefully with her long legs, to keep her balance.

“Is it true?” she asked, when we were done and I was again composed.

I nodded. “Has Gleason seen you yet?”

“I don’t see him till four something. He killed himself, didn’t he?”

“I suppose so.”

“But … like that! Did you see him?”

I shuddered, remembering. “I’ll say. It was the awfullest sight … worse than the war … at least then you were usually looking at people you didn’t know, and there were so many of them …”

“But the papers act as if he’d been murdered.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“But how could he kill himself in that way?”

“He might’ve passed out … you know he was taking an awful lot of the stuff, whatever it was he took … you remember my telling you how I found him passed out in the hall the day after Ella died.”

“Let’s hope this is the end of the whole mess.”

“I hope so, too.” But I knew that we hadn’t come to the end of the trouble … I’d taken to calling it “the trouble” in my mind, like one of those Negro spirituals.

“How’re the kids in the company holding up?”

“Scared to death,” Jane smiled. “They’re positive we’ve got a maniac around … they go everywhere in pairs, even to the john.”

“And the thing I always liked about dancers was that they had no imagination.”

“Sometimes I think you’re against ballet.”

“I am … I am,” I said, locking the door. “But I’m not against you …” And I headed for her with an insane leer, scaring hell out of her. Then, before she had time to complain, I was out of my clothes and we were together on the floor, doing it like Mamma and Poppa as Eglanova would say … she likes the old-fashioned, heart-to-heart method, with no thrashing about … so do I, on hot days at least, when anything else would use up too much energy. After we finished, we lay side by side for a bit on the cool dirty floor.

“We shouldn’t have done that,” said Jane, at last.

“Why not? We missed last night. At least I did.”

“I did, too.”

“Are you sure you didn’t have a frolic with that Senator?”

“With who?”

“That big middle-aged job with the gray hair you were talking to at the party … the red face.”

“Oh him! Was he a Senator?”

“I should say so.”

“He told me he was a broker named Haskell.”

“I hope you got your money in advance.”

“Don’t be dirty.”

A knock on the door brought us both to our feet in a flash. “Wait a second,” called Jane in the cool voice of one used to keeping her head in crises. Since I had not taken off my shoes and socks, I was able to dress with a speed which did credit to my military training. Jane slipped into a bathrobe and opened the door while I sat down before the dressing-table mirror and dried my sweaty face with a handkerchief as Magda entered.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t know …”

“Come on in,” said Jane briskly, offering her the third and last chair. “How do you feel?”

“Awful … naturally.”

“I thought you were too sick to come to the theater?”

“I am,” said Magda, and she did look ill. “I wanted to come, though. To talk to you, to my friends here. You have no idea what it’s been like this last week with my family around and everything, not being able to see Miles …” Her voice broke a little. “The family wouldn’t let me see him but he came once, anyway, when they were out and we talked and made plans and then I went to see him last night.”

“Have you seen Gleason yet today?” I asked quickly, before she could start weeping. “Yes.”

“What does he say—what about the autopsy?”

“He wouldn’t tell me but I told him that someone had killed Miles … I don’t know how but someone did.”

“But why? If somebody else murdered Ella then they certainly wouldn’t murder Miles just as he was about to be arrested for Ella’s murder.”

“Oh, but they would,” said Magda. “You see, Miles knew who killed Ella.” I must say this gave us both a jolt.

“How do you know he did?”

“Because he told me so the last time I saw him. He told me not to worry … that if they tried to charge him with murder he would tell everything.”

“But he didn’t tell you who it was?”

Was it my imagination or did she pause just a second before she answered? Before she said: “No, he didn’t tell me.”

“Did you tell Gleason all this?”

“Oh yes … I told him a lot more, too.”

“The sooner it’s finished the better,” said Jane emphatically, taking out her sewing kit and going to work on the torn costume.

We talked a little more and then, seeing that the girls had a lot to discuss, I wandered on stage where Alyosha was giving some directions to the electricians. He looked very dapper in a Lord Byron shirt, magenta slacks, with a silk handkerchief tied about his lean neck and his monocle screwed in one eye.

“We must have everything right for tomorrow,” he said to me as the electrician walked away. “Anna will do Swan Lake.”

“And for once, it won’t be her ‘last’ performance,” I said.

Alyosha smiled. “No, she won’t be able to weep this year. Ten more years I give her. She is at her peak.”

Well, you better get her some contact lenses, I said to myself, trying to imagine the old star at sixty reeling about the stage in Giselle.

“Have you seen Wilbur today?”

I said that I hadn’t.

“I was told he was to start rehearsing the new ballet today … if he is he should send out a call for the dancers he wants. They are all eager, naturally.”

“I think he intends to use most of the company, but not until the season closes.”

“If you see him, though, tell him to let me know which dancers he will want … he is not used to our system.”

I said that I would and we parted.

My interview with Gleason was more amiable than usual.

He looked very hot in a white crumpled suit which made me think of a photograph I once saw of William Jennings Bryan when he was down in Tennessee fighting evolution.

Where were you at such and such a time and did you for any reason leave the party before such and such an hour? No sir I did not sir. We got through the preliminaries without a blow. Then the first of the brass tacks.

“Where, Mr. Sargeant, did you find those shears?”

“I found them, now that I think of it, in Eglanova’s dressing room … someone had put them in the wastebasket. I took them out.”

“Why didn’t you tell us this before?”

“I wasn’t sure it had any bearing on the case.”

“Aren’t we to be the judges of that?”

“Certainly … I didn’t remember at the time. So many things had happened.” I’m no fool … I’ve watched some of those investigations over television: all you have to do is say you can’t remember, or that you’ve suddenly remembered, and you’re legally safe.

“It might have made it easier for us if you’d been able to remember at the time.”

“Well, I didn’t.”

“I wonder if you realize how serious all this is, Mr. Sargeant.” For some reason Gleason had decided to handle me with tenderness.

“I do.… It was a dumb thing, wasn’t it? For someone deliberately to put the shears in her wastebasket to throw suspicion on her … I mean, if she had cut the cable she’d never keep The Murder Weapon in her own dressing room.”

“Very sound reasoning,” said the detective; if I hadn’t already been acquainted with his simple mind I would have thought he was indulging himself in a bit of irony at my expense.

“What did the autopsy turn up?” I asked, disregarding all his previous statements to the effect that it was not my place to ask questions.

“If you would just let us …” He began with a show of patience.

“Mr. Gleason,” I lied, “I have the representatives of all the wire services, foreign and domestic, as well as reporters from every daily in town, waiting at my office for some word from Anthony Ignatius Gleason as to the outcome of the autopsy this morning.…” That did the trick … Gleason for Mayor, Honest, Courageous, Tireless.

“As a rule the district attorney’s office handles releases to the press but since the boys are so eager you can tell them that Miles Sutton had a heart attack and fainted, falling face forward onto the lighted stove. He was not attacked or poisoned … unless you can call a system which looked like a drugstore poisoned.”

“That’s certainly a load off my mind,” I sighed. “Everybody else’s, too.”

“It would seem,” said Gleason, “that the case is closed.”

“Seem? Weren’t you going to arrest him for murder?”

“Oh yes.”

“He did kill her, didn’t he?”

“We believe so.”

“Then tell me; why did you wait so long to arrest him? What couldn’t you prove?”

Gleason blinked and then, quite mildly, answered: “Well, it happened that of all the people involved Sutton was the only one who had an alibi … the only one who could not, if his story was true, have gone backstage between five and eight-thirty and cut the cable.”

I whistled.

“There are times when a good alibi can be more suspicious than none at all. But we managed to break it. I won’t say how because we weren’t entirely sure but we had a theory and we thought we could prove it in court.”

“Then I can tell the papers that the case is finished?”

Gleason nodded. “You can tell them that.”

“They’ll want to interview you.”

“They know where to find me,” he said quietly … Gleason for Governor, Man of the People.

Needless to say, my announcement to the press that afternoon caused a sensation. Everyone in the company was wild with excitement and relief and I felt like a hero even though I was just the carrier of the good news from Aix to Ghent.

After the last reporter had cleared out of the office, grinding the last cigarette butt into the expensive carpet, I sat back and enjoyed a few minutes of much needed solitude. The two secretaries in the next room made a restful steady noise of typing: “Miss Rosen and Miss Ruger, the talented duo-typists, made their Manhattan debut last night at Town Hall with a program which featured Samuel Barber’s Concerto for Two Typewriters with Black and Red Ribbons.” I seldom get a chance to be alone any more … it wasn’t like college or even the army when I would have long stretches of being by myself, when I could think things out, decide what to do next, figure just where I stood on any number of assorted topics like television, Joyce, deism, marionettes, buggery and Handel’s Messiah. Maybe I should take a long rest … I’d saved up quite a bit of cash and … but my dream of solitude was shattered by a telephone call from Miss Flynn.

“I have had an inquiry from the Benjamin Franklin Kafka Foundation; they would like to know if you could handle their account for the next six months. I indicated that I would communicate with you.”

I asked what sum they had suggested and when she told me I said that I would accept. We talked business for a few minutes. Then she suggested that I come by the office and read the mail.

“I’ll be over this afternoon. The case is finished, by the way.”

“That should be nice for the dancers.”

“For all of us.”

“Are you to continue with those clients much longer?”

“Only another week.”

“* * * * * * * *”

I did not get over to my office that afternoon, however, for just as I hung up the telephone Miss Ruger announced that the Executive Secretary of the Veterans’ Committee awaited my pleasure.

“Show him in,” I said.

A thick burly veteran of the First World War rushed toward me; I slipped behind my desk, afraid of being tackled.

“The name’s Fleer, Abner S. Fleer.”

“My name is …”

“I’ll come straight to the point … no use mincing matters, is there? When you got something to say say it, that’s what I say.”

“Shoot!” I said, showing that I could talk straight, too.

“We’ve been picketing your show, right?”

“Right.”

“I’ll bet you’d like us not to picket your show, right?”

“Wrong.”

“Wrong?”

“It happens to be a very useful form of promotion, Mr. Frear.”

“Fleer. That remains to be seen. Veterans are staying away … I can tell you that.”

“Even without the veterans we are sold out not only for this season, but also on the road. We go to Chicago next week.”

“Only because you’ve been cashing in on the other immoral goings-on in your show.”

“You’re referring to the murder?”

“I am indeed.”

“Well, a man killed his wife and now the man is dead of a heart attack … so that’s all over.”

“We have reason to believe that your company is a hotbed of Reds and other undesirables.”

“What makes you think so?”

“Mister, we have spent close to a hundred thousand in the last year to root Reds and other perverts out of our way of life, in government, entertainment and the life of everyday … and we’re doing it. We have reason to believe this man Wilbur is a party member.”

“If you can prove it why don’t you get him indicted? Or whatever the procedure is.”

“Because these fellows are slippery. Oh, we’ve been tipped off but that’s a long way from getting a gander at his membership card.”

“Then why don’t you wait until you have got it … save a lot of bother.”

“There’s a moral issue involved. It may take us years to track him down … in the meantime he is corrupting our cherished ideals with his immoral dances. We want to put him out of commission right now and we’re appealing to you as fellow Americans to help us.”

“But I’m not convinced he is a Communist and neither is Mr. Washburn.”

“We can show you reports from a dozen sources …”

“Malicious gossip,” I said righteously.

“Are you trying to defend this radical?”

“I suppose I am. He is a great choreographer and I don’t know anything about his politics and neither do you.”

“By the way, Mister, just what are your politics?”

“I am a Whig, Mr. Fleer. The last President I voted for was Chester A. Arthur.” On this mighty line, I got him out of the office, still shouting vengeance on all who attempted to sully our way of life.

I was pretty shaken by this interview with what was very likely one of the last perfect examples of Neanderthal man on the island of Manhattan. I went back into Mr. Washburn’s office to get a drink … I knew that he kept a bottle of very good brandy in a bottom drawer of his Napoleonic desk. Since he wasn’t in, I took a mouthful right out of the bottle; then, carefully, I put it back in the desk and idly glanced at the papers on his desk. One of them was a letter from Sylvia Armiger, the English ballerina … a short note which I naturally read, saying that she would be unable to succeed Eglanova for the ’52 season, that she was already under contract, but many thanks and so forth and so on.

The old bastard, I thought, amused by Washburn’s duplicity. Even with Sutton gone he was still trying to replace Eglanova. I was less amused, though, when I noticed the date on the letter … it was ten days old. It had been written before Ella Sutton’s murder.