Death in the Fifth Position (8 page)

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.

“And then I told him that I thought I’d stumbled over the shears backstage, on my way to the dressing rooms.”

“Good boy.” Mr. Washburn was properly appreciative, having no reason yet to regret that favor he’d granted me the day before at the point of a gun or, rather, of a pair of shears.

“I wish, however, to record my serious unease, Mr. Washburn. I didn’t like Gleason’s questions. Just between us and the
New York Globe
he is about to pull something.”

“But, my dear boy, that’s what he’s paid for. He will have to make an accusation soon or the city will be angry with him. That’s the price of office.”

“I think he suspects
me.
”

“Now don’t be melodramatic. Of course he doesn’t.”

“I don’t mean of the murder, but … well, of being connected with it. My story about finding what is officially known as The Murder Weapon just didn’t go down. He knows it was left some place else.”

“You don’t think …” My employer looked alarmed.

“I just don’t know.” And we left it at that.

On the way back to the office, I stopped off at Eglanova’s Fifty-second Street apartment. She had invited me to come see her and I knew that she was always at home to those she liked, which was almost anyone who would pay a call on her.

She had the whole second floor of a brownstone to herself; it had been her home for twenty years and, consequently, it seemed now like a room from a Chekhov play: Czarist Russian in every untidy detail, even to the bronze samovar and the portraits of the Czar and Czarina, signed, on the piano, a grand affair, covered with an antique lace shawl and decorated with several more silver-framed photographs, of Karsavina, Nijinski and Pavlova. “They are my family,” Eglanova was accustomed to say to casual visitors, waving her long sinewy hand at the photographs, including the Russian Royal Family as well as the dancers. Over the mantel was the famous painting of Eglanova in
Giselle
, her greatest moment in the theater … 1918.

Her maid opened the door and, without comment, ushered me into the presence.

“It is Peter!” Eglanova, wearing an old wrapper, sat by the bay window near the piano, looking out at a bleak little garden in the back where one sick tree grew among the tin cans and torn newspapers. She put down the copy of
Vogue
she was reading and gave me her hand. “Come sit by me and keep me company.”

I sat down in a papier mâché Victorian chair and she said something in Russian to her maid who appeared, a moment later, from the kitchen with two ordinary drinking glasses full of hot tea and lemon. “It is just right thing for hot day,” said Eglanova and we toasted each other gravely. Then she offered me some candy, rich creamy chocolates which made me sick just looking at them. “All boys like candy,” she said emphatically. “You sick maybe? or drink too much? American boys drink too much.”

I agreed to that all right … if anything causes this great civilization of ours to fall flat on its face it will be the cocktail party. I thought of those eighteenth-century prints of Rowlandson and Gilray and Hogarth, all the drunken mothers and ghastly children wallowing in gin in the alleys … it makes you stop and think. I thought longingly for several seconds of a gin and tonic.