Death in the Fifth Position Page 4

  I got Mr. Washburn on the line. “Been trying to locate you,” he said and I could tell from his voice that he was worried. “Get over to the Met at eleven, will you? The police are going to talk to us, to the principals.”

  “I’ll be there, sir.”

  “Did you see the papers this morning?”

  “Quite something, weren’t they?” I said, implying I had read them which I had not.

  “Made the front page … even of the Times,” said my employer in a voice which sounded almost joyous. “We’ll have to change our strategy … but I’ll go into all that when I see you.”

  I then called Miss Flynn at my own office.

  “I tried to reach you at your home, Mr. Sargeant, but there was no answer.” Miss Flynn is the only human being I have ever known who could talk not only in italics but, on occasion, could make her silences sound as meaningful as asterisks.

  “I was busy all night … working,” I said lamely.

  “I hope you will try and get some rest today, Mr. Sargeant.”

  “I hope so, too. But you know what happened …”

  “Yes, I saw some mention of it in the Times. One of those dancers was murdered.”

  “Yes, and we’re all being questioned. It’s going to be quite a public relations job.”

  “* * * * * * *”

  “I probably won’t get to the office today … so refer any calls to me at the office of the ballet.”

  “Yes, Mr. Sargeant.”

  I then gave her some instructions about the night school, the hat company and the television actress who had just been voted Miss Tangerine of Central California by an old buddy of mine who lived out there and was a member of the Chamber of Commerce of Marysville.

  Jane was dressed by the time I had finished … like all girls connected with the theater she could be a quick changer if she wanted. I told her that I had to join Washburn and the principals at the opera house. While I dressed it was agreed that we meet after tonight’s performance and come directly here … presuming, of course, that there would be a performance. I had no idea of what the police attitude would be.

  “I’ll go take class now,” she said, pinning her hair up. “Then I suppose I should go and see poor Magda.”

  “Magda who?” I had forgotten.

  “The girl who fainted last night. She’s a good friend of mine.”

  “The one who was pregnant?”

  “How did you know?”

  “Everybody knows,” I said, as though I had been in ballet all my life. But then curiosity got the better of me. “Who was the father?”

  Jane smiled. “I thought you would have found that out, too. Everybody knows.”

  “They forgot to tell me.”

  “Miles Sutton is the lucky man,” said Jane, but she wasn’t smiling now and I could see why.

  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 w
ho 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.”