Death in the Fifth Position (17 page)

“She didn’t talk much to me … I know she told Jane about her abortion. She was going to have it tomorrow; that was her plan.”

“In the meantime she was going to live with Miss Garden?”

“That’s right.”

“Ordinarily you live in Miss Garden’s apartment?”

I blushed. “For the last week or so,” I said. “Do you plan to book me for lewdness?”

Gleason showed his teeth in a friendly snarl. “This is homicide, Sargeant, not the vice squad.” He enjoyed saying my last name; he made it sound like a police rank, a subordinate rank. “We have reason to think the deaths
of Ella Sutton and Magda Foote were the work of the same person.”

“I think so, too.”

“Why?”

“Because a few days ago at the theater, Magda told us, Jane and me, that she knew Miles was innocent and that he knew who had killed Ella. I asked her then if he’d told her and she said no he hadn’t but I thought she was lying … I’m positive she was lying. I’ll bet anything Magda knew.”

“If she knew why didn’t she come to us?”

“I don’t know why. For one thing, she probably didn’t care whether you ever caught Ella’s murderer or not … after all she hated Ella and Miles’ death was an accident, wasn’t it?”

“As far as we know. Why wouldn’t Miles Sutton have told us who killed Ella when he knew he was our number one suspect, that we were going to arrest him the second we could break his alibi … and we broke it, finally.”

“According to Magda, he wasn’t going to say anything until the trial … or until you arrested him. I think he hoped you wouldn’t be able to pin it on anybody.”

“That wasn’t very realistic.”

“I’d hardly call a man as far gone on drugs as Miles realistic … remember that whoever killed Ella was doing him a service. He wouldn’t turn the murderer in … unless it was to save his own neck.”

Gleason asked me some more questions, about members of the company, about Magda, pointless questions, or so they seemed to me … and probably were in fact because it was quite obvious that the police were completely at
sea.
I
was then told to come back the next day for questioning, to stay in New York City at an address where I could be reached at a moment’s notice … I gave him Jane’s address.

She was waiting for me in the reception hall. Everyone had gone except Louis and herself and Wilbur. Louis had apparently just come from the shower room for his hair was gleaming with water, the celebrated black curls damp and straggly. Jane was also in her street clothes, looking very pale, her face not made up. Wilbur was talking excitedly, “As if I didn’t have enough trouble without all this. A major investigation hanging over my head … 
I
was supposed to go to Washington tomorrow … and a half-finished ballet and now one of those god-damned murder investigations this company seems to specialize in.
I
wish to hell I’d stayed in musical comedy. Nothing like this ever happened there.”

“Shows we were just waiting for you, Jed,” said Louis amiably. “It was all Mr. Washburn’s idea to knock you off so Alyosha would remain the greatest living choreographer.”

“Much help you’ve been through all this,” said Jed spitefully. Jane and I got out before the lovers quarreled.

We both took it for granted that I was not going to go to my place after what had happened. Jane was terrified at the thought of being alone.

“I’m sure it’s a lunatic,” she said, when we were back at the apartment, eating cold cuts and drinking beer from the near-by delicatessen. “How do we know he isn’t going to murder everybody in the company while the police sit by and let him kill us, one by one?”

“Come on, kid,” I said, as calmly as possible. “Get a grip on yourself. Your old buddy is right here with you.”

“I’m still frightened,” she said, chewing a piece of liverwurst thoughtfully. “Not just of the murderer either.”

“The police?”

She nodded.

“Did you tell Gleason about having been at Miles’ apartment?”

“I told him everything.”

“Then you have nothing to fear,” I said heartily, beginning to slip out of my clothes.

“Pull the shade down,” said Jane.

“You
are
jumpy.” As a rule we never put the shade down or put the lights out either. But I went over to the window and drew the curtains; they stuck a little and by the time I had pulled them together I had seen the plain-clothes man across the street, watching the apartment.

I remember thinking how unusual it was to be making love to a girl who was thought by some to have murdered two, maybe three people.

Medical examination, inquest, more questioning … it promised to be a long day. When I was not participating in the official rites of investigation, conducted as solemnly as a church service by Gleason, I was at the office holding Mr. Washburn’s hand and battling some thirty newsmen who had appeared at nine o’clock in the morning (proving we were news) and stayed in the anteroom chatting with our duo-typists most of the day, complaining about the meager handouts they got from me. The police were saying nothing and I had silenced the members of our company. Even so there were a dozen wild theories in the air and the editorial in the afternoon
Globe
demanded that the murderer be instantly produced … if not, the
Globe
suggested balefully, there might be some changes made in the office of the Commissioner.

I was almost afraid to read the columns that afternoon. The news stories were all right: they just reported the facts, which were few … Third Murder in Ballet Mystery. But the columnists, in their own libelous way, were hinting pretty strongly that someone highly placed in the ballet world, in our company, had done the three murders. Needless to say, in spite of the official theory, everyone was convinced that there was a connection between the deaths of Miles and Ella and Magda. The
Globe
had the inside story. Beloved Elmer Bush had seen to that. His
column made the front page … an exclusive report by An Eyewitness.

“Little did I think, as I talked with the beauteous Magda, that a few moments later she would lie broken and alone in the street below. She must have known even then what fate had in store for her. There was something other-worldly in her manner, a remoteness, a true serenity. I think she wanted to join her friend Miles Sutton in a better world, to be as one with the father of her unborn child. Yet as we stood talking to one another in that busy rehearsal studio, a murderer was watching us, plotting her destruction. Did she know his (or her?) identity? Yes, I have reason to believe she did …”

“I don’t want to hear any more,” said Mr. Washburn, draining his third shot of brandy.

“It’s more of the same,” I said, putting the paper down on the floor, to join the pile by my chair. We were in his office. One of the duo-typists had brought us sandwiches for lunch and the newsmen had momentarily deserted us. We were taking no calls and reading no mail.

“I wonder if we shouldn’t take that South American tour … we could leave next week … well, in two weeks’ time anyway. First Guatemala City then Panama, Bogotá, Rio, Buenos Aires …” Naming these remote places seemed to soothe my employer who sat now sniffing his empty brandy glass, his eyes bloodshot and glazed.

“I’m afraid the police wouldn’t let us go,” I said gently.

He pulled himself together with a visible effort. “You take over,” he said, as though I hadn’t been in charge all along, since nine anyway. “I’m going down to City Hall. After that, I’ll be at the studio in case you want me.”

“The rehearsals still going on?”

“Oh yes. Gleason was very decent about that. In fact, he’s moved into one of the classrooms … the one where …” He stopped. “I suppose he wants to be on the scene.”

“Try and stop them,” I said, as Mr. Washburn placed his panama squarely on the center of his long head, the grim parallel to the floor.

“Stop who?”

“The police … when you see them. I think they’re going to make an arrest.”

“What makes you think so?”

“First, because I’ve read the papers today. They want an arrest. And, second, because Jane is being watched by the police.”

“I’m sure they don’t suspect her.”

“It’s a toss-up, Mr. Washburn, between her and Eglanova.”

He shuddered. “Don’t say that. Don’t even think it.”

“I’m perfectly willing not to think it but some of these columnists won’t be so obliging. They’ve done everything except name names. ‘Jealous ballerina’ … that’s their line, and that could mean only one of two people.”

“Let’s wait until we come to this bridge,” said Mr. Washburn, with the air of a man ready to fall into a river. Then he left the office.

But I couldn’t wait. I wasn’t really worried about Jane. She was obviously innocent and if they indicted her they wouldn’t be able to convict. I was confident of that. But even if justice prevailed she would be marked all her life as the girl who had been accused of a murder. I can still
remember what happened to a certain musical comedy star back in the Thirties.

I sat at Mr. Washburn’s desk for several minutes, more worried than I’d ever been in my life. Idly, with a pencil stub, I began to write names: Eglanova, Wilbur, Alyosha, Washburn, Louis … I stopped; then I wrote Jane’s name at the bottom. I made a box around it, carefully, an elaborate doodle, like a wall protecting her. I was confident that one of those six had been responsible for the murders. But which one? I had to admit to myself that for all I cared the murderer could go free. The Suttons and Magda meant nothing to me; if someone disliked them or feared them enough to want to kill them, well, that was hardly my business. A callous way of looking at things but you must remember that I liked the suspects, most of them anyway, and I wished them no harm … I’m not a crusader or a reformer and I have no passion for justice: not the crazy way the world is now at least. Official murder, private murder … what’s the difference? Not much, except when you’re involved yourself or someone you care about is. The more I thought about it the madder I got.

I was very grim when I wrote “Why?” at the top of the page; then, next to it, I wrote “How?” Just trying to be methodical made everything seem much better. At least it was all in front of me … like a crossword puzzle, or a double acrostic. If I could only fill in the blanks under each column I might be able to figure it out without leaving my desk … as you see, I have that happy faith in logic which only a liberal arts education can give.

Eglanova. Why? Well, she didn’t want to retire. She
knew that Mr. Washburn could not get another ballerina with her pull at the box office for at least a year … except Ella Sutton. That was motive enough for someone of Eglanova’s dedication. As for Miles and Magda, I was convinced that their deaths were connected with Ella’s, that they had been killed because they knew who the murderer was … which took care of the “Why?” of their deaths. So the only important motive was the original one: who wanted to kill Ella Sutton; who had the strongest
known
motive? The answer was Eglanova. When could she have done the murders? Presuming that Miles had been murdered in some mysterious way. Well, she was at the theater from dress rehearsal to performance, almost continuously. She could have cut the cable any time. And Miles? She was at the party Alma Edderdale gave and she could have left at any time, gone to his apartment and climbed the fire escape without being seen by the police. But even as I checked her in, made it possible for her to have visited Miles, I felt a certain misgiving: it was not in character. Anna Eglanova might in a rage eliminate a rival, but I could hardly see the great ballerina skulking up a fire escape in the middle of the night. Of course everything is possible. As for Magda … well, any of my six suspects could have pushed her out of that window. There was such confusion when the rehearsal broke up that someone could have followed Magda into the classroom, grabbed the purse, shoved her out the window and slipped back into the studio, all undetected.

Sadly, I crossed out “How?” at the top of the page. It wouldn’t work, or rather it worked too well: no one had an alibi. Each time the doughty six had been in the same
place at more or less the same time and all had equal opportunity to commit the murders. So, instead of “How?” I wrote a large question mark over the column next to “Why?” Here I recorded the mysteries.

Opposite Eglanova’s name I wrote “Shears.” If she had sliced the cable, why did she leave the shears in her own dressing room? That was a problem which I left unsolved as I moved on to the next name on the list.

Wilbur. Why? God knows. He didn’t get on with Sutton but obviously if he hated her, for some reason as yet unknown, he would hardly have come to work in the same company with her, create a whole new ballet around her. Was he jealous of her? No. He didn’t like women to begin with; nor did their love interests overlap. Professional jealousy? None that I could see. Something in the past, perhaps? Mysteries? Why did he quarrel with Ella the afternoon of the day she was killed?

Alyosha. Why? Love for Eglanova and hatred of Ella his ex-mistress. That was clear-cut, a perfect crime of passion. He had been married to Eglanova, left her for Ella who had deserted him; then he went back to Eglanova, as official slave and acolyte, and now, seeing that Eglanova was soon to be succeeded by Sutton, he lost his head and removed Ella from this vale of tears. Mysteries? Why would he put the shears in Eglanova’s dressing room, implicating her if he’d done the murder for love of her? My head began to ache. Those god-damned shears … they made a mess of every theory. Then a new idea occurred to me. Suppose the person who had done the murder had put the shears some place else and then another villain had, for malicious reasons, put them in
Eglanova’s room from which I moved them again … button button who’s got the button?

Washburn. Why? Well, he is the most devious man alive. For all I know he may have wanted to get rid of both Sutton and Eglanova, and he saw this as a perfect way to take care of them. Among the mysteries was the fact of that letter I found from Armiger, the English ballerina. Why had Mr. Washburn wanted to engage a big star when the succession had already been arranged, when it had been all but announced that Sutton was to succeed Eglanova for the next season? And what was Mr. Washburn really up to at Miles’ apartment that night?