Death in the Fifth Position (18 page)

Louis. Why? I could think of no reason. There was an old rumor in the company that Ella fancied him but since he was so obviously interested in the other side he could hardly have been disturbed by her love for him, presuming that glacier had ever experienced such a tender emotion. I made a note to ask Louis about Ella; it was possible that he had some unsuspected slant on her character. More and more I was convinced that her character would provide the clue to the puzzle.

Jane? Well, despite the mysterious visit to Miles and her incriminating presence in the classroom with Magda, she had no motive. She was not in line to succeed Sutton even though she was the understudy in
Eclipse.
She had no professional reason for wanting Ella out of the way and after living a while with her, I was fairly sure she had no private reason as well; their private lives had never touched, as far as I knew.

Gloomily, I studied the page, awaiting revelation. None came. The thought that my hypothesis might be wrong
was chilling. I was going on the theory that X had killed Ella, that Miles had found out and was on the point of revealing X’s identity to the police when X, getting wind of this, jammed Miles’ head into that gas burner, not knowing that Miles had somehow gotten a letter or document off to Magda, his proof that X had done the murder. Then X had made a date with Magda to meet her at the studio to discuss the letter … perhaps, even to buy it from her. When she wouldn’t hand it over X had seized the purse which contained whatever it was the murderer wanted and shoved Magda through the window. That was my theory, the police’s theory, too. But suppose Miles had killed Ella and then died of a heart attack and that Y, for reasons unknown, killed Magda? Or suppose … But I made up my mind not to think of any more difficulties. First, I would follow the obvious line; if that failed … well, it
wouldn’t
fail. As I look back on it now, I think my confidence in myself at that point was remarkably unjustified.

I had reason to believe from Gleason’s behavior that morning at the inquest that he was planning to make an arrest in the next twenty-four hours … Elmer Bush had said as much in his column and he had undoubtedly got it from the horse’s ass. I looked at my watch. Three-thirty. I had less than a day in which to find the murderer.

I spent about twenty valuable minutes on the telephone, lining up the suspects, making appointments for spurious reasons. Then I told the duo-typists that they would see me no more that day. If the press wanted news, I recommended they contact Gleason, or Elmer Bush. Miss Flynn wished me luck.

Eglanova’s maid let me in without comment. I sometimes wonder if she knows any English. From the bathroom I heard Eglanova’s voice above a Niagara of bathwater. “Peter! I am right out in one minute!”

The maid withdrew and, feeling like a Pinkerton man, I covered the living room and the bedroom with the speed of an Electrolux vacuum cleaner. Needless to say, I found nothing of interest. The rooms were an old-fashioned clutter of photographs and bric-a-brac and antimacassars, establishing, as her legs did not, that Eglanova was an Edwardian, a displaced person in time.

“If I keep you waiting, I am sorry,” she said, sweeping down on me in a creation of mauve satin, her head wrapped in a towel. “I wash my hair. First, soap and water. Then gasoline. Gives marvelous luster. Even during the war I use gasoline. I tell authorities Eglanova’s hair important, too. They give me little coupon book … so nice of them. And people say Americans are barbarians!” She sat down in her usual place by the window. I sat opposite her. The inevitable hot tea and lemon was brought us.

“You like nougat?”

I shook my head and watched, fascinated, while she devoured two large awful-looking pieces of nougat. “From admirer,” she said, her mouth full. “He sends me nougat from Rome, Italy. Only place for nougat … and Parma violets: I eat pound of violets at one sitting once when I dance in Florence.”

“I’ll stick to tea.”

“You never be big and strong,” she said and took a
swig of tea. Outside the sun glared, like a globe of brass in the afternoon.

I decided the direct approach was best. “I think they’re going to arrest Jane.”

Eglanova blinked, as though I had made a move to strike her. Unsteadily, she put her tea beside the gaily painted nougat box on a marble-topped table. “What … why you think this?”

“She’s being watched every second by a plain-clothes man … the way they watched Miles when he was to be arrested.”

Eglanova smiled wryly. “They watch me, too, Peter. I am no fool. I know all along they suspect me. I have engaged two lawyers … in case.”

“Yes, they suspect you, too, but they’re making a case against Jane. Like a fool, she went to see Miles the evening he was killed, or died. She was with Magda in that classroom before Magda died.”

“But, child, she is so safe! She had no reason to kill Sutton. She never has reason. Surely even that brute who asks questions must know this thing.”

“I’m sure he knows it and I’m also sure that he has to arrest somebody or there’ll be trouble for him and the police department, from the papers, from the public.”

“So they give her trial and she is innocent.”

“In the meantime her reputation is ruined. All her life people will say: ‘Oh, yes, she was mixed up in that ballet murder.’ Because by the time the case falls flat, the real murderer will have covered his tracks and the case might never be solved and she’ll always be suspected. People will say a smart lawyer got her out of it. You know the
way they talk. They always want to believe the worst.”

“Poor little Jane.”

“I want to stop it before we really have to say poor little Jane.”

Eglanova laughed. “And I help you? They arrest poor Anna Eglanova instead?”

“They would never arrest you.”

“I am not so sure of that. Of course I did not kill this vile woman but I tell you one thing: if I did kill her I would do such good job there be no talk of murder. I know ways,” and looking like a real murderess she shut those Asiatic eyes of hers until they were like black slanting lines drawn on her white face.

“Then who did kill her?”

“Meaning if I did not? Ah, you are not gallant.”

“No, I didn’t mean that.”

“I don’t know. I think sometimes I know but I am afraid … very afraid.”

“Think back to that night at the theater. Can’t you remember anything which might help us, you and Jane and me?”

“I try. God how I try all time! I go to Greek church and pray something happen … that whole thing be forgotten by a miracle. But no miracle, and I remember nothing. I am in dressing room almost all time. I go for little dinner across the street. I come back. I stay in dressing room. Why I never even know where cable is until afterward. After all, I am not in ballet. I pay no attention to ballets in which I am not dancing. I had no idea I was connected with whole thing until Ivan told me about shears and how you save me embarrassment. For which I am so grateful.”

“Then try and help now.”

“I pray for miracle. Otherwise I can do nothing.” She had never seemed so oriental to me before … like a peasant woman in Samarkand.

“Who do you think killed Ella?”

She looked away, very pale. “Don’t ask me this question.”

“But you want to help.”

“Not like this … not to hurt people I care about.”

“If you don’t help, Jane will be hurt … maybe you will be, too.”

“I have good lawyers,” she mumbled, looking away, out the window at the sunlit yard, at the garbage pails gleaming dully in the light.

“And so has Jane,” I lied. “We’ve already discussed what their strategy will be if she is indicted. They intend to incriminate
you
as the person with the greatest single motive.” This was wild but it had the effect I wanted.

Her head jerked around toward me and the narrow eyes opened wide … I saw, I think for the first time, that Eglanova’s eyes were as gray as metal, as silver as steel.

“Let them. I am not afraid.”

“Not even of the publicity, of the months in and out of court? Because they won’t be able to convict her and they’ll indict you next and maybe they’ll be able to make the conviction stick, lawyers or no lawyers.” It is not possible for a white face to turn pale but if it were I could have seen the change right then and there … as it was her face sagged.

“Then they find out truth,” she said at last, slowly, looking at me all the time with those silver cat’s eyes of hers.

“And the truth?”

“Don’t you know? Can’t you guess? It is so plain. It is why I have not slept for weeks. Why I grow sick. Why I almost fall off
arabesque
in
Swan Lake
on the last night … I am so weak … not because those terrible men throw things at stage, like I said, but because I am frightened for some person I adore!”

“For whom?”

“For Alyosha.”

I said nothing for several minutes and Eglanova, as though shocked herself by the enormity of what she had said, drank tea quickly, a thin trickle of it on her chin.

“Why did he do this?” I asked at last, softly, respectful of the panic which had brought her to make such an admission.

“We were married,” she said at last. “For a number of years. I am bad on time. I don’t remember how many years, but a long time, in this country, after I come with Grand Saint Petersburg from Paris. Then we grow apart. He is old man and I am young woman. He is tired and I am in my prime so we part, on good terms. I have my private life but I do not marry again. Alyosha falls in love with Ella and he loves her a long time, but like an old man … a mistake I tell him but he doesn’t listen, no, he thinks he can hold this little
corps de ballet
girl, but of course, she sees better opportunity and marries Miles, poor stupid Miles, who is fooled by tricks as old as woman. Then she becomes great star and Alyosha hates her, worse even than Miles. And he comes to me and I comfort him … we have no bitterness, Alyosha and I. He is like a brother to me always. When Washburn tries to replace
me with Sutton, Alyosha is just like a madman …”

“And Alyosha killed Ella?”

She nodded, not looking at me. “I think that is what happened.”

“Do you mean to tell me that after he killed Ella he put the murder weapon in your room … to throw suspicion on you?”

“I don’t know … I don’t know … I don’t know what happened after that … maybe he uses something else to cut with. I only tell you all this now because I have very little time, because I can dance only one two more seasons and because I have so little time I cannot be involved for many months in courts, with lawyers. I put dance ahead of Alyosha … ahead of me, child, ahead of everything. It is the big thing … and though I love Alyosha I never ask him to kill this Sutton.” She stopped abruptly and put her empty tea glass on the table with a click. “He was not wise but he is old man and very bitter. You should have seen him the way he was in Russia … yes, I am almost old myself. I remember him when he was young dancer … so handsome, such man! you have never seen such man! Women, men, children they fall in love with him, follow him in streets everywhere he goes. Then we leave Russia and go on tour and all Europe loves him. Not because he is such good dancer like Nijinski but because he is so beautiful, because he is so good … but that was a long time ago, child. We are old now.” And I saw the tears in her eyes. She did not speak to me again and so, with a murmured good-by, I left her.

I had made a date to see Jed Wilbur after rehearsal, at four-thirty. I arrived at the studio just as the place was breaking up. It looked strange seeing our dancers in their tights running in and out between plain-clothes men in double-breasted suits with snap-brim hats worn like uniform caps.

I said hello to Jane who was standing by the drinking fountain reading the rehearsal schedule with a preoccupied frown.

“How did it go?” I asked.

She jumped. “Oh, it’s you. I’m like a cat today. It went O.K. Nobody was thinking about the ballet except Wilbur.”

“What’s the ballet like?”

“I don’t remember a thing.” She shuddered. “That policeman! He gives me the shivers. For some reason he’s decided that I know a great deal more about all this than I do. He’s been asking me questions all morning. Where was I at such a time, how well did I know Ella … as if I had anything to do with this mess. I couldn’t get it through his head that my only connection with the murder was through Magda who was a friend of mine and not much of a friend … I mean she latched onto me during her troubles with Miles just because I’m so goddamned sympathetic.”

“I don’t suppose it’s any use my telling you again what a mistake you made in going to Miles’ apartment that night, and not telling Gleason about it …”

“No use at all. What are you doing right now?”

“I have to see Wilbur on business. Then I’m off to dinner with some people … newspaper people.
I
don’t know when I’ll be back.”

“Try and finish early. I’m going to be home all evening. I don’t know when I’ve ever been so jittery.”

I said that I would and she disappeared into the ladies’ dressing room. I was about to go into the studio where I could see Wilbur talking to some dancers, when Louis hove-to, flashing that ivory smile … uncapped teeth, by the way.

“What’s new, Baby?”

“About that Harlem deal,” I said. “I’d like to go up there some time.”

“That’s a good boy. I knew you come around.” He gave me a sweaty hug. “We go tonight … unless you rather go straight on to my place.”

“I’d like to see Harlem first. I’m writing a book.”

“That’s a hot one,” said Louis who liked only comic books about Superman and Prince Valiant and Terry and the Pirates. We made a date to meet at eleven in the Algonquin lobby.

I avoided Gleason who was, I gathered, in the classroom sifting evidence. Wilbur had obviously forgotten our appointment but he was pleasant enough and suggested I go to his apartment with him while he changed clothes.

Jed lived in a small apartment in one of the drearier housing projects on the East Side … one of those red brick fortress jobs with tiny windows, the perfect place for a true liberal to get that anthill feeling, that sense of oneness with everyman.