Death in the Fifth Position (7 page)

“Why didn’t you just go ahead and divorce her?”

“Too complicated,” said Miles, evasively, looking away, tugging at his wiry orange beard. “By the way, will you be at the inquest tomorrow?”

I said no, that this was the first I’d heard of it.

“I have to be there,” said Miles gloomily. “The funeral’s after that.”

“Church funeral?” I made a mental note to call the photographers.

“No, just a chapel in a funeral home. I got her a lot out at Woodlawn.”

“Very expensive?”

“What? No, not very … the funeral home handled everything. Awfully efficient crowd.”

“It’s a big racket,” I said. “I know, but it saves all sorts of trouble.”

“Open or closed casket at the service?”

“Closed. You see there was an autopsy this morning.”

“What did they find?”

“I don’t know. Gleason didn’t say. Probably nothing.”

“You know,” I said, suddenly struck by a novel idea, “it might have been an accident after all.”

Miles Sutton groaned. “If only it were! No, I’m afraid they’ve already proved that those shears did the trick. Gleason told me that the metal filings corresponded to the metal of the cable.”

A cold chill went up my spine, and it wasn’t the Polar Bear Airconditioning Unit for Theaters, Restaurants and Other Public Places. “What about fingerprints?”

“They didn’t say.”

“Fingerprints are pretty old-fashioned now, anyway,” I brazened. “Every kid knows enough not to leave them around where the police might find them.”

“Then Jed Wilbur could have done it,” mused Sutton. “He never got along with Ella.”

“But, as I keep pointing out, even in a ballet company dislike is insufficient motive for murder.”

“Maybe he had a motive,” said Miles mysteriously, kicking up some more dust. I’ll say this for him, if Miles did his act with the police the way he did with me he’d keep them busy for a year untangling the politics and private relationships of the Grand Saint Petersburg Ballet.

“Well, motive or not, he’s not the kind of person to endanger his career. That gentleman is the opportunist of all times. If he was going to knock off a dancer he wouldn’t do it on the opening night of his greatest masterpiece …”

“Even so,” said Miles, reminding me of the giant squid in those underwater movies … spreading black ink like a smoke screen at the first sign of danger. “And what about Alyosha Rudin?”

“What about him?”

“Didn’t you know?”

“Know? Know what?”

“He was Ella’s lover before she met me. He got her into ballet when she was just another chorine.”

“Well, I’ll be damned.” This was a bit of gossip I hadn’t heard.

“He’s been in love with her all these years … even after she married me.”

“Why would she marry you to get ahead when she had the
regisseur
of the company in love with her?”

Miles chuckled. “He wouldn’t help her … thought she couldn’t dance classical roles worth a damn … which was quite true, then. She was just another little girl who hadn’t studied enough. But he didn’t take into account her ambition, which I did. I got her solos in spite of him and she was always good. She was one of those people who could do anything you gave her to do well, even though you might have thought she’d fall flat on her face.”

“And Alyosha?”

“He was surprised how well she turned out.”

“And he stayed in love with her?”

“So she always said.”

“He seems a little old for that kind of thing.”

Miles grunted to show that I was too young to know the facts of age. Then we paid our checks and went back to the theater. A crowd of newsmen met us at the door. Miles scooted inside quickly and I paused to butter them up a little, promising them impossible interviews in my dishonest press-agent way; they were on to my game but we had a pleasant time and I
was
able to tell them about the funeral the next day; I promised them full details later, time and place and so on.

I watched the end of the rehearsal. I knew that, as a
rule, rehearsals which involve just the principals don’t take place on the stage but at the West Side studio; in this case, however, Wilbur had insisted on rehearsing Louis and Jane on stage to the music of one piano. He wanted to get Jane used to the stage, immediately.

She looked very efficient, I thought, as I sat on the first row and watched her move through the intricate
pas de deux
with Louis; she acted as though she had been dancing leads all her life and I experienced a kind of parental pride. Wilbur seemed pleased; especially with the way she did her turns fifteen feet above the stage, scaring the life out of me as I recalled the night before … it was just possible that we had some homicidal maniac in the company who enjoyed seeing ballerinas take fatal pratfalls. If Jane was at all aware of any danger she certainly didn’t show it as she pretended to eclipse the sun with a transfigured expression that I had seen on her face only once before, that morning when she had slid blissfully into a hot bath.

“All right, kids, that’s enough for today. You’ll be fine, Jane,” said Jed Wilbur as she came floating down out of the ceiling. “Remember to take it a little slower in your solo. Keep it muted, lyric. Remember what you’re doing … when in doubt go slow. The music will hold you up. You have a tendency to be too sharp in your line, too classical … blur it a little.” And the three walked off stage. I headed for the office where we had the largest sack of mail I think I have ever seen … requests for tickets, for souvenir fragments of the cable, as well as advice from ballet lovers on how to conduct the investigation; I’ll say one thing for the balletomanes, they really know their
stuff; they follow the lives and careers of their favorites with rapt attention and remarkable shrewdness. Many of the letters that I glanced at openly suggested that Miles Sutton and his late wife had not been on the best of terms … now how could strangers have known that? From the columnists?

Mr. Washburn summoned me into the inner office, a spacious room with a thick carpet and a number of Cecil Beaton photographs of our stars, past and present, on the walls. He looked fit, I thought, in spite of the heat and excitement.

“The police have been very agreeable,” he chuckled, handing me one of those special filtered cigarettes which I particularly dislike. I took it anyway. “They have consented not only to let us finish our season but, after the inquest tomorrow, to conduct the investigation a little more discreetly than had been Gleason’s intention.” Mr. Washburn looked like a very satisfied shark at that moment … one who had been swimming about all day in the troubled waters of City Hall. “There’ll be two plain-clothes men backstage at every performance and, of course, no member of the company is allowed to leave New York … 
and
they all must be available at a moment’s notice, leave messages where they can be found.”

“What’s our policy about the funeral tomorrow afternoon?” I asked, after I had first assured my employer that his wishes were, as always, my command.

Mr. Washburn frowned. “I suppose the principals had better attend. I’ll be there of course … you, too.”

“And the press?”

He gave me a lecture on the dignity of death, the privacy
of sorrow; after which he agreed that the press should be fully represented at the last rites.

Then I asked if I should give Jane the full star treatment and he said we should first wait and see what the reviewers would have to say about her … needless to say they were all turning up again tonight. After that, he gave me some routine orders, ending with the announcement that Anna Eglanova would tour another year with the company, her thirty-second year as a star.

“When did you sign her?”

“This afternoon. She changed her mind about retiring, as I knew she would.” He was very smooth.

Neither of us made any mention of the murder. Mr. Washburn had taken the public line that it had all been an accident, that no one connected with his company could have done such a thing but that of course if the police wanted to investigate, well, that was their right. In private he also maintained this pose and for all I knew he really believed it. In any case, his main interest was the box office and that had never been so healthy since Nijinski danced a season with the company a long time ago. If someone had the bad taste to murder a fellow artist he would wash his hands of them.

I was almost sick to my stomach during that night’s performance … experiencing double stage fright for Jane: first, because it was her big chance, as they say in technicolor movies, and second, because of that cable.

Everyone in the audience was also keyed up. They
looked like a group of wolves waiting for dinner. There was absolute silence all through the ballet … even when Louis, who is after all a big star, came on stage with that pearly smile which usually gets all the girls and gay boys.

Jane was better than I thought she would be. I don’t know why but you never regard your lover as being remarkably talented; you never seem to think her able to do anything at all unusual or brilliant unless, of course, she’s a big star or very well known when you first meet her, in which case, you soon discover that she’s not at all what she’s cracked up to be … but Jane floored me and, I am happy to say, the critics, too. She lost the music once or twice and there was a terrible moment when Louis fumbled a lift, when she sprang too soon and I thought they would land in a heap on the stage but both recovered like real professionals and by the time she began her ascent by cable I knew that she was in, really there at last.

I don’t need to tell you that I watched her rise in the air, slowly turning, with my heart thudding crazily and all my pulses fluttering. Even when the curtain fell I half expected to hear a crash from backstage. But it was all right and there she was, a moment later, standing on the stage with Louis, the
corps de ballet
behind them, as the audience roared its excitement, relief, disappointment … everything, every emotion swept over that stage like surf on a beach. She took seven curtain calls, by herself, and received all four of my bouquets as well as two others, from strangers.

I ran backstage and found her in Sutton’s dressing room (now hers) with most of the company congratulating
her, out of relief as well as admiration. I think they were all afraid that something might happen again.…

Then the stage manager ordered everybody to get upstairs and change and I was left alone with Jane in the dressing room, among the flowers and telegrams from those friends who had been alerted.

“I’m glad it’s over,” she said at last, her eyes gleaming, still breathing hard.

“So am I. I was terrified.”

“Me too.”

“Of that cable?”

“No, just the part. I didn’t have time to think of anything else. You have no idea what it’s like to come out on a stage and know that every eye is on you.”

“It must be wonderful.”

“It is! it is!” She slipped out of her costume and I dried her off with a towel … her skin glowed, warm and rich, like silk. I kissed here, here and there.

There is no need to describe my evening with Jane. It was a memorable one for both of us and, next morning, the sun seemed intolerably bright as we awakened, showered, got dressed, ate breakfast … all in a terrible hung-over silence which did not end until, of mutual accord, still without a word, we each took an Empirin tablet and together threw out the three empty champagne bottles (Mumm, Rheims, France); then I spoke: “ ‘April,’ ” I said thickly, “ ‘is the crudest month.’ ”

“This is May,” said Jane.

“And twice as cruel. I have a strange feeling that during the night the spores of some mysterious fungus or moss, wafted down from the planet Venus, lodged themselves in my brain, entering through some unguarded orifice. Everything is fuzzy and blurred and I don’t hear so well.”

“You sound like you’re still lit,” said Jane, putting on a pink negligee which she had once bought at a sale to make herself look seductive over the morning coffee. Wearing only jockey shorts, I posed like Atlas before the full-length mirror on the bathroom door.

“Do you think I’d make a dancer?”

“You’ve made me, darling,” she said.

“Shall I wash your mouth out with soap?”

“I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”

“Not even on alternate Wednesdays?”

“That’s matinee day … when I do
Eclipse
, twice.” And that was the end of our little game. In case you should ever have an affair with a dancer I recommend total resignation to the fact that the Dance comes first; not only in their lives (which is all right) but also in
your
life (which is not, unless you’re a dancer, too, or connected with it the way I am). After a time you will gradually forget all about the other world of Republicans and Democrats, Communists and Capitalists, Hemingway, the D. and D. of Windsor and Leo Durocher. I suppose in a way it’s kind of a refuge from the world, like a monastery or a nudist colony … except for the tourists: the lives of dancers are filled with the comings and goings of little friends and admirers, autograph hounds and lovers, and you never know who is likely to turn up backstage in hot pursuit of one of the girls, or boys. I’ve been very
surprised, believe me, at certain respectable gentlemen who have unexpectedly revealed a Socratic passion for one of our dancing boys. If I should ever decide to go into the blackmail game I could certainly get some handsome retainers!

Midway through an analysis of her last night’s performance in
Eclipse
, the phone began to ring: friends and and relatives of the new star … so I left her to enjoy their admiration.

It was another hot day, windless and still, with not a cloud in the harsh blue sky. I walked to our office, keeping in the shade of buildings, enjoying the occasional blasts of icy air from the open doors of restaurants and bars.

The newspapers were very gratifying. We were still on the front page, or near it, and the
Globe
had a feature article on the life of Ella Sutton, implying, as did nearly all the other papers, that an arrest would soon be made, that the murderer was her husband … naturally, they all kept this side of libel; even so it was perfectly clear that they thought him guilty … all except the
Mirror
which thought it was a Communist plot. The
Globe
carried a six-column story of Ella’s life with pictures of her from every phase of what turned out to be a longer and more varied career than even I had suspected. Dancers are such liars (and so are press agents, God knows) that as a result the facts of any star’s life are so obscure that it would take a real detective to discover them, or else a good reporter with access to a first-rate morgue, like the
Globe’s.