“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.”
“And you left it?”
“Not until after the murder last night.”
“Who did you see when you returned at five-thirty, who was backstage?”
“Just about everyone, I suppose: Mr. Washburn, Eglanova, Giraud, Rudin … no, he wasn’t there until about six, and neither was Miles Sutton now that I think of it.”
“Is it customary for all these people to be in the theater such a long time before a performance?”
“I don’t know … it was a première night.”
“Eglanova was not in the première, though, was she?”
“No, but she often spends the day in the theater … so does Giraud. He sleeps.”
“By the way, do you happen to know who will take Sutton’s place tonight?”
I paused just long enough to sound guilty; I kicked myself but there was nothing to be done about it. “Jane Garden … one of the younger soloists.”
But he missed the connection, I could see, and not until all the interviews had been neatly typed up and my fingerprints had been discovered on the shears would he decide that I had cut the cable so that Jane could dance the lead in Eclipse.
He asked me a few more questions to which I gave some mighty flip answers and then he told me to go, very glad to see the last of me, for that day at least. I have a dislike of policemen which must be the real thing since I’d never had anything to do with them up until now, outside of the traffic courts. There is something about the state putting the power to bully into the hands of a group of subnormal, sadistic apes that makes my blood boil. Of course, the good citizens would say that it takes an ape to keep the other apes in line but then again it is piteous indeed to listen to the yowls of those same good citizens when they come afoul the law and are beaten up in prisons and generally manhandled for suspected or for real crimes: at such moments they probably wish they had done something about the guardians of law and order when they were free. Well, it was no problem of mine at the moment.
I found Jane already downstairs in her rehearsal clothes. I gave her a big kiss and then, when she asked me if I had had anything to do with her getting the lead in Eclipse and I said that I certainly had, I got another kiss. She asked me all about the investigation.
“Everybody’s being pumped,” I said. “They just got through with me. You better go look on the bulletin board and find out what time they’ll want to see you.” We looked; and she was to be questioned at six o’clock.
“What did he want to know?”
“Just stuff. Where I was when it happened … who else was around, and gossip.”
“What did you tell him?”
“Not much of anything … in the way of gossip: it’s his job to find out those things.”
“I suppose it is.”
Wilbur and Louis appeared, both in work clothes. “Come on, Jane,” said Louis. “We got work.” He winked at me. “How’re you doing, Baby?”
I called him a rude but accurate name and marched off to telephone the newspapers about Jane’s coming debut as a soloist … it wouldn’t get in till tomorrow but then, perhaps, we might be able to get a few of the critics out to report on her the next night. Needless to say, we were scheduled to do Eclipse at every single performance until we closed. After I had made my calls and arranged for some photographs of Jane to be sent around by messenger, I left the building with every intention of going to get something to eat … I was getting light in the head from hunger and the heat. I was so giddy that I almost stepped on Miles Sutton who was lying face down in the corridor which leads from the office to the dressing rooms.
2
“What’s going on here?” were, I am ashamed to say, my first words to what I immediately, and inaccurately, thought to be a corpse, the discarded earthly residence of our conductor who lay spread-eagled on his belly in front of the washroom door.
The figure at my feet moaned softly and, thinking of fingerprints, I nevertheless was a good Samaritan and rolled him over on his back, half expecting to see the hilt of a quaint oriental dagger sticking through his coat.
“Water,” whispered Miles Sutton, and I got him water from the bathroom; he drank it very sloppily and then, rolling up his eyes the way certain comedians do when their material is weak, he sank back onto the floor, very white in the face. I trotted back into the bathroom, got another cup of water, returned, and splashed it in his face. This had the desired effect. He opened his eyes and sat up. “Must’ve fainted,” he whispered in a weak voice.
“So it would appear,” I said; at the moment there was very little the conductor and I had in common. I stood there for several seconds, contemplating him; then Sutton pulled out a handkerchief and dried his beard. His color was a little better now and I suggested that, all in all, it might be a good idea for him to stand up. I helped him to his feet. He lurched into the washroom; I waited until he came out.
“Must be the heat,” he mumbled. “Sort of thing never happened before.”
“It’s a hot day,” I said … it was remarkable how little we had to say to each other. “Do you feel O.K. now?”
“A bit shaky.”
“I don’t feel so good myself,” I said, hunger gnawing at my vitals. “Why don’t we go get something to eat across the street? I’m Peter Sargeant, by the way; I’m handling publicity. I don’t think Mr. Washburn introduced us.”
We shook hands; then he said, dubiously, “I don’t suppose I should hang around here. They may want me for the rehearsal.”
“Come on,” I said, and he did. Very slowly we walked down the brilliant sunlit street; shimmering waves of heat flickered in the distance and my shirt began to stick to my back. Miles, looking as though he might faint again, breathed hoarsely, like an old dog having a nightmare.
“Must have been something you ate?” I suggested out of my vast reservoir of small talk.
He looked rather bleak and didn’t answer as we walked into an air-conditioned restaurant with plywood walls got up to look like the paneling in an old English tavern; both of us perked up considerably.
“Or maybe you got hold of a bad piece of ice last night.” This was unworthy of me but I didn’t care. I was thinking of food.
We got ourselves a booth and neither of us spoke until I had wolfed down a large breakfast and he had had several cups of coffee. By this time he was looking less like a corpse. I knew very little about him other than that he got good notices for himself and orchestra, that he conducted the important ballets with more than usual attention to the often eclectic performances of the Grand Saint Petersburg stars who have a tendency to impose their own tempo on that of the dead and defenseless composers. I disliked his face, but that means nothing at all. My character analyses based on physiognomy or intuition are, without exception, incorrect; even so I have many profound likes and dislikes based entirely on the set of a man’s eyes or his voice. I did not like Sutton’s eyes, I might add, large gray glassy eyes with immense black pupils, and an expression of constant surprise. He fixed me now with these startled eyes and said, “Did you talk to the Inspector?”