“Why? What’s the matter?”
“I’ll tell you outside. Come on.” He looked furtively about as though afraid the footmen were eavesdropping. They were not. Even so, as we went out the door, he looked back over his shoulder, like a man fearing pursuers; I looked, too, and saw no one except Louis coming out of the head with a blond footman, both looking pleased as hell. They did not see us.
We headed east on Seventy-fifth Street, toward Lexington Avenue.
“What’s going on? What’s up? Where’re we walking to?”
“It’s quicker, walking,” said Mr. Washburn grimly, prancing ahead of me like a fat mare. “But where?”
“To Miles Sutton’s apartment. He lives just the other side of Lexington.”
“What’s the matter?” But I knew: Gleason had arrested him at last, or was about to.
“He’s dead,” said Mr. Washburn.
I think I said: “Sweet Jesus!”
2
We walked up three flights of stairs which smelled of damp and cabbage; at the top of the third flight was an open door with a curiously formal card on it: “Mr. and Mrs. Miles Sutton” … obviously a Christmas present from an old aunt. The apartment was a three-roomed affair, very modern: you know the kind … two walls battleship gray and two terra cotta in the same room with fuchsia-covered furniture. This was where the happy couple had lived until the present season when Miles moved out, not returning until after Ella was dead.
In the front room several detectives stood, looking important as they always do in the presence of someone else’s disaster. They were very tough with us until Gleason, hearing the noise of Mr. Washburn’s protests, shouted from another room, “Let them in.”
“In there,” said one of the detectives, motioning to a door on the left.
We found Gleason in the kitchen. A photographer with a flash bulb was taking pictures of the corpse, from all angles. Two unidentified men stood by the sink, watching.
“Oh, my God!” And Mr. Washburn, after one look at the body of Miles Sutton, hurried out of the room. We could hear him vomiting in the bathroom. I didn’t feel so good myself but I have a strong stomach and I have seen a lot of things in my time, during the war, and I’m not easily upset … even so all the wine I had drunk that night at the party turned sour in my belly as I looked at Miles Sutton. It was one of the damndest things I have ever seen. He was slumped over a gas stove, his arms hanging at his sides and his legs buckled crazily under him … he was a tall man and the stove didn’t come up to his waist. But the horrible thing was his head. He had fallen in such a way that his chin had got caught in one of the burners on top of the stove … which might not have been so bad except for the fact that the gas had been lit and his hair, his beard and the skin of his face were burned until now his head resembled a shapeless mass of black tar. The room was full of the acrid odor of burnt hair and flesh.
“O.K.,” said the photographer, getting down from a kitchen chair: he had been shooting a picture from directly overhead. “It’s all yours.”
The two men by the sink moved forward and lifted the body off the stove. I looked away while they lugged the large corpse out of the kitchen into the living room. Gleason and I, still without a word to one another, followed the procession into the living room.
A moment later Mr. Washburn joined us, very weak at the knees. Without further invitation, he sat down in an Eames chair, careful not to look at Miles Sutton who was now laid out on a stretcher in the middle of the room. Detectives scurried about, searching the room, taking photographs.
Gleason lit a cigar and glared at us.
“How … how did it happen?” asked Mr. Washburn in a low voice.
“It ruins the whole case,” said Mr. Gleason, savagely chewing on his cigar. “Poor Miles …”
“It makes no sense.”
“Inspector, could you … would you please put something over him.”
“You don’t have to look at it,” snapped Gleason, but he motioned to one of the detectives who found a sheet and covered the body.
“That’s better,” said Mr. Washburn.
“We were going to arrest him this evening,” said Gleason. “We had a perfect case … in spite of everyone’s refusal to co-operate with us.” And he looked at me with bloodshot eyes … when Irish eyes are bleary, I hummed to myself.
“How could such a thing have happened? I mean … well, it’s impossible.”
“That’s our business: the impossible.”
“How could someone have got in that position … I don’t understand.” Mr. Washburn sounded querulous.
“That’s what we’re going to find out … the medical examiner here,” he gestured to one of the men standing by the door, “says that he’s been dead for about an hour.”
“It must’ve been an accident,” said Mr. Washburn.
“We’ll know after the autopsy. We’re going to do a real job, you can bet your life. If there’s been any monkey business, we’ll find out.”
“Or suicide,” suggested Mr. Washburn.
Gleason looked at him contemptuously. “A man decides to kill himself by lighting a gas stove and putting his head on the burner like it was a pillow or something? For Christ’s sake! If he was going to kill himself he would’ve stuck his head in the oven and turned on the gas. Anyway he was about to cook something … we found a pan beside him on the floor.”
“Unless somebody put it there … to make it look like an accident,” I suggested, to Mr. Washburn’s dismay.
The detective ignored me, though. “I wanted you to come here, Mr. Washburn, to tell me which members of your company were at the party tonight.”
“All the principals … Rudin, Wilbur … everyone.”
“Who?”
Mr. Washburn, unhappily, gave him all the names.
“Where was the party held?” When Mr. Washburn told him, Gleason whistled, putting two and two together in a manner marvelous to behold … there’s nothing quite like watching a slow reflex in action.
“That’s just a few blocks from here?”
“I believe so,” said Mr. Washburn.
“Anyone could have come over here and killed Sutton.”
“Now look here, you don’t know he was killed …”
“That’s right, but then I don’t know it was an accident, either.”
“Just how could anybody kill a grown man by pushing his head on a stove?” I asked.
“It could be done,” said Gleason, “if you knocked him out.”
“Is there any sign he was knocked out?” I asked.
“The examination hasn’t been made yet. In the meantime, Mr. Washburn, I want you to have the following people ready to see me tomorrow afternoon at the theater.” And he handed my employer a list of names.
“How soon will you know … what happened, whether he was knocked out or not?”
“By morning.”
“Morning … oh, God, the papers.” Mr. Washburn shut his eyes; I wondered why publicity should bother him at this point.
“Yes, the papers,” said Gleason, irritably. “Think what they’ll say about me? ‘Suspect killed or murdered on eve of arrest.’ Think how that’ll make me look!” I wondered if perhaps Gleason might not have political ambitions … Gleason for Councilman: fearless investigator, loyal American.
My reverie was broken, however, by the appearance of a dark, disheveled woman who pushed her way past the detectives at the door and then, catching sight of the figure on the floor, screamed and drew back. There was a moment of pure confusion. The woman was taken into a back room by the medical examiner who spoke to her in a low, soothing voice which had startlingly little effect on the sobs. Magda was hysterical.