I was pretty shaken by this interview with what was very likely one of the last perfect examples of Neanderthal man on the island of Manhattan. I went back into Mr. Washburn’s office to get a drink … I knew that he kept a bottle of very good brandy in a bottom drawer of his Napoleonic desk. Since he wasn’t in, I took a mouthful right out of the bottle; then, carefully, I put it back in the desk and idly glanced at the papers on his desk. One of them was a letter from Sylvia Armiger, the English ballerina … a short note which I naturally read, saying that she would be unable to succeed Eglanova for the ’52 season, that she was already under contract, but many thanks and so forth and so on.
The old bastard, I thought, amused by Washburn’s duplicity. Even with Sutton gone he was still trying to replace Eglanova. I was less amused, though, when I noticed the date on the letter … it was ten days old. It had been written before Ella Sutton’s murder.
CHAPTER FIVE
1
The last night was a triumph. The box office reported that we had beaten all previous standing-room records for the Met and the audience was in a frantic mood, drowning out the music with almost continual applause for the stars who danced, I must say, with more skill than usual. If the audience was disappointed that the cable didn’t break in Eclipse, they didn’t show it for they called Jane back on stage seven times after the ballet. Swan Lake was magnificent in spite of several veterans who saw fit to heave a couple of firecrackers onto the stage … as well as a stink bomb which fortunately didn’t go off.
Backstage, after the audience had left the theater, a great deal of vodka was stashed away by the Russian contingent … those members of the company born in Europe and their hangers-on … all singing and laughing and drinking vodka among the trunks and costumes. Eglanova was roaring drunk, weeping and laughing, her talk a mixture of Russian and English, all very confused.
Jane and I left early. Mr. Washburn caught us at the door and grandly gave me the next day off … after extending my contract another week. Jane, however, had to report at three-thirty the next day for rehearsal with Wilbur.
We spent the morning in bed, reading the newspapers and talking to people on the telephone, to dancers who were also spending this wonderful morning in bed, in various combinations. It was very cozy, like being part of a large family with, at the moment, no serious feuds to shatter the pleasant mood.
None of us could get over the fact that the investigation was finished, that Gleason was no longer a part of our lives.
“But,” as Jane said in her most professional voice over the telephone to one of the boy soloists, a Greek god with a voice like Bette Davis, “where are we ever going to get another conductor as good as Miles?”
“I think Gold’s working out fine,” I said, when she had hung up the telephone and was sitting cross-legged beside me on the bed, idly pinching my belly, trying to find a serious fold of flesh to complain about: she has always thought I do too little exercise … the reason, I always tell her, why I can eat everything and stay slim while she exercises, eats like a horse and has to watch her weight.
“You don’t have to follow him,” she said irrelevantly, breathing deeply, rib-cage thrust forward, chin held high, breasts moving all of a piece, not quivering like jello the way most breasts do in this age of starch.
I grunted and shook her hand off my stomach as I read about our company, on page twenty-seven, in the Globe: “Murdered Dancer’s Husband Dead” … “Suspected of Murder.” An interview with Gleason followed, on page twenty-eight, without photograph.
“Kind of nice not to be on the front page,” I said.
“Don’t say that or you’ll be thrown out of the press agents’ guild or whatever it is that makes people like you the way they are.”
“The bitch goddess.”
“The what?”
“The ignoble concern with ephemeral reputation which has created people like me … professional criers, drum-beaters, trumpeters of brazen idols with feet of clay.”
“Oh, shut up. Does John Martin say anything in the Times about us?”
“He says that the Grand Saint Petersburg Ballet is leaving town next week for a five-month tour.”
She grabbed the Times away from me and read the column on “Dance” with the desperate concentration of a ballerina hunting for a good notice.
“Certainly a plug for Eglanova,” she said at last, critically.
“Well, she’s had a lot of them in her day.”
“Wouldn’t it be wonderful if she retired of her own free will?” said my good-hearted girl.
“I don’t see why. She’d be miserable. She doesn’t want to teach. I think it’s real fine the old woman can keep going like this … and still be a big draw all over the map.”
Jane scowled. “It’s so hard on the rest of us … I mean, it keeps everybody back.”
I snorted. “Listen to her! A week ago you were one of those lousy cygnets in Swan Lake pounding up and down the stage with three other girls in a Minsky routine and now you’re thinking of the day when you’ll succeed Eglanova.”
With one long liquid line as a certain ballet critic might have described it, Jane Garden dealt me a thunderous blow with the pillow. After a stiff fight, I subdued her at last … quite a trick considering she is a solid girl and, in spite of her lovely silklike skin, all muscle.
“It’s not true!” she gasped, her hair like a net over the white sheet as I held her tight on her back.
“Delusions … that’s what it is.”
“Everybody feels the same way. Ask any of the girls.”
“Vicious group … ambitious, untalented.”
“Oh!” And she twisted away from me and sat up in bed, breathing hard as she pushed her hair out of her face.
“It wouldn’t surprise me one little bit if you knocked off Ella just to get her place in the company.”
Jane laughed mournfully. “I don’t need to tell you that our company works on the caste system. I was number seven ballerina before Ella died.”
“But now you’re number two because you knew that if Ella was out of the picture I’d see to it you got her part.”
“Everything has worked out nicely,” said Jane, beaming.
“You have no conscience.”
“None at all. Especially now that the case is over.”
“Were you afraid of being caught?”
“Well, seriously, I didn’t feel so good when poor Miles died.”
“Why?”
“Well, darling, I was there.”
“There?”
“I saw him about an hour before he died … I stopped off on my way to the party.”
“Good God!” I sat up in bed and looked at her … “Did you tell Gleason that?”
“No, I didn’t. I … I suppose I was afraid.”
“You little fool.…” I was alarmed. “Don’t you realize that he had that building watched, that Miles was being watched every minute of the day and night no matter where he was? Did you go in the front way?”
“Did I go in …? Of course I did. What do you think …”
“Then he knows that you were there and that you didn’t mention it when he questioned you. What do you think he’ll make of that?”
“But … Miles did do it, didn’t he? The case is closed?” she asked in a small voice. I sometimes think that dancers have less brains than the average vegetable.
“I don’t know that he did and neither do the police. I have a hunch he didn’t but I may be wrong. Even so, no matter what the papers say or Gleason says, those boys are still interested in what happened to Ella … and maybe to Miles, too.”