“That’s true. But ballet companies are like families. They are different on the inside … no matter how well you know them from the outside.”
“You knew Ella a long time?”
“Oh yes. In fact, except for Louis, she was the person I knew best in the company.”
“How long did you know her?”
“You sound just like that policeman.” He smiled at me.
“I’m pretty concerned. This is my bread and butter. You can always go on to another company, to Broadway. I’m on a salary, and there aren’t many jobs around as pleasant as this.”
“I see what you mean. O.K.… Ella Sutton. How long did I know her? Since Nineteen Thirty-seven, when she was in the North American Ballet. She joined it the month it folded; even so she danced several leads and got her first recognition.”
“Did you see much of her after that?”
“Very little. We never worked together from that day until she got Washburn to hire me to make some new ballets for her.”
“I didn’t know Ella was responsible for hiring you.”
“She was indeed. I suspect she was the most ambitious dancer in the history of ballet. She felt she had mastered the classics and the Grand Saint Petersburg chestnuts; she wanted to branch out … to prove she was a great dramatic dancer like Nora Kaye. So she got Washburn to hire me … for which I could kill her.…” He laughed, suddenly aware of what he had said. “If somebody hadn’t taken care of that already. As far as I’m concerned, in spite of the success of Eclipse, my little association with your company has taken ten years off my life.”
“Did you like Ella?”
“Certainly not. She was a bitch, not at all the kind of woman I like,” he said, making a perfunctory effort to show his aversion to Ella was not a general one, did not include the entire sex … which of course it did. “But she was one marvelous dancer. I felt, working with her this season, that she might easily have become the finest ballerina of our time … and I’ve worked with the whole lot, with just about every important dancer in the world.”
“Who do you think killed her?”
He frowned; then he finished his drink. “You know,” he said at last, “I’ve gotten so nervous lately with all these investigations that I hardly dare open my mouth to say it’s a warm day for fear some bastard will twist what I say around and use it against me.”
“Well, there’re only two of us here. You need two witnesses, don’t you, to prove a statement? You can tell me what you think, if you want to.”
“Then I may as well say what I think … not what I know; and if you quote me on this I’ll deny it till I’m blue in the face. From what little I know of this company and the way it’s put together, I’d say the Russians did it.”
“Eglanova?”
“And Alyosha … one or the other or both. I mean who else had any real motive? Aside from Miles, and I still think maybe he did it; though that makes Magda’s death seem a little crazy … which makes me also think that the whole thing might be the work of a lunatic. God knows we have enough of them in ballet—and more than our share in this company.”
“I don’t think Eglanova would ever take such a chance.”
“It wasn’t much of a chance since she knew Miles would be blamed for it, as he was. Or maybe she had Alyosha do it for her. He certainly hated Ella … though I suppose if he did it he wouldn’t have planted those shears in Eglanova’s room. That’s more the sort of thing she might’ve done, an obvious stunt to make herself seem victimized. But that’s all theorizing. Ideally, I’d be very happy if the police just gave up, or arrested the janitor, somebody who didn’t have a thing to do with ballet but if they have to arrest the old girl, or Alyosha, I wish they’d hurry up and do it so I can go to Washington and clear myself. I don’t want anything to affect my chances for the fall, with that musical … it’s the biggest chance I’ve had in the commercial theater and I’m looking forward to it … and not just to the money either.… It’s a chance to do something big … something nobody else has done before.”
He talked awhile about the great things he intended to do; I then asked him if the rumor I’d heard about Louis’ going into musical comedy was true.
“Where did you hear that?”
“Some of the boys in the company … you know how they chatter.”
“We talked about it once. I don’t think he wants to leave the ballet.”
“He’d be good in musicals,” I said.
“You never can tell.” Then Wilbur steered the subject back to himself and before I left he had given me a number of pronouncements to give to the press about his political status.
4
It was almost seven o’clock when I met Alyosha at the Russian Tea Room on Fifty-seventh Street, a favorite meeting place for the ballet, where the Russians often sit for hours at a time drinking tea and eating pressed caviar.
I found Alyosha at his usual table, just inside the main room. He was going through his mail when I joined him; he was as dapper as ever, his monocle in place, a glass of vodka at his elbow. I remember thinking at the time that if he was a murderer, he was certainly a cool one. Except for the marks of fatigue which were standard equipment for the members of the Grand Saint Petersburg Ballet Company that season, he could not have been more relaxed as he motioned me to the chair opposite him.
“I’m sorry I’m late,” I said, ordering bourbon. “But I’ve been at the office, trying to keep the newspapers in line.”
“They are like wolves,” said the old gentleman, placing a cigarette in his long onyx holder. “They smell blood and they want more of it.”
“I know one thing: they’re crazy for an arrest.”
“And this Inspector plans to give them one, I am sure.”
“The wrong one, too, I’ll bet.”
“Undoubtedly,” said Alyosha sadly.
“I wish I could head them off.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. I only meant I wished I could … because of Jane.”
“Is she involved?”
I was quick enough, fortunately, to get out of that one. I did some extraordinary feints and maneuvers. “We’re going to be married,” I said. “And all this is making things so difficult for us … her being in Wilbur’s new ballet … the strain of doing Eclipse night after night, terrified that someone may do the same thing to her that they did to Sutton. Well, it isn’t the most wonderful climate for love.”
“Love makes its own climate,” said Alyosha with a warm smile. “Let me congratulate you.”
“Thank you … I appreciate that.… But don’t say anything to the company about it … for now.”
“I shall be very discreet.” He toasted me in tea and I toasted him in bourbon. We talked for a while of love and marriage and he told me about himself and Eglanova. “What a divine woman she is! I have never known any woman so without vanity or meanness. Oh, I know that seems strange since she is such an egotist about her work, but that is natural.… It is the ballet she cares about, not Eglanova. In a way it is like the priesthood for her, for us. You Americans are not quite the same thing. You think of money and glamour and all that, not of the thing itself, the dance, the work, the magic. In a way our marriage was perfect.”
“But it ended.”
“All things must … in our world sooner than later. I was infatuated with someone else and so it ended. Yet Anna never reproached me, not once.”
“With Ella?”
“Yes … I am afraid everyone knows. I made a fool of myself, but I don’t blame her. We were such different people. I thought first of ballet then of her and she thought only of herself; she thought because I loved her I’d give her the great roles but I saw that she wasn’t ready and I refused, thinking that ballet came first with her, too, that she would know, as I knew, that she wasn’t ready. So she married Miles and suddenly, pouf! like that, she was ready: overnight she was a great ballerina. Sad woman … she ended the way she deserved.”