“But in the meantime you had written that letter to Armiger.”
“To several other dancers, too.”
“Very messy.”
“I sometimes wish I had stayed in Bozeman.”
“Stayed where?”
“Bozeman, Montana. That’s where I was born.… I still own property there. I came East about twenty years ago and my ex-wife got me into ballet.” This was an unexpected confidence. As a rule, Mr. Washburn never made any reference to his life before the ballet, nor could one find out much about him before his ballet days. I know. I tried soon after I joined the company; out of curiosity, I looked him up and found almost nothing at all. His birthplace is recorded, officially, as San Francisco, the child of Anglo-Russian parents; his mother was supposed to have been a dancer called the “Pearl of the Baltic.” None of this of course was true … a real New York biography! much glamour and no facts.
“In a way,” said Mr. Washburn after a brief reminiscence or two on his early days, “this may be a blessing for all of us.”
“What may be?”
“Their putting Jane on trial. They haven’t a chance in the world of making any case against her stick because she is so obviously innocent and, let’s face it, of almost all the people involved in this business she is the one least likely to be hurt by a trial. They might make a case against Eglanova or Alyosha or even against me, and make it stick regardless of how innocent we are in fact …”
“But is Eglanova innocent?”
“I have never allowed myself to think of her or anyone else connected with my company as a murderer.”
“Then you should allow yourself to think right now that somebody we both know is responsible for those murders and that Jane is scheduled to take the rap for that somebody. It might be a good policy for us to co-operate with Gleason and help him catch the real murderer instead of trying to confuse him the way you’ve been doing for the last few weeks, helping him make a case against Jane whom you know is innocent.”
“I’ve done no such thing. I …”
“Then why did you tell Gleason about seeing Jane at Miles’ apartment? Especially when you made it a point to tell me you hadn’t mentioned it to Gleason.” This was wild but I had to take chances; it worked.
“I didn’t want to upset you and then have you disturb Jane when she was working on a new ballet. Of course I told Gleason. How would it have looked if I hadn’t? He knew anyway.”
“I don’t like this …”
“In which case you may want to find a job somewhere else,” said Mr. Washburn looking at me coldly, a piece of lettuce sticking to his lower lip.
“I have other jobs,” I said brazenly. “Which is fortunate … especially if they start investigating those letters you wrote Armiger and the other dancers.”
“Are you trying to blackmail me? Because if you are …”
“Christ no!” I said. “I’m just trying to make a little sense out of the mess you and the others have made. I don’t know why but it seems that everybody connected with this company has a constitutional aversion to telling the truth which is very nearly miraculous … I mean just by accident the truth will sometimes out, but not in this set. I’m sick to death of all the shenanigans … yours, too, Mr. Washburn.”
“A fine speech,” said Elmer Bush appearing out of the shadows.
“A little joke,” said Mr. Washburn easily, getting to his feet. “How are you, Elmer? Let me order you a drink.”
“The boy may be right,” said Elmer, accepting a gin and tonic from a waiter. “Sometimes it’s best to be direct.”
“He’s very much upset, as he should be.”
“Over that girl? Well, he has every reason to be,” said Elmer Bush, giving me his serious television gaze, the one denoting sympathy, compassion.
“What do you mean?” I asked, knowing exactly what he meant.
“You better get her a good lawyer; she’ll need one, starting tomorrow.”
“I’ve got Benson for her,” said Mr. Washburn. “And of course we’ll take care of the bond.”
“She’s innocent,” I said, wearily.
“Perhaps,” said Elmer Bush, “but the police and the press both think she killed Ella to get her part in that ballet.”
“Thin motive, isn’t it?”
“They may have evidence we know nothing about,” said Elmer, looking as though he knew all sorts of things nobody else did … which was possible. If it was, I had another puzzle dropped in my lap … and there wasn’t much time to unravel all the threads, to work everything out.
“Do you mind,” said Mr. Washburn, turning to me with icy formality. “Elmer and I …”
“I’m on my way,” I said, getting to my feet. I gave them a brisk good night. Then I headed down the street to the Blue Angel. There, sitting in a booth at a black table under a red light, I pulled out my sheet of paper and began to go over the names, solving some of the old mysteries, adding the new ones I’d come across during the evening, making brief notes on my conversations with the suspects. While making those notes, I figured out who killed Ella Sutton. There was the solution in front of me, in black and white. The only bad thing was that I didn’t have one bit of evidence to prove what I knew. I was very pleased with myself; I was also scared to death.
CHAPTER SEVEN
1
I doubt whether I will ever forget that evening I spent with Louis; we did New York from the Village to Harlem in something under nine hours, from eleven-thirty that night to eight-thirty the next morning when I crawled off to bed.
We met at the Algonquin. From there we went to a bar in the Village … Hermione’s I think it’s called.
I thought I knew a great deal about our feathered friends, the shy, sensitive dancers and so on that I’ve met these last few years in New York, but that night with Louis was an eye-opener … it was like those last chapters in Proust when everybody around starts turning into boy-lovers until there isn’t a womanizer left on deck.
“You’ll like this bar,” said Louis with a happy grin as he marched me into a long blue-lit tunnel, an upholstered sewer, with a number of tables in back and a bar in front. Heads turned to look at us; there was a hiss of recognition when they saw Louis. He’s hot stuff in these circles.
We pushed our way to the back of the bar and a mincing youth, a waiter, found us a table right by the stage, a wooden platform about four feet square with a microphone in front of it and a piano beside it. The stage was empty. A tired little man sat at the piano, banging away.
“They have a swell show here,” said my guide.
“What will it be, big boy?” said Mae West, behind me; I turned and saw that it wasn’t Miss West … only our waiter who despite his debutante slouch managed to give a vivid impersonation of that great American lady.
Louis ordered gin and I ordered a coke, to Louis’ horror but I was firm … I had no intention of getting tanked tonight, for a number of reasons, all good.
The pianist, getting a look at Louis, played a hopped-up version of Swan Lake in his honor and a more godawful noise I’ve never heard. He was rewarded with a big smile from the French Nijinski.
“Nice, isn’t it? They know me here even though I only get down this way maybe once twice a season.”