“I’ll go take class now,” she said, pinning her hair up. “Then I suppose I should go and see poor Magda.”
“Magda who?” I had forgotten.
“The girl who fainted last night. She’s a good friend of mine.”
“The one who was pregnant?”
“How did you know?”
“Everybody knows,” I said, as though I had been in ballet all my life. But then curiosity got the better of me. “Who was the father?”
Jane smiled. “I thought you would have found that out, too. Everybody knows.”
“They forgot to tell me.”
“Miles Sutton is the lucky man,” said Jane, but she wasn’t smiling now and I could see why.
CHAPTER TWO
1
I don’t know when I’d seen so many gloomy faces as I did that morning in Eglanova’s dressing room. Mr. Gleason of the Police Department had assembled the company’s brass there, with the exception of Eglanova herself and Louis, neither of whom had yet arrived. But the others were there … including Miles Sutton who looked as though he hadn’t slept in a week, his eyes glassy with fatigue, and Jed Wilbur who kept cracking his knuckles until I thought I’d go crazy and Mr. Washburn in a handsome summer suit, very grave, and Alyosha looking fairly relaxed, as well as the stage manager and a few other notables who stood about the room while Detective Gleason, a round pig of a man with a cigar, obligingly revealed to us the full splendor of the official mind.
“Where are those two dancers … Egg-something and Giraffe?”
Egg and Giraffe … pretty good, I thought, giving him an A for effort.
“They will be along shortly,” said Mr. Washburn soothingly. “After all, this is very early for them to be up.”
“Early!” snorted Gleason. “That’s a funny way to run a business.”
“It is an art, not a business,” said Alyosha mildly.
Gleason looked at him suspiciously. “What is your name again?”
“Alyosha Petrovich Rudin.”
“A Russian, eh?”
“Originally.”
The detective scowled a xenophobe’s scowl but made no comment. He had us where he wanted us but then again we were pretty hot stuff, too, and we had him if he got too frisky. I was quite sure that Mr. Washburn was in hourly contact with City Hall.
“Well, we’ll start without them. First, I think you should all know that there’s been a murder.” He consulted a piece of paper which he held in his hand. “Ella Sutton was murdered last night at ten-thirty, by falling. The cable which was holding her thirty-eight feet above the stage was severed, except for one strand, by a party or parties as yet unknown, between the hours of four-thirty and ten P.M.… We have, by the way, what we believe to be the murder weapon: a pair of shears which are now being tested for fingerprints and also for metal filings, to see if they correspond with the metal of the cable.” He paused and fixed us with a steely eye, as though expecting the murderer to burst into hysterical sobs and confess everything; instead it was I who almost burst into hysterical sobs, thinking of those damned shears and how I had handled them. I had several very bad minutes.
“Now, I’ll be frank with you,” said Gleason, who was obviously going to be no such thing, now or ever. “We could close down your show while we investigate but, for one reason and another, we’ve decided to let you finish up your last two weeks here, just as you planned, and we’ll investigate when we can. Believe me when I say it’s a real break for you.” I looked at Mr. Washburn, the intimate of Kings and Mayors, but he was looking very bland indeed. “I want to warn you folks, though, that none of you is to take French leave, to disappear from the scene of the crime during your last week, or later, if we haven’t wound this case up by then … and I think we will have, by then,” he added ominously, looking, I swear, right at me, as though he’d already found my fingerprints on what was now called The Murder Weapon. I felt faint. Love and a possible accusation of being a murderer need a full stomach, coffee anyway.
“To be frank with you,” said Gleason, obviously bent on being a good fellow, “it seems very likely that the murder was committed by someone closely connected with the theater, by someone who knew all about the new ballet and who had a grudge against Miss Sutton …” Bravo, I said to myself. You are cooking with gas, Gleason. I began to insult him in my mind … for some reason I was perfectly willing to let the murderer go undetected. Sutton was no great loss but then, of course, I am callous, having been an infantryman at Okinawa (wounded my first day in action, by a bullet in the left buttock … no, I was not running away; the bullet ricocheted, I swear to God, and I was carried from the field, all bloody from my baptism of fire).
“I will,” said Mr. Gleason, “interview each and every one of you, starting right now and continuing through the entire company, including the stagehands … every one, in short, who was backstage.” He unfolded a long sheet of paper, a list of names. “Here is the list in the order in which I want to see you people. Will you have it put some place where the other members of the company can see it?” Mr. Washburn said that he would and motioned for the stage manager to take it outside and put it on the bulletin board.
When the stage manager returned, he was accompanied by Eglanova and Louis. Eglanova looked very distinguished in a black lace dress of mourning with a white feathered hat on her head, while Louis wore a pair of slacks and a sport shirt like the Tennis Anyone? juvenile he occasionally resembles.
“So sorry,” said Eglanova, swooping down upon the Inspector. “You are the police? I am Madame Eglanova … this is my dressing room,” she added, intimating that we had all better get the hell out of there.
“Pleased to meet you,” said Gleason, obviously impressed.
“And I am Louis Giraud,” said Louis with great dignity, but it didn’t come off because Gleason was too busy explaining things to Eglanova who was carefully maneuvering him to the door, like a stalking lioness. In a few minutes we were all out of there and Gleason repaired to an office on the second floor to commence his interviews … the first, naturally enough, was Miles Sutton. I was number seven on the list, I noticed. Lucky seven?
I cornered Mr. Washburn outside in the street; we both had gone out, automatically, for the afternoon papers. “I’ve got something to tell you,” I said.
“I want to hear only good news,” said Mr. Washburn warningly. “I have had enough disaster to last me the rest of what, very likely, will be a short life. My heart is not strong.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, sir, but I think you should know something about those shears.”
“Those what?”
“The things the police thought the murderer cut the cable with.”
“Well, what about them?”
“It just so happens that I found them last night in the wastebasket in Eglanova’s room.”
“What were they doing there?” Mr. Washburn was deep in The Journal-American … we were still on the front page.
“Somebody put them there.”
“Very likely … I wonder why they always spell Eglanova’s name wrong? According to this account, it’s all a Communist plot.”
“Mr. Washburn, I moved those shears … I picked them up and I took them out of that dressing room and put them on top of the toolbox backstage.”