Death in the Fifth Position

by Gore Vidal

  “Well, I’ve been pretty busy,” I allowed in my best bumpkin manner.

  “Say, what about that murder you got in your company?” and the benign features of Elmer Bush (“just a friend of the family in your own living room giving you some real stories about real people in the news,” … just old horse-shit Bush, I thought) shone with friendship and interest.

  “Some mess,” I said, because that’s exactly what he would have said had our roles been reversed.

  “Well, it keeps the show in the news … that’s one thing. Hear my broadcast about it Wednesday night?”

  “I certainly did,” I lied. “Just about the best analysis I’ve seen so far.”

  “Well, I didn’t really try to analyze it … just straight reporting.”

  Had I blundered? “I mean the way you put it, well, that was some job …”

  “Get the facts,” said Mr. Bush, smiling mechanically. “When are they going to arrest the husband?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “He did do it?”

  “Everyone thinks so. He certainly had a good enough reason.”

  “Bitch?”

  “Very much so.”

  “I saw the man who’s on that case yesterday. What’s his name? Gleason? Yes. Used to know him years ago when I was covering the police courts. He was mixed up in the Albemarle business … but that was before your time. Anyway, he made it pretty clear to me, unofficially of course, that Sutton would be arrested in the next twenty-four hours and indicted as quick as possible … while public interest is high. That’s the way they work.” And he chuckled. “Politicians, police … the worst hams of all. But I still don’t know why they’ve held off so long.”

  “Pressure,” I said smoothly, as though I knew.

  He pursed his lips and nodded, everything just a bit more deliberate than life, made sharp for the television camera. “I thought as much. Not a bad idea to string it out as long as possible either … for the good of all concerned. Are you sold out? I thought so. Take a tip from me! This will put ballet on the map.” And with that message he left me for a dazzling lady who looked like Gloria Swanson and who, upon close inspection, turned out to be Gloria Swanson.

  “How’re you doing, Baby?” inquired a familiar voice behind me … needless to say I gave a bit of a jump and executed a fairly professional pirouette … never turn your back on the likes of Louis, as Mother used to say.

  “I’m doing just fine, killer,” I said, showing my upper teeth.

  “Such good boy,” said Louis, holding my arm for a minute in a vise-like grip. “Some muscle!”

  “I got it from beating up faggots in Central Park,” I said slowly; he doesn’t understand if you talk fast.

  Louis roared. “You kill me, Baby.”

  “Don’t tempt me.”

  “Come on out on that balcony … just you and me. We look at moon.”

  “Not on your life, killer.”

  “Why’re you so afraid of me?”

  “Just two guesses.”

  “But I tell you you won’t feel nothing. You’ll like it fine.”

  “I’m a virgin.”

  “I know, Baby, that’s what I go for. Last night …” But before he could tell me some lewd story concerning his unnatural vice, Jed Wilbur approached us, pale and harried-looking, like the White Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland. He too was got up in a dinner jacket … it was the first time, I think, that I had ever seen him in a suit, wearing a tie. I was not able to continue my sartorial investigation, however, for Louis broke off what had promised to be our big balcony scene and rushed off in the direction of the main hall, as though he had to get to the john real fast. I could see that Wilbur was in some doubt as to whether to chase his beloved and corner him in some barricaded lavatory or to tarry a bit with me instead. He chose the latter course.

  “I wonder where Louis is off to?” he asked.

  “Call of the wild, I guess.”

  “What was he talking to you about?”

  This was abrupt and I was almost tempted to remind Jed Wilbur that it was none of his business. But then he is the leading choreographer of the minute and I am, for this minute at least, a minion of the ballet and so I swallowed my thimble-sized pride and said, “Just idle chatter.”

  “In other words making a pass.” Wilbur sounded bitter.

  “But that’s natural. I mean for him it is. He has to get into everything he sees.”

  “Male and under thirty.” Wilbur sighed and I felt sorry for him … unrequited love and all that. He fidgeted with his ready-tied bow tie.

  “Well, that’s the way he gets his kicks,” I said, idly dropping into an Army attitude; while I talked to Jed I looked over his shoulder at the room, recognizing several famous faces, one of whom, belonging to a Senator, was talking very seriously to Jane who obviously had no notion of who he was. I smiled to myself as I recalled the day before when she asked me, very tenderly and shyly, whether Truman was a Democrat or Republican.

  “Why does everyone at parties look over everyone else’s shoulder?” asked Wilbur suddenly, capturing my attention with a bang.

  “Oh.…” I blushed. “Bad manners, I guess.”

  “Some commentary on our society,” said Wilbur, in a voice which smacked a little of the soapbox. “Everyone trying to get ahead every minute of the day … rushing, rushing, rushing, afraid of missing a trick.”

  “This is a competitive town,” I said with my usual profundity, sneaking a glimpse over his shoulder at Eglanova who was surrounded by some rich-looking bucks, laughing as though she was quite prepared to slip off a shoe and guzzle champagne from it.

  “You’re telling me,” said Wilbur and he looked over his own shoulder in the direction that Louis had taken … but our Don Juan was nowhere in sight. No doubt he was having his way with one of the busboys behind a potted palm downstairs. Thinking of Louis always puts me into a good mood … that is when he’s not around to make me nervous … he just makes me laugh, for no particular reason. But then Lady Edderdale, surrounded by outriders, rode down on us, diamonds whispering against green satin.

  “Mr. Wilbur? We haven’t met. I must have been in the other room when you arrived. I’ve so much wanted to meet you.”

  Jed took her outstretched hand, bewildered. “Yes …”

  “I am Alma Edderdale,” she said, smiling a blinding smile, like sun on a glacier; she withdrew her hand.

  “We’ve met,” I said quickly, to cover the moment’s confusion. “With Mr. Washburn.’

  “Of course. Can I ever tell you in words, Mr. Wilbur, my reaction to Eclipse?”

  Wilbur suggested in a confused voice that she give it a try … stated more politely of course.

  “It was my one wonderful, mystical experience in the ballet … not including the classics which I have seen so long that I can no longer remember how they first affected me. But in modern ballet … ah!” Words failed her. They failed Jed, too.

  “It’s generally thought to be Mr. Wilbur’s best work,” I gabbled.

  “And of course what happened that first night! Mr. Wilbur, I was there. I saw.” She opened her eyes very wide, great golden orbs, swimming in jaundiced tears.

  “Very awful,” mumbled Wilbur.

  “And to have had it happen then … at that wonderful moment! Ah, Mr. Wilbur …” The passage of several boisterous guests made escape possible; I slipped through them and wandered off to find Jane. But she had vanished … the Senator, too. I settled for Eglanova who was seated on a love seat with an old man and surrounded by younger ones, all rather sensitive I noted with my shrewd and merciless eyes … I can tell one of our feathered friends at twenty paces: a certain type anyway. The Louis kind nobody can spot until they’re coming at you … then flight is in order, if they’re bigger than you.

  “My darling Peter!” Eglanova was mildly lit, not yet weepy and Czarist the way she gets when she is really gone on vodka … twice a year: at Russian New Year and backstage the last night of every season
in New York … her last season, she always moans, so they say. She gave me her hand to kiss and, feeling good on all the Pommery I had drunk, I kissed it soulfully.

  “I have had such good time with young men.” She waved to include them all. They giggled. “I never go home now.”

  “It’s late, Anna,” said Alyosha, suddenly joining us.

  “Tyrant! Tomorrow I do one pas de deux … no more.”

  “Even so.” Then he spoke in Russian and she answered in Russian, both speaking rapidly, seriously, the good humor of the party-mood gone. I thought Eglanova’s face went quite pale though it was impossible to tell since her make-up was like spar varnish … perhaps, it was the way her eyes opened very wide and her face fell, literally sagged, as though whatever force had been holding it tight across the bone suddenly gave way. Then, with a stage gesture, she got up, swept a half-curtsy to her admirers and, without saying a word to any of us, left the room on Alyosha’s arm. I saw them at the door saying good night to Lady Edderdale.

  I looked about the room for Jane but she was gone. I wondered if she had gone home early … or perhaps had decided in a puckish mood to have a Senatorial fling. Well, she could look out for herself, I decided, and went downstairs to the bathroom. I was just about to go in when I saw Mr. Washburn come trotting across the black and white marble floor.

  “I was looking for you,” he said, stopping short, breathing hard. “We’ve got to get out of here.”

  “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.

  “Was she at the party?” asked Gleason, turning to Mr. Washburn, the sobs muffled now by a closed door.

  “No, no …” Mr. Washburn looked about distractedly, as though ready to make a run for it.

  “She’s been sick,” I volunteered.

  “I know she has,” said Gleason. Then the sobbing stopped and presently the door to the bedroom opened and Magda, supported on one side by the doctor, joined us. Whatever shot the doctor had given her was obviously working like a charm for she was in complete control of herself now … even when she looked at the sheet-covered figure on the floor, she remained calm.