Death in the Fifth Position

by Gore Vidal

  “Even so they will arrest her tomorrow.”

  “Then we must get Ivan. We must engage lawyers. The best in America … I am told in this country with a good lawyer you can escape anything.”

  “It’s been known to happen. She already knows the police suspect her, that they may arrest her any minute.”

  “I should be with her now.”

  “I’m not sure that’d be such a good idea.” For the moment, I didn’t want any of these people getting together and comparing notes; if they did I might find myself in serious trouble. “You see the police are watching her and if they think you might be an accomplice of some sort your testimony in her favor won’t be worth a cent.”

  “Even so …”

  “Besides, she told me she was going to be with her lawyers this evening. Wait until tomorrow. That’s the only thing to do, the only really intelligent thing to do …” I talked for several minutes, trying to divert him; then, still unsure as to whether I had or not, I left.

  5

  Mr. Washburn arrived ten minutes late for dinner with me at a little French restaurant on Fifty-fifth Street. A place with good food and dim lights.

  “Elmer Bush is going to drop by in an hour,” said Mr. Washburn, sitting down, not even bothering to say good evening.

  “Is that a good idea?”

  “Good idea or not we have to see him. He’s in charge around here, just as much as Gleason.” This last name, on his lips, became a curse.

  We ordered a light cool dinner. The room was dark but not air-conditioned … it was a little like being in a cave somewhere in Africa.

  “The police are going to make an arrest, aren’t they?”

  He nodded.

  “Jane?”

  “I’m doing everything I can to stop it. I’ve been at City Hall all afternoon. I’ve talked to the Mayor, to the Governor up in Albany.”

  “I suggest you find her a good lawyer.”

  “Benson will represent her … I’ve seen to that, at company expense.” I knew then he was serious; Mr. Washburn doesn’t like to spend money.

  “Jane doesn’t know yet, does she?”

  “I don’t think so. You’re the one who sees her.”

  “She’s home now. She suspects they might … it’s so damned awful, so stupid! Didn’t you explain to Gleason that there is no motive, absolutely none? That regardless of circumstantial evidence, the state is going to look damned funny when they try to convict her?”

  “He seems confident.”

  “But can’t you stop him? A trial like this could ruin her.”

  “I can’t do anything more than get her acquitted. She will be acquitted … I’m sure of that.”

  It’s a good thing, I suppose, that I have a great deal of self-control because my impulse at that moment was to rush straight to Gleason’s office and tell him exactly what I thought of his investigation.

  “Besides,” said Mr. Washburn, “I have reason to believe that the trial will be speeded up so that Jane will be through in time for our Los Angeles opening.”

  I was beginning, dimly, to see the plot. “You seem very confident,” I said, “that by the time the trial is over the police will have lost interest in the case … that Eglanova will be out of danger.” I was now fully aware that Jane was to be the lightning rod for the whole company in general and for Eglanova in particular.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said my employer sharply and I shut up. There was plenty of time for saying what I had to say.

  We ate the first course in silence; then, when the entree arrived, I asked, very casually, “Tell me, Mr. Washburn, why you were trying to get Armiger to take Eglanova’s place, before Ella was killed.”

  I suppose if I had spat in his face I would have made less effect; he sat back in his chair abruptly and his chin jerked up, like a boxer off guard.

  “How did you know I’d written her?”

  “I saw her answer on your desk one day.”

  “I’m not sure I approve of your reading my mail.”

  “It was accidental, believe me. I don’t usually read other people’s mail. I’ve been wondering, though … been wondering quite a bit lately whether that might tie in with the murders. You see, it’s more important to me to get Jane off the hook than it is for you to save Eglanova.”

  “You haven’t mentioned seeing that letter to anyone, have you?”

  “Not yet. But I plan to tell Gleason about it tomorrow … any stunt I can think of to throw him off the track.”

  “It could be misinterpreted.” Mr. Washburn was worried.

  “It would provide a mild diversion. They might even suspect you.”

  Washburn snorted. “As if I would make such trouble for myself! All I have to do is fire a ballerina … it couldn’t be simpler. I don’t have to kill them … though there are times when I have been greatly tempted.”

  “Why did you write Armiger?”

  “Because right after we opened in New York, Sutton told me that she and Louis were planning to quit the company and go into musical comedy, into night clubs, to make money. I was furious, of course; I did all I could to stop her, promised her more money than Eglanova gets … everything, but she said she’d made up her mind.”

  “Then that clears you.”

  “Not entirely,” said Mr. Washburn very distinctly, his eyes on mine. “I found out after I wrote to Armiger that Ella had said nothing to Louis about this plan of hers … or rather they had discussed it but neither, according to him, had decided to leave the company. For some reason she wanted to upset me, to get me to promise her more money which I did and which I was bound to give her after Eglanova left. That’s the way the situation was when she died. She hadn’t told me she would stay with us but I knew, after talking to Louis, that she would.…”

  “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 ment
ioned 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.”

  “Tell me, Louis, how does it feel to be famous?” And believe it or not he told me; it was the last time I ever tried irony on that boy … on any dancer because, for some reason or another, they are the most literal-minded crew in the world.

  When he had finished telling me what it was like at the end of a ballet when the applause was coming up out of the darkened house (“like waves”), our waiter eased by with the drinks as I watched, fascinated. Most queens walk in a rather trotting manner with necks and shoulders rigid, like women, and the lower anatomy swiveling a bit; not our waiter, though … he was like Theda Bara moving in for a couple of million at the box office, in the days when a dollar was a dollar.

  “Here’s your poison,” he said in that slow Mae Western manner of his.

  “That’s a boy,” said Louis and he swallowed a shot of gin which he immediately chased with a mouthful of water. He grimaced. “Lighter fluid,” he said.

  “What did you expect, lover, ambrosia?” Obviously a literary belle, our waiter … and what a joy it was to hear her say “ambrosia”!

  “Just a little old-fashioned gin.”

  “You want some more?”

  “The real stuff.”

  The belle looked at him beneath sleepy lids which even in the dim light I could see had been heavily mascaraed. “Are you that dancer?”

  “That’s me.” And Louis flashed the ivory smile.

  “That’s what Mary said when you came in but I said, no, this one’s too old.”

  One for the belle, I said to myself, as Louis’ smile vanished. “Get the gin,” he said, suddenly rough and surly.

  “I didn’t mean any offense,” said the belle, with a smile of triumph; she ambled off swaying like some tall flower in a summer breeze.

  “Bitch,” said Louis, in a bad temper. But then two admirers came over, college boy types, very young and drunk.

  “Hey, you Louis Giraud aren’t you?” asked one of them, a crewcut number, short and stocky. The other was a gentle-looking blond.

  “Yes,” said Louis, obviously taking no chances after his experience with the waiter.

  “See, what did I say?” said the short one to the tall one.

  “He’s kidding you,” said the blond.

  “No, he’s not,” I said, just to be helpful; Louis was beginning to look very tough indeed.

  “Giraud’s right calf is about half an inch thicker than his left,” said the blond.

  I could tell by the gleam in his eye that he was a balletomane.

  “Please show us,” said the short one. “I got a bet.…”

  Louis, exhibitionist to the last, pulled up his trouser legs to reveal those massive legs, like blue marble in this light; sure enough one calf was bigger than the other. They both touched him very carefully, like children in a museum. “I win,” said the short one and he pulled the taller one away, with some difficulty now that Louis’ identity had been establ
ished.

  “Nice boys,” said Louis, with his old good humor. “Like little pussycats, fuzzy and nice.”

  “They don’t look much like pussycats to me,” I said austerely.

  “Why don’t you come off it, Baby? Stop all this girl-business.”

  “I can’t help it, Louis. I got a weak character.”

  “I could teach you a lot,” said Louis with a speculative look; before he could start the first lesson, however, the belle returned with another shot of gin.

  “Compliments of the management, Miss Pavlova,” said the belle insolently.

  “Why don’t you go stuff …”

  “That’s no way to talk to a lady,” said the belle, with a faraway Blanche Dubois smile.

  But then the chief entertainer Molly Malloy came over, a man in his late thirties with small regular features; he was wearing a crimson evening gown and a blond wig like Jean Harlow.

  “Hi, there, Louis, long time no see,” said Molly in a husky voice, not precisely female but on the other hand not very male either. He sat down at our table, drawing all eyes toward us. I felt very self-conscious.

  “How’re you doing, Molly? I’ve been tied up all season … haven’t been able to get out once.”

  “That’s not what I hear. This your new chick?” asked Molly, giving me the eye.

  “Yeah,” said Louis, beaming, “Pretty cute piece, huh?”

  “Well you always get the best, dear. And I know why.” There was much vulgar laughter and I looked politely away, looked toward the bar where youths and old men of every description were furtively nudging one another, all engaged in the maneuvers of courtship. It was a very interesting thing to watch.

  “You still doing the same act, Molly?”

  “Haven’t changed it in ten years … my public wouldn’t let me … even if I could. Tell me, dear, about all that excitement you’ve been having uptown: all those dancers murdering each other. Who did it?”

  “Damned if I know,” said Louis, and he changed the subject, the way he had with me all night whenever I tried to get the conversation around to the murders, tried to question Louis about one or two things which had to be cleared up before I could get the proof I needed. But Louis wasn’t talking. And I wasn’t giving up … not if I had to get him drunk, a hard job but, under the circumstances, a necessary one since I’d heard he talks a lot when he’s drunk and there’s truth in the grape, as the ancients used to say.