Death in the Fifth Position

by Gore Vidal

  “How did you know?”

  “I saw Louis this morning. He was here for the nine o’clock class.”

  “How on earth does he do it? I didn’t get to sleep until eight and he was still going strong when I left him.”

  “Where were you?”

  “In Harlem.”

  “Then I suppose he came straight to the class instead of going to bed … he often does that when he’s been drinking, to sober up.”

  “Iron man,” I said, with real admiration. “Is he still here?”

  “He’s rehearsing with the rest of the company. How is Jane?”

  “She doesn’t suspect anything.”

  “Well, try and keep the papers away from her today. One of them says right out that she’s guilty, for personal as well as professional motives.”

  “They don’t mention her name, do they?”

  “No, but they make it clear.”

  “I suppose somebody tipped them off about Jane and Ella.”

  Mr. Washburn looked solemn but I could see he was pleased. “So you’ve found out about that.”

  “Yes … have the police?”

  “Of course. I didn’t want to be the one to tell you.”

  “Very thoughtful.”

  “Yes, I think it was thoughtful of me. There was no use in upsetting you with gossip like that. Now that you know, however, I may as well tell you that we’re going to have a hard time keeping it out of the trial … the state will build its case on that affair, so Bush tells me.”

  “When are they going to arrest her?”

  “Today, I think; Gleason is in that classroom having a conference. I’ve told our lawyer to stand by. He’s at the office now, waiting. It’s terrible, I know, but there’s nothing left for us to do but live through it.”

  “Have you found someone to take Jane’s place in Eclipse?”

  “No,” said Mr. Washburn emphatically; I knew he was lying.

  “Well, don’t hire anybody yet … don’t even write one of those letters of yours.”

  He winced slightly at this reference. “Why not?”

  “Because I know who really did the murder.”

  He looked like one of those heifers which Alma Shellabarger’s old man used to hit over the head with a mallet in the Chicago stockyards. “How … I mean what makes you think you know?”

  “Because I have proof.”

  “Be very careful,” said Mr. Washburn harshly. “You can get into serious trouble if you start making accusations you can’t back up.”

  “Don’t worry,” I said, more coolly than I felt. “I’ll be back in an hour.” I was gone before he could stop me.

  At the office I ran into Elmer Bush who had somehow got his signals mixed and had expected to meet Mr. Washburn here. “See the old rag this morning?” he asked brightly, referring to that newspaper which had once given me a berth.

  “Too busy,” I said, pushing by him into my office; he followed me.

  “Happen to have a copy of it right here,” he said. “I say in it that there will be an arrest by noon today.”

  “Do you say whether the right person will be arrested or not?”

  “No, I leave it up in the air,” said Elmer, chuckling.

  “You’ll find Mr. Washburn over at the studio,” I said coldly, going quickly through the heap of mail on my desk.

  “I’ve got some advice for you, boy,” said Bush, in a serious voice.

  “I’m listening.” I didn’t look at him; I was busy with the mail.

  “Keep out of this. That girl of yours is in big trouble. There’re a lot of things you don’t know … just take my word for it. I’ve been around a long time. I’ve had a lot more experience dealing with the police … I know what they’re up to. They never act in a big case like this unless they got all the dope, unless they’re sure they got their suspect signed, sealed and delivered. I like you, Pete; I don’t want to see you get torn apart by these wolves. I know you like the girl but there’s more in all this than meets the eye … more than most people, even real friends like Washburn, are willing to tell you.”

  I looked up. “Do you mean to say that I have body odor, Mr. Bush?”

  “I was only trying to do you a good turn,” said Elmer Bush, very hurt. He left me alone with my ingratitude.

  I looked at my watch; I had less than an hour before the rehearsal broke up, at which time I was fairly sure the arrest would take place. I took out my sheet of paper and went over it carefully: all the mysteries had been solved and the answer to the puzzle was perfectly clear. Short of a confession on the part of the guilty party, however, I was not going to have an easy time proving my case. If worst came to worst, though, I could always announce my theory, get the police to hold up the arrest and then let them do the proving, which they could do, in time … I was sure of that.

  I got on the telephone and called an acquaintance of mine at the rival ballet company’s office … he’s been the press agent over there for years. Since we’ve always been friendly, he told me what I wanted to know … it helped a little.

  It was not until I was out in the street that I recalled I had not shaved or changed my clothes in two days and that I looked incredibly seedy, according to the plate-glass window in which I caught an unflattering glimpse of myself. I had not been to my own apartment in several days, not since the afternoon when I had packed my clothes and stormed out of Jane’s place.

  I let myself in and picked up the suitcase which still lay in the middle of the living-room floor. Then I opened it.

  At first I thought someone was playing a joke on me. The bag contained a woman’s nightgown, nylon stockings, brassière, panties … I examined them all with growing bewilderment. It was not until I discovered the sealed envelope that I realized what had happened, that this was Magda’s suitcase.

  I had a long talk with Gleason. It lasted for forty minutes and ended just as the rehearsal did, which was good timing for the company was at least able to get through its rehearsal before the killer was arrested.

  I purposely held the final bit of evidence back until I had explained, to Gleason’s annoyance, how I had put the puzzle together. I’m afraid I was a little smug in my hour of triumph.

  “You see,” I said in the same quiet, somewhat bored tone a professor of English I had had at Harvard was accustomed to use with his students, “we all were led astray by the later deaths; we didn’t concentrate on the first murder enough, on the character of the murdered woman which was, naturally, the key to the whole business.” I paused in the middle of this ponderous and obvious statement to fix the Inspector with my level gaze, as though I expected him to question what I had said. He didn’t. He just looked at me, waiting. His secretary’s pencil was poised above his shorthand pad. After a suitable pause, I continued.

  “Curiously enough, what I considered to be your somewhat morbid interest in the shears, The Murder Weapon as they are officially called, turned out to be, finally, the first clue I had to the killer’s identity; in my pocket I have the final evidence. Between the first clue and the last, however, there is an extremely complex story which I am sure that you never suspected, in its entirety at least … I didn’t either, I must admit.” I am not sure but I think that at this point, I put the tips of my fingers together.

  “Ella Sutton was an ambitious girl, as we all know, and an excellent artist. Her tragedy began (and I think it has all the elements of a classic tragedy: a beautiful, clever, gifted woman rising to glory only to be struck down because of one fatal flaw in her temperament … greed).” I was having a very good time; I had shifted now from the slightly bored professor of English to the more suitable role of classic moralist, a Sophocles sitting in judgment. “Her tragedy, then, began in 1937 when she joined the North American Ballet Company where she met Jed Wilbur, an eager young choreographer, and Alyosha Rudin who, though he was with the present company, was more active in the whole ballet world in those days than he is now. She made, as I construct the case, two friends
at that time: Jed, who was not only her choreographer but her political mentor as well, and Alyosha who fell in love with her and, when the North American Ballet folded, was able to take her into this company. Both men had a great influence on her. With Wilbur, she joined the Communist Party …”

  “You realize what you’re saying?”

  “Yes, Inspector. They joined the Party and belonged, for a time, to the same cell. Ella, however, was not very much interested in politics, or anything else which didn’t help her to get what she wanted professionally … she was a true artist when it came to her work: she would do anything to get ahead. I believe she became a Communist to impress Jed, who was indifferent to her sexually; and she became Alyosha’s mistress to please him … even taking a Russian name for a while in an attempt to make people believe that she was a White Russian born in Paris. All of this you can find in old interviews.

  “As you probably know, she quickly lost interest in Alyosha who adored her but cared for the dance more; he refused to push her ahead in the company as fast as she thought she should go. She deserted him finally and married the next most powerful person, from an artistic point of view, Miles Sutton, the conductor. Their marriage was never very happy. She had a bad temper and she was a natural conniver. I suspect much of the trouble she had with the men in her life came from the fact that she was either quite indifferent to sex or else she was, in actual fact, a Lesbian. In any case, she went quickly to the top, and, finally, this season, she got her dearest wish when she prevailed upon Washburn to fire Eglanova. Meanwhile, however, Ella had made a great deal of trouble for herself. She had got involved with Jane Garden in an abortive affair … she was genuinely attracted to Jane who is not, contrary to your recent theory, a Lesbian … that’s one of those things I would know better than you without any evidence. And Ella had decided to shed Miles and marry Louis, partly out of attraction (she seemed always to care only for men and women who would have nothing to do with her) and partly because it would be a glamorous marriage or alliance: the king and the queen of ballet.

  “Everything might have worked out perfectly if Louis had ever shown the faintest interest in her, but he didn’t and there were bitter quarrels. Miles, who now no longer lived with Ella, fell in love with Magda and, as you know, got her pregnant. Even in ballet circles that sort of thing presents a problem and he did his best to get Ella to divorce him. She took it all very lightly … it was the sort of thing that amused her and she made it clear that he would have to work his problems out on his own time. I think she was indignant, deep down, that he had preferred another woman to her even though they no longer lived together, even though she despised him … naturally, he could have killed her. But he didn’t. So, by the time Eclipse was to be prèmiered, Ella had infuriated Miles and Magda, Louis, Mr. Washburn by threatening to leave the company and take Louis with her, Eglanova by succeeding her, Alyosha for deserting him and for getting his beloved Eglanova fired, Wilbur for having blackmailed him into joining the company.…

  “Now when I had found out all these things, it occurred to me that the person who killed Ella would, naturally, be the one with the most urgent motive or, failing that, the one whose monomania was equal to hers. The most urgent motive was her husband’s and I was just as sure as you were that he killed her. But we were all wrong. That left Eglanova, Alyosha, Louis, Wilbur, Mr. Washburn and Jane. I knew Jane hadn’t done it. Mr. Washburn, despite a rather sinister nature, had no motive, other than exasperation. Eglanova and Alyosha seemed likely candidates, for nearly the same reason. Louis had no apparent motive. Wilbur had an excellent one.

  “Ella needed Wilbur for two reasons: she wanted a modern ballet and she wanted to go into musical comedy. They had grown apart over the years and when she first had Washburn approach him the answer was no. He didn’t like the Grand Saint Petersburg Ballet and he had no intention of leaving his own company, or Broadway. Ella then went to see him and told him, in her definite way, that if he didn’t accept Washburn’s offer she would give evidence in Washington that he had been, and for all anybody knew now, was still a member of the Communist Party … and she had proof. She was the sort of girl who never let go of anything which might one day prove useful. Needless to say, Wilbur joined the company. But like everyone else connected with this mess, he had more than one iron in the fire: you see, he had been in love with Louis for years. Which was, as far as he was concerned, the one good thing about his predicament, about his giving in to Ella.

  “Everything might still have turned out all right if Ella had not gone too far and if Louis had been a little brighter. The Grand Saint Petersburg doesn’t have much of a reputation for chic but it is a money-maker and Wilbur was allowed a free hand and he did create for Ella what many people think is his best ballet—Eclipse. As for Ella’s going into musical comedy, well, there was nothing wrong in that either. She could have gotten a job with any management in town on her own … so there was no reason why Wilbur shouldn’t sponsor her. The complication arose when Ella became interested in Louis and Louis, who was not at all attracted to Wilbur, used Ella as an excuse for his own coldness, saying that she was the one woman he had ever loved and that they were to be married. Poor Wilbur took this as long as he could. Louis would even pretend to make love to Ella in his dressing room when he knew Wilbur might be within hearing distance.

  “This crisis came to a head the afternoon of the day Ella was killed. Wilbur told her he wasn’t going to stay in the company another minute, that he was going to break his contract. She told him if he did she would expose him as a Communist and that would be the end of his career. So, believing that he would lose his career as well as his love to Ella, he cut the cable; then he put the shears in Eglanova’s dressing room since she seemed as likely a suspect as any.”

  I stopped, expecting some outcry from the Inspector, but there was none. “Go on,” he said.

  “Fortunately for Wilbur, Miles was immediately suspected and, as fortunately, Miles died a natural death before he was arrested. The case would have ended there except that Miles had known all along that Wilbur was the real murderer … Wilbur never knew that Ella, a very efficient woman, had somehow managed to get hold of his membership card in the Party years ago and, with an eye to the future, had kept it. She was a very shrewd woman … the more you study her life the more you have to admire her for the sheer audacity she displayed. If she had been able to identify a bit more with her friends and victims she’d still be alive … might even have ended up being adored by everyone like old Eglanova.”

  “Why didn’t Sutton give us this card?”

  “He would if you’d tried to arrest him. He was not rational … no man as heavily doped as he was could be. Besides, he must have regarded Wilbur as a benefactor.I do know, though, that he discussed the whole thing with Magda that day he went to Magda’s apartment and he either gave her Wilbur’s membership card then, or else told her where it was in case something should happen to him. If he didn’t give it to her then she could have got it the night she came to his apartment. No matter how she got it, the card was in her possession at the time of her death.”

  “Why didn’t she bring it to us?”

  “The same problem … why should she? She had nothing against Jed. The death of Ella didn’t disturb her one bit and she realized that now with Miles dead the case was over. And it would really have been over if, for some reason we may never know, Magda hadn’t become suspicious of Jed. She began to think that perhaps Miles had not died naturally. She made a date to talk to him; she told him that she had the Party card and he asked her for it. They were to meet after the rehearsal. I admire the way he went through that rehearsal, not knowing what to expect from Magda who was sitting there with the rest of us on the bench, waiting for him to finish. After the ballet they went into the empty classroom … or rather Wilbur joined Magda there after Jane had left her … a break for him, the room being empty. She told him that she had the card with her; they quarreled. She demanded to know whe
ther Miles had died naturally or not. There was some sort of scuffle and he grabbed the purse and, either accidentally or on a sudden impulse, he pushed her through the window. Then, taking the card out of her purse, he rushed back into the studio.”

  “Then he has the card?”

  “Yes. Magda, however, the day she died came to Jane’s apartment as you know, intending to move in. Since the apartment is a small one I was forced to move out … which naturally irritated me. So, shortly after Magda arrived, I left … after first shoving my own suitcase under the bed and taking hers with me to my own apartment where it remained unopened until an hour ago.”

  “What was in that suitcase?”

  With a look of quiet triumph I handed Mr. Gleason the photostatic copy Magda had had made of Jed Wilbur’s membership card in the Communist Party, dated 1937.

  4

  It was a blissful evening. I had sold the exclusive story of my apprehension of the murderer to the Globe for what is known in the trade as “an undisclosed amount,” meaning a good deal … to the fury of one Elmer Bush whose own story on the arrest of Jane Garden had to be killed at the last minute at great expense, and now Mr. Washburn was entertaining Jane and myself at the Colony Restaurant for dinner.

  “You know,” said my erstwhile employer expansively, offering me a cigar, “though it may sound strange, I always suspected Jed. You remember how I repeatedly maintained that no one connected with my company could have done such a thing? Well, in a sense, I was right … it was the newcomer who was responsible, the outsider.”

  “Very sound, Mr. Washburn,” I said, glancing at Jane who glowed in coral and black.

  “But what made you suspect him … when did you get on to him?”

  “The evening I went to see him in his apartment and tried to get him to talk about the murder. At first he wouldn’t, which was suspicious. But then, after much coaxing, he did suggest that perhaps Eglanova had done the murder and then put the shears in her own dressing room to make herself appear victimized. Well, I knew that only three people in the company knew where those shears had been found originally … you, Eglanova and myself. Only the murderer could have known that they had been placed in her wastebasket because it was the murderer who had put them there. Very simple.”