Free Death in the Fifth Position by Gore Vidal Page A

near the dressing rooms. I damn near fell. Then I looked down and saw those things at my feet and so I picked them up and put them on the box.”
    “What time was this?”
    “About ten-thirty.”
    “
After
the murder?”
    “Well, yes.”
    “Didn’t you think it peculiar that a pair of shears should be lying out in the open like that?”
    “I had other things on my mind.”
    “Like what?”
    “Well, Ella Sutton, for instance … she had been killed a few minutes before.”
    “And you made no connection between the shears and her death?”
    “Of course not. Why should I? For all we knew at the time, the cable might have broken by itself.”
    “When you did discover that the cable had been cut, why didn’t you tell me at our last interview that you had handled The Murder Weapon?”
    “Well, it just slipped my mind.”
    “That is no answer, Mr. Sargeant.”
    “I’d like to know what you want to call it then?” I was getting angry.
    “Do you realize that you could be under suspicion right now for the murder of Ella Sutton?”
    “I don’t realize any such thing. In the first place you’ll find that my fingerprints are on the cutting end of the shears, not the handle … also the fact that there are no other prints on it means that whoever
did
cut the cable had sense enough to wipe the shears clean.”
    “How do you know there were no other prints?”
    “Because you said there weren’t … and, in case you still aren’t convinced, I may as well tell you that I had less motive than anyone in the company for killing Sutton. I told you I didn’t know the woman, and that’s the truth.”
    “Now, now,” said the Inspector with a false geniality that made his earlier manner seem desirable by comparison. “Don’t get hot under the collar. I realize that you had no motive … we’ve checked into all that. Of course it doesn’t do your girl friend any harm, having Ella Sutton gone, but that of course would hardly be reason enough for murder … I realize that.”
    He was playing it dirty now but I said nothing; he had no case and he knew it. He was only baiting me, trying to get me to say something in anger which I would not, under other circumstances, say … something about Miles or Eglanova, or whoever they suspected. Well, I would disappoint him; I composed myself and settled back in my chair; I even lit a cigarette with the steadiest hand since the 4-H Club’s last national convention.
    “What I would like to know, though, is the exact position of the shears, when you first stumbled over them.”
    “That’s hard to say. The north end of the stage, near the steps which go up to the dressing rooms.”
    “Whose rooms are there?”
    “Well, Sutton’s was, and Eglanova’s, and the girl soloists share a room. The men are all on the other side.”
    “Tell me, Mr. Sargeant, who do
you
think killed Ella Sutton?” This was abrupt.
    “I … I don’t know.”
    “I didn’t ask you if you knew … we presume you don’t know. I just wondered what your hunch might be.”
    “I’m not sure that I have one.”
    “That seems odd.”
    “And if I did I wouldn’t be fool enough to tell you … not that I don’t want to see justice triumph and all that, but suppose my guess was wrong? … I’d look very silly to the person I’d accused.”
    “I was just curious,” said Gleason, with that same spurious air of good fellowship and I suddenly realized, like a flash, that, motive or not, I was under suspicion … as an accomplice after the fact or during the fact or even before it for all I knew. Gleason was quite sure that I was, in some way, on the murderer’s side.
    This knowledge froze me and the rest of our talk was mechanical. I do remember, however, wanting to ask him why he hadn’t arrested Miles Sutton yet. It was very strange.

CHAPTER THREE
1
    “And then I told him that I thought I’d stumbled over the shears backstage, on my way to the dressing rooms.”
    “Good boy.”