Corpse de Ballet (17 page)

He picked up the dance bag, ready to leave, and suddenly gave her a brilliant smile, all sparkling teeth and bright eyes. “Nice to see you,” he added. “Now do me a favor, wouldja? Don't leave town.”

Chapter Ten

After Murray Landis's departure, Juliet sat alone in the cool of her library and thought about him for a long time. No doubt she was as morally opaque to him as were the denizens of the Jansch to her; no doubt it was his job to suspect all equally. Yet she could not help feeling angry about his behavior. Maybe he had forgotten that peculiarly charged hour in her silent dorm room, when they had done no more than study side by side, yet bristled, vibrated with mutual attraction. Still, for God's sake, they had smoked hashish together! If that was not a sacred bond, what was?

All the same, she reflected (as at last she slowly climbed the stairs to her desk), it was interesting to fall asleep with a budding sculptor across a dorm room from you and wake ten or twenty years later to find him a New York City police detective. She must remember to reread Washington Irving.

Meanwhile, there was Lady Porter's guest list to arrange. In the little office adjacent to Juliet's larger one, Ames was tactfully beavering away on fan mail. Juliet closed her own door and escaped from the world of sudden death to the vast, elegant dining room of Ankle House. She set her ladyship's long table with Sèvres, polished her heavy silver and chose (from an 1816 cookbook) a six-course meal commencing with lobster soup and culminating in gooseberry fool. Her writing came easily today. When the guests sat down to dine, Caroline Castlingham was astonished to discover across from her at table a gentleman she'd not seen since both were children. On that occasion, they had sneaked into the supper room at a ball together and made off with a tankard of syllabub, with which they had then escaped to Caroline's schoolroom upstairs. They had made themselves rather drunk while playing endless rounds of Consequences.

(“A lady and a gentleman meet during a dancing lesson,” Caroline remembered beginning one round.

“In consequence whereof,” her drinking companion had gone on, “the gentleman trips over the lady's foot.”

“In consequence whereof, the lady hits the gentleman over the head,” Caroline had added.

“In consequence whereof,” her interlocutor had replied, “the gentleman falls to the floor, sobbing.”

At the age of twelve or so, and in their deepening inebriation, this had struck them both as so hilarious they could hardly breathe for laughing.)

Meeting this old acquaintance now across Lady Porter's dining table, the twenty-year-old Caroline could not at first prevent herself from exclaiming with pleasure. However, the gentleman's reciprocal enthusiasm proving excessively effusive, she soon chose to quell him with a chilly and dignified look, then ignored him for the rest of the evening.

Before Juliet knew it, two hours had gone by and she was a little late to start for the Jansch. Still in her work clothes—blue jeans and a T-shirt—she sprinted down to the street and dashed to West End Avenue, where two taxis almost collided in an attempt to get to her first.

She dodged them both, chose the less aggressive one, got in and gave the address of the Jansch. As the driver pulled out into traffic, the cell phone in her purse rang.

“Hello?”

“Juliet, do you think Hart is up to dancing Pip? Oh, Jesus, I still can't believe this is happening.”

“Of course he is,” said Juliet mechanically, wondering at the same time what on earth could be on the mind of the driver of the red Chevy—Bounder, was it called? Blunder? No, a Blazer, a Chevy Blazer—straddling both lanes three or four cars ahead of them on West End. “You're lucky to have him. He'll be marvelous.”

“But I don't see Pip that way, I never have. You know,” insisted Ruth. “I see him as earthy and springy and—”

“I'm sure Hart can do earthy and springy.” Juliet intended the words to soothe, but they somehow had the opposite effect.

“No he
can't,
that's exactly why I called. I need you to tell me it'll be all right with a balletic Pip, an ungrounded Pip. Will it? You know the character.”

“Of course it will be all right. It will be better than all right, it will be unique, it will be wonderful in a new way.” With dismay, Juliet realized she would need to surpass her ordinary supportiveness skills if she wanted to calm and fortify the frenzied Ruth. Resourcefully, she summoned in imagination the adroit Sir Hugh Legburne—a steadfast friend and a superb flatterer, as Chapter Four of
The Consul-General
amply demonstrated—and channeled him.

“Ruth, dear, you're creating a work of real depth and imagination,” she said. “There isn't going to be only one way to dance Pip. Over the years, there will be all kinds of Pips, in all kinds of productions, and each will be valid and interesting in its own way. That's what it means to create art. You have to try to surrender control a little to the work itself. Trust yourself. Trust dance. Trust Dickens, at least.”

There was a moment of silence. Juliet wondered what the cab driver might be making of her end of this conversation.

Finally, “You really think
Great Ex
has depth?” Ruth asked.

“Yes, I really do,” crooned Juliet, and lied, “Listen, we're turning onto Amsterdam. I'd better run.”

“Watch out for reporters,” Ruth hastily warned. “They're already crawling around the building here, God knows how.”

Juliet was replacing the phone in her purse when it went off in her hand.

“Detective Landis, for Juliet Bodine.”

“Hi, Murray.”

“Oh, Juliet.” The deep voice lost some of its bark. “Listen, I'm calling from the M.E.'s office. There was a container of medicine in Mohr's bag—one of those seven-compartment, one-a-day plastic things. Monday and Tuesday were empty, Wednesday had one pill left in it and the others had three each. Did you see it?”

“I told you, I didn't look.”

“Well, the pills are a prescription medication called Nardil, an antidepressant. The M.E. recognized them right off the bat.”

“Really?”

“Did Mohr seem depressed to you?”

“Not at all.”

“Well, he was.” Landis's voice hardened. “The M.E. says shrinks don't start with Nardil—it's the MAO-inhibitor type, the type that's dangerous to mix with a long list of foods and medications. It does the trick, but it's so hard for people to keep away from cheese and beer and whatnot that doctors only prescribe it if the easier, newer antidepressants don't work. So Anton Mohr had to have been a tough case. I'll get the name of his doctor and see if he'll talk to me, but—Oh, by the way, that was the reason he died. Ecstasy and Nardil—bad combination. Poor putz, the shrink probably never warned him about illegal drugs.”

Juliet was silent for a while. Then, “But don't you think if he had been taking—”

But Landis interrupted her.

“You figure anyone else at the company knew he was on an antidepressant?” he asked, as the Blazer finally lumbered off into the far reaches of West Seventy-fifth Street.

“I don't know.”

“Well, think about it, 'cause if someone did, maybe they did mean to kill him. Listen, I'm going to be over at the studios a little later on. If we see each other there, quick eye contact and that's it, you hear? You don't show and you don't tell anyone that you've been talking to me. No one. Not even your friend Ruth, for now. You got that, Juliet?”

“Thank you, yes, that's quite clear.”

“I left the Coke at the lab. But right now, everything is pointing toward accidental death. Even if the soda was doped, he probably doped it himself. Remember hash brownies and dropping acid in sugar cubes? Anyway, I'll call his family when we hang up, see what they know about this history of depression.”

“Yes, about that,” Juliet tried again, “how do you figure—”

“Gotta run, Jule. They're bringing another body in.”

He hung up, the phone making a painful click in Juliet's ear.

Jule?

*   *   *

As usual, rehearsal for
Great Expectations
was slated to start at noon in Studio Three. The call having been for the entire cast, and her arrival having been impeded by the crowd of reporters disrupting routine in the building lobby, Juliet entered to find the ensemble already in the room. Many had pink eyes. They clutched each other even more than ordinarily, around the waist or shoulders. Kleenex fluttered damply from their graceful fingers. Juliet was surprised to see Elektra Andreades holding onto her husband—mutely, for comfort, the way people do who have temporarily lost their bearings. Though it was clear that everyone knew Anton was dead—most of the dancers had come here two hours ago to start class—Greg Fleetwood sat them down, stood before them and made a formal speech.

Greg had obviously been up all night. His eyes were red, his spiky hair flat, his voice gravelly. Max, hovering near him, wore the strained, sharp-eyed look of a man determined to ride out a public relations disaster.

“You're probably all aware by now that Anton Mohr died last night,” said Greg, tears instantly, disconcertingly welling in his exhausted eyes. “He died of hyperthermia after taking a—a drug that had an adverse effect. We don't have a lot more detail now, and I must ask you all to say no more than this to any reporter who contacts you. I'm sure that Anton would want us to go on with the productions that meant so much to him…”

Juliet, sleepy again after the early start to her day, listened with only one ear as he continued. Her attention was on the faces before her. Elektra Andreades had let go of her husband (so much larger than she) and now sat hunched on the floor with her knees against her chest. She looked stricken—more than stricken, maybe. Scared? Ryder sat with his long, powerful legs out straight before him, a hard, sober look in his dark eyes. Across the room, Elektra's partner, Hart, looked as distressed, as disoriented as she did, though in his case, shock rather than fear seemed uppermost. Lily Bediant's violet eyes gazed steadily at Greg, but her face was blank, closed. Juliet thought suddenly of Murray's question and wondered if Lily had known Anton was taking Nardil. A drug with so many restrictions would be hard to keep secret from an intimate. Near her, the frosty Kirsten Ahlswede was in tears. Alexei had lost his wiseguy style and sat with his hands covering his head, as if he did not want to know what had happened. Olympia Andreades's soft, full mouth had crumpled; her eyes were clouded and pink. Victorine, awake at the hospital most of the night, had not come in.

If any of those before her had had a hand in Anton Mohr's death, Juliet could not see the guilt in his or her expression. What did guilt look like, anyhow? She thought of her own behavior when she had something to hide. Not a murder or even a legal misdemeanor—any impulses she had had of this sort had always been foiled by her muscular superego—but a social lie, or even a lapse in neighborliness. Once, to evade an invitation from a particularly annoying acquaintance, she had pretended that she would be out of the country that weekend on business. Then she ran into her would-be hostess at the fish counter at Zabar's. How had she acted? She tried to recall, to imagine how she appeared that afternoon to her inquisitor. She had prepared an appropriate story in advance, exactly in case of such a mishap, and she thought now that she had probably been overly energetic in telling it. She smiled more than usual—pulled her lips back, anyway—cringed and fawned a bit, as if out of sheer, animal make-nice instinct before what might be an angry predator. Her story was unnecessarily elaborate. She felt compelled to kiss her tormentor before they parted, though she did not habitually do so. But all that had happened only when she was actually confronted with someone who knew her guilt. Before and after, she had felt nothing—nothing but satisfaction at escaping a tedious dinner party—and had looked no particular way at all.

Juliet had lost the thread of Greg's remarks but was recalled to the business at hand by the sound of Ruth starting to speak in his place. She looked up to see Greg, all his habitual cockiness gone, shrinking into a corner near Max. As both a lover and an administrator, wouldn't Greg have known about the Nardil? And he had hired Anton. If the depression was of such long standing, surely he would have wanted to know whether it was controlled. But the Jansch was his company, its artists his livelihood, his reputation. What possible motive could he have had?

Ruth was also hoarse and her eyes red-rimmed (though from what mix of selfish and selfless motives she had been crying Juliet preferred not to know). On Juliet's arrival, she had clutched briefly at her hand and fervently whispered, “Thank you.”

Now, her address to the dancers showed her better side.

“What we have to do today is brutal, almost inhuman,” she began. “If I could, I would go home and cry and sleep for a week, and I know most of you would, too. But that isn't an option. We have to go on, and we have to go on now, and we have to go on without Anton. If we don't, we risk the project we've all worked so hard to make a reality. So—Hart, I would like you to take the role of first Pip. Can you manage that along with your other responsibilities?”

Hart Hayden glanced at Greg, who nodded. Then, quietly, “Sure,” he said. Beneath the well-schooled mask of his handsome face, some new feeling was working to make itself visible, Juliet saw; but his fine, scholarly features were too well trained to allow it to appear. It could have been pleasure at the promotion; it could equally well have been alarm at the greater work the promotion would mean, or a professional resolve to rise to the task, or even a poignant flash of renewed grief.

Meanwhile, Ruth was going on, “Kirsten, I'm afraid Elektra will have to dance with Hart. I simply can't pair you with him, unless you can shrink by half a foot.” The little joke met with silence, and Ruth went on, “You'll continue to learn Estella with Nicky Sabatino, as second Estella and second Pip, and I hope you know how much I've appreciated your contributions—which I hope you'll continue to make. Elektra, I trust you can manage first Estella?”