Corpse de Ballet (30 page)

“When you say that Kensington didn't seem surprised, are you suggesting he already knew Anton Mohr had been his wife's lover?”

It was a policeman's question, and it made Juliet uneasy to have to answer it before she could weigh the implications of her reply.

“I'm not sure. He definitely was surprised when the doctor told him she had been pregnant. He almost fell off his chair. But he hardly batted an eye when Elektra said it was Anton's.”

“What did he ask her, exactly?”

“He said, ‘Who knocked you up?' or, ‘So, who knocked you up?' Something like that.”

“And when she said ‘It was Anton'—”

“He said, ‘Holy shit.' No, ‘Son of a bitch,' he said. And he asked her when she was planning to let him know.”

Their drinks arrived. Murray held his to his sweating forehead. “Knowing your wife is having an affair makes a hell of a good motive for whacking her lover,” he said.

“I know. On the other hand—” Juliet paused and fell silent.

“Yeah? Go on, say it.”

“On the other hand, if Elektra told Anton she was pregnant and he didn't jump up and down with joy, maybe she decided to punish him herself.”

“By powdering the rosin,” Murray added.

“Or spiking the Coke. And/or.”

Murray considered, chewing on his slice of lime. “Just now in the hospital, did she look scared of Kensington?” he asked finally.

Juliet shook her head. “She looked too tired to be scared. Too sad.”

“If you're concerned, why don't you go back and ask her tomorrow?”

“You think I should?”

“If you're worried about her. Go first thing in the morning.”

Now Juliet was silent. First thing in the morning, she was supposed to bandage Sir Edward Rice's wounded leg and sneak him back into Lady Porter's house. Of course, Elektra had the claim that she was real on her side of the balance.

“I don't think she particularly likes me,” she remarked. “You wouldn't want to drop in on her instead, would you?”

Landis merely raised his eyebrows.

“Oh, all right,” Juliet said. “I'll go.”

*   *   *

Visiting hours at St. Luke's–Roosevelt (Juliet was glad to learn after Murray kindly put her into a cab and gave the driver her home address) did not begin until eleven in the morning. For a few happy minutes after hanging up on the recording, therefore, she thought she would be able to spend a little time, at least, with Sir Edward in the morning after all.

But then she realized Ryder (if he were as angry as she feared) might not wait until the officially sanctioned hour. So she arose two hours before she would normally have done, drank her coffee hastily, went out, and hailed a taxi on Broadway.

The day was still pale but already uncomfortably warm. Cabs were abundant and ordinary traffic sparse, as happens in the city in summertime. Juliet arrived at St. Luke's well before eight o'clock and found it was no trouble at all to slip up to the fourth floor. There were plenty of civilians milling through the hospital: relatives waiting for patients in surgery, visitors to outpatient clinics, the usual hapless caught up in the usual emergencies. Once upstairs, she simply ignored the nurses' station and walked purposefully down the halls to Room 418. There were advantages to having a soft, innocuous face and a smile that suggested bewilderment. What she would have done if she had bumped into Ryder on the way she had no idea.

She found Elektra alone and awake, her hair somewhat more orderly, her frightening pallor gone. If her husband had beaten her last night, it had not been on her face. Her complexion was smooth and unbruised as she lay with her eyes closed and listened to the
Today
show, which flickered on the television mounted high on the opposite wall. At the sound of Juliet's footsteps, her eyes flew open and she sat up a little. She appeared startled but not displeased to discover Juliet.

“Am I disturbing you?”

Elektra reached for the remote and clicked the TV off.

“No. I thought you were the nurse's aide.” Her feet moved restlessly under the sheet. Juliet supposed it must be strange for her to rest in bed when movement and exertion were the constants of her life. “I asked to have somebody wash my hair.”

“How do you feel today?”

“Pretty crappy. I lost my baby, you know.” Tears swam in her eyes.

“I'm so sorry. It's a horrible thing. I—” Juliet paused, then, without quite meaning to, added, “I lost a baby myself once. It's awful.”

Elektra's dark eyes were filled with tears, but she did not allow them to spill over. “Did you have another?”

“No.” That, too, had been part of the trouble between Juliet and Rob, part of the reason the birth of his daughter, Jemima, had hit Juliet so hard.

Juliet's own eyes grew tearful and Elektra started to cry. Juliet moved forward and, not liking to sit on the bed, awkwardly stroked her hand while standing beside her.

“But I was older than you,” she lied. “You have lots more time.”

“Maybe.” Elektra was silent a moment, then burst out again, “I don't understand what happened. I saw my obstetrician just two days ago. Everything was fine. And now…”

“Miscarriages are much more common than most people realize,” Juliet said quietly, though doubtful whether this fact could be of any comfort. “They actually occur in as many as a fifth of pregnancies. Just a lot of them happen before people know they're pregnant.”

Elektra said nothing. With a struggle, she worked to get hold of herself. She took her hand from Juliet and grabbed a tissue to wipe her eyes. She blew her nose and ran her fingers through her thick, dark hair. In less than a minute, she had recovered a large measure of her habitual composure. Her breathing slowed, her beautiful features resumed their usual expression—power at rest, Juliet supposed you would call it. If she had not seen the transformation herself, she would have said it was not possible for a woman in a hospital bed—in a hospital gown!—to have so much poise, so much dignity. Inwardly, Juliet also tried to gather herself together. It was not easy to address the Firebird in a spirit of womanly solidarity.

“Listen, I hope you'll forgive me if I'm way off base here, but I couldn't help worrying after I left you yesterday. Your husband—I've gotten the idea he can be—” Her words broke off again, but really, what other way was there of putting it? “Violent,” she finished at last. “I wondered if you were scared.”

Elektra gave a small, sad smile. “Scared of Ryder?”

With a flash of insight, Juliet saw her meaning: After the death of her lover and the loss of their baby, what could she have to fear from an angry husband? So what if he hit her? As long as he didn't kill her … And maybe even that didn't seem to her such a terrible threat just now.

After a moment, Elektra went on. “Since you've asked, Ryder has taken a swing at me now and then. He's a fucked-up, self-pitying, ambitious, frustrated, big, small man. But he never hit me where it would show; that would be unprofessional. And I've always given him his own back.” She gave the tight little smile again. “Sometimes, I thumped him first. And to be honest, I felt a little sorry for him last night. He always wanted to have a kid while he was still young himself. We tried for a long time, years. Dancing is great, but it's not forever. We wanted a family, even if it took me off stage for a while. But it was no good, we never got anywhere. So last night was kind of a kick in the teeth for him that way.”

Juliet would have thought it was a kick in the teeth to learn one's wife had a lover at all, but Elektra didn't mention this. Perhaps it was understood between them that fidelity was no longer expected.

Or perhaps not.

After a moment, thinking of Landis, she steeled herself and asked.

“I'm confused. Did Ryder already know about you and Anton?”

Was it her imagination, or did Elektra give a little look of fear before she jumped onto her high horse?

“Look, I know you're a friend of Ruth's and a donor to the Jansch and everything,” the ballerina answered, once more as lofty as any snow maiden, “and I appreciate your coming over to see if I'm okay. But I really don't care to discuss my marriage further with you.”

“Of course not. I'm so sorry.”

For a moment, Juliet was appalled by her own behavior. Then she remembered that if someone had killed Anton Mohr—if Ryder had—that would be far more appalling.

“Listen, if you speak to Ruth,” Elektra went on, her tone brisk, “could you please let her know I was planning to tell her about the baby at the end of this week? I wouldn't have let her choreograph the whole ballet on me and Hart. I was just waiting to make sure I didn't—” Elektra's tears welled up again and she blinked hard against them, “—didn't miscarry,” she finished.

The timely arrival of a nurse's aide with a basin and a bottle of shampoo spared both the women another round of tears. Juliet wished Elektra good luck and swiftly headed home.

*   *   *

When Juliet got back to her apartment, she found three messages from Ruth on her answering machine, all sputtering and fuming about Elektra's having kept her pregnancy secret, all demanding to know where Juliet was and why she didn't pick up the phone.

Cravenly, Juliet had not phoned Ruth last night, hoping instead that Greg Fleetwood would get the honor of conveying the news of Elektra's miscarriage to her. It was a relief to find this had, in fact, happened. Unfortunately, though, Ruth did not seem to have calmed down much since then.

“When was she going to tell me?” Ruth shrieked, when Juliet called her back. “Greg says she was three months pregnant! Was she waiting till opening night?”

Juliet relayed the ballerina's message on this point.

“Is she crazy? Five weeks to opening and she thinks that would have been time enough to recast?”

“Would you have had to recast?”

“Are
you
crazy? A pregnant Estella? That would be nice for the kiddies.”

“Oh,” said Juliet, considering. It was true; surely Elektra could not have gone on much longer without showing. “Well, at least you'd only have had to replace Estella,” she observed, hoping to calm Ruth. “You'd still have had your Pip.”

“Juliet, who do you think could dance this role with Hart except Elektra? He's six inches shorter than Kirsten Ahlswede—make that ten inches when she's on pointe. And she probably weighs as much as he does. How's he supposed to lug that around? I would have had to start all over again using—using God knows who. Kirsten and Nicky Sabatino, I guess. Jeez!”

“When does the doctor think she'll be back?” Juliet asked, trying to guide Ruth away from the disaster that might have been.

“She'll probably come home tomorrow,” Ruth said grudgingly, apparently reluctant to stop complaining. “As long as she rests through the weekend, she's supposed to be okay by Wednesday. And by the way, her husband asked me a couple of days ago if he could miss rehearsal this Saturday,” she added, seizing on another hardship.

“What for?”

“Didn't say. Just asked for a ‘personal day.' I guess now he can spend it with her.”

Juliet had said nothing as yet about the identity of the lost baby's father, and she did not intend to. That was a secret she had stumbled on entirely by chance. True, it added a bit to her ideas about the identity of the talcum powderer. But if either Ryder or Elektra were guilty, it was over and done with now. Maybe after
Great Expectations
opened, Juliet would share the information with Ruth. Till then, it could only distract her, the last thing she needed now. Juliet promised to come to rehearsal late that afternoon and after a few more minutes, the two women said good-bye.

Chapter Seventeen

“But the whole point of ambition,” Ruth was saying, “is that it's deeply personal.” Her spoon rattled restlessly in the porcelain cup that held her last, melting lump of ice cream. “It's an irresistible inner drive to achieve excellence, to be as great or even greater than the people who inspired you. That's ambition, that's what it means.”

It was the last Sunday in August, and Ruth and Juliet were having lunch in the latter's kitchen. A month had gone by since Elektra's miscarriage and, to her own astonishment, Ruth had finished Act Three of
Great Expectations
two days ahead of schedule. She explained the miracle by saying the act was shorter than the first two and drew heavily on the vocabulary of movements she had already created for them. But Juliet believed that, like many artists, Ruth simply worked better in adverse circumstances than so-called optimal ones. The stress of events surrounding
Great Ex
actually helped. Look at Elektra Andreades: Her catastrophic loss and week-long absence had clearly concentrated her energies; after her return, she applied herself with a fierceness, and danced Estella with a proud, angry coldness, that Juliet could only chalk up to a broken heart.

And so Ruth Renswick's
Great Expectations
was now complete. All that lay ahead was letting the dancers learn how to move through the whole thing at once and working with them as they developed and deepened their characterizations. Then tech rehearsals, dress rehearsals and—surviving the premiere. The lunch in Juliet's kitchen (the women had been driven indoors by an ozone alert) was, in a small way, a kind of victory meal. Juliet having also (nearly) finished
London Quadrille,
the two were contentedly gorging themselves on a banquet of crûdités, hummus, tapenades, smoked trout, Portuguese rolls, ginger ice cream, and the kind of argument they liked best: theoretical, insoluble, and in no way intended to change each other's ideas.

“I don't think so,” Juliet replied. “I think that's part of ambition, but it's a narrow view.” She poured milk into her coffee. “I think most ambitious people, or many people, at least, are pushed by a need for social recognition, a need to have their value authenticated, or—what do I mean?—publicly labeled by other people.”