Murder as a Fine Art (3 page)

Richard's books were not the kind Laura would normally read, but she found them, if not earthshaking, at least entertaining and surprisingly informative about places and events. They certainly didn't deserve to be savaged the way Henry tore into them in the reviews he wrote for the Associated Press newspapers. These thoughts occupied Laura on the short walk to the Banquet Hall in the basement of Donald Cameron Hall.

The Banquet Hall was buzzing with the news about Alan Montrose. Kevin Lavoie had made the announcement to the members of the colony and the Centre's graduate art students. He emphasized that it had been an accident and, while unfortunate, shouldn't be allowed to interfere with their studies or their art.

Laura joined the other colonists at the table where they usually sat. As always, John Smith sat at a table by himself, downing one large glass of orange juice after another. Today the tall, gaunt performance artist was dressed head-to-toe in black, complete with a bowler hat set squarely on his head. His face was smeared with white greasepaint. Reminded by his hat of her too-vivid nightmare, Laura gave a slight inward shudder.

Kevin Lavoie was passing among the tables, answering questions about the fatality and assuring everyone once again that it had been an accident. As he approached their table, Henry Norrington declared, “Of course it was an accident. I've told you before that that low railing is an accident waiting to happen.”

“It already has,” interjected John Smith from his nearby table.

Ignoring the interruption, Norrington went on, “You really should do something about it, Kevin.”

“We're looking into it,” Lavoie assured him, knowing full well that months would pass before anything would be done about it. Fixing it now would amount to an admission of fault on the part of the Centre.

All conversation at the table ceased when Jeremy Switzer joined them. “How come everyone looks so glum?” he asked blithely as he sat down, carefully arranging his breakfast tray in front of him.

“Alan Montrose was killed last night,” Laura told him.

“What? What do you mean ‘killed'? How did it happen?”

“He fell down the stairwell on the sixth floor.”

“I'll be damned!” Jeremy's fingers were combing his beard. He cleared his throat and looked around the table. “Well, as you all know, there wasn't any love lost between Alan and me, but I'm sorry he's dead.”

“It was an unfortunate
accident
,” Lavoie said soothingly.

“Murder will out,” John Smith chanted in his flat monotone as he put down his napkin and stalked out.

“John Smith always hopes for the worst,” remarked Laura.

“He had been drinking, I assume?” asked Richard Madrin as, freshly showered and shaved after his run, he sat down next to Laura. He had heard about Montrose from a student he met on his way to breakfast.

Lavoie nodded glumly. “He reeked of the stuff. At first I was relieved because it could absolve the Centre from any liability, but then I realized it could backfire on us. As we all know only too well the provincial government is hell bent to make even deeper budget cuts, and we're a prime target. Montrose falling down the
stairs dead drunk in the middle of the night is going to give them some great ammunition. A lot of politicians think of artists as parasites living high on public funds and this will only confirm it.”

As he replied to Madrin's question, Lavoie's tone was deferential. The wealthy speculator in commercial real estate was a potential donor to the Centre, which depended on private donations to supplement the steadily shrinking public funding.

Erika Dekter got to her feet. “It may sound callous, but I've got work to do.” Erika was only five-foot-two and there wasn't an ounce of fat on her diminutive frame, but she had an appetite out of proportion to her size. The breakfast she had just finished included fruit juice, three fried eggs, bacon, sausage, and several slices of toast. Erika was slightly hyper and had the metabolism to go with it. Her creative energy must burn up a lot of calories too, Laura thought. The two women had become fast friends during their stay in the colony.

“I'll go with you,” Laura said and drained the last of her coffee. As they climbed the Banquet Hall staircase to the ground floor, she said, “Isabelle looked absolutely devastated, I didn't realize she and Montrose were close.”

“It wasn't because of Montrose,” replied Erika dryly. “Isabelle's family is coming to visit her.”

“Oh no!” breathed Laura. Visits from “outside” were regarded as disruptive influences and were not encouraged. But this went far beyond that. Isabelle Ross and Marek Dabrowski had been carrying on an intense love affair for weeks. A
coup de foudre
was the way Henry Norrington, in his own pedantic fashion, had described the first meeting between the pianist and the dark-haired composer. Everyone on the sixth floor of Lloyd Hall was aware of Marek's nightly excursions down the hall to Isabelle's room. The attitude of the
other artists toward the star-struck lovers was nonjudgemental and even protective. It was the sort of thing that was almost inevitable in the hothouse atmosphere of the colony.

“She'll have to put her rings back on,” Laura murmured. “You said her ‘family'. What family does she have?”

“Her husband. He's a doctor. And a young daughter.”

On the way out Erika picked up the box lunch she had ordered. They walked the short distance to Lloyd Hall and remained chatting together for a few moments on the front steps. Erika was going directly to her studio, while Laura was going to take a break in her room to sort out her thoughts and mentally prepare herself to resume painting. “How's the book coming?” asked Laura. “You're certainly putting in some incredibly long hours.”

“I can't seem to stay away from it. A couple more chapters and I'll have finished the first draft.” Erika was about to say something more, but broke off as John Smith suddenly appeared before them. Doffing his bowler, his painted face devoid of expression, he executed a more than passable tap dance, ending it with a low bow.

Laura clapped her hands, while Erika remained stony-faced.

“That's very good, John Smith,” said Laura, using, as he insisted upon, his full name. She very much doubted it was the name he had been christened with; it was the kind of stripped-down name performance artists often choose for themselves. John Smith produced two pink carnations, seemingly out of the air, presented them with a flourish, and skipped away, whistling to himself.

Laura fingered her carnation. It was plastic. Typical of John Smith. With him, you never knew what was real and what was false.

“I bet I'll find him hanging around my studio,” Erika muttered. “He's beginning to seriously annoy me.”

“He certainly has fixated on you. I'd like to think that he's harmless, but I'm not at all sure he is.”

“I'll go along with it for now,” said Erika as she began to walk away. “But if it keeps up, I'll tell him where to get off.”

“Which would probably be just fine with John Smith,” said Laura. “It would add a note of tension to his ‘art'. That's the problem in dealing with performance artists. They stand everything on its head.”

If only Geoff were here, thought Erika as he headed for the colony. He would know how to handle John Smith. But Geoffrey Hamilton was history, she reminded herself sternly. She would have to deal with John Smith on her own.

As the Banquet Hall emptied, Kevin Lavoie made his way up to the small office in the administration building that had been assigned to Corporal Lindstrom for the purposes of her investigation. From past experience he had some reason to hope she could be prevailed upon to handle the investigation into Montrose's death with discretion. She had been gratifyingly discreet about that bizarre business of the poison pen letters and the bearded poet. But the Mountie quickly disabused Lavoie of the notion that an investigation into a death under suspicious circumstances could be handled in the same low-key fashion.

“We're dealing with a possible homicide here, not a gay lovers' tiff,” she said. “You might as well brace yourself to deal with the media.”

Lavoie found out how right she was as soon as he returned to his own office. His secretary informed him that both a newspaper and a television reporter were downstairs in the reception area, requesting an interview.

“I'm told you wish to see me.” Jeremy Switzer stood in the open doorway.

Corporal Lindstrom looked up and closed her notebook. “Thank you for coming, Mr. Switzer.”

“I didn't realize I had a choice,” he murmured as he sat down on a chair facing her across the desk.

She responded with a wintry smile and took a moment to size him up. Laura Janeway had described him as a professional art colonist and he certainly looked the part. He was wearing a thick woollen sweater over an open-necked denim shirt and faded blue jeans. His thinning brown hair was tied back in a sparse ponytail, and the lower half of his face was covered with a salt-and-pepper beard. He seemed blithely unconcerned as he waited for her to speak.

“You know, I'm investigating the death of Mr. Montrose?”

“Yes. But I don't know why,” Jeremy said with a shrug. “Montrose topples over a railing and breaks his neck. End of lesson.”

“No one seems to know what he would be doing on the landing at that time of night. Apparently he never used the stairs.”

Jeremy snorted. “The old fart was probably so pissed he didn't know where he was.”

“I understand he was suing you for libel?”

“So you've heard about that load of crap.” As always, when the lawsuit was mentioned, Jeremy was defiant, but the Mountie saw his fingers tugging at
his beard, as if to distract his thoughts by the self-inflicted discomfort.

“You weren't in your room last night. At least not at the time it happened.”

“No, I wasn't.” Although it was hard to tell with his beard, Jeremy seemed to be smirking. “I was in a much more romantic place.”

“And where was that?” Karen picked up her pen.

“Oh, I can't tell you that! It wouldn't be fair. My lover has a reputation to protect.”

“You're saying you were with someone last night?”

“It was heavenly. The start of a wonderful new relationship.”

“With who?”

“I'm not prepared to tell you. The age of chivalry may be dead, but some of us still have a code of honour.” Jeremy frowned. “You're acting as if this was a murder. Lavoie said it was an accident.”

“It's a death under unexplained circumstances. It's our duty to investigate such cases and part of that investigation is to interview people who knew the deceased and to establish their whereabouts at the relevant time.”

“I'll tell you this much, Corporal,” Jeremy said, leaning back in his chair. “I have an iron-clad alibi. If push comes to shove, I'll trot it out. But not until then. Okay?”

“Definitely not okay, Mr. Switzer. I could charge you with withholding evidence. But since the investigation is still in its preliminary stages, I'll just put you down as an uncooperative witness.”

“I'm doing my best to be helpful,” Jeremy said with a pout. “Don't waste your time on me, Corporal. I can prove I was nowhere near the residence last night any time I have to.”

While Corporal Lindstrom was having her unsatisfactory interview with Jeremy, Laura was on her way to her studio. Snow drifted gently down through the lodge pole pines as she walked along the path. Her steps slowed as she approached the large music hut that housed the elegant Baldwin concert grand. Isabelle Ross was playing Rakhmaninov's Second Piano Concerto with savage intensity. Laura had never heard her play Rakhmaninov before. Very likely this was Isabelle's way of venting her feelings at the prospect of leaving her new lover's ardent arms for those of her husband.

As she continued along the path, she heard the deep, soulful strains of a cello seeping through the thick walls of one of the tiny wooden huts where the music students practiced. That would be Veronica Phillips, the graduate music student who was so openly and hopelessly infatuated with Marek Dabrowski. Laura had seen this sort of thing happen before at the Centre. In fact, she had been here two years ago when, to the shock of the entire community, a young ballet dancer — a “bun head” as they were called — threw herself off the sixth-floor deck because of her unrequited love for a principal dancer, who she never lived to know was gay and thus beyond her reach. Someone like Veronica, Laura thought, had probably been studying music since she was four or five years old. She comes here with this sheltered background of being immersed in music, with playing the cello the focus of her entire life, and meets the man who wrote the music she had played and loved since she was a child. Someone who was darkly handsome in the intense way the public thinks composers are supposed to look. But, unfortunately for Veronica, Marek is head-over-heels in love with someone else. So the student suffers silently as she sees them doing everything together — taking long walks through the woods,
attending concerts — all the wonderful, fun things lovers do. To make it worse, she can't escape from them, not in the closed world of the Centre.

As always, Laura paused for a reflective moment on the footbridge. There were times when life at the Centre outdid the soapiest soap opera, but with the symbolic act of crossing the little bridge she knew she could temporarily leave all distractions behind and concentrate on her art. She laughed with delight as the falling snowflakes landed on her upturned face; one fat flake spiking itself on her eyelashes, blurring her vision. Refreshed, she crossed the bridge and decided to walk all the way around the path that circled the studios.

Even in daylight, there was something spectral and unworldly about the boat studio, so far removed from its natural element. Its weathered hull rested on a wooden cradle, and it was sheltered from the elements by a plexiglass canopy. Maybe the fact that it had sunk and had been raised from a watery grave accounted for its ghostly aura. While certainly picturesque, it was not popular with visiting artists because the narrow hull made for cramped working quarters. But Erika loved the way it allowed her to work at her computer and reach for her research files on the shelves behind her without moving from her chair. Laura looked for any sign of John Smith lurking among the pine trees, but she couldn't spot him. That didn't mean he wasn't there, of course. The way John Smith had zeroed in on Erika was as disturbing as his unpredictable behaviour. There didn't seem to be anything sexual about it, at least not in the usual sense.