Murder as a Fine Art (25 page)

After a moment of stunned silence, someone screamed and the theatre erupted in a cacophony of terror. The fire alarm went off, galvanizing the audience into a stampede for the exits. Richard grabbed Laura's
arms and pulled her toward the door that was only a few steps away. She hung back for a moment staring up at the horror on the stage. John Smith was a blackened skeleton in the midst of the flames, his arms slowly rising as if conferring an unholy benediction on the fleeing crowd. The skeleton broke apart and fell to the floor as a stream of foam hit it. Justin, who was prepared to give the fire extinguisher one chance before fleeing, took heart as the flames flickered and died out. Moving forward, he quickly snuffed out a puddle of burning kerosene on the stage. Charlene was on her feet, staring out at the panicking mob that had once been an audience. She was screaming over and over again, “It was supposed to be water! Don't you understand? It was supposed to be water in that urn!”

“Attention everyone. There is no danger. The fire has been extinguished. I repeat, the fire is out. Stay where you are.” Karen was up on the stage yelling through her cupped hands. The strident ringing of the alarm abruptly ceased, and she shouted out again that the fire was over. This time she was heard, and the mad scramble for the exits slowed. As they dared to stop and look around, the terror-stricken people saw that what the Mountie said was true. There was no fire. The grisly remains of the performance artist were covered under a blanket of foam.

There were moans and cries for help from a few, mostly elderly, people who had been knocked down in the rush. Some members of the audience remained behind to comfort them as they waited for the ambulances and paramedics to arrive. The rest filed out through the exits and the main entrance in a hurried but reasonably orderly fashion.

Kevin had leaped to his feet, as soon as he saw John Smith engulfed in flames. Grabbing the cabinet
minister and Norrington by their elbows, he propelled them toward the same exit Laura and her two companions were slipping through. Shaking him off, Norrington used his swimmer's shoulders to bull a path for them through the crush of people.

Safely outside, Joseph Moore shook his head and stared grimly at the colony coordinator. “What's happening here, Kevin? This place is turning into a slaughter house.”

“I have an idea that after tonight, it's all behind us, Sir.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don't know what the police think, but my own theory is that John Smith was behind the terrible things that have been happening here.”

“You think the man killed himself?”

“He's a performance artist,” Kevin replied as if that explained everything. “I'm hoping he will have left a note confessing to the murders.”

“You're wrong, Kevin,” Norrington interjected. “John Smith would never kill himself. Never. He had too high a regard for his own importance.”

“As you well know, Kevin,” said Moore as they threaded their way through the shocked and murmuring crowd heading for their cars,” some of my cabinet colleagues would like nothing better than to cut the Centre's funding to the bone. You people here at the Centre are doing a good job of building a case for them.”

“But you are sticking up for us, sir?”

“I am. But recently I've begun to wonder why,” the minister of culture sighed. “I suppose I better find Alec and see if I can help him with the Bensons. Unless I'm very much mistaken, we can kiss that three million good-bye.”

T
he sensational, and highly suspicious, immolation of the performance artist brought reinforcements in the form of a task force of detectives from the RCMP headquarters in Calgary. Karen conducted a briefing session for them in the Banff detachment office. She was the only uniformed officer in the room.

When it was over, shrugs and questioning looks were exchanged among the detectives. One of them spoke up. “If it wasn't for that woman writer being dead before she was torched, we could be looking at suicide and accidental deaths. Right?”

“The death of the performance artist could have been a suicide,” volunteered another.

“There are easier ways to kill yourself than that,” rejoined a detective sergeant. His remark was greeted with nods of approval.

The men closed their notebooks and the detective sergeant assigned each squad its area of investigation.
When he finished without mentioning Karen, she glanced questioningly at Inspector Gratton, the officer in charge. “I want you to be a floater, Karen,” he said. “You know these people and you're familiar with the campus. You can poke around wherever you think it will do the most good. But I suggest you start with the team that will be questioning the people connected with last night's performance.”

With Constable Peplinski at the wheel, Karen led the way to the Banff Centre with the Calgary detectives following in an unmarked sedan. They were met by a haggard looking Kevin. He assigned them a suite of offices, promised every cooperation, and implored them to find out who was behind the terrible events. “If this keeps up,” he told them, “it could bring this wonderful institution down with it.”

Inspector Gratton assured him that they wouldn't rest until the perpetrator was brought to justice, and asked who would have been the lead stagehand at last night's performances.

“Len Gerlitz. Would you like me to get him for you?”

“That would be very helpful.”

“That urn was filled with water. I'm positive of that,” Len Gerlitz, seated across the desk form the inspector, declared. “I filled it myself.”

“The idea was to switch the urn containing kerosene for the one filled with water?” asked the inspector.

“Right. The audience saw torches being lit from the urn so they would figure it was kerosene that John Smith was going to pour over himself.”

“Which, as it turns out, he did,” interjected Karen quietly.

The inspector gave her a look, then turned his attention back to the stagehand. “How was the switch carried out?”

“Two of us were standing in the wings, out of the audience's line of sight. When Desiré danced by, she handed her urn to Bill Williams and took the second one, the one that was supposed to contain water, from me.”

“How many people knew about the switch?”

Len shrugged. “I guess just about everyone in the show. There was no particular reason to keep it secret. Once the trick was over, the audience would realize what had happened. It was the shock of what they
thought
was going to happen that John Smith was after. It's the same idea as clowns dousing each other with pails of water, then one of them grabs a pail and runs toward the audience. Except when he throws it at them, it turns out to be shredded paper.”

Karen, feeling a bit like she was back in school, raised her hand and the inspector nodded. “What about the revelation?” she asked. “Do you have any idea of what it was going to be?”

“None whatsoever. Some of the cast tried to pry it out of him, but they got nowhere. That didn't stop them from speculating though.”

“Oh? And what did they speculate?”

“Everything from him naming the murderer, confessing to the murders himself, all the way down to him spouting some nonsense about world peace or something like that.”

They continued taking statements for the rest of the morning without learning anything more than Len had already told them. At one point, Peplinski came in to report on the fingerprints found on the fatal urn. There were two sets, one was definitely Len's and the second set was presumed to be Desiré's , although that couldn't be verified since she had received burns to her hands and the doctor refused to let her be fingerprinted.

This was borne out when Desiré appeared for her interview. Her hands were loosely bandaged with gauze. For the first time that morning, the inspector rose to his feet. She accepted his concern for her burns with a gracious smile and said that she considered herself lucky to have gotten off so lightly.

Desiré confirmed in her melodious voice how the trick was supposed to work. Holding up her bandaged hands, she added, “It was a good thing for me my costume was so scanty.”

“Or non-existent,” murmured Karen.

“You have good eyesight,” Desiré told her. “Originally, I was supposed to wear a body stocking, but John Smith thought it would be more effective for me to be naked. That undoubtedly saved my life.”

“Apart from your hands, were you injured at all?” asked Karen.

“My eyebrows are a little singed and I can still feel the heat in my face, but I am told that will pass.”

Karen had told the inspector that Desiré, as the highest-ranking member of the cast, would be the most likely to know about the revelation. But she claimed to know nothing. “That was John Smith's secret.”

“Do you have any questions you wish to ask, Corporal? the inspector asked Karen.

“Just one. Do you think that John Smith might have left something that would tell us what his revelation was? In case something like this happened before he could announce it to the world.”

“It's possible. It's just the sort of thing he might do. But it won't be obvious, you can count on that.” She favoured Peplinski who was standing outside the door with a dazzling smile as she swept out of the room.

“I think I'll take a look around the theatre.” Karen got to her feet.

“Good idea,” said the inspector. “Al's in charge over there, but he and his men don't know what they're looking for.”

“Neither do I, but I know someone who might.”

“John Smith's dressing room is the logical place to start,” Laura told Karen as they walked across the empty stage, still reeking of kerosene and smoke, and another sickish, sweet smell that Laura recognized only too well.

The dressing room door, decorated with a cardboard skeleton instead of the traditional star, stood open. The sight of the skeleton, so reminiscent of John Smith's last appearance on earth, almost unnerved Laura. Had he predicted his own fate? Had he even arranged it? A beefy detective, with his hands on his ample hips and an incredulous, baffled expression of his face, stood in the middle of the room. He had been told to expect Karen and her companion, and waved them in.

“Maybe you can make some sense out of the junk in here,” he said, “but it sure as hell beats me.” Giving the cluttered room a final disgusted look, he left, saying, “I'll leave you with it. If you find anything, I'll be up on the stage.”

The dressing room was just what Laura would have expected from John Smith. It was filled with the paraphernalia of his art, including many items that were not needed for last night's performance. Those grotesque masks, for example. Probably he just liked to be surrounded with this kind of stuff. Laura picked up a black crucifix with a voluptuous female Christ nailed to it. The nails were in the correct position, driven through the wrists and ankles rather than the hands and feet as
commonly shown. Nails in the latter positions could not support the weight of a human being. Trust John Smith to know that. She put the crucifix down beside an open Bible. There were a number of other books lying on the counter. Laura was not surprised to see one of both Richard's and Norrington's among them. John Smith liked to get inside the minds of people, and he obviously believed that possessing something personal gave him some sort of power over that person. Witness the lock of her hair he had snipped off, and the things he had stolen from Marek, Richard and Eckart. God only knew what rites he had intended to perform with them. Laura shivered. The spirit of John Smith, which she had finally come to acknowledge was truly sinister, seemed to pervade the room and its bizarre contents.

She picked up Richard's book
The Blue Agenda
and saw that some of the pages had been paper clipped. So had some pages in Norrington's book. Knowing what she was going to find, she turned to the paper clipped pages and read the paragraphs that had been highlighted. With a grim smile she put the books back on the table. So John Smith had figured it out, too.

She debated with herself as to whether or not she should tell Karen. But it had nothing to do with the murders, and would do a great deal of harm if word ever got out. Feeling slightly guilty, Laura pretended to carry on with the search, knowing there was nothing more to be found. Finally, she turned to Karen and said, “It looks as if John Smith's revelation, whatever it was, died with him.”

Kevin looked up as the president walked into his office. Alec Fraser didn't take a seat, instead he went over to the window and looked out at the campus.

“I've just had a long talk with Benson,” he said without turning around.

“And?”

Alec turned away from the window and seated himself across the desk from Kevin before replying. “Benson held a conference call with his fellow directors. The Chinook Foundation is prepared to give us not three million dollars, but seven-and-a-half million.”

“What?”

“That's right. Seven-and-one-half million dollars.”

‘My God! I don't believe it. That's wonderful!”

“Not as wonderful as you might think. They want representation on the board of governors and a say over what artistic projects the Centre supports.”

“That's censorship.”

“Of the worst kind. I told him it was unacceptable.”

“You couldn't have done anything else. But, Jesus, Alec, how we could have used that money!”

Fraser leaned forward in his chair; the look of ennui which Kevin had sometimes observed with concern in recent months, was gone and his eyes shone with excitement. “We've got to make this place more self-sufficient, Kevin. Much more. What makes money for us?”

“The executive management courses. They're a licence to print money.”

“Exactly! And they're what we are going to concentrate on. Develop new courses, advertise around the world, maybe increase the fees. I bet if we approached some of the major corporations that send their executives here, we could raise the funds to construct a new management building.” He broke off, seeing the look on Kevin's face. “I know what you're thinking. You're worried that it will overwhelm the arts side of our operation. But that won't happen. We
won't let it. They are two separate streams and we'll keep them that way. Except that the revenues from the training programs will subsidize the arts. Now here's what I have in mind...”