Murder as a Fine Art Read online

  MURDER AS A

  FINE ART

  For

  Alexis Grace

  and

  Lliam

  MURDER AS A

  FINE ART

  John Ballem

  A Castle Street Mystery

  Copyright © John Ballem, 2002

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except for brief passages for purposes of review) without the prior permission of Dundurn Press. Permission to photocopy should be requested from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency.

  Editor: Marc Côté

  Copy-Editor: Natalie Barrington

  Design: Bruna Brunelli

  Printer: Webcom

  Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Ballem, John

  Murder as a fine art

  “A Castle Street M ystery.”

  ISBN 1-55002-385-3

  I. Title.

  1 2 3 4 5 06 05 04 03 02

  We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program and The Association for the Export of Canadian Books, and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishers Tax Credit program.

  Care has been taken to trace the ownership of copyright material used in this book. The author and the publisher welcome any information enabling them to rectify any references or credit in subsequent editions.

  J. Kirk Howard, President

  All the characters in this book are fictitious.

  Any resemblance to actual people is purely coincidental.

  Printed and bound in Canada.

  Printed on recycled paper.

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  MURDER AS A

  FINE ART

  “… behold a pale horse, and its

  rider’s name was Death …”

  Revelation 6

  prologue

  High in the Canadian Rockies is a place like no other — eight rustic studios set in the midst of a dense forest of lodge pole pines. Artists, writers, painters, and composers from all over the world flock to this mountain retreat to work on their art in individual studios, free from the distractions of the outside world.

  The resort town of Banff, slightly more than an hour’s drive from the city of Calgary, is located in the beautiful Bow River Valley at an altitude of 4,500 feet. Surrounded by the towering and jagged peaks of Mount Rundle, Sulphur Mountain, Cascade Mountain, and Mount Norquay, it is an irresistible lure for tourists, skiers, and mountaineers. Although the town itself is small, with a permanent population of only 7,000, it is by far the largest settlement in the Banff National Park, a 2,300 square mile nature preserve. The small number of permanent residents is dwarfed by the five million visitors who stream through the park gates every year.

  Overlooking the town of Banff, and facing the massive rock ramparts of Mount Rundle, the Banff Centre of Fine Arts is one of Canada’s most important cultural institutions, providing instruction and training to aspiring artists in their various disciplines. Under the umbrella of the Banff Centre is the Leighton Artist Colony, which caters only to established artists with a proven track record, and offers no instruction, but rather an opportunity to work undisturbed in a setting of inspiring beauty.

  As a writer, I have had the benefit of several stays in the colony, and know full well just how creative an environment it is. It is also a closed world, where you are thrown into the company, for weeks or months, of fellow artists from many different countries and cultures. Ideas flow freely at mealtimes and at get togethers in the lounge. In fact, this exchange of ideas and experiences is one of the great benefits of colony life. Nor, let it be said, do these exchanges always remain on the philosophical level. The artists come to the colony on their own, and find themselves in one of the world’s most romantic settings and in the company of attractive and creative companions. It is not surprising that relationships spring up, to flower and usually to die, when the lovers’ stay is over.

  Add to this the fact that the artists are established, well known, and come to the colony with large reputations and, in many cases, even larger egos. It’s a heady mix—one that sets the stage for murder.

  chapter one

  Alan Montrose was sprawled headfirst on the concrete steps below the stairwell landing. A narrow trail of blood ran from his nostrils down his right cheek. Blocked by a dense, tangled eyebrow, it filled his eye socket and was spreading across his forehead. Blood seeped from his ears and dripped onto the concrete.

  Laura Janeway’s hand flew to her mouth to hold back the gorge rising in her throat. She swallowed hard, the sound loud in the bare concrete stairwell. The sickening angle of his head told her that Montrose was beyond help. Nevertheless, she forced herself to feel for a pulse, pushing back the sleeve of his dressing gown to expose his wrist. His skin was still unpleasantly warm to the touch and she was aware of the rank stench of alcohol. Finding no sign of life, Laura sat back on her haunches and looked up at the top landing. The railing was dangerously low, coming barely above her knees. For some time she had been meaning to mention it to Kevin, but had never gotten around to it.

  Kevin would have to be notified. Stepping carefully over Montrose’s lifeless body, she climbed the stairs to the landing and opened the door to the hallway of the sixth floor that housed the members of Leighton Artist Colony. Once in her room, she glanced at the clock on her bedside table. Twelve-thirty. Kevin would be in bed asleep, but that hardly mattered. The phone rang four times before Kevin Lavoie picked it up. “Jesus!” he swore softly after Laura told him about finding the body. “We don’t need that!” As the artist colony’s coordinator the burden of dealing with all the details surrounding the death of a member would fall on him. “I’ll get dressed and come right over,” he told Laura, asking her to make sure that nothing was disturbed.

  Laura went into her bathroom and splashed cold water on her face. Squaring her shoulders, she went back to the stairwell. Taking a firm grip on the metal railing, she leaned over and stared down at the body sprawled on the steps below. Montrose had either been in bed or had been preparing for bed. His portly body was dressed in pyjamas and a paisley silk dressing gown. What in the world had brought him out here to meet his death? Some of the initial shock had worn off, but that head lolling helplessly to one side made her wince. She sat down on the top step and stared straight ahead at the blank concrete wall as she waited for Kevin.

  She didn’t have long to wait. Kevin lived in a near-by duplex provided by the Banff Centre and he joined her in less than fifteen minutes. His blond hair was thinning, and he wore a perpetually harried expression that went with coping with the artistic temperaments that came and went in the colony. Laura was fond of him.

  “He’s been drinking,” Kevin said as he bent over the body. He sounded relieved as though he had found a defence to any claim that might be brought against the Centre. “Not that there’s anything unusual about that.”

  “The police will have to be informed,” said Laura.

  Kevin looked as if he would have liked to protest, then sighed, and said, “You’re right, of cours
e.” He patted his pocket. “I’ll use the pay phone at the end of the hall.”

  “10-11.” Corporal Karen Lindstrom replaced the microphone in its clip and told the driver to proceed to Lloyd Hall at the Banff Centre, but not to turn on the siren or the flashing lights. Minutes later, the corporal’s terse “10-7” told the dispatcher that they had arrived at the scene.

  Lavoie greeted the Mountie like an old friend. He seemed relieved that she was the one who had responded to the call. After introducing her to Laura, who was struck by the policewoman’s Nordic good looks, he gave a nervous little laugh and, with a suggestive sniffing of the air, said that it shouldn’t take much detective work to figure out what had happened. The corporal’s expression was noncommittal as she pulled a video camera from a carrying case and began to film the scene. The young constable with her, who looked as if he was not long off a Saskatchewan farm, was securing the area with yellow crime scene tape.

  Kevin Lavoie flinched when the Mountie focused her camera on the low railing. Then she switched it off and climbed up to the landing to look down at the corpse. Gazing around at the bare concrete walls she said, “There’s nothing here he could grab on to.”

  Turning around, she carefully backed up against the railing. “The deceased looks to be a little bit taller than I am,” she said, almost as if talking to herself. “It would have been quite easy for him to topple backwards and land on his head. Was he a heavy drinker?”

  “I understand he got sloshed every night,” replied Lavoie. Laura confirmed this with a reluctant nod.

  “The circumstances seem consistent with an accident.” The corporal seemed to be choosing her words with care. “However, the body can’t be moved until the medical examiner gives the okay. He should be here before too long. While we’re waiting, maybe I could get a brief statement from each of you.”

  “I don’t have anything to contribute,” Kevin told her. “I was in bed when Laura called. I got dressed and rushed over. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to tell the president about this unfortunate accident.” The Mountie nodded permission and Lavoie hurried away.

  “Correct me if I’m wrong, Ms. Janeway, but I get the impression that you’re not as convinced as Mr. Lavoie that we’re dealing with an accidental death.”

  Laura looked at her thoughtfully before replying. With her blond hair neatly tucked under her cap, ice blue eyes, and clear skin glowing with good health, Corporal Lindstrom looked as though she could pose for a recruiting poster. “What troubles me,” Laura said finally,” is what Alan was doing out here in the stairwell at this time of night. Or at any time, for that matter. He never used the stairs. You’ve seen how overweight he was. And where was he going in his pyjamas and dressing gown?”

  “Anything else?” The corporal was looking at Laura keenly. “For instance, how did the deceased get along with the other members of the colony?”

  Laura hesitated before saying, “You’ll find out about this sooner or later. Alan Montrose was suing Jeremy Switzer, a New York playwright, for libel. There was a nasty scene between them at dinner tonight.”

  “Libel? That’s pretty serious. Is your room on this floor? We can talk there if you like.”

  Laura nodded, thinking to herself that the police-woman seemed to have more than a passing knowledge of the Banff Centre. Corporal Lindstrom told the constable to let them know when the medical examiner arrived.

  Laura’s room, like all the others on campus, was spartan in its simplicity, but she had added little touches — a vase of freshly cut flowers, a few photographs, and stacks of illustrated art books — that gave it a homey, lived-in look. With Laura’s permission, Corporal Lindstrom switched on her tape recorder and placed it on the narrow built-in desk.

  “Everybody in the colony knows the story,” Laura began, “but it really came to a head tonight. Montrose fancies — fancied — himself a gourmet and, as usual, he had fortified himself against the Banff Centre cuisine with several stiff drinks in his room and brought a bottle of red wine to the table. In many ways, he was a pompous ass and the drinks didn’t make him any better. Or any more tactful. Montrose is — was, rather — a professor of English at Mount Hedley, a small college in Illinois. He wrote marginally successful plays on the side. Jeremy also writes plays. Appallingly bad plays. Jeremy is a dilettante, a professional art colonist who flits from one art colony to another. I have often thought that his plays are just an excuse to go on living the colony life. But Montrose took his plays very seriously, just like he took himself. About a year ago, poor Jeremy wrote an article for a literary magazine accusing Montrose of plagiarism, claiming that the plot of his latest play, The Hostile Act, had been lifted holus-bolus from the doctoral thesis of one of Montrose’s graduate students. It caused quite a sensation. Montrose issued a furious denial, and Jeremy unwisely pressured the student into launching a court action against Montrose for plagiarizing his work. The case fell apart in the courtroom when Montrose was able to prove that he had been working on the play long before the student enrolled in his class.”

  “And the shit hit the fan.”

  “I couldn’t have put it better myself,” said Laura after a startled pause. “And then it turned out the student’s claim had been motivated largely by revenge because Montrose had intervened and prevented him from obtaining an academic post. Ever since he arrived here last month, Montrose has been taunting Jeremy, and tonight he announced that his attorneys had commenced an action against Jeremy in California, where he lives when he’s not at an artist colony. The magazine and the student are also being sued, but Jeremy knows he’s the real target. The student is judgment proof because he’s broke, and the magazine limps along from one financial crisis to another. You know how it is with those literary magazines.”

  “No, I don’t. But you will tell me.”

  “They couldn’t even afford the premium for libel insurance. Poor old Jeremy is out there all by himself, twisting in the wind. He basically lives on a family inheritance, that’s what enables him to live the colony life. The lawsuit could wipe him out. His attorneys are trying to settle, but Jeremy knows Montrose would never settle. He wanted vindication and revenge in the full glare of a public trial.”

  “Jeremy Switzer seems to have confided a great deal to you.”

  Laura shrugged. “We’ve known each other for years. We both like to come here to Banff whenever we can. Besides,” she added somewhat ruefully, “I seem to be the kind of person that people like to tell their troubles to.”

  “I think it would be useful to have a talk with this Mr. Switzer. Is he on this floor?”

  “Two doors down the hall. I’ll show you.”

  The Mountie knocked on Jeremy’s door, softly at first so as not to disturb the other residents, then more forcefully. But there was no answer.

  “He could be in his studio.”

  “At this hour?”

  Laura grinned. “This place operates on a twenty-four hour basis.”

  The young constable came down the hall to tell them the medical examiner had arrived. The corporal turned to Laura. “Look, I hate to impose any further on you, but could I ask you to go down to the colony with Constable Peplinski,” she paused to introduce them, the Mountie touching the peak of his cap in an informal salute, “and see if Mr. Switzer is in his studio?”

  As they stepped outside into the cold night air and began walking down the cinder path that led to the artist colony’s studios, Laura learned that her intuitive guess had been correct — he was a farm boy. Constable Peplinski had grown up on a farm a few miles north of Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan. Banff was his first posting since graduating from the RCMP Depot in Regina, he informed Laura as they walked past the deserted music huts toward the little footbridge that separated the colony from the rest of the Centre.

  The Banff Centre for the Arts was a large, university-type institution, which offered post-graduate courses and instruction in music, painting, writing, dance, and drama. The famous “campus in the clou
ds” was located on Tunnel Mountain in the Canadian Rockies, overlooking the resort town of Banff, and attracted students from all over the world. The Leighton Artist Colony was an exciting offshoot of the Centre. It consisted of eight individual studios deep in a pine forest on the eastern edge of the campus. It was designed to be a working retreat for professional artists with a proven track record — a chance for them to escape the demands of everyday life and concentrate on their art, whether it be writing, painting, or composing music. Each artist was assigned one of the studios for the duration of his or her stay, which could be up to three months. The artists lived in the Centre’s residence, and took their meals with the students and staff, but did not take courses or attend lectures. They were there to create.

  “That’s the Hemingway Studio,” said Laura after they had crested the footbridge and approached the first building, a round hut with shingled sides.

  “I’ve read some of Ernest Hemingway.”

  Laura smiled in the shadows cast by the single light burning outside the round, shingled studio. “I know why you would think that. But it’s not the case here. The studios, there are eight of them out here in the woods, are named after the architects who designed them. Peter Hemingway was an Edmonton architect.”

  Laura wasn’t surprised to see that the lights were on in the boat studio. Erika was putting in brutally long hours in her determination to finish her book before her time in the colony was up.

  “That boat looks kinda out of place way up here in the mountains.”

  “Parks Canada thought so too,” Laura replied. “They claimed it was out of keeping with the mountain setting and fought like mad to keep it out. But they were overruled. The Centre has a lot of clout in this town.”

  “How did they get it in here with all the trees?”

  “Lowered it in by helicopter.” Laura pointed out a wooden frame building at the edge of the path. It was barely visible in the darkness. “That’s my studio.”