Murder as a Fine Art Read online

  “That last stunt was more like a magician’s trick than performance art,” remarked Richard. He and Laura had decided there was no point in leaving their seats and fighting the crush of people. Jeremy had gone off in search of a washroom.

  “The two have a lot in common,” agreed Laura, absently, her mind on the way Mrs. Benson had stalked out of the theatre. “Performance art is a pretty elastic concept. And getting more so all the time. It’s changed a lot since the ‘70s when it seemed to be mostly people hitting themselves with raw meat.”

  She paused, then said with a frown, “I’m worried, Richard. The Centre may have lost that grant. The Bensons are nice but they’re very conventional and straight-laced. I can’t bear the thought of this place having to close.”

  “It won’t come to that. The Centre is too important. The government couldn’t afford the political backlash if they let it go under.” He twisted around in his seat. “The cabinet minister is still here. He and Henry seem to be really hitting it off.”

  “Do you know Mr. Moore?”

  “Not really. Alec introduced me when I ran into them on their way to dinner.”

  A recorded announcement warned the audience that the play would resume in three minutes. Then John Smith’s voice testily announced a correction, saying it was a “revelation”, not a “play”.

  “There was a hell of a line-up, but I made it.” Jeremy said, sliding into his seat beside Laura. “I wonder what surprises John Smith has for us now?”

  The curtain rose on a stage that was completely dark. Then a soft spotlight picked out a life-size, fibre-glass horse painted a light beige.

  “‘Behold a pale horse, and its rider’s name was Death’,” Laura said, remembering the famous passage from the Book of Revelation.

  “‘... and Hades followed him’,” Richard surprised her by finishing the quote.

  A trumpet sounded off stage and a star fell out of the darkness.

  “‘The name of the star is Wormwood,’” murmured Laura and this time Richard merely nodded.

  A gasp went up when a shower of stars, almost blinding in their light, cascaded down from the flies.

  “It won’t be long now,” whispered Laura. “The dragon’s tail has swept down the stars of heaven.”

  A tongue of flame shot out from centre left stage and was quickly extinguished, to be followed by another and another. The smell of kerosene began to permeate the air.

  “Reminds me of the fire-eaters of Jamaica,” Richard whispered.

  The shape of a dragon slowly materialized out of the gloom. With a sudden roar, a flame shot out of its mouth, bringing another gasp from the now rapt audience.

  “Jesus,” mutter Richard. “Do you suppose there’s anybody inside that contraption?”

  “It’s bound to be John Smith,” Laura whispered back.

  “It is,” Jeremy told them. “He’s wearing an asbestos mask.”

  There was movement on the stage and the light gradually intensified to reveal a tableau with a half-naked Charlene kneeling and holding one of the sacred urns over her head, while four male dancers, also bare from the waist up, stood motionless on the stage. They sprang to life when drums began to roll. Their bare feet slapped the floor as they circled around the kneeling Charlene. Bowing reverently, the first dancer removed the cover from the urn, dipped his torch in the kerosene and lit it from the flame shooting out of the dragon’s mouth. In turn, each of the others did the same. Torches held high, they paraded around the dragon as the drums faded into the background to be superseded by a high-pitched wailing of human voices. “Voices of the damned,” Laura muttered to herself as the eerie wailing rose and fell.

  Another trumpet sounded, and Desiré stood before the red dragon. In the dim, smoky light it was impossible to be sure, but she seemed to be totally naked. Eyeing the taut lines of her body, Laura whispered, “He’s departing from the biblical script. She’s supposed to be about to bear a child.”

  “Not with that figure,” murmured Richard appreciatively.

  The mounting sexual tension in the theatre had become palpable, a tangible thing that seemed to be an integral part of the performance itself. John Smith had certainly succeeded in capturing the attention of the audience, but maybe not in the way he intended. Or wanted. With a clash of wooden swords, the dancers began an elaborately choreographed battle. Their torches were beginning to smoke as the kerosene burned off. Desiré danced among them while they fought their ritualistic duels. For the first time, the dragon moved. Lumbering ponderously across the stage like a reptilian flamethrower, he pointed his flame at each of the duelling dancers in turn. They threw up their arms in pretended agony, fell writhing to the floor, and lay still. The flame from the dragon’s mouth was beginning to subside.

  Desiré fluttered her hands in the dragon’s direction, as if to reassure it, then deftly took the urn from Charlene’s outstretched hands and danced away with it. She teased the dragon, first holding the urn out to him, then drawing it back. The stage reeked of kerosene and in the front rows members of the audience shifted in their seats and looked at each other nervously. The dragon seemed to be collapsing into itself as the flame flickered and nearly went out. Desiré made a spectacular leaping circle around the stage, brushing close to the darkened wings. The dragon held out his arms imploringly and she rushed toward him, holding out the urn. He seized it from her and held it up, tilting it as if to drink from the spout.

  Horrified cries of “No!”, “No!”, “Oh, my God!” rang out. The dragon, flame trickling from its mouth, turned to took down at the audience as if pondering their advice. Women shrieked and others covered their eyes as he tilted the urn and a stream of liquid arced out from the spout. With an explosive whoosh, the paper-mâché costume ignited and John Smith was enveloped in flames. The flames reached out for Desiré, but she was saved by not having a costume to catch on fire, and jumped back out of the way.

  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.

&n
bsp; 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.”

  chapter twenty

  The 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.