Murder as a Fine Art

by John Ballem

  “Hey, is that the case where the doc promised her a candy and the kid said, ‘You know what, Mom, he never did give me my candy’?” chuckled the fat detective.

  “That’s the one,” Karen confirmed.

  “Do you know what the case stands for, Al?” asked the inspector in some surprise.

  The detective looked deflated. “No. I just remember hearing that line and thinking it was a hoot. That’s all.”

  “In the sexual assault case against the doctor,” Karen went on, “the court held that the child couldn’t testify because she was too young to take the oath, or to appreciate the difference between telling the truth and lying. Without her testimony there was no evidence of the offence except for what she had told her mother. The doctor sure as hell wasn’t going to testify.”

  “What happened?” demanded Laura when Karen paused.

  “They let the mother testify as to what her daughter had told her. The court ruled that it was a spontaneous exclamation made by the daughter when she was under emotional stress and had no incentive to lie.”

  Inspector Gratton turned to Laura. “Could you repeat once more what Madrin said to you.”

  Without hesitation, Laura recounted every word of the exchange that had taken place between herself and Richard in the pool.

  “That does it. We’ve got the murdering bastard!” the exultant inspector exclaimed. “I think we can consider the case of the Banff murders closed.” As if to emphasize the point he shut his notebook with a decisive snap.

  “You think you know someone, and then you find you don’t know them at all,” mused Laura.

  “Were you in love with Richard?” asked Karen. She and Laura were standing beside Karen’s cruiser outside the administration building. The inspector and his detectives had gone back to the detachment office, where Jeremy was lodged in a holding cell.

  “No, I wasn’t. I was attracted to him, and I liked him a lot. He was wonderful company. But I was not in love with him. Thank God.”

  “Excuse me, Karen.” It was Constable Peplinski, who Laura would always think of as having just left the farm. “Professor Norrington’s prints are all over the manuscript we found in Madrin’s studio.”

  Karen glanced at Laura. “That confirms your theory. Not that it needed any more confirmation.”

  “I remember once telling Richard that he was a writer because he wrote,” said Laura. “And he didn’t write one word! How’s that for irony?” She managed a rueful little smile and said, “I’d like to see a copy of the manuscript.”

  When the constable confirmed that the fingerprint people were finished with it, Karen told him to make a copy for Laura. “I’m sure someone on the Centre’s office staff will make you a copy,” she said.

  “I know just the person,” he replied with a grin. “She works in the president’s office.”

  “It would seem the gallant constable has made a conquest,” smiled Laura as he hurried off.

  “He usually does. I’ll have the manuscript delivered to your studio if you like. It shouldn’t take long.”

  The press was in a feeding frenzy on the day following Richard’s grisly death and Jeremy’s arrest. But it wasn’t the multiple murders that excited their interest; it was the literary hoax. People love to see reputations shredded, to see the successful and famous brought down, thought Laura as she watched Norrington holding forth outside the Valentine Studio. The “No Trespassing” signs meant nothing to the voracious reporters. Laura had been on her way to her studio when she saw them, and she immediately melted into the shelter of the pines. From her place of concealment she heard Henry say into a forest of tape machines and microphones that the ghostwriter’s trade was an ancient and honourable one.

  Knowing that she would be a prime target for the media, Laura quietly retreated. She would thwart them by borrowing Kevin’s car and driving aimlessly along the highway.

  It was late afternoon when she returned, and when she gave the keys back to Kevin he told her that the horde of reporters had departed. “They really wanted to interview you,” he added, “but they couldn’t wait. They had to file their stories.”

  “Good. Then I guess it’s safe for me to go to my room.”

  As she stepped out of the elevator on the sixth floor of the residence she saw Norrington, wearing a bathrobe, coming down the corridor on his way to his daily session in the pool.

  “ ‘Fearful symmetry’, indeed,” she said as he stopped in front of her.

  “William Blake. English poet. 1757 to 1827.” replied Norrington. “From his poem The Tiger.”

  “And also from page 91 of Richard’s manuscript. Somehow I doubt that Richard was all that well acquainted with Blake’s poetry. But you are. You’ve written a paper about William Blake.”

  Norrington merely smiled.

  “Your fingerprints are all over the manuscript.”

  “They would be, wouldn’t they?” he replied blandly. “Where are you going with this, Laura? By now the whole world knows I wrote those books of Richard’s . For my sins,” he added with mock piety.

  “For a great deal of money, you mean. But I think there’s more to it than that.”

  Hands stuffed into the pockets of his robe, Norrington peered expectantly at Laura through his thick eyeglasses. “Pray continue,” he murmured in his best professorial tone.

  “I spent two hours with that manuscript last night. It’s first class, as I’m sure you know. Somewhere along the line, Henry, you lost your contempt for thrillers and began to really write.”

  “As always, you are very astute, Laura. I finally realized that there was nothing to be ashamed of in writing thrillers. Quite the contrary. And, as Richard never tired of pointing out, they outsold my other books by a wide margin. A very wide margin. This revelation, if you will forgive my using the term, occurred about midway through The Blue Agenda. The way in which sales are taking off is very flattering as well. I like to think the new book, of which you speak so kindly, shows me at the height of my powers. I am quite proud of it, in fact.”

  “So proud you decided to claim authorship.”

  “You continue to impress me, Laura. Might I ask what led you to the remarkable conclusion?”

  “You were preparing the ground by leaving a trail of literary clues. Like the quote from Blake. There are a number of other expressions that, if they were put under a microscope, as in a court case for example, could be identified only as yours.”

  “Such as?”

  “In the manuscript you describe a character as, ‘Measuring his words like medicine from an eye-dropper.’ A memorable description; it’s also used in your essay on the reclusive Israeli philosopher, Eli Kaplan. It’s in the library.”

  “All my writings are, I’m pleased to say.” Norrington gave a gleeful little chuckle. “If my claim of authorship had ended up in court, I would have called you as a witness.”

  “It never would have gotten that far, Henry.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Have you forgotten what happened to Erika?”

  For once, Norrington was speechless. He stared at Laura in mounting horror as the realization struck home.

  “You tipped her off, didn’t you?” asked Laura.

  “Erika I mean.”

  Norrington shook his head. His expression was returning to normal as he realized the danger was safely behind him. “No. Not directly, that is. I might have been a little careless, leaving manuscript pages lying around, and so on. But that’s all.”

  “What will this do to your career as tenured professor, much-quoted philosopher, and literary guru?”

  Norrington smiled complacently. “I have lived that life for many years. Now I find myself rather looking forward to my role as the creator of the best selling fictional hero, James Hunt, who is surely destined for a long and successful career in bookstores and on television screens.”

  The message light on Laura’s telephone was blinking when she entered her room. The switchboard told her
there was a message to call Geoff Hamilton in New York. He had left the number of both his hotel and his office. Since New York was two hours ahead, Laura tried the hotel first, but Geoff wasn’t in his room. She reached him at his office.

  “My God, Laura, what’s been going on up there?”

  “How much do you know?”

  “Only what I can glean from the press reports. It’s had a fair bit of coverage here, because so many of the players are American. Including yourself. And that business of Norrington writing Madrin’s books is a hell of a story. I gather you were the one who solved the case?”

  “I think I was more a catalyst than anything else. Does it help now that you know the identity of Erika’s killer?”

  “Yes. It does. I can begin to come to terms with what’s happened.” He paused and Laura could picture him shaking his head. “I can see that Switzer character doing what he did, but Richard Madrin! To think the guy had Erika killed just so people wouldn’t find out he didn’t write those books of his.”

  “I know. I didn’t tumble on to that until the very end. Just before he tried to kill me. He must have been in an absolute state knowing that Erika was going to expose his secret to the world. Knowing Erika as he did, he would have realized that he couldn’t buy her silence. That book and her scholastic reputation were much more important to her than money.”

  “You’re absolutely right. Erika liked nice things, particularly clothes, but money never was a high priority for her. Just so she had enough to live on, buy a new outfit every so often, and do her research and writing.”

  “Exposure would make Richard a laughing stock. Not a criminal. Just a vain, foolish cheat. The very opposite of the image he portrayed to the world. He must have seen Jeremy’s plan as the only way out of an intolerable situation.”

  “The poor man,” muttered Geoff with bitter irony. After another pause, he continued, this time with a hint of excitement in his voice. “I had a phone call earlier today. From a professor of zoology at Columbia University. He and Erika were close. In fact, they had been lovers, but that was over sometime before I met her. They remained friends, and he and I get along just fine. He’s spent the past month or so in the wilds of Brunei researching something — orangutans probably. Zoologists will never leave those poor animals in peace. Anyway, he’s been completely out of touch, didn’t know anything about what happened to Erika until he got back to the university and a colleague told him that she had been killed in a fire ‘somewhere up in Canada.’ It seems that before she left, the professor installed a remote access application on her computer which gave her the ability to logon to his local network server. By using his user ID and password, she could upload her material to his secure drive as back-up files.”

  “Are you telling me Erika’s book is in this professor’s computer in New York?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m telling you. When Ed — his name’s Ed Godwin — booted his computer and called up the directory, he found twenty-four of her files. So she must have uploaded the chapters she had written before going up there, as well as what she wrote at the Centre. If there are twenty-four chapters the book must be pretty complete, don’t you think?”

  “I know she was awfully close. She was really driving herself the last couple of weeks.”

  “The last file was time stamped 1:26 a.m. on the morning of the fire. I asked Ed to read it. Apparently it’s very long, so he skimmed through it and gave me the gist of it. It’s the chapter that has all that business about Norrington writing Richard’s books. According to Ed, her analysis is very convincing.”

  “So Erika’s book survived. Will it be published?”

  “Without question. It’s the last and best thing I can do for her. One of New York’s leading literary agencies is a client of my law firm, and I will put them on it. If it needs some editing, we’ll hire an editor. With all the publicity about the murders, and that business about the professor being a ghostwriter, I expect publishers will be clamouring for it.”

  “Having her book published would have thrilled Erika. It’s what she wanted more than anything else.”

  “I know. It’ll be her dream come true.”

  And Richard’s worst nightmare, thought Laura as she rang off. The humiliating tale of how he had bought the fame he couldn’t achieve on his own would live on between the covers of a book.

  Unable to sleep, Laura got out of bed and dressed in her painting clothes. Using her flashlight, she walked through the darkness to her studio. Her paintings sprang to vivid life when she switched on the lights. They were good. The best she had ever done. Pure and luminous, they stood apart from the human condition, with its greed and deadly vanity. Looking at them brought Laura a measure of serenity and peace. Placing a blank canvas on an easel, she picked up her palette and brush and began to paint.