Murder as a Fine Art Read Online Free Page B

libel?”
    â€œSo 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 athis beard, as if to distract his thoughts by the self-inflicted discomfort.
    â€œYou weren’t in your room last night. At least not at the time it happened.”
    â€œNo, 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.”
    â€œAnd where was that?” Karen picked up her pen.
    â€œOh, I can’t tell you that! It wouldn’t be fair. My lover has a reputation to protect.”
    â€œYou’re saying you were with someone last night?”
    â€œIt was heavenly. The start of a wonderful new relationship.”
    â€œWith who?”
    â€œI’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.”
    â€œIt’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.”
    â€œI’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?”
    â€œDefinitely 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.”
    â€œI’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