Masquerade

by William Kienzle

  “Not NFL. Canadian League.”

  “Oh . . .uh . . .well, nice meeting you, Guido.”

  “Same here.”

  And that was that. Taliafero remained at his post, in an “at ease” stance. Koesler felt awkward trying to continue this monosyllabic conversation; he moved off to a vantage whence he could more easily observe the others. As their drinks were poured, he noted their choices: Janet, Amaretto; Marie, Benedictine; Martha, Galliano; Benbow, E & J Brandy; Winer, Frangelico; Augustine, Chartreuse and then Grand Marnier; Krieg, Frangelico.

  Neither the drinks nor the momentary lull in hostilities appeared to have healed the situation. Janet and Marie were off by themselves. Benbow, Winer, and Augustine seemed to have found some common ground; at least they were talking among themselves. Augustine gave some indication that he was not feeling all that well. Martha was talking to Krieg. Whatever her husband’s problem with the publisher, Martha did not seem to share it.

  Krieg, catching sight of Koesler standing by himself, motioned him over. Koesler joined him and Martha.

  “So, Father,” said Krieg, “did you know that Martha here is in real estate? Very successfully, too.”

  “No, I had no idea.”

  “Not only that,” Krieg continued, “but she’s been thinking of doing some writing. She’s been telling me some of her ideas. Promising. Very promising.”

  “Reverend Krieg has been most encouraging,” Martha said. “It certainly motivates a person when a publisher says he’s willing to read your work. I don’t think I would consider taking time from my schedule to write unless I were sure the completed version would be read. But now . . .”

  “Praise God!” Krieg said.

  “You’re thinking of writing for P.G. Press?” Koesler asked Martha.

  “At least tentatively,” Martha said.

  “Have you ever read any of the books the Reverend’s house publishes?” Koesler asked.

  “Not yet. But I surely will. First chance I get.”

  Lady, thought Koesler, are you in for a surprise.

  At that point, Sister Janet spoke loudly. “If I may have your attention, everyone . . .” She got it. “According to our schedule, those of you who will be conducting seminars tomorrow—namely, Fathers Benbow and Augustine, Rabbi Winer and Sister Marie—should go to your conference rooms on the second floor at this time. The locations are in the folders you will find”—she gestured—“on the table near the door. There will be facilitators in the conference rooms to brief you on the students you may expect tomorrow.

  “Martha Benbow, Father Koesler, and I are to go to the Denk Chapman room here on the first floor.” She addressed the two named directly. “There are some last-minute details that I could use your help with.

  “Reverend Krieg, your conference room is not quite ready. So, if you would, please, remain here in the faculty dining room for a brief while longer. One of our facilitators will come to get you in just a short while.

  “Shall we go now?”

  Koesler noticed Krieg nodding to Guido Taliafero. The guard acknowledged the signal, then left the dining room, disappearing in the direction of the building’s front door.

  Glasses were deposited on table, folders located, and the group began to disperse.

  As Koesler left the dining room, he saw Taliafero’s massive form silhouetted against the front door. Beyond that, just outside the entrance, was a white stretch limo, standing in what Koesler knew was a no-parking zone.

  Indicating the limousine-in-violation, Koesler asked, “Krieg’s?”

  “Yes.” Janet sighed. “I’m afraid so.”

  The man has ways of impressing others, thought Koesler, with his celebrity, his wealth, his importance. His clothing—the finest cut; the most expensive material. Guido Taliafero—a lackey, present whenever needed; performs tasks, even leaves, with only the slightest signal to indicate the command. The liquor—the finest labels in more than adequate supply. And now, a stretch limo—two people in a vehicle easily large enough for an entire wedding party. What next, Koesler wondered.

  The trio walked along the corridor. As they entered the Denk Chapman room, Martha Benbow spoke. “You know,” she confided, “I thought Reverend Krieg rather charming.”

  “But then,” Koesler said, “you really don’t know much about the man, do you?”

  “You mean watching his program on TV, or reading any of his publications.” She was a bit defensive. “No, I don’t know all that much about him.”

  “Judging from the reaction of the others, to know him is not necessarily to love him.” Koesler wondered how much Martha’s opinion of Krieg was predicated upon his professed interest in publishing her work sight unseen. “But I must admit that I can’t quite fathom the intensity of feeling I sensed in the dining room. Do you have any clue?”

  She thought for a moment. “No, I can’t say I have. But I must admit I’m troubled by it. It’s not like David to think or speak that way. I mean, I’ve seen him in ecumenical and like groups. He’s always been the very model of a most understanding Christian gentleman. The type whose bottom line is, ‘Well, I guess we agree to disagree.’” Her brow furrowed further. “But not with Reverend Krieg.

  “I must agree with you, Father Koesler. It’s not only David; the others seem to manifest the same inexplicable animosity toward the Reverend Krieg. I simply don’t understand it. And it troubles me.”

  A sudden roaring clap resounded.

  “Good God!” Martha exclaimed. “What was that?”

  “An automobile?” Koesler hoped it was, but knew it wasn’t. “A backfire?”

  “A gun!” Sister Janet shuddered. “Gunfire! It’s on this floor! The dining room!”

  They turned and raced back toward the dining room.

  It was the dining room, no doubt about that; high-pitched screams were emanating from within.

  As Janet, Martha, and Koesler entered the room, a hysterical waitress was being calmed by another waitress.

  Koesler saw the body immediately. Crumpled on the floor, it looked like a pile of laundry that had been carelessly dropped. That is, if you could believe a laundry bag of expensive pin-striped blue silk.

  In seconds the first three were joined by Benbow and Winer and then Marie, who dashed breathlessly into the room. She gasped at the sight of the inert figure. Almost prayerfully, she breathed, “Oh, my God!”

  Koesler was first to approach the body. Krieg’s white-on-white shirt was now almost completely red. Koesler could discern what appeared to be a small dark hole on the upper chest. Blood was trickling from Krieg’s mouth and nostrils. The priest stood frozen.

  Not so Janet. Quickly she knelt next to Krieg and placed her fingers against his carotid artery. She looked up at the others and said, wonderingly, “He’s dead! My God, he’s dead!”

  At that moment, a young woman burst into the dining room. “It’s Father Augustine,” she gasped. “He’s dead!”

  7

  “She couldn’t help it; she thought he was dead,” Sister Janet said.

  It had been only about fifteen minutes since seemingly everyone in the building had heard the single shot. Almost simultaneously, the student facilitator assigned to Father Augustine had entered his classroom to find him slumped in a chair, mouth hanging open grotesquely, face ashen. It had all happened so quickly, she assumed he’d had a heart attack. She thought he was dead.

  She ran to the dining room and blurted out her news before she realized that something catastrophic had happened here also.

  Coming only moments after Krieg had been pronounced dead, the announcement brought a second wave of shock to the participants. Everyone followed the all-but-hysterical facilitator upstairs to the classroom to see if Augustine was beyond all possible aid.

  They found Augustine just as the young woman had described him. They were as shocked as she had been.

  Then Augustine snored. One outrageously loud snore.

  They roused him. He became extremely sick at
his stomach. They had no way of knowing that between the drinks in his room and the freewheeling mixture of drinks he’d had before and after dinner, he had ingested a significant amount of alcohol.

  All they really knew was that, for one reason or another, he was not well.

  Several students who appeared on the scene volunteered to mop up, get Father to his room, and summon a doctor.

  Unsure what to do next and bewildered by all that had happened in so brief a time, the room’s other occupants moved, or, rather, were led by Sister Janet, into an adjoining classroom. None seemed eager to return to the scene in the dining room. Some sat, some stood; all were stunned.

  Janet was first to speak. “We were together,” she said. “Father Koesler, Martha, and I were together when we heard the shot.”

  Her statement hung in the ensuing silence. Evidently she intended to exclude the three of them from any possible suspicion of involvement in the death of Klaus Krieg.

  Sister Marie was the first to grasp her implication. “What did you mean by that?” she demanded, obviously appalled.

  “Nothing.” Janet was apologetic. “Only that the three of us were together when it happened.”

  “So none of you could have done it!” Marie charged.

  “Well, yes: None of us could have done it.”

  “Meaning one of us did do it?” Clearly, Benbow was angered.

  “Oh, David, I’m sure the Sister didn’t mean to imply—”

  “On the contrary, Mrs. Benbow, I’m afraid Sister Janet meant precisely that,” interrupted Winer.

  “Janet,” said Marie, “how could you!”

  “Marie, I’m not accusing anyone,” Janet protested. “How could I? After all, we are religious people. But somebody shot Reverend Krieg. And whoever it was, it couldn’t have been Father Koesler, Martha, or me. We were together.”

  “So you have an alibi . . .” Benbow was becoming angrier.

  “Just a minute, Father Benbow,” said Winer, “the Sister has a point.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “Think,” said Winer. “We, the four of us—” He interrupted himself: “Make that the three of us; Augustine is out of this entirely since he was unconscious at the time of the shooting.” He returned to his premise, “—we were united by two things: We are writers and we hated Klaus Krieg.”

  “Hate might be too strong a word,” Marie protested.

  Winer shook his head. “I hesitated initially to use the word, Sister,” he said. “As Sister Janet noted, we are people given to religion and hatred should not be part of our makeup—”

  “But it is,” Benbow cut in. “It just flat out is. Think back on our conversation earlier this evening. Think of what each of us had to say about Krieg. It wasn’t a case of ‘not a kind word was said’; we were . . . taken in by an unscrupulous charlatan and we were angry about it. I can’t see that ‘hatred’ is too strong a word for how we felt about Klaus Krieg.”

  “You actually think that one of us killed him?” Marie was incredulous.

  Benbow responded simply. “Somebody did.”

  “Somebody who had a motive,” Janet added.

  “I guess we all had that,” Benbow said.

  “This is preposterous,” Martha Benbow cut in. “Perhaps—just perhaps—all of you had reason to dislike the man. But anger and murder are not the same. All of us are angry at people from time to time. That’s no more than human. We get angry all day long at checkout clerks, at other drivers, at parking, at bureaucracies, at government. We get angry at relatives, coworkers, spouses. Some of this anger comes and goes momentarily. Some of it lasts a lifetime. But just because we get angry with people doesn’t mean we’re going to kill them. Good heavens!”

  “That’s all very true, Mrs. Benbow,” said Winer. “But there is one indisputable fact that must be faced: Klaus Krieg is dead. In all truth, I must confess I am not sorry. God forgive me, but I am almost relieved. I never thought I would be completely unmoved by another person’s death, but I am. I’ll say it, and I think in our hearts we will not deny it: The world is a better place without Klaus Krieg.”

  “And somebody killed him,” Benbow said.

  “And somebody killed him,” Winer repeated. “Not likely one of the student waitresses or one of the facilitators. Then, who?”

  “An outsider,” Martha suggested. “Somebody who hated him and was physically and emotionally capable of killing him. That must be it! Surely not one of you. Someone none of us knows.”

  “I think not,” Sister Janet said. “Since this is the only building on campus in use just now until the workshop students check in, we were able to pull in the security guards, sort of circle the wagons more closely. Actually, this building is quite secure now. I don’t think an outsider could have gotten through without being detected.”

  “That pretty much—inevitably—brings us back to us, doesn’t it?” Benbow said.

  “The three of us,” Marie said. She seemed almost in a trance. As if this were a stage production and she were in the audience instead of being one of the participants. “Father Augustine was unconscious—or so it seems.” She was unwilling to dismiss any possibility no matter how remote. “And Martha, Janet, and Father Koesler were together. None of them could have returned to the dining area without the others knowing it. That leaves Rabbi Winer, Father Benbow, and . . . me.”

  Silence.

  Everyone knew what the next consideration must be, but no one wanted to consider it.

  Finally, Benbow enunciated it. “Given we had motive, which of us had the opportunity?”

  The three self-consciously considered each other.

  Benbow sighed. “Okay, I’ll begin. I didn’t see either of you after we left the dining room until we returned after he’d been killed.”

  “And,” Winer said, “I didn’t see either of you.”

  “This is ridiculous,” Marie said, “but I did see Fathers Benbow and Augustine, though only briefly.”

  “All right then,” Benbow said, “where were we? We were all headed for the same general location. How did we get separated? Why didn’t we, except for Sister here, see each other? As far as I’m concerned, I started up the front staircase to the second floor. Father Augustine was with me, but he was walking sort of unsteadily, weaving a bit. I asked him if he needed any help, but he just shook his head and mumbled something. I didn’t realize he was not well. So I walked ahead of him. Lost him at the turn of the staircase. Then I went to my classroom.”

  “Was the facilitator there?” Winer asked.

  “What kind of question is that?” Benbow bridled.

  “A very ordinary sort of question,” Winer replied gently, spreading his hands to signify its innocence. “If there was anyone in your classroom, you would have a witness to testify that you were with someone else when the shot was fired.”

  “Well . . . well . . . in fact there wasn’t anyone else in the classroom,” Benbow stated. “But there’s nothing odd about that. The facilitator wasn’t in Augustine’s room when he got there. And he must have arrived there after I got to my room: I left him staggering around behind me on the staircase. His facilitator didn’t get to his room until just about the moment the gun was fired. She found him unconscious—or so it seemed.

  “So there was no one in my room to provide an alibi: so what?” His tone was challenging.

  “So nothing,” Winer said. “It’s a natural consideration to want to know where everyone was at the time of a crime.”

  There was an awkward pause.

  Then Sister Marie spoke. “The reason neither of you saw me was that I took the elevator. I saw Father Benbow and Father Augustine start up the stairs. It was as Father Benbow said: Father Augustine was quite unsteady. I thought of offering to help him, but I knew that Father Benbow would be more capable of helping him in every way . . . you know, man to man.

  “I had to wait for the elevator for quite a few moments; it is very slow.” She looked to Janet for corroboration.
/>   Janet nodded vigorously.

  Marie continued. “Finally, when the elevator arrived, I got on alone. The door had just opened at the second floor when I heard the shot. I immediately pushed the first-floor button. When I got off the elevator, I heard the commotion in the dining area and I hurried there. That’s why I was the last to arrive. But I didn’t see anybody from the time the two men took the stairs until I returned to the dining room. I have no way of knowing whether Father Benbow continued up the stairs or doubled back.”

  “That, Sister, is a cheap shot!” Father Benbow was nearly shouting. “What right have you to suggest that things did not happen exactly as I described them? What right have you to imply that I might be the killer?”

  “I didn’t—”

  “For that matter,” Benbow cut in, “how do we know you actually took that elevator? When I turned to go up the stairs, I saw you standing at the elevator. I didn’t see you get on the elevator. How do we know you actually took the elevator? You were alone, as you yourself testified. What if you—”

  “I beg your pardon, sir!” Marie shot back.

  “Please,” Sister Janet broke in, “before this goes too far, let’s hear from Rabbi Winer.”

  “As it so happens,” Winer began, “after we left the dining room, I was going to go up to the classroom, but I stopped first to go into the kitchen and compliment the cooks on the meal.”

  “But I saw you,” Benbow said. “I watched you at dinner. You hardly touched your food. Why would you compliment a cook for a meal you didn’t eat?”

  “You presume too much.” Winer was teaching, which is what a rabbi does, and his tone indicated just that. “You presume because someone does not eat, the food is not well prepared. It is a presumption against fact. There can be many reasons a person does not eat.

  “In any case,” the rabbi returned to his narrative, “I stopped in the kitchen to compliment the cooks. They were so pleased, that nothing would do but that I meet everyone in that very well-kept kitchen.

  “And that,” he smiled, “is where I was when the shot was fired.”

  Benbow was taken aback. “You mean you had all those witnesses?”