For the Sake of Elena

by Elizabeth George

  “Sarah’d never give Flame to just anyone,” he said. “And him not even on his lead. I knew there was something wrong the minute I saw that, didn’t I, Mr. Jeffries?”

  In other circumstances, Mr. Davies’ continued presence might have been irksome to Lynley. But as it was, the man was a godsend, for Sarah Gordon’s dog knew him, recognised his voice, and was willing to go with him even when his owner was carried out of the house, swathed in temporary bandages, with a pressure pack applied to stop arterial bleeding.

  “I’ll take the cat as well,” Mr. Davies said as he shuffled down the drive with Flame in tow. “Not much for cats, Mr. Jeffries and I, but we won’t want to see the poor thing go begging for somewhere to lodge till Sarah comes home.” He gazed uneasily in the direction of her house where several members of the firearms unit stood talking together. “She’s coming home, Sarah is, isn’t she? She’ll be all right?”

  “She’ll be all right.” But she’d taken the shot straight on in her right arm, and from the look the ambulance attendants had given the extent of the damage, Lynley wondered how all right would be defined. He walked back to the house.

  From the studio, he could hear the sound of Sergeant Havers’ sharp questions and Anthony Weaver’s deadened responses. He could hear the crime-scene team gathering evidence. A cupboard closed and St. James said to Superintendent Sheehan: “This is the muller.” But Lynley didn’t join them.

  Instead, he went into the sitting room and studied a few of the pieces of Sarah Gordon’s work that hung on the walls: five young blacks—three crouched, two standing—round a doorway in one of London’s most disastrous tower blocks; an old chestnut seller hawking his product outside the underground in Leicester Square as well-furred and well-garbed theatre-goers passed him by; a miner and his wife in the kitchen of their tumbledown Welsh cottage.

  Some artists, he knew, make their work a mere showcase for a clever technique in which little is risked and less is communicated. Some artists merely become experts in their medium, working clay or stone or wood or paint as proficiently and effortlessly as an ordinary craftsman. And some artists try to make something out of nothing, order out of chaos, demanding of themselves that they ably communicate structure and composition, colour and balance, and that each piece they create serve to communicate a predetermined issue as well. A piece of art asks people to stop and look in a world of moving images. If people take the time to pause before canvas, bronze, glass, or wood, a worthy effort is one which does something more than act as nonverbal panegyric to the talents of its creator. It doesn’t call for notice. It calls for thought.

  Sarah Gordon, he saw, was that kind of artist. She had played her passions out on canvas and stone. It was only when she had tried to play them out in life that she had failed.

  “Inspector?” Sergeant Havers entered the room.

  With his eyes on the painting of Pakistani children, he said, “I don’t know if he really intended to shoot her, Barbara. He was threatening her, yes. But the gun may well have gone off accidentally. I’ll have to say that in court.”

  “It won’t look pretty for him no matter what you say.”

  “His culpability is moot. All he needs is a decent lawyer and public sympathy.”

  “Perhaps. But you did the best that you could.” She extended her hand. In it she held a folded piece of white paper. “One of Sheehan’s men found a shotgun in the boot of her car. And Weaver, he had this thing with him. He wouldn’t talk about it, though.”

  Lynley took the paper from her and unfolded it to see a sketch, a beautifully rendered tiger pulling down a unicorn, the unicorn’s mouth opened in a soundless scream of terror and pain.

  Havers went on. “All he said was that he found it in an envelope in his rooms at the college when he went by yesterday to talk to Adam Jenn. What do you make of it, sir? I remember that Elena had posters of unicorns all over her walls. But the tiger? I don’t get it.”

  Lynley returned the paper to her. “It’s a tigress,” he said and finally understood why Sarah Gordon had reacted to his mention of Whistler on the first day they had spoken to her. It wasn’t about John Ruskin’s criticism, nor was it about art or painting the night or the fog. It was because of a woman who had been the artist’s mistress, the unnamed milliner he had called La Tigresse. “She was telling him that she’d murdered his daughter.”

  Havers’ jaw dropped. She snapped it closed. “But why?”

  “It was the only way to complete the circle of ruin they’d inflicted on each other. He destroyed her creation and her ability to create. She knew he’d done so. She wanted him to know that she’d destroyed his.”

  23

  Justine met him at the front door. He’d only inserted his key into the lock when she opened it for him. She was, he saw, still dressed for her working day, and although she had worn the black suit and pearl grey blouse for at least thirteen hours now, they remained unwrinkled. She might have just put them on.

  She looked beyond him to the receding lights of the panda car in the drive. “Where have you been?” she asked. “Where’s the Citroën? Anthony, where are your glasses?”

  She followed him to his study and stood in the doorway while he rooted through his desk for an old pair of horn-rimmed spectacles that he hadn’t used in years. His Woody Allen specs, Elena had called them. You look like a clod with those on, Dad. He hadn’t worn them again.

  He looked up at the window in whose reflection he could see himself and his wife behind him. She was a lovely woman. For the ten years of their marriage, she had asked for little enough from him, only that he love her, only that he be with her. And in return she had created this home, into it she had welcomed his colleagues. She had given him support, she had believed in his career, she had been perfectly loyal. But she had not been able to give him that ineffable connection that exists between people when their souls are one.

  As long as they’d had a mutual goal towards which they were working—scouting round for a house, painting and decorating, purchasing furniture, looking at cars, design ing a garden—they’d existed quite securely within the illusion of their ideal marriage. He had even thought: I’ve got a happy marriage this time round. It’s regenerative, devoted, committed, tender, loving, and strong. We’re even the same astrological sign, Gemini, the twins. It’s as if we were meant for each other from birth.

  But when the superficial commonalities had disappeared—when the house had been purchased and furnished to perfection, when the gardens had been planted and the sleek French cars sat shining in the garage—he had found himself left with an indefinable emptiness and a sense of vague, uneasy incompletion. He wanted something more.

  It’s the absence of an outlet for creativity, he had thought. I’ve spent more than twenty years of my life in dusty academia, writing, giving lectures, meeting students, climbing up. It’s time to broaden my horizons and stretch my experience.

  As in everything else, she had supported him in this. She did not join him—she had no abiding interest in the arts—but she admired his sketches, she mounted and framed his watercolours, and she clipped out of the local newspaper the announcement of the class that Sarah Gordon would teach. This is something you might like to take, darling, she had told him. I’ve never heard of her myself, but the paper says she’s quite an astounding talent. Wouldn’t it be wonderful for you to get to know a real artist?

  That, he felt, was the greatest of the ironies. That Justine should have been the instrument of their acquaintance. But then, her having made him aware of Sarah Gordon’s presence in Grantchester in the first place actually completed the circle of the story in a well-balanced fashion. Justine, after all, was uniquely responsible for the final set of events in this obscene tragedy, so it was only appropriate that she also would have been instrumental in setting in motion the initial events that began with a life-drawing class in Sarah Gordon’s studio.

  If it’s over between you, get rid of the painting, Justine had said. Destroy it. Ge
t it out of my life. Get her out of my life.

  But it hadn’t been enough when he defaced it with oils. Only its complete destruction would appease Justine’s anger and assuage the pain of his infidelity. And at only one time, in only one place, could this act of destruction be carried out in order to convince his wife of the sincerity with which he was putting an end to his affair with Sarah. So three times he had driven the knife through the canvas as Justine looked on. In the end, however, he’d been unable to bring himself to leave the ruined painting behind.

  If she’d only been what I needed in the first place, none of this would have happened, he thought. If she’d only been willing to open her heart, if she’d got in touch with her spirit, if creating meant more to her than merely possessing, if she’d done more than just listen and appear sympathetic, if she’d had something to say about herself, about life, if she’d tried to understand me at the deepest level of who and what I am…

  “Where’s the Citroën, Anthony?” Justine repeated. “Where are your glasses? Where on earth have you been? It’s after nine o’clock.”

  “Where’s Glyn?” he asked.

  “Having a bath. And using most of the hot water in the house to do it.”

  “She’ll be gone tomorrow afternoon. I’d think you could manage to put up with her that much longer. After all—”

  “Yes. I know. She’s lost her daughter. She’s been crushed and devastated and I ought to be able to overlook everything she does—and every rotten thing she says—because of that fact. Well, I won’t buy it. And you’re a fool if you do.”

  “Then I suppose I’m a fool.” He turned from the window. “But that’s something you’ve used to your advantage more than once, isn’t it?”

  A spot of deep ruby appeared on each of her cheeks. “We’re husband and wife. We made a commitment. We made vows in a church. At least I did. And I’ve never broken them. I wasn’t the one—”

  “All right,” he said. “I know.” The room was too warm. He needed to take off his coat. He couldn’t summon the will to do so.

  She said, “Where have you been? What have you done with the car?”

  “It’s at the police station. They wouldn’t allow me to drive it home.”

  “They…The police? What’s happened? What’s going on?”

  “Nothing. Not any longer at least.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” She seemed to grow taller as some sort of realisation dawned upon her. Under the fine material of her suit, he could imagine her muscles ripple and coil. “You’ve been with her again. I can see it in your face. You promised me, Anthony. Anthony, you swore to me. You said it was over.”

  “It is. Believe me.” He left the study and headed for the sitting room. He heard the sound of her high heels tapping along behind him.

  “Then what…Have you been in an accident? Have you wrecked the car? Are you hurt in some way?”

  Hurt, an accident. There could be no greater truth. He wanted to chuckle at the grim, gallows humour. She would always assume that he was victim, not avenger. She couldn’t conceive that he might take matters into his own hands for once. She couldn’t conceive that he might finally act at his own behest, without regard for opinion or condemnation any longer, because he believed it was right to do so. And why should she, really? When had he ever acted on his own before? Other than to walk out on Glyn and he’d paid for that decision for the last fifteen years.

  “Anthony, answer me. What’s happened to you today?”

  “I finished things. Finally.” He went into the sitting room.

  “Anthony…”

  He’d once thought the still lifes hanging above the sofa represented his very best work. Paint something that we can hang in the sitting room, darling. Use colours that match. He had done so. Apricots and poppies. One could tell what they were at a single glance. And isn’t that what true art is all about? An accurate duplication of reality?

  He’d taken them off the wall and carted them proudly to show her on the first night of class. No matter that it was life drawing she was teaching, he wanted her to know from the very start that he was a cut above all the rest, raw talent just waiting for someone to mould him into the next Manet.

  She’d surprised him from the first. Perched on a stool in the corner of her studio, she began by offering no instruction at all. Instead, she talked. She hooked her feet round the rungs of the stool, put her elbows on her thoroughly paint-spattered knees, cupped her face in her hands so that her hair spilled through her fingers, and talked. At her side stood an easel holding an unfinished canvas, depicting a man sheltering a tousle-haired little girl. She never pointed to it as she spoke. It was clear that she expected they would make the connection.

  “You’re not here to learn how to put paint on canvas,” she had said to the group. There were six of them: three elderly women in smocks and brogues, the wife of an American serviceman with time on her hands, a twelve-year-old Greek girl whose father was spending a year as a guest lecturer at the University, and himself. He knew at once that he was the serious student among them. She seemed to be speaking directly to him.

  “Any fool can make splatters and call it art,” she had said. “That’s not what this course is all about. You’re here to put part of yourself on canvas, to reveal who you are through your composition, your choice of colour, your sense of balance. The struggle is to know what’s been done before and to push beyond it. The job is to select an image but to paint a concept. I can give you techniques and methods, but whatever you produce ultimately has to come from your self if you want to call it art. And—” She smiled. It was an odd, bright smile, completely without self-conscious affectation. She couldn’t have known that it wrinkled her nose in an unattractive fashion. But if she did know, she probably didn’t care. Externals did not seem to have much importance to her. “—if you have no real self, or if you have no way of discovering it, or if for some reason you’re afraid to find out who and what it is, then you’ll still manage to create something on canvas with your paints. It’ll be pleasant to look at and a pleasure to you. But it’ll be technique. It won’t necessarily be art. The purpose—our purpose—is to communicate through a medium. But in order to do that, you must have something to say.”

  Subtlety is the key, she had told them. A painting is a whisper. It isn’t a shout.

  At the end of it all, he’d felt ashamed of his arrogance in having brought his watercolours to show her, so confident of their having merit. He resolved to slink unobtrusively out of the studio with them safely tucked, in their protective—and suitable—brown wrapping paper, under his arm. But he wasn’t quick enough. As the others filed out, she said, “I see you’ve brought some of your work to show me, Dr. Weaver,” and she came to his worktable and waited while he unwrapped them, feeling as he hadn’t felt in years, in a welter of nerves and completely outclassed.

  She’d gazed on them thoughtfully. “Apricots and…?”

  He felt his face grow hot. “Oriental poppies.”

  “Ah,” she said. And then quite briskly, “Yes. Very nice.”

  “Nice. But not art.”

  She turned her gaze to him. It was friendly and frank. He found it disconcerting to be engaged so directly by a woman’s eyes. “Don’t misunderstand me, Dr. Weaver. These are lovely watercolours. And lovely watercolours have a place.”

  “But would you hang them on your wall?”

  “I…?” Her gaze flickered under his, then held quite firmly. “I tend to like a painting that challenges just a bit more. It’s a matter of taste.”

  “And these don’t challenge?”

  She studied the watercolours once more. She perched on the work-table and held the paintings on her knees, first one then the other. She pressed her lips together. She blew out her cheeks.

  “I can take it, you know,” he said with a chuckle that he realised was far more anxious than amused. “You can give it to me straight.”

  She took him at his word. “All right,�
� she said. “You can certainly copy. Here’s the evidence of that. But can you create?”

  It didn’t hurt nearly as much as he thought it might. “Try me,” he said.

  She smiled. “A pleasure.”

  He’d thrown himself into it for the next two years, first as a member of one class or another which she offered the community, then later on as a private student, alone with her. In winter they used a live model in the studio. In summer they took easels, sketch pads, and paints out into the country and worked off the land. Often they sketched each other as an exercise in understanding the human anatomy—the sternocleidomastoid muscles, Tony, she would say and put her fingertips to her neck, try to think of them like cords right beneath the skin. And always she filled the environment with music. Listen to me, if you stimulate one sense, you stimulate others, she explained, art can’t be created if the artist himself is an insensate void. See the music, hear it, feel it, feel the art. And the music would start—a haunting array of Celtic folktunes, a Beethoven symphony, a salsa band, an African mass called the Missa Luba, the nerve-shaving whine of electric guitars.

  In the presence of her intensity and dedication, he’d begun to feel as if he’d emerged from forty-three years of darkness to find himself walking in sunlight at last. He felt completely renewed. He felt his interest engaged and his intellect challenged. He felt emotions spring to life. And for six straight months before she became his lover, he called it all the pursuit of his art. There was, after all, a certain safety in that. It did not beg an answer for the future.

  Sarah, he thought, and he marvelled at the fact that even now—after everything, even after Elena—he could still wish to murmur the name that he hadn’t allowed himself to say for the past eight months since Justine had accused and he had confessed.

  They’d pulled up to the old school on a Thursday evening, just at the time he’d usually arrived. The lights were on and a fire was burning—he could see its shifting glow through the drawn front curtains—and he knew that Sarah was expecting him and that music would be playing and a dozen or more sketches would be strewn among the pillows on the floor. And that she would come to meet him when the doorbell rang, that she would run to meet him, throw open the door, and draw him inside saying Tonio I’ve had the most marvellous idea about how to compose that picture of the woman in Soho, you know the one that’s been making me wild for a week…