more like a detective than a psychiatrist.”
“I’m a psychotherapist.”
“Is there a difference?”
“I’m just trying to understand Alicia’s mental state. How did you experience her mood?”
Jean-Felix shrugged. “She seemed fine. A little stressed about work.”
“Is that all?”
“She didn’t look like she was going to shoot her husband in a few days, if that’s what you mean. She seemed—fine.” He drained his coffee and hesitated as a thought struck him. “Would you like to see some of her paintings?” Without waiting for a reply, Jean-Felix got up and walked to the door, beckoning me to follow.
“Come on.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
I FOLLOWED JEAN-FELIX into a storage room. He went over to a large case, pulled out a hinged rack, and lifted out three paintings wrapped in blankets. He propped them up. He carefully unwrapped each one. Then he stood back and presented the first to me with a flourish.
“Voilà.”
I looked at it. The painting had the same photo-realistic quality as the rest of Alicia’s work. It represented the car accident that killed her mother. A woman’s body was sitting in the wreck, slumped at the wheel. She was bloodied and obviously dead. Her spirit, her soul, was rising from the corpse, like a large bird with yellow wings, soaring to the heavens.
“Isn’t it glorious?” Jean-Felix gazed at it. “All those yellows and reds and greens—I can quite get lost in it. It’s joyous.”
Joyous wasn’t the word I would have chosen. Unsettling, perhaps. I wasn’t sure how I felt about it.
I moved on to the next picture. A painting of Jesus on the cross. Or was it?
“It’s Gabriel,” Jean-Felix said. “It’s a good likeness.”
It was Gabriel—but Gabriel portrayed as Jesus, crucified, hanging from the cross, blood trickling from his wounds, a crown of thorns on his head. His eyes were not downcast but staring out—unblinking, tortured, unashamedly reproachful. They seemed to burn right through me. I peered at the picture more closely—at the incongruous item strapped to Gabriel’s torso. A rifle.
“That’s the gun that killed him?”
Jean-Felix nodded. “Yes. It belonged to him, I think.”
“And this was painted before his murder?”
“A month or so before. It shows you what was on Alicia’s mind, doesn’t it?” Jean-Felix moved on to the third picture. It was a larger canvas than the others. “This one’s the best. Stand back to get a better look.”
I did as he said and took a few paces back. Then I turned and looked. The moment I saw the painting, I let out an involuntary laugh.
The subject was Alicia’s aunt, Lydia Rose. It was obvious why she had been so upset by it. Lydia was nude, reclining on a tiny bed. The bed was buckling under her weight. She was enormously, monstrously fat—an explosion of flesh spilling over the bed and hitting the floor and spreading across the room, rippling and folding like waves of gray custard.
“Jesus. That’s cruel.”
“I think it’s quite lovely.” Jean-Felix looked at me with interest. “You know Lydia?”
“Yes, I went to visit her.”
“I see.” He smiled. “You have been doing your homework. I never met Lydia. Alicia hated her, you know.”
“Yes.” I stared at the painting. “Yes, I can see that.”
Jean-Felix began carefully wrapping up the pictures again.
“And the Alcestis?” I said. “Can I see it?”
“Of course. Follow me.”
Jean-Felix led me along the narrow passage to the end of the gallery. There the Alcestis occupied a wall to itself. It was just as beautiful and mysterious as I remembered it. Alicia naked in the studio, in front of a blank canvas, painting with a bloodred paintbrush. I studied Alicia’s expression. Again it defied interpretation. I frowned.
“She’s impossible to read.”
“That’s the point—it is a refusal to comment. It’s a painting about silence.”
“I’m not sure I understand what you mean.”
“Well, at the heart of all art lies a mystery. Alicia’s silence is her secret—her mystery, in the religious sense. That’s why she named it Alcestis. Have you read it? By Euripides.” He gave me a curious look. “Read it. Then you’ll understand.”
I nodded—and then I noticed something in the painting I hadn’t before. I leaned forward to look closely. A bowl of fruit sat on the table in the background of the picture—a collection of apples and pears. On the red apples were some small white blobs—slippery white blobs creeping in and around the fruit.
I pointed at them. “Are they…?”
“Maggots?” Jean-Felix nodded. “Yes.”
“Fascinating. I wonder what that means.”
“It’s wonderful. A masterpiece. It really is.” Jean-Felix sighed and glanced at me across the portrait. He lowered his voice as if Alicia were able to