“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 fi rearms 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 fi nally 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 refl ection 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 indefi nable 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?