KATHY WAS OUT WHEN I GOT HOME.
I opened her laptop and tried to access her email—but with no luck. She was logged out.
I had to accept that she might never repeat her mistake. Would I keep checking ad nauseam, give in to obsession, driving myself mad? I had enough self-awareness to appreciate the cliché I had become—the jealous husband—and the irony that Kathy was currently rehearsing Desdemona in Othello hadn’t escaped me.
I should have forwarded the emails to myself that first night, as soon as I’d read them. Then I’d have some actual physical evidence. That was my mistake. As it was, I had begun questioning what I had seen. Was my recollection to be trusted? I’d been stoned out of my mind, after all—had I misunderstood what I had read? I found myself concocting outlandish theories to prove Kathy’s innocence. Maybe it was just an acting exercise—she was writing in character, in preparation for Othello. She had spent six weeks speaking in an American accent when preparing for All My Sons. It was possible something similar was going on here. Except the emails were signed by Kathy—not Desdemona.
If only I had imagined it all, then I could forget it, the way you forget a dream—I could wake up and it would fade away. Instead I was trapped in this endless nightmare of mistrust, suspicion, paranoia. Although on the surface, little had changed. We still went for a walk together on Sunday. We looked like every other couple strolling in the park. Perhaps our silences were longer than usual, but they seemed comfortable enough. Under the silence, however, a fevered one-sided conversation was taking place in my mind. I rehearsed a million questions. Why did she do it? How could she? Why say she loved me and marry me, fuck me, and share my bed—then lie to my face, and keep lying, year after year? How long had it been going on? Did she love this man? Was she going to leave me for him?
I looked through her phone a couple of times when she was in the shower, searching for text messages, but found nothing. If she’d received any incriminating texts, she had deleted them. She wasn’t stupid, apparently, just occasionally careless.
It was possible I’d never know the truth. I might never find out.
In a way, I hoped I wouldn’t.
Kathy peered at me as we sat on the couch after the walk. “Are you all right?”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. You seem a bit flat.”
“Today?”
“Not just today. Recently.”
I evaded her eyes. “Just work. I’ve got a lot on my mind.”
Kathy nodded. A sympathetic squeeze of my hand. She was a good actress. I could almost believe she cared.
“How are rehearsals going?”
“Better. Tony came up with some good ideas. We’re going to work late next week to go over them.”
“Right.”
I no longer believed a word she said. I analyzed every sentence, the way I would with a patient. I was looking for subtext, reading between the lines for nonverbal clues—subtle inflections, evasions, omissions. Lies.
“How is Tony?”
“Fine.” She shrugged, as if to indicate she couldn’t care less. I didn’t believe that. She idolized Tony, her director, and was forever talking about him—at least she used to; she hadn’t mentioned him quite so much recently. They talked about plays and acting and the theater—a world beyond my knowledge. I’d heard a lot about Tony, but only glimpsed him once, briefly, when I went to meet Kathy after a rehearsal. I thought it odd that Kathy didn’t introduce us. He was married, and his wife was an actress; I got the sense Kathy didn’t like her much. Perhaps his wife was jealous of their relationship, as I was. I suggested the four of us go out for dinner, but Kathy hadn’t been particularly keen on the idea. Sometimes I wondered if she was trying to keep us apart.
I watched Kathy open her laptop. She angled the screen away from me as she typed. I could hear her fingers tapping. Who was she writing to? Tony?
“What are you doing?” I yawned.
“Just emailing my cousin … She’s in Sydney now.”
“Is she? Send her my love.”
“I will.”
Kathy typed for a moment longer, then stopped typing and put down the laptop. “I’m going to have a bath.”
I nodded. “Okay.”
She gave me an amused look. “Cheer up, darling. Are you sure you’re okay?”
I smiled and nodded. She stood up and walked out. I waited until I heard the bathroom door close, and the sound of running water. I slid over to where she had been sitting. I reached for her laptop. My fingers were trembling as I opened it. I re-opened her browser—and went to her email log-in.
But she’d logged out.
I pushed away the laptop with disgust. This must stop, I thought. This way madness lies. Or was I mad already?
I was getting into bed, pulling back the covers, when Kathy walked into the bedroom, brushing her teeth.
“I forgot to tell you. Nicole is back in London next week.”
“Nicole?”
“You remember Nicole. We went to her going-away party.”
“Oh, yeah. I thought she moved to New York.”
“She did. And now she’s back.” A pause. “She wants me to meet her on Thursday … Thursday night after rehearsal.”
I don’t know what aroused my suspicion. Was it the way Kathy was looking in my direction but not making eye contact? I sensed she was lying. I didn’t say anything. Neither did she. She disappeared from the door. I could hear her in the bathroom, spitting out the toothpaste and rinsing her mouth.
Perhaps there was nothing to it. Perhaps it was entirely innocent and Kathy really was going to meet Nicole on Thursday.
Perhaps.
Only one way to find out.
THERE WERE NO QUEUES OUTSIDE Alicia’s gallery this time, as there had been that day, six years ago, when I had gone to see the Alcestis. A different artist was hanging in the window now, and despite his possible talent, he lacked Alicia’s notoriety and subsequent ability to draw in the crowds.
As I entered the gallery, I shivered; it was even colder in here than on the street. There was something chilly about the atmosphere as well as the temperature; it smelled of exposed steel beams and bare concrete floors. It was soulless, I thought. Empty.
The gallerist was sitting behind his desk. He stood up as I approached.
Jean-Felix Martin was in his early forties, a handsome man with black eyes and hair, and a tight T-shirt with a red skull on it. I told him who I was and why I had come. To my surprise, he seemed perfectly happy to talk about Alicia. He spoke with an accent. I asked if he was French.
“Originally—from Paris. But I’ve been here since I was a student—oh, twenty years at least. I think of myself more as British these days.” He smiled and gestured to a back room. “Come in, we can have a coffee.”
“Thanks.”
Jean-Felix led me into an office that was essentially a storeroom, crowded with stacks of paintings.
“How is Alicia?” he asked, using a complicated-looking coffee machine. “Is she still not talking?”
I shook my head. “No.”
He nodded and sighed. “So sad. Won’t you sit down? What do you want to know? I’ll do my best to answer truthfully.” Jean-Felix gave me a wry smile, tinged with curiosity. “Although I’m not entirely sure why you’ve come to me.”
“You and Alicia were close, weren’t you? Apart from your professional relationship—”
“Who told you that?”
“Gabriel’s brother, Max Berenson. He suggested I talk to you.”
Jean-Felix rolled his eyes. “Oh, so you saw Max, did you? What a bore.”
He said it with such contempt I couldn’t help laughing. “You know Max Berenson?”
“Well enough. Better than I’d like.” He handed me a small cup of coffee. “Alicia and I were close. Very close. We knew each other for years—long before she met Gabriel.”
“I didn’t realize that.”
“Oh, yes. We were at art school together. And after we graduated, we painted together.”
“You mean you collaborated?”
“Well, not really.” Jean-Felix laughed. “I mean we painted walls together. As housepainters.”
I smiled. “Oh, I see.”
“It turned out I was better at painting walls than paintings. So I gave up, about the same time as Alicia’s art started to really take off. And when I started running this place, it made sense for me to show Alicia’s work. It was a very natural, organic process.”
“Yes, it sounds like it. And what about Gabriel?”
“What about him?”
I sensed a prickliness here, a defensive reaction that told me this was an avenue worth exploring. “Well, I wonder how he fit into this dynamic. Presumably you knew him quite well?”
“Not really.”
“No?”
“No.” Jean-Felix hesitated a second. “Gabriel didn’t take time to know me. He was very … caught up in himself.”
“Sounds like you didn’t like him.”
“I didn’t particularly. I don’t think he liked me. In fact, I know he didn’t.”
“Why was that?”
“I have no idea.”
“Do you think perhaps he was jealous? Of your relationship with Alicia?”
Jean-Felix sipped his coffee and nodded. “Yeah, yes. Possibly.”
“He saw you as a threat, perhaps?”
“You tell me. Sounds like you have all the answers.”
I took the hint. I didn’t push it any further. Instead I tried a different approach. “You saw Alicia a few days before the murder, I believe?”
“Yes. I went to the house to see her.”
“Can you tell me a little about that?”
“Well, she had an exhibition coming up, and she was behind with her work. She was rightfully concerned.”
“You hadn’t seen any of the new work?”
“No. She’d been putting me off for ages. I thought I’d better check on her. I expected she’d be in the studio at the end of the garden. But she wasn’t.”
“No?”
“No, I found her in the house.”
“How did you get in?”
Jean-Felix looked surprised by the question. “What?” I could tell he was making some quick mental evaluation. Then he nodded. “Oh, I see what you mean. Well, there was a gate that led from the street to the back garden. It was usually unlocked. And from the garden I went into the kitchen through the back door. Which was also unlocked.” He smiled. “You know, you sound 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.”
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 hear us. “It’s a shame you didn’t know her then. She was the most interesting person I’ve ever met. Most people aren’t alive, you know, not really—sleepwalking their way through life. But Alicia was so intensely alive.… It was hard to take your eyes off her.” Jean-Felix turned his head back to the painting and gazed at Alicia’s naked body. “So beautiful.”
I looked back at Alicia’s body. But where Jean-Felix saw beauty, I saw only pain; I saw self-inflicted wounds, and scars of self-harm.
“Did she ever talk to you about her suicide attempt?”
I was fishing, but Jean-Felix took the bait. “Oh, you know about that? Yes, of course.”
“After her father died?”
“She went to pieces.” Jean-Felix nodded. “The truth is Alicia was hugely fucked-up. Not as an artist, but as a person she was extremely vulnerable. When her father hanged himself, it was too much. She couldn’t cope.”
“She must have loved him a great deal.”
Jean-Felix gave a kind of strangled laugh. He looked at me as if I were mad. “What are you talking about?”
“What do you mean?”
“Alicia didn’t love him. She hated her father. She despised him.”
I was taken aback by this. “Alicia told you that?”
“Of course she did. She hated him ever since she was a kid—ever since her mother died.”
“But—then why try to commit suicide after his death? If it wasn’t grief, what was it?”
Jean-Felix shrugged. “Guilt, perhaps? Who knows?”
There was something he wasn’t telling me, I thought. Something didn’t fit. Something was wrong.
His phone rang. “Excuse me a moment.” He turned away from me to answer it. A woman’s voice was on the other end. They talked for a moment, arranging a time to meet. “I’ll call you back, baby,” he said, and hung up.
Jean-Felix turned back to me. “Sorry about that.”
“That’s all right. Your girlfriend?”
He smiled. “Just a friend … I have a lot of friends.”
I’ll bet you do, I thought. I felt a flicker of dislike; I wasn’t sure why.
As he showed me out, I asked a final question. “Just one more thing. Did Alicia ever mention a doctor to you?”
“A doctor?”
“Apparently she saw a doctor, around the time of her suicide attempt. I’m trying to locate him.”
“Hmm.” Jean-Felix frowned. “Possibly—there was someone…”
“Can you remember his name?”
He thought for a second and shook his head. “I’m sorry. No, I honestly can’t.”
“Well, if it comes to you, perhaps you can let me know?”
“Sure. But I doubt it.” He glanced at me and hesitated. “You want some advice?”
“I’d welcome some.”
“If you really want to get Alicia to talk … give her some paint and brushes. Let her paint. That’s the only way she’ll talk to you. Through her art.”
“That’s an interesting idea.… You’ve been very helpful. Thank you, Mr. Martin.”
“Call me Jean-Felix. And when you see Alicia, tell her I love her.”
He smiled, and again I felt a slight repulsion: I found something about Jean-Felix hard to stomach. I could tell he had been genuinely close to Alicia; they had known each other a long time, and he was obviously attracted to her. Was he in love with her? I wasn’t so sure. I thought of Jean-Felix’s face when he was looking at the Alcestis. Yes, love was in his eyes—but love for the painting, not necessarily the painter. Jean-Felix coveted the art. Otherwise he would have visited Alicia at the Grove. He would have stuck by her—I knew that for a fact. A man never abandons a woman like that.
Not if he loves her.