For the Sake of Elena (Inspector Lynley, #5)(51)

He ignored the question, saying, “Anything else?”

“The lights from the Peterhouse lantern cupola. I could see them from the island.”

“Anything that you heard?”

“Nothing out of the ordinary. Birds. A dog, I think, somewhere in the fen. It all seemed perfectly normal to me. Except that the fog was heavy, but you’ll have been told that.”

“You heard no sound from the river?”

“Like a boat? Someone rowing away? No. I’m sorry.” Her shoulders sagged a bit. “I wish I could give you something more. I feel monumentally egocentric. When I was on the island, I was thinking only of my drawing. I’m still thinking mostly of my drawing, in fact. What an ugly little item in my personal make-up.”

“Unusual to go sketching in the fog,” Havers noted. She had been writing rapidly, but now she looked up, addressing their prime interest in coming to speak to the woman: What sort of artist goes sketching in the fog?

Sarah didn’t disagree. “It was more than unusual. It was a little bit mad. And anything I might have managed to create wouldn’t exactly be like the rest of my work, would it?”

There was truth in this. In addition to the use of bright, crisp, sun-inspired colours, Sarah Gordon’s images all were clearly defined, from a group of Pakistani children sitting on the worn front steps of a paint-peeling tenement to a nude woman reclining beneath a yellow umbrella. Not one of them featured the gauzy absence of definition or the lack of hue that drawing in the morning fog suggested. Not one of them, additionally, depicted a landscape.

“Were you attempting a change in style?” Lynley asked.

“From The Potato Eaters to Sunflowers?” Sarah got to her feet and went to the bar where she poured herself more cocoa. Flame and Silk looked up from their respective positions, alert to the possibility of a treat. She went to the dog, squatted next to him, ran her fingers across his head. His tail thumped appreciatively, and he settled his chin back onto his paws. She sat on the floor next to his basket, cross-legged, facing Lynley and Havers.

She said, “I was willing to try just about anything. I don’t know if you can understand what it feels like to believe you may have lost the ability and the will to create. Yes”—as if she expected disagreement—“the will, because it is an act of will. It’s more than being called upon by some convenient artistic muse. It’s making a decision to offer up a bit of one’s essence to the judgement of others. As an artist, I’d told myself that I didn’t care how my work was evaluated. I’d told myself that the creative act—and not how it was received or what anyone did with the finished product—was absolutely paramount. But somewhere along the line, I stopped believing in that. And when one stops believing that the act itself is superior to anyone’s analysis of it, then one becomes immobilised. That’s what happened to me.”

“Shades of Ruskin and Whistler, as I recall their story,” Lynley said.

For some reason, she flinched at the allusion. “Ah, yes. The critic and his victim. But at least Whistler had his day in court, didn’t he. He did have that much.” Her eyes went from one piece of art to another, slowly, as if with the need to convince herself that she indeed had been their creator. “I’d lost it: the passion. And without that, what you have is only mass, the objects themselves. Paint, canvas, clay, wax, stone. Only passion gives them life. Otherwise, they’re inert. Oh, you may draw or paint or sculpt something, anyway. People do it all the time. But what you draw or paint or sculpt without passion is an exercise in competence and nothing more. It’s not an expression of self. And that’s what I wanted back—the willingness to be vulnerable, the power to feel, the ability to risk. If it meant a change in technique, an alteration in style, a shift in media, I was more than willing to try it. I was willing to try anything.”

“Did it work?”

She bent over the dog and rubbed her cheek against the top of his head. Somewhere in the house, the telephone began to ring. An answering machine switched on. A moment later the low tones of a man’s voice floated to them, leaving a message that was indistinguishable from where they sat. Sarah seemed indifferent both to the identity of her caller and to the fact of the call itself. She said, “I hadn’t the chance to find out. I made several preliminary sketches in one location on the island. When they didn’t work out—they were dreadful, to be honest—I went to another spot and stumbled on the body.”

“What do you remember of that?”

“Just that I stepped backwards onto something. I thought it was a branch. I kicked it aside and saw it was an arm.”

“You hadn’t noticed the body?” Havers clarified.

“She was covered by leaves. My attention was on the bridge. I can’t say I even watched where I was walking.”

“In what direction did you kick her arm?” Lynley asked. “Towards her? Away from her?”

“Towards her.”

“You didn’t touch her other than that?”

“God, no. But I should have done, shouldn’t I? She may have been alive. I should have touched her. I should have checked. But I didn’t. Instead, I was sick. And then I ran.”

“In what direction? Back the way you came?”

“No. Across Coe Fen.”

“In the fog?” Lynley asked. “Not back the way you’d come?”