For the Sake of Elena (Inspector Lynley, #5)(91)

“Painting soup tins, you mean?” Pen smiled. “Or shooting herself in the foot, making a film of the event, and calling it performance art?”

“At the extreme, I suppose.”

“What’s more important than coming up with the fad of the moment is having a style that catches the emotional fancy of collectors and critics, Tommy. Like Jurgen Gorg’s Venice carnival pieces. Or Peter Max’s early fantasy canvases. Or Salvador Dalí’s surrealistic art. If an artist has a personal style, then he is forging ahead. If that style gains international approbation, then his career is made.”

“Hers is?”

“I should say so, yes. Her style is distinct. It’s crisp. Very clear. According to whatever p.r. machine it was that orchestrated her bow to the art world years ago, she even grinds her own pigments like some sort of modern Botticelli—or at least she did at one time—so her colours in oil are wonderful as well.”

“She talked about being a purist in the past.”

“That’s always been part of her persona. As has the isolation. Grantchester, not London. The world comes to her. She doesn’t go to the world.”

“You never worked with her canvases while you were at the museum?”

“What need would I have? Her work’s recent, Tommy. It doesn’t need to be restored.”

“But you’ve seen them. You’re familiar with them.”

“Yes, of course. Why?”

Lady Helen said, “Is her art at the root of this, Tommy?”

He gave his attention to the spotted brown rug that partially covered the floor. “I don’t know. She said she hadn’t done anything artistically in months. She said she was afraid that she’d lost the passion to create. The morning of the murder was the day she’d designated to start painting—or sketching, or something—again. It seemed like a superstition of hers. Paint on this day, paint at this spot, or give it up forever. Is that possible, Pen? That someone would give over creating—would actually lose it somehow—and find the struggle to come back so enormous that it would end up tied in to exterior influences such as where one paints and what one paints and exactly at what time one paints?”

Penelope stirred in her chair. “You can’t be that naive. Of course it’s possible. People have gone mad over the belief that they’ve lost the power to create. People have killed themselves over it.”

Lynley raised his head. He saw that Lady Helen was watching him. Both of them had leaped to the same conclusion with Penelope’s final words. “Or kill someone else?” Lady Helen said.

“Someone who got in the way of creativity?” Lynley asked.

“Camille and Rodin?” Penelope said. “They certainly killed each other, didn’t they? At least metaphorically.”

“But how could this University girl have got in the way of Sarah Gordon’s creativity?” Lady Helen asked. “Did they even know each other?”

He thought of Ivy Court, her use of the name Tony. He dwelt on every conjecture he and Havers had developed to explain Sarah Gordon’s presence there on the previous night.

“Perhaps it wasn’t the girl who got in her way,” he said. “Perhaps it was her father.” Yet even as he spoke, he could list the arguments against that conclusion. The call to Justine Weaver, the knowledge of Elena’s running, the entire question of time, the weapon that had been used to beat her, the disposal of that weapon. The relevant issues were motive, means, and opportunity. He couldn’t argue that Sarah Gordon had any of them.

“I mentioned Whistler and Ruskin while I was talking to her,” he said pensively. “She reacted to that. So perhaps her failure to create over the last year grew out of some critic’s hatchet-job of her work.”

“That’s a possibility, if she’d had negative criticism,” Penelope said.

“But she hasn’t?”

“Nothing major that I know of.”

“So what stops the flow of creativity, Pen? What impedes passion?”

“Fear,” she said.

He looked at Lady Helen. She dropped her eyes from his. “Fear of what?” he asked.

“Failure. Rejection. Offering something of the self to someone—to the world—and having it stomped to bits. That would do it, I should guess.”

“But that didn’t happen to her?”

“Not to Sarah Gordon. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that she isn’t afraid it might happen in the future. Lots of people are felled by their own success.”

Penelope looked towards the door as, in the other room, the refrigerator’s motor coughed and whirred. She got to her feet. The rocker creaked a final time with her movement.

“I’d not thought about art for at least this last year.” She brushed her hair back off her face and smiled at Lynley. “How odd. It was quite nice to talk about it.”

“You’ve got a lot to say.”

“Once. Yes. I did have once.” She headed towards the stairway and waved him back when he began to rise. “I’m going to check on the baby. Good night, Tommy.”

“Good night.”

Lady Helen said nothing until her sister’s footsteps sounded along the upper corridor, until a door opened and shut. Then she turned to Lynley.