The Silent Patient (16 page)

“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.”

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.

“Voil
à
.”

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.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

I WENT INTO WATERSTONES
on my way to work and bought a copy of
Alcestis
. The introduction said it was Euripides’s earliest extant tragedy, and one of his least- performed works.

I started reading it on the tube. Not exactly a page-turner. An odd play. The hero, Admetus, is condemned to death by the Fates. But thanks to Apollo’s negotiating, he is offered a loophole—Admetus can escape death if he can persuade someone else to die for him. He asks his mother and father to die in his place, and they refuse in no uncertain terms. It’s hard to know what to make of Admetus. Not exactly heroic behavior, and the ancient Greeks must have thought him a bit of a twit. Alcestis is made of stronger stuff—she steps forward and volunteers to die for her husband. Perhaps she doesn’t expect Admetus to accept her offer—but he does, and Alcestis dies and departs for Hades.

It doesn’t end there, though. There is a happy ending, of sorts, a deus ex machina. Heracles seizes Alcestis from Hades and brings her triumphantly back to the land of the living. She comes alive again. Admetus is moved to tears by the reunion with his wife. Alcestis’s emotions are harder to read—she remains silent. She doesn’t speak.

I sat up with a jolt as I read this. I couldn’t believe it.

I read the final page of the play again slowly, carefully:

Alcestis returns from death, alive again. And she remains silent—unable or unwilling to speak of her experience. Admetus appeals to Heracles in desperation:

“But why is my wife standing here, and does not speak?”

No answer is forthcoming. The tragedy ends with Alcestis being led back into the house by Admetus—in silence.

Why? Why does she not speak?

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Alicia Berenson’s Diary

AUGUST
2

It’s even hotter today. It’s hotter in London than in Athens, apparently. But at least Athens has a beach.

Paul called me today from Cambridge. I was surprised to hear his voice. We’ve not spoken in months. My first thought was Auntie Lydia must be dead—I’m not ashamed to say I felt a flicker of relief.

But that’s not why Paul was calling. In fact I’m still not sure why he did call me. He was pretty evasive. I kept waiting for him to get to the point, but he didn’t. He kept asking if I was okay, if Gabriel was okay, and muttered something about Lydia being the same as always.

“I’ll come for a visit,” I said. “I haven’t been for ages, I’ve been meaning to.”

The truth is, I have many complicated feelings around going home, and being at the house, with Lydia and Paul. So I avoid going back—and I end up feeling guilty, so I can’t win either way.

“It would be nice to catch up,” I said. “I’ll come see you soon. I’m just about to go out, so—”