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.”

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.

“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.