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“Questions, questions, all great art should ask questions of the audience. As artists, we should not strive to provide answers. Instead, we should force people to look inside, force them to confront the fundamental questions of life.”
“What about death?” Christopher asked.
Lucien seemed enthused by that. “Death is a crucial part of the artistic process. Pain, fear, and cessation all challenge us. The thought of ending forces us to confront the moment, forces us to live in thenow.”
He sounded like one of Paige’s lecturers from her student days, starting to talk about a pet topic that had formed the basis of his research.
“How beautiful life is on the brink of death, how precious. In approaching our own finitude, we approach the infinite itself. By showing others the reality of death, we ask them to question the true meaning of all things.”
Was that him saying that he had killed people, or simply him waxing lyrical about the role of death in understanding life? The grandiosity of his tone made all of it hard to make sense of.
“Lucien, can you focus?” Paige said.
“Focus, focus, the artist must focus. The greater the focus, the greater the art. Once, I had no focus. My work was not what it should be, but I gained focus. Oh, I gained it.”
“And how many people did you kill, gaining it?” Christopher demanded.
Lucien smiled over at him, almost as if he enjoyed the accusation. He didn’t seem as frightened by the thought of being accused of murder as Paige might have expected from a normal suspect.
Of course, what she’d seen of his case files explained a lot of that.
“Kill?” He laughed, and Paige couldn’t tell whether that was because he thought the accusation was ludicrous or because he thought that no one would ever be able to prove it.
“Do you think that murder is funny?” Paige snapped.
He went silent for a moment or two. “If you’re going to be rude, I’m not going to talk to you.”
“If youdon’tstart talking,” Christopher threatened, “we’ll arrest you, drag you down to the police station, and talk to your parole officer.”
The threat barely seemed to register. Lucien started talking, but not much of it made sense. “All of life is a performance. Once, that fact troubled me, but I have learned to embrace it. I have learned that every moment is an act of creation and of artistry.”
Paige asked what she thought was an important question. “Lucien, when they released you from the hospital, did they give you medication to take?”
Lucien didn’t answer for several seconds. Instead, he looked out of the window towards the ocean. “Do you ever wonder about the extent to which we are all flotsam and jetsam upon the ocean of the world?”
“Your medication, Lucien,” Paige said. “Have you been taking it?”
He didn’t look at her, but at least he answered. “It slows me down. It stifles my creativity, muddies my thoughts.”
Paige had heard that kind of argument from people before, particularly from those with a manic edge to their illness or those involved in creative industries. They thought that the illness unlocked something in their brains that allowed them to be more creative, and that any attempt to control their condition would reduce that creativity. Back when she’d worked at the St Just Institute, those had been some of the patients with the greatest resistance to treatment.
“And without it, you’re more creative?” Paige asked.
Lucien looked at her with suspicion. “You don’t believe me, do you? You don’t believe in my greatness.”
He looked away from Paige then, refusing to answer.
Christopher took a turn asking questions. “You know what I think? I think this is all a deflection. You wouldn’t have seduced that chef talking like this. You’re obviously perfectly capable of talking normally if you want to.”
Or pretending to. Superficial charm was a common trait among narcissists or psychopaths. So was a refusal to engage with anything that they didn’t want to engage with.
Paige suspected that confronting Lucien directly wasn’t going to do much good. Looking at him, he appeared withdrawn, refusing even to look at the two of them.
“Can I help it if Jess was drawn to the power of my art?” Lucien demanded.
“Forget about the art,” Christopher said. “I want to talk about murder.”
Lucien shrugged as if none of it mattered to him.
