by John Verdon
“Very.”
“Any predominant personality trait?”
“I wouldn’t know how to answer that.”
Gurney suspected that the quickest means of getting something from Marian Eliot was to stop tugging on it. He sat back and studied the shapes of the apple tree’s branches, twisty from a series of long-ago prunings.
He was right. After a minute she began speaking. “I’ll tell you something about Scott, something he did, but you’ll have to make up your own mind about what it means, whether it would add up to a ‘personality trait.’ ” She articulated the phrase distastefully, as though she found it too simplistic a concept to apply to human beings.
“When Scott was still in medical school, he wrote the book that made him famous—well, famous in certain academic circles. It was called The Empathy Trap. It argued quite cogently—with biological and psychological data to back up his hypothesis—that empathy is essentially a boundary defect, that the empathic feelings human beings have for one another are really a form of confusion. His point was that we care about each other because at some location in the brain we fail to distinguish between self and other. He conducted one elegantly simple experiment in which the subjects watched a man peeling an apple. In the course of peeling it, the man’s hand seemed to slip and the knife jabbed his finger. The subjects were being videotaped for later analysis of their reactions to the jabbing. Virtually all the subjects reflexively flinched. Only two out of the hundred tested failed to have any reaction, and when those two were later given psychological tests, they revealed the mental and emotional characteristics common to sociopaths. Scott’s contention was that we flinch when someone else is cut because for a split second we fail to distinguish between that person and ourselves. In other words, the normal human being’s boundary is imperfect in a way that the sociopath’s is perfect. The sociopath never confuses himself and his needs with anyone else’s and therefore has no feelings related to the welfare of others.”
Gurney smiled. “Sounds like an idea that could stir up a reaction.”
“Oh, indeed it did. Of course, a lot of the reaction had to do with Scott’s choice of words: perfect and imperfect. His language was interpreted by some of his peers as a glorification of the sociopath.” Marian Eliot’s eyes were gleaming with excitement. “But all that was part of his plan. Bottom line, he got the attention he wanted. At the age of twenty-three he was the hottest topic in the field.”
“So he’s smart, and he knows how to—”
“Wait,” she interrupted, “that’s not the end of the story. A few months after his book stirred up that hornet’s nest of controversy, another book was published that was in essence a broadside attack on Scott’s theory of empathy. The title of the competing book was Heart and Soul. It was rigorous and well argued, but its tone was entirely different. Its message was that love is all that matters, and ‘boundary porosity’—as Scott had described empathy—was in fact an evolutionary leap forward and the very essence of human relationships. People in the field were dividing into opposing camps. Journal articles were generated by the score. Impassioned letters were written.” She sat back against the arm of the bench, watching his expression.
“I have a feeling,” said Gurney, “that there’s more.”
“More indeed. A year later it was discovered that Scott Ashton had written both books.” She paused. “What do you think of that?”
“I’m not sure what I think of it. How was it received in his field?”
“Total rage. Felt like they’d all been had. Some truth in that. But the books themselves were unimpeachable. Both perfectly legitimate contributions.”
“And you think all that was to draw attention to himself?”
“No!” she snapped. “Of course not! The tone was attention-getting. Posing as two writers in conflict with each other was attention-getting. But there was a deeper purpose, a deeper message to each reader: You need to make up your own mind, find your own truth.”
“So you’d say Ashton was a pretty smart guy?”
“Brilliant, actually. Unconventional and unpredictable. A supremely good listener and a fast learner. And a strangely tragic figure.”
Gurney was getting the impression that despite being in her late sixties, Marian Eliot was afflicted with something she would surely never acknowledge: a consuming crush on a man who was nearly three decades her junior.
“You mean ‘tragic’ in the sense of what happened on his wedding day?”
“It goes well beyond that. The murder, of course, ended up being part of it. But consider the mythic archetypes embedded in the story from start to finish.” She paused, allowing him time for such consideration.
“Not sure I follow that.”
“Cinderella … Pygmalion … Frankenstein.”
“You’re taking about the evolution of Scott Ashton’s relationship with Hector Flores?”
“Precisely.” She gave him a smile of approval befitting a good student. “The story has a classic beginning: A stranger wanders into the village, hungry, looking for work. A local landowner, a man of substance, hires him, takes him to his home, tries him at various tasks, sees great potential in him, gives him increasing responsibility, gives him entry into a new life. The poor scullery worker, in effect, is magically elevated to a rich new life. Not the Cinderella story in its gender details, but certainly in its essence. Yet in the larger scheme of the Ashton-Flores saga, the Cinderella story is only act one. Then a new paradigm becomes operative, as Dr. Ashton grows enthralled by the opportunity to mold his student into something greater, to lead him to his highest potential, to sculpt the statue into a kind of perfection—to bring Hector Flores to life in the fullest possible sense. He buys him books, a computer, online courses—spends hours each day supervising his education, pushing him toward a kind of perfection. Not the Pygmalion myth in its specific Greek details, but close enough. That was act two. Act three, of course, became the Frankenstein story. Intended to be the best of human creatures, Flores turns out to harbor the worst of human flaws, bringing havoc and horror into the life of the genius who created him.”
Nodding slowly, appreciatively, Gurney took all of this in—fascinated not only by the fairy-tale parallels to the real-life events but also by Marian Eliot’s insistence on their huge significance. Her eyes burned with conviction and something that resembled triumph. The question in Gurney’s mind: Was the triumph in some way related to the tragedy, or did it simply reflect an academic’s satisfaction with the profundity of her own understanding?
After a brief silence during which her excitement subsided, she asked, “What were you hoping to find out from Carl?”
“I don’t know. Maybe why the inside of his house is so much neater than the outside.” He wasn’t entirely serious, but she replied in a businesslike tone.
“I look in on Carl fairly regularly. He hasn’t been himself since Kiki disappeared. Understandable. While I’m there, I put things where they seem to belong. It’s nothing, really.” She gazed over Gurney’s shoulder in the direction of Muller’s house, hidden behind a couple of acres of trees. “He takes better care of himself than you might think.”
“You’ve heard his opinion of Latinos?”
She uttered a short, exasperated sigh. “Carl’s position on that issue isn’t much different from the campaign speeches of certain public figures.”
Gurney gave her a curious look.
“Yes, I know, he’s a bit intense about it, but considering … well, considering the situation with his wife …” Her voice trailed off.
“And the Christmas tree in September? And the Christmas carols?”
“He likes them. Finds them soothing.” She stood, took her hoe with a firm hand from where it was leaning against the trunk of the apple tree, and gave Gurney a quick little nod that communicated the end of their conversation. Discussing Carl’s craziness was clearly not her favorite activity. “I have work to do. Good luck with your inquiries, Mr. Gurney.”
Either she had forgotten or she had consciously chosen not to pursue her earlier interest in the missing puzzle pieces. Gurney wondered which it was.
The big Airedale, seemingly sensing a change in the emotional atmosphere, appeared out of nowhere at her side.
“Thank you for your time. And your insight,” Gurney said. “I hope you’ll give me an opportunity to speak with you again.”
“We’ll see. Despite retirement, I lead a busy life.”
She turned to the rose garden with her hoe and began hacking fiercely into the crusty soil, as if disciplining an unruly element of her own nature.
Chapter 20
Ashton’s manor
Many of the houses on Badger Lane, especially those up toward Ashton’s end of the road, were old and large and had been maintained or restored with costly attention to detail. The result was a casual elegance toward which Gurney felt a resentment he would have resisted identifying as envy. Even measured by the elevated standards of Badger Lane, the Ashton property was striking: an impeccable two-story farmhouse of pale yellow stone surrounded by wild roses, huge free-form flower beds with herbaceous borders, and trellises of English ivy serving as passageways among the various areas of a gently sloping lawn. Gurney parked in a Belgian-block driveway that led to the kind of garage a real-estate agent would call a carriage house. Across the lawn stood the classical pavilion where the wedding musicians had played.
Gurney got out of his car and was immediately struck by a scent in the air. As he struggled to name it, a man came around from the rear of the main house carrying a pruning saw. Scott Ashton looked familiar but different, less vivid in person than on video. He was dressed in casually expensive country attire: Donegal tweed pants and a tailored flannel shirt. He noted Gurney’s presence without apparent pleasure or displeasure.
“You’re on time,” he said. His voice was even, mellow, impersonal.
“I appreciate your willingness to see me, Dr. Ashton.”
“Would you like to come inside?” It was purely a question, not an invitation.
“It would be helpful if I could see the area behind the house first—the location of the garden cottage. Also the patio table where you were sitting when the bullet hit the teacup.”
Ashton responded with a movement of his hand indicating that Gurney should follow him. As they passed through the trellis linking the garage and driveway area beside the house to the main lawn behind it—the trellis through which the wedding guests had entered the reception—Gurney experienced a feeling of combined recognition and dislocation. The pavilion, the cottage, the rear of the main house, the stone patio, the flower beds, the enclosing woods were recognizable but jarringly altered by the change of season, the emptiness, the silence. The odd scent in the air, exotically herbal, was stronger here. Gurney asked about it.
Ashton motioned vaguely toward the planting beds bordering the patio. “Chamomile, windflower, mallow, bergamot, tansy, boxwood. The relative strength of each component changes with the direction of the breeze.”
“Do you have a new gardener?”
Ashton’s features tightened. “In place of Hector Flores?”
“I understood he handled most of the work around the house.”
“No, he hasn’t been replaced.” Ashton noted the pruning saw he was carrying and smiled without warmth. “Unless by myself.” He turned toward the patio. “There’s that table you wanted to see.” He led Gurney through an opening in the low stone wall to an iron table with a pair of matching chairs near the back door of the house.
“Did you want to sit here?” Once again it was a question, not an invitation.
Gurney had settled into the chair that gave him the best view of the areas he remembered from the video when a slight movement drew his attention to the far side of the patio. There, on a small bench against the sunny back wall of the house, sat an elderly man in a brown cardigan with a twig in his hand. He was rocking his hand from side to side, making the twig resemble a metronome. The man had thinning gray hair, sallow skin, and a dazed look.
“My father,” said Ashton, sitting in the chair opposite Gurney.
“Here for a visit?”
Ashton paused. “Yes, a visit.”
Gurney responded with a curious look.
“He’s been in a private nursing home for about two years as the result of progressive dementia and aphasia.”
“He can’t speak?”
“Hasn’t been able to for at least a year now.”
“You brought him here for a visit?”
Ashton’s eyes narrowed as though he might be about to tell Gurney it was none of his business, but then his expression softened. “Jillian’s … death created … a kind of loneliness.” He seemed confused by the word and hesitated. “I think it was a week or two after her death that I decided to bring my father here for a while. I thought that being with him, taking care of him …” Again he fell silent.
“How do you manage that, going to Mapleshade every day?”
“He comes with me. Surprisingly, it’s not a problem. Physically, he’s fine. No difficulty walking. No difficulty with stairs. No difficulty eating. He can tend to his … hygiene requirements. In addition to the speech issue, the deficit is mainly in orientation. He’s generally confused about where he is, thinks he’s back in the Park Avenue apartment where we lived when I was a child.”
“Nice neighborhood.” Gurney glanced across the patio at the old man on the bench.
“Nice enough. He was a bit of a financial genius. Hobart Ashton. Trusted member of a social class in which all the men’s names sounded like boys’ prep schools.”
It was an old witticism and sounded stale. Gurney smiled politely.
Ashton cleared his throat. “You didn’t come here to talk about my father. And I don’t have much time. So what can I do for you?”
Gurney put his hands on the table. “Is this where you were sitting the day of the gunshot?”
“Yes.”
“It doesn’t make you nervous to be in the same spot?”
“A lot of things make me nervous.”
“I’d never know it, looking at you.”
There was a long silence, broken by Gurney. “Did you think the shooter hit what he was aiming at?”
“Yes.”
“What makes you so sure he wasn’t aiming at you and missed?”
“Did you see Schindler’s List? There is a scene in which Schindler attempts to talk the camp commandant into sparing the lives of Jews whom he would normally shoot for minor offenses. Schindler tells him that being able to shoot them, having a perfect right to shoot them, and then choosing in a godlike way to spare them, would be the greatest proof of his power over them.”
“That’s what you think Flores was doing? Proving, by sparing you and smashing the teacup, that he has the power to kill you?”
“It’s a reasonable hypothesis.”
“Assuming that the shooter was Flores.”
Ashton held Gurney’s gaze. “Who else did you have in mind?”
“You told the original investigating officer that Withrow Perry had a rifle of the same caliber as the bullet fragments gathered from this patio.”
“Have you ever met him or spoken to him?”
“Not yet.”
“Once you do, I think you’ll find the notion of Dr. Withrow Perry crawling around in those woods with a sniperscope utterly ridiculous.”
“But not so ridiculous for Hector Flores?”
“Hector has proven himself capable of anything.”
“That scene you mentioned from Schindler’s List? As I think about it, I seem to remember that the commandant doesn’t take the advice for very long. He doesn’t have the patience for it, and he very quickly goes back to shooting Jews who aren’t behaving the way he wants them to.”
Ashton did not reply. His gaze drifted toward the wooded hillside behind the pavilion and rested there.
Most of Gurney’s decisions were conscious and well calc
ulated, with one conspicuous exception: deciding when it was time to switch the tone of an interview. That was a gut call, and right then it felt like the right time. He leaned back in his iron chair and said, “Marian Eliot is quite a fan of yours.”
The signs were subtle; maybe Gurney was imagining them, but he got the impression from the odd look Ashton gave him that for the first time in their conversation he’d been thrown off stride. He recovered quickly.
“Marian is easy to charm,” he said in his smooth psychiatrist’s voice, “as long as you don’t try to be charming.”
Gurney realized that that had been his own perception, precisely. “She thinks you’re a genius.”
“She has her enthusiasms.”
Gurney tried another twist. “What did Kiki Muller think of you?”
“I have no idea.”
“You were her psychiatrist?”
“Very briefly.”
“A year doesn’t seem that brief.”
“A year? More like two months, not even two months.”
“When did the two months end?”
“I can’t tell you that. Confidentiality restrictions. I shouldn’t even have said two months.”
“Her husband told me that she had an appointment with you every Tuesday up until the week she disappeared.”
Ashton offered only an incredulous frown and shook his head.
“Let me ask you something, Dr. Ashton. Without improperly divulging anything Kiki Muller might have told you during the time she was seeing you, can you tell me why her treatment period ended so quickly?”
He considered this, seemed uncomfortable answering. “I discontinued it.”
“Can you tell me why you did that?”
He closed his eyes for a few seconds, then seemed to make a decision. “I discontinued her therapy because in my opinion she wasn’t interested in therapy. She was only interested in being here.”
“Here? On your property?”
“She’d show up half an hour early for her appointments, then linger afterward, supposedly fascinated by the landscaping, the flowers, whatever. The fact is, wherever Hector was, that’s where her attention was. But she wouldn’t admit it. Which made her communications with me dishonest and pointless. So I stopped seeing her after six or seven sessions. I’m taking a risk in telling you this, but it seems an important fact if she was lying about the duration of her treatment. The truth is, she ceased being my patient at least nine months prior to her disappearance.”