Marian Eliot’s suggested location for carrying on their conversation was her own home, which happened to be across the lane and a hundred yards back down the hill from Carl Muller’s. The actual location turned out to be not so much her home as her driveway, where she enlisted Gurney’s help unloading bags of peat moss and mulch from the back of her Land Rover.
She’d traded her cudgel for a hoe and stood by the edge of a rose garden about thirty feet from the vehicle. As Gurney hefted the bags into a wheelbarrow, she asked him about his precise role in the investigation and his position in the state police chain of command.
His explanation that he was an “evidence consultant” who’d been retained by the victim’s mother outside the official BCI process was greeted with a skeptical eye and tightened lips.
“What on earth is that supposed to mean?”
He decided to take a chance and reply bluntly. “I’ll tell you what it means if you can keep it to yourself. The fact is, it’s a job description that lets me carry on an investigation without waiting for the state to issue an official PI license. If you want to check on my background as an NYPD homicide detective, call the smart rhinoceros—whose name, by the way, is Jack Hardwick.”
“Hah! Good luck with the state! Do you think you might be able to push that wheelbarrow over here?”
Gurney took that as her way of accepting him and how things were. He made three more trips from the back of the Land Rover to the rose garden. After the third she invited him to sit with her on a white-enameled cast-iron bench under an overgrown apple tree.
She turned so she could look at him squarely. “What’s all this about missing pieces?”
“We’ll come to the missing pieces, but I need to ask a few questions first to help me get oriented.” He was feeling his way toward the right balance of assertiveness and accommodation, watching her body language for signs of needed course corrections. “First question: How would you describe Dr. Ashton in a sentence or two?”
“I wouldn’t try. He’s not the sort of man to be captured in a sentence or two.”
“A complex man?”
“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.