As if on cue, the wet blonde reappeared. The only noticeable difference was that now she was entirely naked.
CHAPTER 31
Gurney found Madeleine in the Hearth Room in an armchair by the fire. Her eyes were closed, but she opened them as he settled into the chair next to hers.
“Your meeting go well?”
“I can’t decide whether Peyton is the world’s most self-absorbed brat, or just pretending to be.”
“Why would he do that?”
“I’m not sure. But I got the impression of someone playing a role in a movie.”
“A man who can do whatever he wants?”
“Whatever and whenever.”
“Was he alone?”
“Not exactly.”
She gazed into the fire. “So what did you learn?”
“That he hated Ethan. That he considered him an intolerable control freak. That he couldn’t care less how he died or who might have killed him. That money bores him. That he relies totally on Steckle to deal with the tiresome burden of the Gall fortune. And that all he wants to do with his life is fuck his brains out with a breast-enhanced hooker in a hothouse.”
“But you’re not sure if you believe him?”
“I don’t know if he’s as undisciplined as he lets on—a hedonistic leaf in the wind. I think there’s a side to him I’m not seeing.”
“So . . . what do you do next?”
“Next? We need to check out Hammond’s place. Jack thinks it’s bugged. He thinks that’s how Fenton discovered his involvement. But he wants to be sure.”
“You mean now?”
He glanced at his watch. “Good a time as any, unless you want me to do something about getting us some dinner first.”
“I’m not hungry.” She hesitated. “But I want to come with you. Is that a problem?”
“Not at all.” He took out his phone and brought up Jane’s cell number.
TWENTY MINUTES LATER HE AND MADELEINE WERE STANDING IN the foyer of the chalet, brushing ice pellets off their clothes.
Wide-eyed with worry, Jane took their jackets and hats and hung them on coat hooks by the door. “Is something wrong?”
“I just want to give you a progress report and ask a few questions, if that’s okay.”
They followed her into the chalet’s main living area, where Richard was tending a modest fire. His expression was as bland as Jane’s was apprehensive.
“Sorry to intrude with so little notice,” said Gurney, “but I thought it would be useful to bring you up to date.”
With a notable lack of enthusiasm, he motioned Gurney and Madeleine toward the couch. When they were seated, he and Jane took chairs opposite them. On the table next to Hammond’s chair were two laptop computers, both open.
“So,” said Hammond. His unblinking aquamarine eyes were as unsettling as ever.
Gurney gestured toward the computers. “I hope we’re not interrupting anything.”
“Just a bit of voodoo.”
“Beg pardon?”
“On your last visit you questioned my interest in the curses employed by African witch doctors. It reminded me of my last paper on the subject, one I never completed. I decided to finish it now. With my new reputation for magical murder, interest should be high.”
“I’d love to hear more about it,” said Gurney, “assuming it’s not too academic.”
“It’s a practical description of how the power of a curse can be broken. The key is understanding how the voodoo curse works—how it brings about the victim’s death.”
Madeleine raised an eyebrow. “Are you saying those curses actually kill people?”
“Yes. In fact, the voodoo curse may be the world’s most elegant murder weapon.”
“How does it work?” asked Gurney.
“It begins with belief. You grow up in a society where everyone believes the witch doctor has extraordinary powers. You’re told that his curses are fatal, and you hear stories that prove it.
“You trust the people who tell you these stories. And eventually you see the proof for yourself. You see a man who has been cursed. You see him wither and die.”
Madeleine looked frightened. “But how does that happen?”
“It happens because the victim believes it’s happening.”
“I don’t understand.”
“It’s not that complicated. Our minds search constantly for cause-and-effect relationships. It’s necessary for survival. But sometimes we get it wrong. The man who knows he has been cursed, who believes in the power of the curse, is terrified because he believes the curse has doomed him. In his terror, his appetite decreases. He begins to lose weight. He sees the loss of weight as proof that the process of dying has begun. His terror increases. He loses more weight, gradually weakens, becomes physically ill. This illness—the product of his own fear—he sees as the result of the witch doctor’s curse. The more terrified he becomes, the worse the symptoms become that feed his terror. In time, this downward spiral kills him. He dies because he believes he is dying. And his eventual death solidifies the community’s belief in the power of the curse.”
“I’m impressed,” said Gurney. “The killer never touches the victim, the murder mechanism is psychological, and death would essentially be self-inflicted.”
“Yes.”
“Rather like Fenton’s theory of the four suicides.”
“Yes.”
That led to a fraught silence, broken by Madeleine. “Didn’t you start by saying there was a way to break the power of the curse?”
“Yes, but it isn’t the way you might imagine. A scientifically minded person might try to persuade the victim that voodoo is nonsense, that it has no real power. The problem with that approach is that it usually fails, and the victim dies.”
“Why?” asked Madeleine.
“It underestimates the power of belief. Whenever they collide, facts are no match for beliefs. We may think our beliefs are based on facts, but the truth is that the facts we embrace are based on our beliefs. The great conceit of the rational mind is that facts are ultimately persuasive. But that’s a fantasy. People don’t die to defend the facts, they die to defend their beliefs.”
“So what’s the answer? If you see the victim of a curse suffering, actually withering away, what do you do?”
He regarded her for a moment with those unearthly eyes. “The trick is to accept the power, not challenge it.”
“Accept it . . . how?”
“When I was in Africa I was once asked to speak to a man who’d been cursed by the local witch doctor and who was, predictably, wasting away. A Western psychiatrist had taken the logical debunking approach, with no positive effect. I took a different route into the man’s mind. To make a long story short, I told him that the local witch doctor had in the past so misused the tremendous power of voodoo for his own enrichment that the spirits had taken the power away from him. I explained that to maintain his position, to keep the tribe from realizing he’d been stripped of his magic, the witch doctor had resorted to poisoning his victims. I invented a full narrative, including the details of a recent victim’s death. I described a credible process for the poisoning—exactly how it was done, how its symptoms imitated the effects of a legitimate curse. As I was speaking I could see the specifics of the new narrative taking root in his mind. In the end, it worked. It worked because the man could accept it without abandoning his fundamental belief in the power of voodoo.”
Madeleine appeared to be struggling with the implications of this.
Gurney asked, “What happened to the witch doctor?”
“Shortly after the rumor spread that he’d lost his mojo, a deadly snake ended up in his hammock.” He shrugged. “Witch doctors make so many enemies. And there are so many perils in Africa. So many avenues of revenge.”