“I noticed your asparagus bed out there. Only vegetable worth the trouble of growing at home. Freshness. Huge difference.” He glanced around again. “Might be a good idea to have a seat.”
“How about right here,” suggested Gurney, gesturing to the chairs at the table. He added, “We’re eager to find out what this is all about.”
“Good. I’m hoping your interest will survive the answer.”
With curious frowns, Gurney and Madeleine took seats next to each other at the table.
Thrasher remained standing on the opposite side. “First, a bit of background. As you know, my vocation is forensic pathology, with a focus on determining the causes of untimely death. My avocation, however, is the examination of northeastern Colonial life, with a focus on its darker aspects, particularly the malignant synergy of slavery and psychopathology. I’m sure you’re aware that slavery was not an exclusively Southern phenomenon. In Colonial New York City in seventeen hundred, nearly half the households owned at least one slave. Chattel slavery—the buying and selling of human beings over whom the owner had absolute control—was widely accepted.”
“We’re aware of the history,” said Madeleine.
“A glaring defect of history as it is commonly taught is that the events of an era are often seen acting upon one another in only very large terms—for example, the interaction between advances in mechanization and the movement of populations to manufacturing centers. We read about these interactions and think we’re grasping the essence of an age. Or we read about slavery in the context of agricultural economics and we think we understand it—when, in fact, nothing could be further from the truth. It’s possible to read a dozen books about it and never
“What synergy?” asked Madeleine.
“The appalling ways in which some of society’s ills combine with others.”
“What are you getting at?”
“I wrote an article on the subject last year for a journal of cultural psychology. The title was ‘Victims for Sale: Torture, Sexual Abuse, and Serial Murder in Colonial America.’ I’m working on another right now—detailing the confluence of psychopathic disorders and a legal system that permitted one person to own another.”
“What does this have to do with us?”
“I’m coming to that. The average American’s image of Colonial America doesn’t run much deeper than stolid-looking Pilgrims in big black hats, happy Indians, brotherly love, religious freedom, and occasional hardship. Colonial reality, of course, was something else entirely. Filth, fear, starvation, ignorance, disease, superstition, the practice of witchcraft and the torture and hanging of witches, heresy trials, cruel punishments, banishments, absurd medical practices, pain and death everywhere. And of course, all the major mental disorders and predatory behaviors—all rampant, all misunderstood. Psychopaths who—”
Madeleine broke in impatiently. “Dr. Thrasher . . .”
He ignored the interruption. “The convergence of two great ills. The desire of the psychopath to exert total control over another person—to use, to abuse, to kill. Imagine that urge combined with the institution of slavery—a system that enabled the easy purchase of potential victims at a public market. Men, women, and children for sale. Objects to be employed at the owner’s pleasure. Human beings with hardly any more rights than farm animals. Human beings with virtually no effective legal protection against constant rape, and worse. Men, women, and children whose deaths, accidental or intentional, few authorities would bother to seriously investigate.”
“Enough!” said Madeleine. “I asked you a question.
Thrasher blinked in surprise, then replied matter-of-factly. “The old foundation David uncovered dates, in my opinion, to the very early seventeen hundreds. There were no settlements in this part of the state at that time. This was a frontier wilderness, the essence of the unknown—a place of savagery, danger, and isolation. No one would have chosen to live here, this far from a protective community, unless they were under constraint.”
“Constraint?”
“The people who came here would have done so for one of two reasons. One, they were engaging in practices that would have been considered abhorrent to their community and so came here to avoid possible exposure. Or two, they
There was a silence, broken by Gurney.
“What kind of practices are you talking about?”
“The objects you found indicate some involvement with witchcraft. That may have been the reason they were driven out of their original community. But I believe that witchcraft was the least of their transgressions. I believe the essence of what was happening in that house by your pond three hundred years ago was what we would define today as serial murder.”
Madeleine’s eyes widened. “What?!”
