For a long moment, she did not respond. It was clear to Logan that she did not enjoy answering these questions. He also sensed something inside her — something going on beyond, or beneath, the ordinary. What it was, he couldn’t tell. Nevertheless, she seemed to be so dazed by the loss of Artowsky that she was operating on autopilot, answering the questions as they came without thought. “You know of my father’s work?”
“I know of his reputation, yes.”
“Then you may or may not know that over the last few years in particular he’d been subjected to increasingly withering scorn, even derision, by the orthodox scientific community. Academics can be an unforgiving, hateful lot, Mr. Logan. Schadenfreude, or an embarrassing bit of peer review, seems never to be very far away.”
“I know. And it’s Dr. Logan, actually. I teach history at Yale.”
“Then you’ll understand what I’m talking about. His theories were ridiculed, articles called his work unscientific, even pseudoscience. My father was an honorable man, Dr. Logan. He took great pride in his research. He tried to shrug it all off, but the continued criticism wounded him deeply. At last, he went into a kind of disgusted seclusion, determined not to be heard from publicly again until his work was complete. And yet even that was not enough — he grew so despondent that a time came when I truly feared for him. And so I arranged for us to come out here — just Father, myself, and our two graduate students — to continue his research in a place where academic bitterness would have a hard time reaching him.”
“So what, exactly, was your father researching?” Logan asked. “I know he was a naturalist, but beyond that very little.”
A look of defensiveness came immediately over the woman’s face.
“Don’t worry,” Logan said. “You’ll find that I’m the last person who would ever ridicule another scholar’s theories.”
“Because of your looking into things ‘beyond the scope of the normal,’ you mean?”
“Exactly. My professional title — outside of Yale historian, that is — is enigmalogist.”
She sighed. “Very well. I’m sure you’ll understand if I don’t go into detail. It had to do with something called the lunar effect.”
“You mean, the correlation between the various stages of earth’s lunar cycle and animal behavior?”
She looked at him in astonishment. “You’ve heard of it?”
“Given my avocation, are you surprised? Yes: it’s the supposed connection between the full moon and the increased symptomology of epileptics, schizophrenics, and so forth.”
“That’s the simplistic view of it, anyway — and partly what gave my father such difficulties within the scientific community. And it is true there had been published studies on the ‘lunar-lunacy connection’: spikes in erratic behavior, suicides, psychiatric admissions, even increased traffic accidents and dog bites during certain phases of the moon. But I’m afraid our work here was much less sensational. I can’t tell you everything. But part of my father’s work involved mapping, very carefully and fully, the correlation of the lunar effect between nocturnal and diurnal animals. Small animals: shrews, bats. And as it turned out, this remote spot in the Adirondacks was ideal for both experimentation and observation. Now I’m determined to finish up the work he never got a chance to complete.”
It was ironic, Logan thought, that Jessup’s theories and Dr. Feverbridge’s research both dealt, in very different ways, with the same thing: the moon. He wondered what Jessup knew, if anything, about Feverbridge’s work. “How did he happen to die, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“He was out hiking about six months ago. He liked the outdoors so — I think that’s where Mark got his own taste for tramping around the forest. He was at the top of Madder’s Gorge, a high point of land not two miles from here. He must have slipped, because he fell to the base of a waterfall, a few hundred feet below.”
“How awful.”
“I had to identify what was left of my poor father. It was… it was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do….” And here she fell silent.
Logan let the silence lengthen. He admired the courage of this woman, her evident determination, and her willingness to open up to a stranger about such a painful subject. The dogs returned, one with the stick in its mouth. It dropped it at Laura Feverbridge’s feet, panting eagerly, and she picked it up and tossed it toward the woods once again.
“Anyway, continuing Father’s research seemed the best way to honor his memory.” She stood up. “And now, Dr. Logan, I think I’d better get back to it.”
Logan stood up as well. “Of course. And I think you’re brave to do so. Believe me, I know what it’s like to have to work, knowing the entire world might be laughing at you. You’ve been very patient in answering my questions. I hope you’ll forgive me if I ask just one more — and believe me when I say I don’t mean to cause you any pain by it. You said you brought your father out to this remote place because you feared the academic scorn he’d been unrelentingly subjected to might make him… well, deeply depressed, at the very least. Can you be sure that his fall from the cliff wasn’t intentional on his part?”
At this, the woman’s hazel eyes clouded over. “No,” she said after a long moment. “I’ve asked myself that, and there’s no way I can ever be sure. I can only tell you that the seclusion brought him relief from the outside world — a place where the quiet could marshal his thoughts. He seemed happier to me here, more at peace with himself, than he had in years.”
“Thank you, Dr. Feverbridge. I appreciate your candor. And I wish you the best of luck in completing your research.”
“A pleasure to meet you, Dr. Logan.”
They shook hands. Laura Feverbridge turned and disappeared into the laboratory, and Logan walked back to his Jeep.
He drove the hour-long trip back to Cloudwater deep in thought.
15
The following day began sunny and crisp, but by afternoon clouds had gathered and a fine mist was falling. After lunch, Logan bundled his laptop and notepad into his duffel, slung it over his shoulder, and made his way out of his cabin, along the network of paths, across the lawn, and into the great lodge. The receptionist nodded as he passed. All was quiet; he could almost imagine a great creative hive around him, busily working as — in countless private rooms — theses were being proposed, novels narrated, abstruse geometric theorems proven.
As was his nature, he had already explored the lodge and even some of its extensive grounds: he always felt more comfortable having a working knowledge of his surroundings. Now he made his way to the third floor and down its plushly carpeted hall to the heart of the building, where a half-open door revealed a narrow wooden stairway leading upward. He climbed it to a tiny room, nestled beneath the very eaves. This room, he’d learned, was known as “Forsythe’s aerie.” Back in the late nineteenth century, when Cloudwater had still been known as Rainshadow Lodge, the “Great Camp” had been the summer home of Willis J. Forsythe, a shipping magnate. He had, the story went, fancied himself something of an essayist and writer of belles lettres, and it had been his wont to come up to this tiny, uppermost room, where he could be certain of no distractions, in order to concentrate on writing. If the tactic had worked, Logan found no evidence of it: there were no books by Forsythe in Cloudwater’s library.
The room was plain to the point of monasticism, containing only a single table and straight-backed wooden chair. It was empty, as he’d expected it would be. A single double-sashed window looked over the lawn and down to the mist-shrouded lake, and it was precisely this expansive view that he had come for: sitting in the Thomas Cole cabin that morning, he’d begun to feel hemmed in by trees, and he wanted a larger view in which to make the decision he realized now had to be made.