Authors: Susan Conant
“They just churn them out as fast as they can,” Elise had
said, “and take no responsibility afterwards. When someone turns one of their dogs over to us, we don’t even bother calling him. Motherway has never taken a dog back in his life. The reputable German breeders won’t sell to him anymore. They’re sorry they ever did. They think he’s garbage.”
Pouring a little more of the vinegary wine into my glass, I said to Kevin, “I should have known there was something fishy. Mr. Motherway came across as the gracious old gentleman, American antiques, European travel, the whole bit. The grandson, Christopher, looks exactly like him. Christopher struck me as sort of arrogant. ‘Entitled,’ Rita would say. And Peter was definitely unpleasant. Sullen. But the strange thing was that it was as if Christopher, the grandson, was Mr. Motherway’s son, and Peter was some serf who worked for both of them. Except that Peter didn’t exactly play that role gracefully. He obviously didn’t get along with his father or his son, and he sort of went around radiating resentment. His wife, Jocelyn, is the original doormat. They have this dog, this big black shepherd, Wagner, that tags along with Mr. Motherway, and even the dog realizes that Jocelyn is at the bottom of the hierarchy. The dog growls at her, and no one interferes, and she just kind of takes it as her due. It’s pitiful. But there’s something likable about Jocelyn. I offered to help her with the dog, but I guess she wasn’t interested.”
Kevin was sipping his beer from the can. Although I knew he was listening, his eyes were on Rowdy and Kimi. Rowdy lay in almost comatose bliss on his side as Kimi leaned over him and energetically scoured his face with her maternal pink tongue. She licked repeatedly at one of his ears, moved to the other, then ministered to his eyes, which he was forced to close to avoid having his eyeballs groomed. After that, she apparently meant to give herself a break, but Rowdy stirred. Gently and tenderly, he poked her in the chest with one of his big forepaws.
More!
As if she were glad to know that he appreciated her efforts, she resumed her task. The sight of Kimi playing dental hygienist with her tongue was too much for Kevin. He looked back at me.
“Quiet type.” Kevin’s tone was ominous.
“Kimi? Kevin, I’d hardly call her the—”
“The widow. Jocelyn. Sometimes it’s the mousy ones that—”
“That what? Turn out to be bubbling with murderous rage that finally comes spewing out? Kevin, Jocelyn Motherway is not some sleeping volcano. I’ve met her. She just isn’t.”
Stretching his gorilla-like arms in an immense shrug, Kevin said lugubriously, “Marriage. It’ll do that to a person.” Kevin’s prejudice against the institution is not based on personal experience, unless you count his experience with his mother and his late father, who died a natural death, at least as far as I know. Rather, according to Kevin, he merely possesses a professional understanding of the risks of marriage and parenthood. For as long as I’ve known him, his view has been that if your spouse doesn’t kill you, your parents, your siblings, or your children will.
I hoped Kevin wouldn’t launch into statistics. He did. Forty-five percent of murder victims were killed by people they knew. Twenty-six percent of female murder victims were done in by a husband or boyfriend. When women committed murder, in thirty-one point four percent of the cases, the victim was the husband.
Mate homicide
is a phrase he savors.
“Kevin, I don’t remember numbers the way you do, but I seem to recall from one of our previous discussions that the great majority of murderers
and
victims are men. Violence is a predominantly
male
phenomenon. It is in dogs. The typical dog that bites someone is an intact male.
Unneutered.”
Kevin turned red.
“But,” I added, “does that mean that Rowdy is going to bite someone? No. And all the statistics going do not mean that this particular murder is a mate homicide. Since most murderers are male, the raw probability is that Peter was killed by a man.”
“Never said otherwise.” With a look that falsely suggested a change of subject, Kevin asked, “You read about that guy in Watertown?”
Watertown is west of Cambridge. I’d assumed until now that Kevin had been too busy to follow the latest local example of what was definitely a family murder. This one was especially gory and dramatic. At five-thirty in the evening on
a quiet street of small houses, a thirty-six-year-old man cut his sixty-seven-year-old father’s throat. The father got up and ran. Neighbors tried to intervene, but the son caught the father and stabbed him to death.
“Yes,” I admitted, “and if you know any details that weren’t in the paper, I don’t want to hear them, and in particular, considering that we have both just eaten a big meal, including steak, it would be nice of you to refrain from quoting the autopsy report.” I particularly hate hearing postmortem incisions compared to letters of the alphabet. I
like
the alphabet. I don’t want to think of its letters in terms of shapes incised in dead bodies. “Peter Motherway wasn’t stabbed, was he? I thought he was strangled.”
“Garroted. Strangled with a thin length of wire.” He got himself another beer.
“What makes you think he wasn’t killed at Mount Auburn?”
Kevin was succinct. “Everything. M.E. says so. And Motherway’s vehicle was left at Logan, probably right where he parked it. Poor bastard probably never got back into it. Eight forty-five
P.M.
Comes out of the cargo terminal, proceeds to his vehicle, perp moves in from behind, wire around his neck—”
“Well, you can probably rule out old Mr. Motherway. He’s in great shape for his age, but I’m far from sure he’s strong enough. And Jocelyn doesn’t have the gumption. Christopher?”
“Out to dinner with Granddad. Got to the restaurant—French place in Acton—at seven-thirty. Left at ten. Service must’ve been awful. Stopped for gas on the way home. Verified.” Acton is west of Boston, nowhere near Logan airport or Mount Auburn Cemetery.
“Jocelyn wasn’t with them,” I said.
“Home alone,” Kevin replied. “Big, brawny woman. A lot of muscles from lifting the old lady.” He paused. “Home alone.”
L
ET ME INTRODUCE
Althea Battlefield, BSI, as she likes to be presented. Instead of boldly stating that Althea was born in the year before Marcellus Hartley Dodge and Ethel Geraldine Rockefeller became man and wife, I’ll explain that the letters after Althea’s name proclaim her membership in the Baker Street Irregulars. I can best explain the organization in terms of my own native language and subculture: The Baker Street Irregulars is
the
elite, by-invitation-only kennel club for fanciers of Sherlock Holmes. Just as the American Kennel Club long refused to allow women to serve as delegates, so the BSI long persisted in barring women from membership. The AKC was established in 1884. One of its founders was William Rockefeller, father of you know who. Not until 1973 did the AKC make the dramatic announcement that it would permit women to serve as delegates. Geraldine R. Dodge died the same year—not of surprise. So far as I know, the events were unconnected. Founded in 1934, the BSI waited until 1991 to admit women. Before that, Althea was stuck in the ladies’ auxiliary, known, incredibly, as the Adventuresses of Sherlock Holmes.
Althea? An
adventuress?
The word has licentious connotations. The other Adventuresses may, I suppose, have sashayed around madly contracting scandalous liaisons. Althea, however, is in all respects a thoroughly upright person. She uses a
wheelchair, but she sits up straight in it with her extremely long legs stretched ahead of her and her large feet resting on the floor. Everything about her is lengthy: her arms, her hands, her torso. She has a large, bony head. Althea’s memory, too, is immense. She remembers everything about the many years she has lived through. That’s why I consulted her about the eugenics movement in the twenties and thirties. I was counting on her to exonerate Mrs. Dodge.
I’d met Althea the previous January, when she lived at the Gateway, a nursing home where Rowdy and I still do therapy-dog visits. Most people in nursing homes move only to the same final destination, but almost everyone dreams of leaving as Althea did, which is to say, alive. Not that the Gateway is a terrible place; on the contrary, it is cheerful, busy, and attentive. Even so, Althea was far happier sharing a house with her sister, Ceci, than she’d been at the Gateway. There, Althea’s living space had consisted of half a shared room. Although she’d tried to surround herself with Sherlockian artifacts, she’d had space on her nightstand and windowsill for only a few treasured volumes and a handful of carefully chosen objects. Meanwhile, her sister, Ceci, a wealthy widow, had lived all by herself in a big, beautiful house on Norwood Hill in the suburb of Newton.
Althea’s room in the house on Norwood Hill had originally been the library. It was a large, sunny room with a fireplace. The built-in shelves that lined the walls held hundreds, perhaps thousands, of books about Sherlock Holmes, and displayed pipes, Persian slippers, deerstalker hats, statuettes, and zillions of other Holmesian icons. The collection was especially large because Ceci’s late husband, Ellis, another Sherlockian, had maintained the library as a shrine to Baker Street. The addition of the items Althea had had at the Gateway and those she’d kept in storage had turned the room into a little museum. The only non-Holmesian object was Althea’s bed, although it, too, may have slyly alluded to the Canon in a way that escaped me. One of the advantages of Althea’s new Sherlockian quarters was, I thought, that she wasn’t confined to them. The library-bedroom was right next to the living room, which was where Rowdy and I often
found her on what were no longer therapy-dog visits, but calls of friendship.
On Thursday morning at ten, I rang the bell of the big white house on Norwood Hill. One of Althea’s nurses, Ginny, answered the door and led Rowdy and me to the far end of the living room, where a plant-filled alcove formed a miniature conservatory. The French doors of the alcove gave a view of the terrace and the spacious backyard. The alcove had a tile floor and was crowded with potted palms and rattan furniture. Althea’s wheelchair had been positioned to bake her in the sort of solar oven that people in their nineties often enjoy. The skin on her face had passed beyond wrinkles to translucent purity. Her white hair was so thin that it revealed her pale scalp and the skull beneath; she could have modeled for a phrenologist. Although Althea had lost most of her vision, her faded eyes retained an unmistakable look of sharp intelligence. She wore a pink silk dress.
“Good morning, Holly!” Althea is one of the few friends I have who greet me first. “Rowdy, good morning to you, too.”
The big boy was on his best therapy-dog behavior. He did not chomp on the palms and then deposit half-digested leaves on some prominent spot on the living room rug. Instead of dropping to the tile to beg for a tummy rub, he sat close enough to Althea to let her reach his head. Then he raised a massive paw and rested it on the arm of her chair. Posed together with the palm fronds in the background, the two looked like figures in a sentimental Victorian oil painting.
Taking a seat in one of the thickly cushioned rattan chairs, I said, “Althea, I need to ask you something that isn’t about Sherlock Holmes.”
She chortled. “If pressed, Holly, I am capable of limited small talk on one or two other subjects.”
“Eugenics,” I said abruptly. “I need to know about the eugenics movement: who supported it, what it meant, how people felt about it.” I hesitated. Althea’s age was no secret, and she was ferociously proud of her memory. Even so …
“In the thirties,” she said with a knowing little smile.
“Yes,” I replied gratefully. I leaned forward in my chair.
“I have the impression that, at least for some people, eugenics meant different things before and after the Holocaust. That in the late twenties maybe …” I stumbled. “Or in the early thirties.” I took a breath. “That
some
people, some decent people, saw it just as a way to improve social conditions, end poverty, and so forth.”
“Revisionist nonsense!” Althea decreed. “Eugenics was as evil then as it is now. Breeding better people, indeed! Ridding the gene pool of unfit stock! Elitist, racist, anti-Semitic, pseudoscientific palaver! People are not show dogs, and that’s that.”
“But why would …” I began again. “Why would a kind, decent person have supported it?”
“Stupidity?” Althea suggested. “Naïveté. And people who are kind and decent in some respects may still harbor delusions of their own superiority. Vanity plays a role. It isn’t flattering to be told that we’re all created equal, is it? Ah, but to be told that by virtue of nothing more than birth, one is an Aryan superman? The appeal to vanity was as effective as it was dangerous.”
“A lot of Americans were taken in, at least temporarily,” I pointed out. “They had German friends. They visited Germany in the thirties. Just the way they do now. Althea, Americans visit Germany all the time. American dogs do!” Mindful of the beer lecture I’d delivered to Kevin, I said, “I have a friend, Delores Lieske, whose malamute, Tazs, went to Berlin, for heaven’s sake, to celebrate the reunification of Germany. This was for the German-American Volksfest. Tazs was specially invited. All expenses paid! He gave weight-pulling demonstrations, and he visited with people. Paws across the water. He’s very charming. Among other things, he purrs and moans when you pat him, and he turns somersaults. Or he did then.” I hesitated. “He’s a little old for somersaults. Now he corkscrews. Anyway, in the thirties, most of the visits back and forth between Germany and the U.S. were probably just like that! Innocent! Americans went there, and they didn’t see—”
Althea jabbed a bony fist in the air. She seemed almost to be mocking the Nazi salute.
“Then
, in the thirties, there was
evil to be seen. And if people didn’t see, it was only because they were fooling themselves. I ask you! What kind of person is taken in by
goose-stepping?
Flashy uniforms, braggadocio, national self-aggrandizement, tirades of
hate!
Your friend’s dog wouldn’t have been deceived! My dear, from the beginning, the evil of the Third Reich was visible, audible, and palpable. The essence of that evil was, of course, the death of compassion.” Althea paused. “Holly, if I may ask, is there someone in particular you have in mind? Besides a somersaulting dog?”