by Susan Conant
“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.”
Chapter Twelve
LET 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? Th
e 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?”
I told Althea about Geraldine R. Dodge. I gave the short version. “She’d had friends in Germany since the early twenties,” I finally said, “if not earlier. These were other dog people, breeders, important dog-show judges. I can’t believe that they were any more political than dog people are in this country right now.”
Althea corrected me. “Here, in this country, we enjoy the luxury of choosing whether to be political. Or perhaps the luxury of imagining that we are not. In Germany in the Nazi era, that choice did not exist.”
“Althea, I just cannot see Mrs. Dodge as someone who wanted to kill off the poor or sterilize people against their will, and I cannot see her as a Nazi sympathizer. But …”
“Yes?”
“She had German judges at her shows in the thirties, and not just in the early thirties.”
“And?”
“And I just found, on the Web—”
Althea came close to snorting. One of her Sherlockian friends, a man named Hugh, is a computer type from way back who is hooked on the World Wide Web and persists in futile efforts to introduce Althea to its wonders. But she does know what the Web is.
“Well, I did find it on the Web!” I insisted. “And I must have known this before, but maybe I’d forgotten. The point is that when the Nazis took over, they took over everything, including, believe it or not, dog clubs. They disbanded every breed club and every training club, every dog organization throughout Germany, and they nationalized all dog activities and events under the control of one government-run organization. And Mrs. Dodge absolutely must have known that. So when Mrs. Dodge invited German judges to her shows in the mid-and late thirties, they didn’t just come here as individuals. These people arrived with Nazi blessings. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have been here.”
“You are shocked that the Nazis took over a part of your world? And sent it here?”
“Yes, I am.”
Althea’s expression was slightly cynical, but her tone was kind. “Holly, have you ever heard the word totalitarian?”
“Of course,” I replied.
“Well, my dear, what did you think it meant?”
Chapter Thirteen
THE STAR OF DOG TRAINING that Thursday evening was, for once, a human being, a woman named Sherry who’d joined the Cambridge Dog Training Club about six months earlier. Sherry’s dog, Bandit, was a bright, eager Aussie—Australian shepherd—who harbored a prejudice against Rowdy and Kimi, whom he apparently saw as a threat to sheep. I didn’t hold Bandit’s opinion against him. I thought he was right. To avoid arousing Bandit’s sheep-protective instincts, I usually kept my dogs away from him. Consequently, I hardly knew Sherry. Tonight I risked Bandit’s wrath by easing Rowdy into the little crowd that surrounded Sherry, who, it turned out, lived within a half mile of the Motherways. What’s more, Sherry’s best friend had gone to high school with Jocelyn.
The Motherways were already the main subject of talk in the advanced class when Rowdy and I arrived at the Cambridge Armory, which is on Concord Avenue within easy walking distance of my house. At the end of the hall close to the entrance, the big beginners’ class was laboring over such rudiments of civilization as sit and stay, but at the far end of the room, Roz, our advanced instructor, was working individually with a single dog-handler team at a time. At the moment, Ray Metcalf and one of his Clumber spaniels had all Roz’s attention. Everyone else was clustered around Sherry, a plump woman with short, gray-blond curls. At a guess, she was fifty, about Jocelyn Motherway’s age. Age was the only thing the women had in common, I thought, age and, as I soon learned, the friend who’d gone to high school with Jocelyn. In particular, Sherry had the self-confidence and animation that Jocelyn sorely lacked.
“Ask anyone!” Sherry exclaimed. “The old man was always, always stinking mean to Peter, who was, believe me, no sweetheart, but you have to ask yourself, if you’d been raised like that, what would you be like?” Bandit, sitting squarely at Sherry’s left side, kept his eyes fastened on her face and listened with anticipatory interest, almost as if he expected her to order him to go fetch Mr. Motherway and shape him up. “When Jocelyn and Peter got married,” Sherry continued, “it was just awful. Peter’s father had a fit—and for the stupidest reason, which was that Jocelyn was adopted. Peter’s father figured she wasn’t good enough for his son because she didn’t know who her parents were, like it matters. And it wasn’t like Peter was some great catch, either. He flunked out of the academy, where his father taught, and then he got kicked out of another prep school, and he ended up in high school, and he barely graduated. And then he got sent to Vietnam, and when he got back, he moved in where they live now, in this little house, like a cottage, on his parents’ property, and he did odd jobs around town, but mainly he just did stuff there for his father. Sandra, my best friend, the one who went to school with Jocelyn, says the only reason Jocelyn ever got mixed up with him, Peter, to begin with was low self-esteem” Sherry made it sound as if the rest of us had never encountered the phrase before. After letting the idea sink in, she lowered her voice. “But about getting married, Jocelyn didn’t have a lot of choice. Things were different back then.”
To my annoyance, Roz interrupted. “Sherry? You and Bandit are next.” Really! What, after all, is the purpose of dog training? Gossip? Or just training dogs?
While Sherry and Bandit worked with Roz, I got Rowdy’s cheese cubes and roast beef from my little insulated bag, filled my pockets, and warmed him up with some heeling. But as soon as Sherry’s turn was over, I felt compelled to rejoin the group.
“What was Mrs. Motherway like?” I asked. “Peter’s mother, Christina. The one who just died.”
“Oh, she tried to be nice to Jocelyn, but she’d spoiled Peter rotten, and it was too late to fix that. When Peter was a kid, his father’d make him do this awful stuff, and Peter’d go running to his mother, and she’d give him whatever he wanted. And then his father’d call him a sissy.”
“What awful stuff?” I asked.
Ron, who is my plumber as well as my dog-training buddy, said in my ear, “Holly, you don’t want to hear. She was telling us before you got here.”
“I do want to hear,” I told him.
“It’s gross. Take it from me. You don’t want to hear.”
I should have listened to Ron. A dog-training plumber is, by definition, a person who understands how things work. I persisted. “What awful stuff?”
I asked Ron.
Unfortunately, he told me. “The old man used to make the son, Peter, kill the puppies there was something wrong with. He made him drown them. Sherry says he made the grandson do the same thing. When they were just little kids.”
Ray Metcalf was listening in. “The Nazis used to do that,” he commented. Ray is old enough to remember the era. He served in World War II. “Training for the Third Reich: They’d give a soldier a dog to raise, and then make him strangle it with his own hands.”
“Ron is right,” I said vehemently, “I really don’t want to hear this.” My stomach was turning. To settle myself, I stroked Rowdy’s soft ears, but when our time with Roz finally arrived, I still felt queasy. By concentrating on Rowdy and on the exercises, I managed to escape from myself, but as soon as our turn was over, the nasty feeling returned. For once, I was glad to leave the armory.
Walking home up Concord Avenue, I tried to blot out the ugly images by focusing on Rowdy’s pleasure in the cool of the evening, his wholesome happiness in trotting briskly over familiar pavement, and his earthy satisfaction in marking trees, shrubs, and utility poles he’d claimed as his own many times before. Terrible, unspeakable things, I reminded myself, had happened and would happen to millions of people. The perversion of the human-canine bond that Ray had mentioned was simply a form of dehumanization I hadn’t happened to hear of before. If Mrs. Dodge had known of this or any of the other horrors perpetrated by the Third Reich, she’d have had nothing at all to do with anyone even remotely connected with the Nazis.
But what of B. Robert Motherway? In referring to his travels in Germany in the thirties, he’d said not a word about Hitler. Had he been a Nazi sympathizer? The notion seemed fantastic. Then I realized with a jolt that he’d had the perfect cover: He’d been an art history teacher who spent his summers leading American students on tours of Europe. If his German was good? His field was art history; of course his German was good. And he didn’t have a German name. Robert was innocently English. Motherway, I realized for the first time, must have been the name of B. Robert’s stepfather, the American who’d married a German bride, adopted her son, and cultivated the boy’s interest in art and in dogs.