Evil Breeding

by Susan Conant

  Charitably speaking, B. Robert Motherway had borrowed an episode from the life of the young Hartley Dodge. Uncharitably speaking? B. Robert Motherway was a damned liar.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  A LTHEA BATTLEFIELD is given to quotation. Her fanatical devotion to Sherlock Holmes means that her source is almost invariably the Sacred Writings. Today, however, she produced a line of verse that had not been penned by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. “‘Oh, what a tangled web we weave,’” declaimed Althea, “‘when first we practice to deceive!’ Sir Walter Scott.”

  “Web,” I repeated gratefully. “A tangled Web. Exactly. You see, Althea? I knew you were the right person to consult.” I thanked her as she likes to be thanked. “‘The tidiest and most orderly brain,’” I quoted, “‘with the greatest capacity for storing facts of any man’—or woman—’living.’” I had touched up the Great Detective’s famous description of his brother, My croft Holmes.

  “Tampering with the Canon!” Althea scolded. “Shame on you!”

  “If Sherlock Holmes had known you,” I insisted, “he’d have had to update his views. You are the ‘central exchange.’ You are the ‘clearinghouse.’ Your ‘specialism is omniscience.’”

  “Your specialism,” countered Althea, “is brazen flattery.”

  It was Wednesday morning. When Rowdy and I visited Althea, we usually sat in front of the fireplace in the living room or in the sunbathed alcove packed with rattan furniture and potted palms. Today, Althea and I were at her dining room table. Rowdy snoozed under it. The polished mahogany top was covered with manila folders and stacks of paper. In making sense of the plethora of information, Althea had a triple advantage over me. Her limited vision meant she couldn’t read most of what was printed on the material I’d spread before her; she was drown-proofed against the deluge. Because of her great age, she lacked the stamina for mental meandering; she reserved her energy for marching directly to the point. Most important, her tidy, orderly brain enabled her not only to absorb great amounts of information, but to distinguish between the useful and the useless, to ignore the irrelevant, and to sort what remained into meaningful patterns. Forced to organize and summarize for Althea, I found myself infected by her contagious intelligence. Or maybe all this blather is simply a way of saying that Althea was a retired teacher, a martinet, I suspected, in whose presence I felt compelled to think.

  The dining room of the house on Norwood Hill, I might mention, provided a suitably Holmesian setting for the one-act play in which Althea took the role of the brainy Mycroft Holmes, the archetypal armchair detective, who, except in the extraordinary case of the Bruce-Partington plans, walked from his rooms in Pall Mall around the corner into Whitehall, and was seen nowhere else but at the Diogenes Club, conveniently located opposite his lodgings. Indeed, with its wood-paneled walls, mahogany sideboard, ornate silver, and heavy crystal, the suburban American dining room could have passed for the Stranger’s Room, the only place at the Diogenes Club where talking was allowed. Heavy crimson velvet swathed the windows. Oil paintings hung on the walls. One showed two sailing ships about to capsize in deep swells under a dark sky. In the other, a pair of scrawny kittens took sentimental shelter from a rainstorm under an umbrella apparently made of skin as thin and translucent as Althea’s. The maudlin pictures were favorites of Althea’s sister, Ceci, whose mentality was as mushy and gushy as Althea’s was logical and sparse. It was certainly Ceci who’d chosen the frilly white summer dress and white lace shawl Althea wore today, Ceci who’d lovingly daubed Althea’s prominent cheekbones with powdery pink blusher and glossed Althea’s age-thinned lips in rose. Fortunately, cosmetology had offered Ceci the means neither to reduce Althea’s great height by six or eight inches nor to shrink Althea’s amazonian feet to a girlish size six. Althea’s hair had, however, been becomingly trimmed, moussed, curled, and fluffed. Its white aura hovered around her pink scalp as if emanating from the electrochemical whoosh and crackle of logical thought beneath.

  “Bro,” said Althea, impatiently tapping long, bony fingers on the table.

  I’d finished summarizing facts and speculations about the Motherway family, Christina’s death, Peter’s murder, the background of Mrs. Dodge and the Morris and Essex shows, and the material I’d received in the mysterious mailings. Before presenting and subsequently surrendering the material to Kevin Dennehy, I’d made high-quality photocopies of everything, including the photographs. Donning eyeglasses with inch-thick lenses, Althea had peered at the picture of the servants at Giralda. At her request, I had just read aloud the note from Eva to the unknown Bro.

  “Bro,” she repeated. “Brother? Our cast of characters offers only one, does it not? We are told that the senior Mr. Motherway’s sister died in Germany. Therefore, she lived or visited there for at least part of her life. The biological father of this same Mr. Motherway was German. The surname is not. The relationship between the stepfather and stepson was close. The stepfather passed along his interest in dogs, in antiques, in art. His name, too?”

  “I wish my memory were better,” I said. “I think that Mr. Motherway actually said he’d been adopted, that his stepfather had adopted him.”

  “Two children,” Althea said. “Brother and sister. Your Mr. Motherway, if I may call him that, was adopted by the stepfather, who did not necessarily adopt the sister as well. Therefore, the sister and brother may have had different last names. Hers, presumably, was German. Her first name, too.”

  What came to mind was Brunhild. I had the sense to keep quiet.

  “Many of what one thinks of as American first names,” Althea continued, “are, of course, of German origin or are common to both countries. But let us broaden our focus to include other items in these mysterious packets, which are not, on reflection, all that mysterious after all. What are these mailings about? The Motherway family. Specifically, Christina Motherway. Her funeral. Therefore, her death. The murder of her son, Peter. Nothing cryptic there. If some items, why not all? Letters of reference from German employers for a certain Eva Kappe. Eva. An ordinary American name, an ordinary German name. Eva’s connection to the Motherways? As you have cleverly discovered, a certain Eva Kappe attended the same New Jersey high school also attended by our unique brother, so to speak. An informal note from Eva to Bro. Eva Kappe to her brother. Bro? Oh my, yes. Yes, of course! Our only brother.”

  “Bro,” I said. “Short for B. Robert. Short for brother. Althea, what Motherway wanted to paint for me was a picture of a patrician background. Princeton, tours of Europe, showing at Morris and Essex. He likes low-key name-dropping. Mrs. Dodge. Her son. Foreign judges. Even if he’d talked about his sister, he’d never have said that she was anyone’s maid.”

  “My energy is beginning to run low.” Althea does not complain. Rather, she reports. Now, she could have been a laptop issuing a low-battery warning. “Perhaps a cup of tea would help. Would you mind asking Mary? And a treat for Rowdy, too. We can’t leave him out.”

  Roused by the sound of his name, Rowdy arose and did his debonair act, which consists of dancing around with the grace of Fred Astaire before seating himself next to a lady and proffering his outstretched paw. If his victim cooperates, he kisses her hand. Althea objects to saliva. Rowdy compromises by resting his chin on her knee or on the arm of her chair while training eyes of adoration on her ancient face. His posture and expression suggest that he is summoning the courage to propose marriage. What’s interesting about the courtship behavior of Rowdy the Debonair is the contrast between the actual and the potential. In actuality, he suavely and gently pays tribute to an elderly friend. The potential is readily observable: the incisors, the canines, the premolars, and the molars of this or any other Alaskan malamute. Ponder the crushing power of those jaws. The dog could maim or kill in seconds. He could, yet he does not and will not; the distinction between the actual and the potential is strong and trustworthy. But it’s always there, isn’t it? There’s nothing specifically canine about the distinction, of course. All
of us could go around knifing, shooting, poisoning, and garroting one another. We could, yet most of us do not and will not. Still, the potential is always there.

  For instance, Ceci and Althea’s housekeeper, Mary, could have slipped a toxin into the tea that Althea and I were soon sipping. Before leaving to have her hair done, Ceci could have tampered with the lemon wafers Mary innocently served us on a bone-china plate patterned with delicate violets. Even so, I drank my tea and nibbled the wafers with the same sense of relaxation I felt in watching Althea happily violate my taboo on feeding a dog at the table by treating Rowdy to lemon wafers. Proof of my trust: If I’d harbored the slightest doubt about the wholesomeness of those wafers, I might have risked a taste myself, but I wouldn’t have let a lemony crumb pass Rowdy’s lips. Had Christina Motherway felt a hint of suspicion when she’d eaten her last meal, taken her last drink, or swallowed her last medication? Leaving the cargo terminal at Logan Airport, had Peter Motherway glanced suspiciously around in fearful search of a would-be attacker? Christina Motherway had had Alzheimer’s. Perhaps she had suffered for years from the delusion that her loved ones meant her harm. For all I knew, her son, Peter, had been chronically plagued by the lunatic conviction that someone was trying to kill him.

  “Caffeine,” Althea said with satisfaction. “Of all the drugs that age has forced upon me, it is by far the most effective. Yes, B. Robert, Bro, brother. The brother of Eva Kappe, who attended high school in Princeton, left at the end of her sophomore year, worked as a maid in Germany, returned to this country by 1939, and joined the staff of Geraldine R. Dodge at Giralda. At Giralda, Eva had her photograph taken. She wrote a note to her brother. She evidently gave satisfaction. She left, apparently of her own accord, with a good reference.”

  “And returned to Germany?” I wondered aloud. “And was killed in the war.”

  Althea’s lips pursed in disapproval. “She returned to the economic disaster of the Third Reich while leaving behind three strong letters of reference? Or she took them with her, only to have them sent to the U.S. after she was killed, perhaps, in the firebombing of Dresden? Or after her death in a concentration camp?”

  “Sorry,” I said. “I see what you mean.”

  Althea tilted her head upward toward the chandelier above the table. It was on. She can see light. “On this side of the Atlantic,” she said censoriously, “Bro, if we may call him that, your Mr. Motherway, receives a note from his sister, a note that he does not destroy.”

  “He keeps it,” I contributed.

  Althea sighed. “He does not tear it up. He does not burn it. He does not throw it out. Indeed, it survives to this day. In whose possession we do not know. And who does know?”

  The question was not rhetorical. “Mr. Motherway, presumably,” I answered. “Christina might have known. Peter might have. Christopher? Jocelyn? Jocelyn does the housework. Maybe there are cleaning people who come in, but she does at least some of the housework. Jocelyn would be likely to know what was where.”

  “The location of family memorabilia,” Althea said with approval. “Photographs, letters, documents. Birth certificates, for example.”

  “Christina Heinck’s,” I supplied. “Christina Heinck Motherway’s.”

  “A woman,” exclaimed Althea, “who was not who she seemed!” Now and then, Althea succumbs to the Holmesian devotion to melodrama.

  “I think she assumed the name of a child,” I said, “a child who died young.”

  Althea slowly raised her teacup to her lips. Her hands trembled lightly, but she drank without slurping or spilling. Then she slowly lowered the cup and placed it neatly in her saucer. “And all of this information,” she said, “is sent to you. By whom? By someone with access to it. By a member of the Motherway household. Moreover, by a surviving member of the household. The elder Mr. Motherway, Bro, B. Robert, has no conceivable reason. The grandson, it seems, dislikes and mistrusts you. There remains the daughter-in-law. Jocelyn.”

  “She took care of Christina,” I said, “so Christina wouldn’t end up in an institution. She was in a position to know how Christina died. She acts browbeaten. Timid.”

  “Has she any reason to trust you? To approach you as, shall we say, a woman of action?”

  “Yes! Yes, she does. Well, it may seem strange, but I offered to help her. I gave her my card, and I told her to get in touch, but it was about a dog, not about … One of the Motherways’ dogs lives in the house, a big black shepherd, Wagner. And twice when I was there, the dog growled at Jocelyn. What bothered me was that no one did anything. Jocelyn just took that nasty behavior for granted. She didn’t like it. She was afraid. Appropriately, I thought. I didn’t trust the dog. But it didn’t seem to occur to her that she could do anything about the dog. She sort of crept around hoping Wagner wouldn’t notice her and hoping she wouldn’t get bitten. And I thought that was outrageous.” I paused. “He isn’t really a bad dog,” I added.

  Althea crowed.

  “There are some! Really, there are,” I protested. “A few. Hardly any. But this situation was as unfair to the dog as it was to Jocelyn. A dog has a right to know what’s civilized and what isn’t, and no one had taken the time to inform this poor dog that aggression toward a family member is absolutely, unconditionally unacceptable. And no one had told Jocelyn that she didn’t have to take it! Until I did. I told her it was unnecessary. I said that if she wanted help, she should call me. I gave her my card.”

  “Before you received the first of these mailings,” Althea said.

  “Yes. Before.”

  “And she did not call you. She lacked the gumption. You, however, demonstrably did not lack gumption. Faced with a large, menacing dog, you did not cower. Quite the reverse! You bravely offered to intervene.”

  “It wasn’t gumption. It was common sense.”

  “Perhaps you could call her,” Althea suggested. “A simple phone call might produce interesting consequences.”

  Althea looked exhausted. I started to gather the material spread on the table. She stopped me. “Could you leave that with me? Ceci is illiterate in matters concerning the Canon, but she is generous about sharing her eyes. Something is eluding me. I want to reconsider after I have recovered my forces.”

  I agreed, of course. Rowdy and I made a swift departure. Just before we left, Althea said, “Altruism. That’s what it is! It’s the altruism that I don’t entirely trust. And something else. What can it be? I have the odd sensation that it has something to do with a dog.”

  Chapter Twenty-two

  “THANK YOU FOR CALLING Haus Motherway German Shepherd Dogs,” announced Peter Motherway’s voice, “proudly bred by geneticists for protection and devotion.”

  I’d dialed the toll-free number given in the ads in the dog magazines. The posthumous thanks reminded me of the urban myth about Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science, whose monument at Mount Auburn is big enough for a few hundred bodies—or one gigantic ego. Anyway, according to Boston legend, Mary Baker Eddy had been buried with a telephone in her coffin. So, in Mary Baker Eddy fashion, Peter Motherway continued: “We offer world-class puppies and adults from outstanding German and American bloodlines. Stud service is available. For free information, including photos and pedigrees, leave your name and address at the sound of the beep. To order your beautiful Haus Motherway German shepherd puppy or adult, leave your phone number, and we will return your call as soon as possible. Please speak clearly and spell any unfamiliar words. And remember! If it isn’t a Haus Motherway shepherd, it isn’t a real dog.”

  Who needs to spell out bullshit? But after obediently waiting for the beep, I left a neutral message carefully phrased for the ears of B. Robert, Christopher, or Jocelyn. I had a hunch that Jocelyn got stuck with the clerical work as well as the housework, but in case I was wrong, I didn’t want to alert the grandfather or grandson. Without actually trying to disguise my voice, I adopted the eager tone of a puppy buyer. “I’m interested in the material you sent,” I gushed, “esp
ecially the picture of the black male. Could you call me?” I left only my phone number.

  Althea had predicted that one simple call might produce interesting consequences. I left the message at about twelve-thirty. The consequence arrived at three o’clock in the form of Jocelyn, who appeared at my front door in what I diagnosed as an advanced state of true panic. When I opened the door, Jocelyn’s eyes darted left and right over her hunched shoulders as if she expected to see a knife-wielding hand poised to stab her in the back. Finding none, she bolted inside, only to flatten herself against the wall in a futile attempt to evade Rowdy and Kimi.

  I launched briefly into my usual reassurances. The dogs were friendly, I showed them in obedience, they were Canine Good Citizens, Rowdy was a certified therapy dog, we visited a nursing home, yak, yak, yak. I abandoned the tactic when it became obvious that Jocelyn was about to faint. The little color she had in her face drained visibly. Even with the support of the wall, she wobbled.

  “Bend over!” I ordered her. “Get your head between your knees! I’ll put the dogs away. I’ll be right back.”

  Five minutes later, the dogs were behind the closed door of my bedroom and Jocelyn was seated at my kitchen table drinking a mug of heavily sugared microwave tea. After making sure that she wasn’t going to pass out, I’d calmly issued instructions about taking slow, deep breaths and exhaling completely. It’s thanks to my extensive experience in the relaxing, devil-may-care sport of dog obedience that I’ve become such an expert at recognizing and treating panic and associated symptoms such as trembling, sweating, violent gastrointestinal attacks, tachycardia, hyperventilation, and loss of consciousness. Every form of athletic recreation puts participants at risk of certain injuries. Runners get Achilles tendinitis. Weight trainers strain muscles. Downhill skiers break bones. After decades of nursing myself and other equally happy-go-lucky dog-obedience competitors through bouts of our very own sport-induced affliction, I could run an anxiety-disorders clinic.