by Susan Conant
Althea smiled gently. “Not to mention the occasional family or two in which no one murders anyone else.”
“Exactly, Althea! And in which everyone works for an honest living instead of banding together to go around robbing museums and fencing stolen art and murdering people. So how was I supposed to guess that Gerhard was a cousin? Gerhard Woolf? Have you ever heard a more made-up-sounding name? He doesn’t have a German accent, he doesn’t look German, and he doesn’t look anything like Mr. Motherway or Peter or Christopher. And nobody called him ‘Cousin Gerhard’ or anything. Not that he’s all that close a relative. He’s something like B. Robert Motherway’s mother’s sister’s great-grandson. I think I’ve got that right. And Christina’s mother’s, too, of course. Eva Kappe’s mother’s sister’s great-grandson? Maybe I’m off somewhere. Anyway, it’s the part of the family that Eva—in other words, Christina—went to in Germany when she dropped out of high school in New Jersey. Later on, B. Robert told the family in Germany that she died here. And he told people here that his sister died in Germany. The German part of the family just thought he’d married a woman named Christina, which he had, of course, only it was the same woman. Eva.”
“Appalling,” said Althea, “but not unprecedented. There was a couple in Spain, wasn’t there? Brother and sister. Ceci and I heard about them on National Public Radio, if I recall. They had two children. They were allowed to marry. The parents, that is, not the children, although one does have to wonder…. But it’s interesting to observe, isn’t it, that in this case, the madness one tends to associate with inbreeding shows itself most blatantly in a family member, this Gerhard, who, so far as one knows, is not the child of close relatives.”
“Peter Motherway didn’t even look all that much like his father,” I pointed out, “even though his parents apparently looked quite a lot alike. There was a family resemblance, but nothing out of the ordinary. That kind of thing happens with dogs all the time, of course. You can linebreed two beautiful dogs of a similar type and get a whole litter of funny-looking puppies. Good dogs aren’t necessarily good producers. They can throw all kinds of stuff you wouldn’t expect.”
“Three heads,” Althea said mischievously.
I smiled. “Not exactly three heads. Missing teeth, bad bites, incorrect coats, all kinds of faults you don’t see in the parents. And the kind of strong resemblance between B. Robert and Christopher does sometimes crop up in dogs, including between grandsire and grandson.”
“And evil, too?” inquired Althea. “Does evil, too, run in canine families?”
“Certainly not! Althea, you’re teasing me. No, evil has nothing to do with dogs. There are dogs with bad temperaments, and there are a few vicious dogs, but evil is an exclusively human characteristic. I don’t think it has a thing to do with genetics. The person who really got B. Robert Motherway started was his stepfather, who was a small-time crook. Christina told Jocelyn about it. The guy—”
Althea blanched.
“Pardon me. The man, the Mr. Motherway who adopted B. Robert, ran what was really a junk shop rather than an antique shop, but he had higher ambitions. When he returned from Germany with his German bride and her two kids—children, pardon me—he also smuggled some stuff with him. And I think that’s when he discovered that the boy, B. Robert, could be useful to him.”
“Fagin!” Althea exclaimed. She concentrates on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, but reads Dickens on the side. “Oliver Twist”, she informed me.
“Yes,” I said. “And the stepfather also seems to have pumped his stepson full of grandiose ideas about the glory of Germany and about rising to the aristocracy and so forth. And then when B. Robert got to Princeton—Princeton University—he happened to find himself in the same class as Hartley Dodge, Jr., who was in the same Princeton class, 1930, but in a whole other league from the townie son of a junk dealer. Christina told Jocelyn that B. Robert was totally obsessed with Hartley Dodge. He used to keep clippings about Hartley Dodge from the school newspaper, and sometimes he actually followed him around. When he saw Hartley Dodge, he saw a manifestation of the person he desperately wanted to be. Only he couldn’t, of course. For a start, he didn’t have any money. But the image was there: the glamorous, risk-taking heir to Remington Arms and to part of the Rockefeller fortune, the mansions, the show dogs, the incredible art collection! It was who he tried to become.”
“You know quite a bit about your Mr. Motherway now,” Althea commented. Her eyes narrowed.
“He isn’t my Mr. Motherway. And he isn’t the only villain in the piece. Far from it. The stepfather seems to be the origin of a lot of what went wrong. For one thing, Christina sort of hinted to Jocelyn that the stepfather was the reason she was sent back to Germany. She was a pretty girl, a beautiful girl, young, and not his biological daughter. In fact, he’d never adopted her the way he had her brother. And the idea is that he was paying her inappropriate attentions, so her mother got her out of the country and away from him. There’s no way to know for sure. Anyway, the stepfather died rather sadly. He hanged himself in 1929. He hadn’t had a lot to invest, but he’d put it in the market, and after the Crash, he killed himself.”
“As did others,” Althea commented.
“Yes. But strangely enough, his wife, B. Robert’s mother, died right after that, too. B. Robert was in his senior year at Princeton. He was living at home, naturally. He had a scholarship, but nothing beyond that. Until his mother supposedly hanged herself.”
“Supposedly?”
“She’d managed to keep up the payments on a small insurance policy.”
“Ah-hah!”
“But it was assumed that she was overcome with grief and shame about her husband’s suicide, and followed suit. Anyway, by then, Eva was in Germany, and before long, our Mr. Motherway, B. Robert, had a degree in art history from Princeton. When he graduated, he took over his stepfather’s business, mostly the shady part of it, and his stepfather’s dogs, but he apparently decided he needed a better cover than a junk shop. That’s when he moved here, to Massachusetts. He got a job teaching art history at exactly the kind of prep school he wished he’d gone to, and he had the perfect excuse to keep going back and forth to Europe: escorting student tours. And he liked what he saw in Germany in the thirties: the art, the music, the tidiness, the nationalism. What impressed him most of all was Eva. He hadn’t seen her since 1926. She was beautiful. She liked housework. She was a simple person. She was the ideal Aryan woman. And she looked like him! After that, things get foggy for a while. What’s clear is that he discovered an elite employment agency in New York that Mrs. Dodge used, and Eva Kappe came to this country, and she was a big hit there. She really did have good recommendations, and her training in European household service was practically designed to appeal to wealthy American employers. And then there was an opening with Mrs. Dodge. One of her dogs had bitten a maid, so she’d fired the maid. And Eva got the job. She left other letters besides the one Jocelyn sent to me. She kept them in what she called her ‘treasure chest.’ I’ve read them. So far as casing the place went, she really was useless, except that she did give a picture of tight security. Anyway, he finally pulled her out of there.”
“The war began,” Althea said.
“Yes, but he didn’t go. He had a heart murmur. And flat feet. But he sure did go to Germany after the war. It was paradise for shady dealings in art, and he spoke fluent German. That’s when he really made a bundle. By then he’d married Eva, who was now Christina. He brought her to Massachusetts. Peter was born in 1946. From what Peter told Jocelyn, I gather that there was trouble from the beginning. Really, I think that B. Robert had the world’s worst case of sibling rivalry about the baby. He didn’t want to share Christina’s affection. Nothing Peter did was ever right. He got into trouble in school, kept flunking out of prep schools, and eventually got drafted and sent to Vietnam. When he got back, he moved into a cottage, a hovel, way at the back of his parents’ property, and just sort of stayed there, doing kennel
work, yard work, odd jobs, drifting along. And assisting his father in other ways, too. Then he met Jocelyn, who didn’t know she was adopted until just before she got married. Her parents decided to tell her. And she stupidly told B. Robert, who threw a fit about having his family tainted with blood from God knows where. Can you believe it? Of all people?”
“Oh yes,” said Althea. “I certainly can believe it.”
“But strangely enough, when Christopher was born, his grandfather moved in and took over. It reminds me of what Marcellus Hartley did. He was M. Hartley Dodge’s grandfather. He basically was Remington Arms and a lot else. His daughter died in childbirth, and he raised the baby, Marcellus Hartley Dodge, who, of course, married Geraldine Rockefeller. So in sort of the same way, Christopher became his grandfather’s son. And B. Robert did everything he could to poison the relationship between Peter and Christopher. Christopher lived in the big house. Peter and Jocelyn were still stuck in a hovel.”
“With expectations of inheritance.”
“Yes. Justified expectations, too. They really were included in B. Robert’s will. Both of them. Separately. He wasn’t stupid. He knew how to use people. He knew how to keep Peter and Jocelyn where he wanted them. Obviously, the strategy was effective.”
“And Gerhard?”
“A German import, so to speak,” I said. “Mr. Motherway brought Gerhard here from Germany when Gerhard was ten. I have a hunch that the immediate use he had for Gerhard was to help him smuggle something from Germany. Just as his stepfather had used him, of course. Once they got here, he must have made plans for Gerhard. He really kept Gerhard in a kind of servitude. Christopher got the education B. Robert had wanted for himself. Gerhard’s job was to do what B. Robert said when he said it. Jocelyn says he was a docile boy, not very bright, pitifully eager for approval, very shy and very isolated, socially awkward. He had artistic ambitions, but no talent. He couldn’t even draw. He didn’t finish high school. He became B. Robert’s lackey and, to some extent, Christopher’s. He took care of the cars, drove for Mr. Motherway, did what he was told. As far as I can tell, it was all the same to him. Polishing the car, murdering Peter, following Jocelyn and reporting back to Mr. Motherway. He was at Mount Auburn when I gave her the envelope. He called Mr. Motherway to tell him. Once Mr. Motherway was sure she was on her way home, he waited for her there. He sent Gerhard back to Mount Auburn. They talked on Gerhard’s car phone. Mr. Motherway wanted Peter’s murder explained. Jocelyn’s suicide was supposed to do that. The police were supposed to decide that she drowned herself where she’d left her husband’s body.”
“At the Gardner vault. Whence that eccentric interest in Isabella Stewart Gardner?”
“What Gerhard tells the police, Althea, is that it began after the heist. He’s confessed to that. He says he was one of the actual robbers, the men disguised as Boston police officers. He says that Fenway Court was the most beautiful place he’d ever been. His words are, I’m told, that he was crazy about it the second he walked in. Of course, he’s also confessed to ten or twenty other art thefts and to assorted other crimes. For example, the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby.”
“He wasn’t born yet.”
“He says he was. He also helped Lee Harvey Oswald to assassinate John Kennedy, and that was before he was born, too. What’s not imaginary is his obsession with Isabella Stewart Gardner. He lived in a room in the basement of the Motherways’ house. Kevin Dennehy, my friend who’s with the Cambridge police, told me about it. He heard the place was a shrine to Mrs. Gardner. The walls were plastered with reproductions of works at Fenway Court, and there were tons of clippings about the robbery. What also seems to be true is that Gerhard cracked up about the time of the Gardner heist. Until then, he was peculiar and isolated. About that time, he started having what I guess were psychotic episodes. Jocelyn won’t say much more than that. She doesn’t want to talk about it. It occurs to me that she thinks a lot about the reward.”
“Five million dollars? There’s a good deal of room for thought there.”
“Yes,” I said ruefully. “Unfortunately, there’s a lot of room for thought and no proof at all. What does seem clear is that leaving Peter’s body at the Gardner vault was strictly Gerhard’s idea. On Mr. Motherway’s orders, Christopher was supposed to hire someone to kill Peter. Instead, Christopher got Gerhard to do it. He was supposed to make it look as if Peter had been attacked at the airport or on the way home by some random assailant. But Gerhard wanted to offer a sacrifice to his heroine. So he did.”
“Holly, tell me, do you honestly believe that he was, in fact, involved in the Gardner robbery?”
“There is no proof, Althea. There is no proof.”
And there isn’t. What I know is that since being taken into custody, Gerhard has rambled wildly about many crimes and many people, me among them. Indeed, when he realized that the police didn’t believe he’d robbed the Gardner, he cited me, of all people, as a corroborative witness. He explained that while sitting at a table next to mine at the Gardner Cafe, he’d heard me reveal knowledge of the robbery that I could not have read in the papers. Not surprisingly, I’d been talking about the Gardners, Gerhard claimed. I’d mentioned, for example, that Jack Gardner had died of apoplexy, as he had. I remember talking about apoplexy. Steve and I had been discussing Mrs. Dodge, of course. I’d said something about her husband’s death. We’d joked about his having died of apoplexy when his wife got yet another dog. What convinced Gerhard of my inside knowledge, of course, was my remark that it was a miracle that all those priceless artworks hadn’t been chewed or otherwise damaged by dogs. Furthermore, Gerhard insisted, I even knew the breed that had had brief access to the Rembrandts, the Vermeer, and the other works lifted from Fenway court. If I hadn’t been privy to the hidden truth about the heist, how could I have known that the potential chewers were German shepherd dogs? Gerhard also makes much of my having stared at the tattoo on his arm. I did stare at it; he’s right about that. As you know, I had no idea what it was supposed to represent. According to Gerhard, it portrays a special item he selected during the Gardner heist: the finial from a Napoleonic flag.
B. Robert, of course, had dismissed Gerhard’s suspicion of me as delusional paranoia centered yet again on Isabella Stewart Gardner. Gerhard followed me from Mr. Motherway’s all on his own. It was, I am convinced, Gerhard who broke into my house and trashed my study. There did, after all, turn out to be one object missing, something I hadn’t noticed while straightening out the mess. The object was a book. It was the guidebook Steve had bought for me at the Gardner, the guide to Fenway Court. Gerhard had clearly found nothing else in my house to connect me to knowledge of the famous heist.
A few last words. The book is done. Elizabeth and I have submitted it to our publisher. It has been accepted. It’s nonetheless a disappointment to me. It says nothing about Nazi spies. Were there any at the old Morris and Essex shows? There may have been many. I do not know. I know of only one. The proof was in Christina Motherway’s treasure chest. It consisted of a document in German, a letter to her husband that she had secretly kept because she was proud of him for serving the Fatherland. So there was a Nazi spy at Morris and Essex. His name was B. Robert Motherway.
My financial situation is improving. I had the Bronco fixed. It starts most of the time. I’m showing Rowdy and Kimi again. I scrape together the fees. But my hopes are great. I have applied for a grant, you see. I don’t know whether I’ll get it, but I’m optimistic. The funding agency is bound to love me. I have applied, you see, to the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation. I am applying for a grant to write dog books. It is the perfect topic. I am the perfect candidate.
If you enjoyed Susan Conant’s twelfth
Dog Lover’s Mystery EVIL BREEDING,
you won’t want to miss any of the books
in this series that the Washington Post
called “a real tail-wagger!”
Look for the thirteenth Dog Lover’s
Mystery, CREATU
RE DISCOMFORTS,
at your favorite bookstore.
Creature
Discomforts
A Dog Lover’s Mystery
Susan Conant
Available now in paperback from
Bantam Books
About the Author
SUSAN CONANT, a three-time recipient of the Maxwell Award for Fiction Writing given by the Dog Writers’ Association of America, lives in Newton, Massachusetts, with her husband, two cats, and two Alaskan Malamutes—Frostfield Firestar’s Kobuk, CGC; and Frostfield Perfect Crime, CGC, called Rowdy. She is the author of thirteen Dog Lover’s Mysteries.
This edition contains the complete text of the original hardcover edition.
NOT ONE WORD HAD BEEN OMITTED.
EVIL BREEDING
A Bantam Book
PUBLISHING HISTORY
Doubleday hardcover edition published April 1999
Bantam paperback edition / February 2000
All of the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved.
Copyright © 1999 by Susan Conant.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 98-11249.
eISBN: 978-0-307-56950-9
Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, a division of Random House, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words “Bantam Books” and portrayal of a rooster, is Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada. Bantam Books, New York, New York.