Animal Appetite

by Susan Conant

  Before I left the Brookline library, I asked a librarian about what seemed to me the odd disappearance of Mass. Mayhem from so many places. She was a plump, intelligent-looking woman. When I told her the call number, she smiled knowingly. “So you’re one of those three sixty-four fifteen types, huh?”

  Momentarily flustered, I felt like explaining that I was actually a wholesome type whose professional interests focused on dog training and the polar regions, and whose recreational reading consisted mainly of novels by Charles Dickens, Barbara Pym, Elinor Lipman, and the inimitable Jack London. As I turned red and began to sputter, the librarian took pity on me. Many of the library’s most irreproachable patrons, she assured me—upstanding members of the community, civic leaders, socially prominent mothers, even—never checked out anything except true crime. Hearing the news, I had to wonder what kind of place Brookline really was. Were comparable suburbs all across America also populated by citizens of guileless, upright appearance and demeanor whose true passion was true crime?

  As I drove along Route 9 from Brookline Village to Newton, the image stayed with me, and I viewed the innocent-looking mock-Tudors and Victorian arks with freshly alarmed eyes. Indeed, who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of suburban men and women? No, not the Shadow. How would the Shadow know? The one who really has the scoop on our foibles is the local librarian.

  As I’ve mentioned, the main branch of the Newton Free Library is my summer pick because of its superb air-conditioning. Its bright central atrium also made it a good choice for this gloomy late-autumn day. Just off the atrium, which housed the reference room, was a wall of books about Massachusetts, books that couldn’t be checked out. But could, of course, be lost or stolen. As in Brookline, the copy of Mass. Mayhem was missing. Mass. Mayhem didn’t appear in Books in Print; I’d be unable to order it unless I went to a search service far out-of-print books. Again, I consulted a librarian. This one didn’t rag me about reading true crime. Rather, she clucked her tongue, called up the title on her screen, and advised me that the only available copy of the book was at the main branch of the Brookline Public Library.

  “That one’s missing, too,” I told her.

  I felt relieved when she agreed that the situation really was odd.

  I had more luck in finding material about Hannah Duston than I’d had in locating Randall Carey’s book. Among other things, in a rather recent article in Yankee magazine by someone named Sybil Smith and in an old book about the history of Haverhill, I read that the statue of Hannah Duston in the center of Haverhill was believed to be the first monument in the United States erected to a woman. So much for supposed expertise. I already knew that in 1861, Haverhill had erected a hefty marble monument, not a statue, in Hannah’s honor, but that because of the Civil War, its sponsors had been unable to pay for it. Repossessed, the monument was later installed as a soldiers’ memorial in Barre, Massachusetts. The Boscawen statue went up in 1874, Haverhill’s bronze Hannah in 1879. The Yankee article gave repulsive details about scalping, but pointed out that Hannah Duston must certainly have wrung the necks of chickens and helped to slaughter pigs and cows. On-the-job training. Since I was already immersed in revolting subjects, I thought about trying to find some practical volume about rodent invasions (How to Shoot Rats in the City Without Getting Caught?), but my stomach turned, and I gave up and went home.

  When I got there, my answering machine had a message from my cousin Leah, who reported the good news that Harvard owned Mass. Mayhem and the bad news that it had been checked out by a professor who’d be entitled to keep it indefinitely. There were three other messages. Two were from dog people who said that they had no recollection of a tall girl named Tracy who used to handle goldens for someone named Jack Andrews. The last was from Mrs. Dennehy, Kevin’s mother, who doesn’t really like me, but loves dogs and approves of what she calls my “kindness to God’s creatures.” She is very religious. “Holly, dear,” her voice said, “I have to tell you that when I went to take out the garbage this morning, a rat went scuttling away from the trash cans! O-o-o-o-h! It gave me the willies! Watch out! They’re right here on Appleton Street!” And not exactly God’s creatures, I took it.

  I wondered whether rats liked dank weather. In the late afternoon, when I walked the dogs, the rain had stopped, but a combination of dark clouds and evening filled the sky. Rowdy insisted on detouring around the puddles, and he and Kimi kept coming to prolonged halts to sniff city smells intensified by the dampness. Because the construction on Huron Avenue was supposed to be the source of the rats, I headed in the opposite direction, down Concord, around the observatory, back up Garden Street, and, eventually, to Donnell, which meets Concord across the street from my house. When the traffic finally let us cross, we hurried, but as I made my way down the short stretch of sidewalk next to the spite building, the dogs’ ears suddenly went up, the hair on their backs rose slightly, and they hit the ends of their leads. Ahead of us, just beyond the Dennehys’ house, a small animal scuttled across the sidewalk and slithered under a parked car. Although I’d been reading and hearing and talking and thinking about the invasion for weeks, it took me a second to realize exactly what the small animal was. Once I knew, it didn’t seem so small anymore. Rowdy and Kimi had known right away. The dogs had smelled a rat.

  CHAPTER 11

  Ah, Cambridge! I love you! Across the street firom Emma’s Pizza—The New Emma’s Pizza: new owners, but the same fabulous crust and peerless sauce—is what has officially been rechristened the Bryn Mawr Book Store, but for at least the next decade will still be known throughout Cambridge by its original name, the Bryn Mawr Book Sale. Although “Sale” suggests a one-day fund-raiser, the store is a permanent used-book shop run by alums for the benefit of the college. Whenever I’m in danger of having my entire living space taken over by books, I enter the Bryn Mawr Book Sale with a couple of bags or cartons of literary discards, receive a little slip proving that I’ve made a tax-deductible contribution, and promptly buy the precise number of books I’ve just given away. I’ve found some great bargains on dog books there, and I always scan the works on Antarctica, which reside directly across a narrow aisle from a little notice that reads.

  DEATH IS NOW LOCATED ABOVE SELF-HELP

  I can never decide whether the news is heartening or depressing.

  So that’s where I finally got a copy of the elusive Mass. Mayhem: at the Bryn Mawr Book Sale. If you’re a book on the lam, avoid Cambridge. Around here, you can run, but you can’t hide for long.

  By the time I got my hands on it Tuesday morning, I’d convinced myself that its chapter on the murder of Jack Andrews held the key to the identity of his real murderer. At Marsha’s bat mitzvah, of course, when I’d first heard of the murder, Claudia had told me that the book named and blamed Shaun McGrath. I didn’t care what the author, Randall Carey, had pronounced in print or what Claudia Andrews-Howe or anyone else believed. Sprinting home from the Bryn Mawr Book Sale, stopping here and there to peek at the chapter, I was confident that it contained a hidden clue. With luck, it would also expose the whole story of Jack’s secret life in dogs and reveal the last name of the tall girl, Tracy, who’d dropped out of dogs and whose last name no one remembered. So excited was I that when I got home, I delayed the thrilling moment of discovery by making a pot of coffee and setting out on the kitchen table a pen and the fresh yellow legal pad on which I, Holly Winter, the Nancy Drew of dogs, would inscribe the name of the real murderer.

  Well, was I ever disappointed. Whoever this Randall Carey was, he’d known less than I did about Jack Andrews. It seemed to me he’d cared far less than I did, too. Maybe his middle name wasn’t Winter. Maybe he hadn’t grown up with golden retrievers. If Carey had ferreted out Jack’s hidden life, he’d kept Jack’s secret. The chapter said only that Jack’s dog was a golden retriever; it didn’t even give Chip’s name. According to the book, Jack had had a lot of style, and Claudia none. After her father’s death, Bronwyn had become increasingly masculine, t
he book said. The son, Gareth, was described as eccentric. For all I knew, he was. I did learn the names of some people who’d worked at Damned Yankee Press. At the time of Jack’s murder, his secretary, Ursula Pappas, had been on vacation in Greece. A temp named Estelle Grant was filling in for her. The chapter referred only to rat poison in the coffee; it didn’t specify sodium fluoroacetate. The only really new information was the suggestion that Shaun McGrath had forged Jack’s signature on the insurance policy; Claudia had not mentioned forgery, nor had Brat or Kevin.

  The themes of the chapter, to the minor extent that it had any, were betrayal and, appropriately enough, disappointment. In the author’s view, Jack had betrayed his children by frittering away money needed for their private-school tuition. Claudia, who came across as lazy and feckless, had let her husband down by working in child care instead of pursuing a lucrative career. The masculine Bronwyn and the eccentric Gareth would’ve been a disappointment to their father, or so the author maintained. Even so, Shaun McGrath had cheated Jack of the chance to see them grow up. When Jack had founded the press, he’d duped everyone, including himself, into believing that he could run a publishing house. Discovering the sloppy way the business actually operated, Shaun McGrath had felt cheated. Even the vacationing Ursula Pappas came across as betraying Jack. If she’d stayed at work and not gone gallivanting off to the Mediterranean, the chapter implied, Shaun wouldn’t have dared to poison her caffeine-addicted employer. The hint was that Jack Andrews had betrayed even himself: If the man had refrained from coffee, he’d be alive today.

  I dialed Kevin’s number at the station.

  “Dennehy,” he bellowed, as if I’d charged him with being someone else.

  “Kevin, Holly. The report about Jack Andrews: Was there anything in there about Shaun McGrath’s forging Jack’s signature on that insurance policy?”

  “Hey, hey, so we’re on a first-name basis now,” Kevin replied.

  “As it happens, we are. Was there?”

  “No,” said Kevin. “Not a thing.”

  With a growing sense of futility, I consulted the phone book in search of a number for Shaun McGrath’s parents. Boston is more Irish than Ireland. Seriously. I’ve heard that there are more Irish people here than in Dublin. Consequently, even in one of the suburbs, Arlington, I expected to find a few dozen J. McGraths. To my surprise, there was a listing for James and Shirley. The number got me an answering machine. I left a brief message asking to have my call returned. I hoped that the McGraths didn’t assume I was dunning them about a credit card payment or trying to persuade them to have their carpets cleaned.

  Then I took another look at Mass. Mayhem. It wasn’t much of a book, but it was a hardcover, and the copy I’d bought still wore its dust jacket. On the back flap were a photograph of the author, Randall Carey, and a biographical sketch. The picture showed a bland-looking young man with a pipe in his hand. He wore a corduroy jacket. Behind him were shelves of books. The image was too small to let me read the titles. Maybe they weren’t scholarly books at all. Maybe they were nothing but junky would-be potboilers like Mass. Mayhem. According to the bio, Dr. Randall Carey had gone to Harvard College, held a Ph.D. in history from Harvard University, and taught at Newton North High School.

  Around here, it’s not unusual to find a Harvard Ph.D. teaching in a secondary school, including a public school. Actually, in the Square, it’s not all that unusual to find a Harvard Ph.D. driving a cab. What does salary matter? Proximity is all that really counts. As these people see it, they’re like electric cars that can travel only a fixed distance; if they don’t keep going back to the power source all the time, they’ll sputter and quit. A call to Newton North High School told me that Randall Carey no longer taught there.

  I followed a hunch and checked the phone book again. Dr. Randall Carey’s address wasn’t far from mine. As I’d done with the McGraths, I left a message on his machine asking him to return my call. I wanted to find out where Carey had heard that Shaun McGrath had forged his partner’s signature. I also wanted to hear anything Carey might have learned about Jack’s murder in the ten years since he’d published his book.

  By now, my work life felt divided between the people I thought of as my murderer, Hannah Duston, and my victim, Jack Andrews, and I was learning to shift rather smoothly from the distant horror of 1697 to the horror of a mere eighteen years ago. As Kevin had noticed, Hannah, Jack, and I were now on a first-name basis. Or I was with them. Whether they called me or each other anything at all was, of course, the ultimate mystery that I certainly couldn’t solve.

  While I waited for the McGraths or Randall Carey to return my call, I went over my notes about Hannah. Nowhere in anything I’d read was there a single indication of the particular group or tribe that had abducted her. Most accounts just called the people “Indians.” An alarming number used what I read as racist obscenities: “squaws,” “redskins.” Cotton Mather had had lots of names for Hannah’s victims: “idolaters,” “persecutors,” “formidable salvages.” Not that I myself would have called them, say, “lovely human beings.” In the raid on Haverhill, the attackers had killed twenty-seven people, including fifteen children. Hannah and Mary were two of thirteen people taken captive or, as the old accounts phrased it, “captivated by the salvages.” As far as I could tell, Hannah and Mary were the only two to survive. It was common practice among Indian captors to kill the very old, the very young, the weak, and the infirm: those who wouldn’t survive captivity anyway. Consequently, my wish to call these people something other than “Indians” did not stem from some romantic vision of Hannah’s captors as noble savages. Rather, although I knew almost nothing about particular tribes, I did understand that all tribes weren’t alike. To call all of them “Indians” made as much sense as using “European” to lump together the seventeenth-century English and French. Also, like Hannah, I had a pecuniary motive. If I wanted to sell whatever I wrote about Hannah to a magazine as well as to Rita, I’d do well to avoid a word that would bother people. The terminology of political correctness, however, did nothing to solve my problem. I could hardly write that Hannah had been “captivated by Native Americans.”

  So that’s why I got in touch with Professor George Foley, who, in his own way, had captivated me. As he’d told me, he lived on Fayerweather Street, which, as it happens, crosses Huron Avenue conveniently near Emma’s and the Bryn Mawr Book Sale. His name was in the phone book. I dialed the number. He was at home.

  After polite preliminaries, I posed my question.

  “Coleman doesn’t say?” he asked.

  “No, she doesn’t. And I can’t find it in anything else I’ve read.”

  “Hmm. Well, to hazard a guess, I’d say they were Abenaki. Yes, I’d say there’s a ninety-five percent chance they were Abenaki.”

  The Abenaki were once widespread throughout what is now Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Massachusetts, he told me. Few survived the epidemics of smallpox, bubonic plague, and other diseases brought by the Europeans. I’d had no idea who they were. George Foley, I realized, must have been a wonderful professor, a gifted teacher. Instead of making me feel ashamed of my ignorance, he seized on my curiosity. He also invited me to tea. He promised that on Friday at four o’clock we’d have a long talk about Hannah Duston and the Abenaki. As I hung up, I made a silent vow that Professor Foley and I would also have a chat about Jack Andrews.

  CHAPTER 12

  Afiter my conversation with Profiessor Foley, I put on my heavy leather boots, a wool shirt, and pigskin work gloves, and went out to split and stack wood. The sky was the blue of bleached denim, the sun was a pale buttery yellow, and the air was wintery. When I’d been out there for an hour or so, the phone rang, and I dashed inside to grab it. Dr. Randall Carey’s voice was even more supercilious than deep. I explained that I’d read his chapter about the murder of Jack Andrews and wondered whether he’d be willing to discuss the subject with me. According to the phone book, I said, we were practically neighbors.
He lived on Walden Street, didn’t he? I was at the corner of Appleton and Concord. Yes, the red house next to the spite building. Smitten as I was with Professor Foley, I imitated him: I invited Dr. Randall Carey to tea.

  Dr. Randall Carey refused, and not very graciously. He was very busy. He worked at home, but he did work. He did not say what he did. I worked at home, too, I announced. I was a writer. I did not inform Dr. Randall Carey that I wrote about dogs. Not that I’m ashamed of being a dog writer; on the contrary, I’m proud. It’s just that around here, when I say what I do, people get this funny look on their faces. I wished I’d had credentials of some sort to present to him. Dropping Professor Foley’s name would probably have worked, but it would also have felt like a betrayal of my harmless infatuation. So I fell back on the reliable skills honed by a lifetime of training dogs. I’d made the beginner’s mistake of asking a question: Come, Rover? Rover, come? Come to Mommy? I corrected my error: “I’m taking my dogs for a walk late this afternoon,” I informed Dr. Randall Carey. “I’ll be passing right by your house. We’ll stop in.”