The Barker Street Regulars (16 page)

“Ceci is aware of that possibility,” I said, “except that she doesn’t see herself as a victim. What she’s afraid of is misunderstanding. That’s what she thinks about Jonathan, the grandnephew, the one who was murdered. What I think is that Jonathan got the full picture.”

“Maybe Auntie did him in.”

“
Ceci?
I really don’t …”

Although Kevin had no connection with the official investigation of Jonathan’s murder, I couldn’t bring myself to say anything incriminating about Ceci. I couldn’t help thinking, though, that the murder weapon had presumably been the shovel she’d admitted to having left in her yard. I remembered how effortlessly she’d lifted and carried the heavy tea tray. Most of all, I thought of how dependent Ceci was on Irene Wheeler and how pitifully eager for a reunion with her beloved Simon. As to risk, it seemed to me that half the people who lived at the Gateway might’ve risked jail to stay out of the nursing home.

“When it comes to murder,” said Kevin, “one thing you can forget is this pet psychic who’s conning the old lady. These vultures who prey on the elderly are dirt, they’re filth, you can’t touch them, most of the time you
don’t even know they’re there, but if things start to go wrong, the world’s full of sitting ducks, and all’s they do is move on to a new one. These bastards are the scum of the earth, but there’s one thing they’re not, and that’s violent.”

M
Y CONVERSATION WITH KEVIN
took place on Wednesday. Over the next few days, one little incident after another echoed his disheartening message that no one would nail Irene Wheeler.

The first incident consisted of my checking out and reading a tattered old library copy of a book published in 1924. Its title was
Memories and Adventures.
It was the memoirs of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. If I’d hoped to find proof that a belief in spiritualism was any indication of lunacy, I’d have been deeply disappointed in the book. It was the warm, charming, utterly cogent autobiography of a sane person whose assumptions about the possible and the impossible differed radically from mine. The creator of Sherlock Holmes had been a man bursting with energy and interests: crime and detection, of course, politics, war, friendship, love, travel, the sea, the Arctic, and that marvelous new invention, the bicycle. Gregarious and industrious, Conan Doyle was an incredibly prolific writer who penned his works while talking with family and friends. On several occasions, he’d played Sherlock Holmes; he’d investigated real
crimes. Only at the end of his memoirs did he turn to what ultimately became the grand and generous passion of his life: his determination to share with the world the joyous news that the spirits of the dead could communicate with the living. His fervor was more technological than evangelical. A few weeks earlier, I’d heard Nicholas Negroponte preach on the radio about bits and bytes. Negroponte: the Billy Graham of computers. Half of Negroponte’s claims sounded more farfetched than Conan Doyle’s. I believed Negroponte; I’d experienced the miracles myself. Conan Doyle, of course, had persuaded millions of readers to accept Sherlock Holmes as a virtual reality. Yet he didn’t convert me to spiritualism. He did, however, convince me of his sincerity and his sanity. I’d have liked to consult him myself. I wondered what he’d make of Irene Wheeler. He’d encountered fraudulent mediums. Would he spot her as one? If so, as a man of vigorous action, he’d certainly expose her fakery. Furthermore, he’d devise an ingenious plan to identify and punish the scoundrel who’d tried to murder the poor cat that now occupied my office. As the perfect ally, Conan Doyle had only one drawback: He’d been dead since 1930.

The second incident occurred on Thursday night after services, which is to say at the end of the evening’s dog training at the Cambridge Armory. I’d left Rowdy home and taken Kimi to the advanced class. Steve had been working his pointer, Lady, in Novice, more to build her self-confidence than to prepare her for obedience competition, I might add. Anyway, after class, out on the sidewalk in front of the armory, Kimi checked out Lady, who immediately curled up in a quivering ball of submission at Kimi’s feet. Steve’s shepherd bitch, India, is a superb obedience dog. What’s more—and the two don’t always go together—India is wonderfully
obedient in everyday life. She is utterly devoted to Steve and quietly protective of him. India is one of the least neurotic animals I have ever known. Lady, in contrast, actually leaps in fear at the sight of her own shadow. Terrified, love-starved, and unbelievably sweet, she was brought to Steve for euthanasia. With more justification than she realizes, she regards him as her defense against a world that is trying to kill her. It seemed to me symptomatic of Steve’s state these days that he’d shown up with Lady and left his tough-minded protector at home.

Without preamble, I said, “It’s harassment You could at least talk to a lawyer.”

“These aren’t the first dissatisfied clients I’ve had. They won’t be the last. They’re entitled to take their business elsewhere. There’s no more to it than that.” He paused. “Negative attention can be reinforcing, too. I don’t need to tell you that.”

It’s true. Take barking.
Yap, yap, yap, yap, yap.
The owner springs up, dashes to the dog, and yells, “Now, Fang, enough of that! No more noise! I am sick to death of listening to that racket all the time, and so is everyone else! Stop! Quiet! No more barking!” Now consider the opposite behavior, namely, not barking. When Fang is a good, quiet boy, what does the owner do? Nothing. And from a dog’s point of view, almost anything is better than nothing, and a dramatic display of attention is radically better than nothing. In fact, it’s such a big treat that Fang wants more.
Yap, yap, yap, yap, yap.

“Gloria and Scott don’t care about your response or nonresponse,” I told Steve. “They’re getting plenty of positive reinforcement elsewhere. Irene Wheeler is getting free publicity. This is not some minor behavior problem that is going to vanish if you ignore it. If a dog
goes for your throat, you defend yourself. You don’t just stand there trying not to reinforce the behavior. Besides which, you are not the only person being hurt here.”

“All I’m doing, Holly,” he said pointedly, “is minding my own business.”

That’s how we parted for the evening.

The third incident emerged from a series of minor episodes evidently presented for my viewing by some Higher Power who wanted to teach me a lesson in the difficulty of distinguishing between truth and make-believe. The incident itself, to the extent that it was one, was strictly internal and consisted of my concluding that I couldn’t make the distinction myself and couldn’t tell whether anyone else could, either.

On Friday morning, Rowdy and I arrived in Althea’s room at the Gateway to find Robert and Hugh engaged in fantastic Holmesian speculations about Jonathan’s murder. In today’s episode of the Great Game, Robert and Hugh took turns playing the Great Detective.

“Has there ever been,” Robert interrogated Althea, “a family connection with Australia?”

Bending toward me, Hugh said in an undertone, “The possibility of a missing heir, you understand.”

“None whatsoever,” replied Althea. “The return of long-lost kin from anywhere at all is entirely out of the question. Jonathan was Ceci’s heir and my own, and we are his, too, for that matter. He told me so himself. You see, there are no other family members.” As if in response to my unspoken speculations about who would inherit now that Jonathan was dead, Althea added, “Except ourselves, of course. I myself am now Ceci’s heir, I suppose, although the matter is strictly hypothetical. Ceci is a relatively young woman. As for me?” Here, Althea produced a mischievous smile that took sixty
years off her face. Wagging a finger at Hugh and Robert, she said, “As for me, I suppose I’d better be careful if the two of you install yourselves in the next room and suspend a bellrope near my bed!”

Delighted with myself, I said a bit too loudly, “‘The Speckled Band’!”

Remember that one? Dr. Grimesby Roylott? His stepdaughters? The ventilator? The bellpull? And the deadly snake, the swamp adder, that
is
the speckled band.

Hugh and Robert greeted my interjection with glances of withering scorn. Resuming the interrogation, Robert asked whether Jonathan had been in a position to reveal the shameful secrets of some highly placed personage. I struggled to sense how light the banter really was. Althea, I was certain, understood the game as just that; in pretending that the Canon was the true record of the exploits of Sherlock Holmes, she reveled in what she knew was fantasy. Of Hugh and Robert I felt less certain. At some level, they could tell fact from fiction. It seemed possible, though, that just as I could imagine Holmes and Watson as real people, so Hugh and Robert could conceive of them as historical beings. Why not? Didn’t the entire world
believe
in Sherlock Holmes?

“Jonathan did not move in the circles of the illustrious,” said Althea.

Narrowing his eyes, Hugh demanded in low tones, “Freemasonry?”

As Althea was shaking her head, I felt like asking what Conan Doyle had had against Freemasons. In his work, they were always portrayed in a hideously sinister fashion that I’d never been able to comprehend. A reference to Conan Doyle as a writer of personally biased fiction would, however, have seemed like a spoilsport’s
effort to ruin the game. Furthermore, although Hugh and Robert were successfully distracting Althea from what might otherwise have been gloomy thoughts of the demise of her family and the restrictions of her life at the Gateway, the strained atmosphere of forced gaiety and the scorn that had greeted my own contribution made me reluctant to say anything more. Responding to my discomfort or perhaps to the oddity of the whole situation, Rowdy grew increasingly restless. Instead of playing up to Althea, Hugh, or Robert, he focused exclusively on me. For the first time since our initial visits to the Gateway, he whined noisily in what I heard as a plea to go home. I didn’t linger, but excused myself by claiming that he needed to go out, as in a sense he did.

Once we left Althea’s room, Rowdy stopped his noise and seemed in no hurry at all. As we waited by the elevators, an attendant, Ralph Ryan, according to his name tag, appeared from around the corner with an ancient, emaciated man in a wheelchair. Rowdy gave the frail-looking man his usual happy tail wag. “Do you like dogs?” I asked brightly. To Rowdy, I whispered, “Wait.”

The man said nothing. It occurred to me that he may not have heard me. When I’d found myself in similar situations on previous visits to the Gateway, I’d tried to read the person’s facial expression and body language. Now, I found nothing to read. The attendant, Ralph, was almost as unresponsive as his charge. I hated to seem like the kind of person who acts as if people in wheelchairs can’t speak for themselves (“Does he like dogs?”). Some people at the Gateway, however, really were unable to speak for themselves. Most of the employees would tactfully let me know when someone couldn’t see or couldn’t hear and whether the person
did or didn’t welcome the attention of a therapy dog. Ralph yawned and checked his watch. Rowdy and I might have been invisible and inaudible. When one of the two elevators arrived, I let Ralph and the man have it to themselves. In the absence of information about the old man’s wishes, it seemed best not to trap him in a small enclosed space with a big dog.

As Rowdy and I waited, a woman wearing a bright red dress and baby blue bedroom slippers joined us. She said how beautiful Rowdy was, but declined my invitation to pat him. He was too big for her, she said; she’d always had toy poodles. When the elevator finally came, she followed us in with no hesitation. The second the doors closed, she began to complain about the Gateway. The elevators took forever, she said. The food wasn’t what it used to be, and neither were the activities. There was a shortage of staff because everyone was underpaid. Furthermore, these days, the Gateway wasn’t in the least fussy about who got hired. “They’ll take anyone who’ll work for almost nothing,” she said. “And with what it costs to be here? Scandalous!” She went on to say that when she’d moved to the Gateway, it had been just like a hotel. Now, no one did anything for you. “And it used to be spotless!” she exclaimed indignantly. “How that’s changed! Yesterday, a cockroach crawled right across my windowsill, and I couldn’t get a soul to do a thing about it.” As the doors opened to the lobby, she lowered her voice and confided, “They pretended they didn’t believe me. They do that here, you know. It’s one of their favorite tricks.”

Fact: The elevators were slow. Fact: I wouldn’t have hired the unresponsive Ralph as a kennel attendant. But the pay scale? The cost of living at the Gateway? The decline in the quality of staff and services? And the cockroach? As I returned my volunteer’s badge to the
bulletin board in the office and signed myself out, I inspected the area for signs of infestation. I found none. On the contrary, the linoleum floor looked freshly washed and waxed, the desks and shelves were free of dust, there was no odor at all, and nothing was crawling along the baseboards or anywhere else. And there were plenty of activities, weren’t there? There had to be. Helen Musgrave was always attending something, wasn’t she? But if Helen showed up to find that an event had been canceled or didn’t exist, what would she do? With a sinking heart, I realized that she’d immediately forget her disappointment and happily bustle off elsewhere. The recent past disappeared from Helen’s mind as swiftly and as completely as every trace of Nancy had vanished from her room within hours of her death. Passing through the lobby, stopping to let Rowdy say goodbye to the women gathered there, I realized that although a prominent section of the big notice board by the front doors was devoted to welcoming new residents, there was nothing there or elsewhere to acknowledge the departure of those whose beds the new people now occupied. On the way out, I studied the Polaroid photos of the new residents. Well, what did I want? A notice that read Bon Voyage? And underneath it, deathbed snapshots of people breathing their last?