The Barker Street Regulars

by Susan Conant

  “So you’re not clairvoyant after all,” I teased.

  “A.C.D. to the contrary,” Hugh replied.

  A.C.D.? To the contrary? I suppressed the urge to lapse into baffling jargon of my own. J.H., CD., O.FA.! I wanted to reply. Unfortunately, I could think of no way to turn the conversation to Junior Hunter and Companion Dog titles or to squeeze in a cryptic reference to the Orthopedic Foundation for Animals. My annoyance must have shown on my face. Its source was, as I’ve just said, natural resentment at being addressed in a language I couldn’t follow, as opposed to justifiable indignation at finding myself the target of unwelcome snooping. Robert, however, cleared his throat and said, “We keep a close eye on Althea.”

  Hugh expanded. “We prefer to know who her friends are.”

  Was Althea so tremendously wealthy that gestures of apparent friendship toward her required scrutiny? Had the men suspected me of being an innovative con artist who’d hit on the scheme of identifying potential marks by cruising nursing homes with a canine confederate disguised as a therapy dog? I must have looked puzzled. In apparent response, Robert said, “Althea is a woman of extraordinary wit.”

  “And quickness,” Hugh chimed in.

  “Resolution,” added Robert.

  “In brief,” said Hugh, “she eclipses the whole of her sex.”

  Robert glared at him. “Eclipses and predominates.”

  I finally caught on. The adventure was “A Scandal in Bohemia.” The reference was to Irene Adler, the woman in the Great Detective’s life. Not yet knowing about the late sister-wives, I said gently, “Althea is the woman.”

  Robert, of course, corrected me. But not about the wives. “Is always the woman,” he said.

  Chapter Four

  ALTHEA BATTLEFIELD’S SISTER, CECI, was ten inches shorter than Althea and her junior by ten years. It took me a minute to realize, though, that the principal difference between the sisters was that Ceci had a streak of foolishness. What briefly fooled me was that Ceci made a fool of herself over Rowdy, who is always glad to make a fool of himself over anyone. I must add, however, that fool that I am over Rowdy, I took a liking to Ceci that endured even after it slowly dawned on me that she’d pulled a fast one and that Althea knew she’d done so.

  It was the Sunday after Hugh, Robert, and I had had coffee in the Square. On Friday, Rowdy and I had paid our regular visit to the Gateway. Helen had been having her hair done, Robert and Hugh hadn’t been there, and Althea had had a fine time instructing me about engineers’ thumbs, devils’ feet, Sussex vampires, and miscellaneous other bits of Sherlockian trivia. In an oblique and tactful way, I’d tried to satisfy my curiosity about whether Hugh or Robert had ever been the man in her life, as she was the woman in theirs, and if so, which one, Hugh or Robert, but I got nowhere, mainly because such bothersome impediments as discretion and good taste held me back from suggesting that the late Mr. Battlefield, whoever he’d been, had been other than the man. All I learned about Mr. Battlefield was that Althea had married him just after she’d graduated from Radcliffe and that he’d soon died of meningitis. Althea had then begun her career as an English teacher at the Avon Hill School, where she’d continued to teach even after boys had been admitted and from which she’d retired twenty-five years ago. Robert and Hugh, she told me, were fellow members of the Red-headed League of Boston, not to be confused with any of the other Red-headed Leagues in other cities or any of the three other Sherlockian organizations in Greater Boston, and certainly not to be confused with the Baker Street Irregulars. The B.S.I., I learned, was the elite, by-invitation-only society to which Althea and Robert belonged and Hugh did not. She herself was a recent inductee—the B.S.I. had been closed to women until 1991—but Hugh had been eligible for eons, and was sensitive about his exclusion.

  “Politics!” Althea exclaimed.

  “It’s the same way in dogs,” I told her.

  “It’s the same way everywhere,” Althea said. “And what does a title mean, after all?”

  “Nothing,” said I, stroking the head of my Ch., C.D.X., C.G.C., T.T., soon-to-be Rx.D. companion. That’s breed champion, Companion Dog Excellent, Canine Good Citizen, Temperament Tested, soon-to-be Therapy Dog, who’d also have titles from Canada, Bermuda, and elsewhere if I could afford to travel. “But what do, uh, titles …?”

  “B.S.I.,” Althea replied. “I am a B.S.I. Robert is a B.S.I. Hugh is not.” I assumed that he’d flunked a trivia test by misquoting the Canon, but to my surprise, Althea said, “And all because Hugh is an Oxford man.”

  As it turned out, Althea didn’t mean that Hugh had gone to Oxford. As I’ve said, he went to M.I.T. Rather, one of the classic Problems in Sherlockian scholarship, as Althea explained to me, was a controversy about whether Sherlock Holmes’s time at university, as she phrased it, had been spent at Oxford or Cambridge. Hugh’s allegiance to the Oxford side of the debate was, in itself, perfectly respectable; the topic was one on which aficionados agreed to disagree. As quite a young man, Hugh, however, in a burst of excess loyalty to the Oxford side, had created a violent scene that culminated when, in the midst of a big convention of fellow Holmesians, he had punched an argumentative Cantabrigian in the jaw and sent the poor man to the hospital. The bystanders, I suspected, had been outraged at the crassly non-Sherlockian method of attack. It seemed to me that if Hugh had had the sense to whack his foe with the Master’s favorite weapon, a loaded hunting crop, he’d be a B.S.I. today.

  Anyway, after making our regular Friday visit, Rowdy and I returned only two days later not only because the more we visited, the sooner he got his title, but because … Well, I’m sure there was some less frivolous, preferably more altruistic, reason. Oh, yes. Except that it wasn’t exactly altruistic. I’ll have to leap ahead again here, but bear with me, because the whole business about Steve Delaney, and Gloria and Scott, honestly does have to do with the story. Steve Delaney, as I’ve mentioned in passing, is my lover and Rowdy and Kimi’s vet, not that I get a substantial discount, in case you wondered, but he’s both, although for entirely separate reasons. Until recently, I’d had no cause at all for complaint about him in either capacity, meaning that if it hadn’t been for the stink Gloria and Scott were kicking up, Steve and I would have spent a torrid late-winter afternoon in bed, and then I’d have talked him into making himself professionally useful by squirting Intratrak II up the dogs’ noses or at least trimming their nails. Even now, on the Sunday when I met Ceci, I still thought Steve was the best vet I’d ever used, and I knew that if a veterinary crisis befell Rowdy or Kimi, he’d rouse himself from his silent stoicism to tend to one of my dogs. As it was, he remained in the emotional cocoon he’d spun around himself in response to what I correctly insisted was outrageous harassment.

  When I pressed the matter, he pointed out through locked jaws that I, too, received occasional letters of complaint. Our situations were comparable, Steve stated flatly; consumer dissatisfaction was an inevitable hazard of becoming a vet or a writer. As I told him, our situations weren’t comparable at all. Yes, of course there were readers who didn’t like my column or took objection to articles I published, but Gloria was plaguing him with persistent phone calls, letters, and E-mail. Furthermore, she was making slanderous public accusations of malpractice. In contrast, the typical letter of complaint from one of my readers did nothing more than politely chastise me for slighting the Samoyed, the otterhound, the Gordon setter, or some other splendid breed I hadn’t mentioned lately. Once in a while, Dog’s Life heard from someone who gleefully pounced on my mistakes: “In her article on the Transylvanian Bludhund in the June issue, Holly Winter makes the egregious error of stating that this noble breed originated in Transylvania. Wrong! Had Miss Winter researched her subject in a professional manner by consulting the Transylvanian Bludhund Club of America, she would soon have been set straight!” On rare occasions, my editor got the bizarre complaint that my column in particular and the magazine as a whole had entirely too much to say about dogs. In other word
s, my readers’ grievances were perfectly justified.

  Gloria and Scott, however, blamed Steve for ruining their wonderful show dog and excellent brood bitch when, in fact, he’d saved her life. Lest I trigger a volley of the kinds of breed-loyal complaints I’ve just described, I’ll leave Gigi’s breed unspecified, but I will tell you that Gigi was short for Gloria, and I’ll refrain from commenting on the kind of woman who names a bitch after herself. Anyway, two years earlier, Gigi began to have seizures, and Steve advised Scott and Gloria to spay her. They not only refused, but went ahead and bred her not just once but twice. When she developed pyometra, they finally agreed. Pyometra is a serious uterine disorder of bitches that begins as a hormonal problem and turns into a bacterial infection. Spaying is standard practice for an animal with seizures, and it’s the treatment of choice for a bitch with pyometra. Indeed, Scott and Gloria thanked Steve for saving Gigi. Now, four months later, they were claiming that Gigi’s surgery had been unnecessary. They didn’t just blame Steve in private: They also did it in public, outside the show ring, in the grooming areas, wherever dog people gathered. If you show your dogs, you’ll probably recognize Scott and Gloria.

  And how did Steve respond to Gloria and Scott? Did he copy their tactics and stand around at shows to announce out loud that they’d knowingly bred a bitch with seizures? That out of greed and laziness they’d sold Gigi’s puppies at six weeks instead of waiting until eight weeks? He did not. He did nothing except spend all his free time holed up in his apartment with his dogs. Furthermore, he forbade me to violate his clients’ confidentiality by so much as whispering a discreet word about Gloria, Scott, or Gigi to anyone in dogs.

  What really got to Steve, I must mention, was something I haven’t touched on yet. Steve would have welcomed a second, third, or fourth opinion, which is to say, the opinion of a second, third, or fourth veterinarian. So, what got to Steve wasn’t that Gloria and Scott had taken Gigi to someone else. No, what ate at him was that the second opinion they’d sought, accepted, and used to attack his reputation was the pronouncement of an animal psychic who hadn’t even seen Gigi, if you can believe it, but had studied a photograph and, on the basis of telepathic communication, deemed the spaying unnecessary.

  So I spent Sunday afternoon at the Gateway instead of with Steve Delaney, who sought only the company of his dogs. As I began to report, just after Rowdy and I entered Althea’s room, her sister, Ceci Love, swept in and pulled a fast one by falling all over Rowdy while excluding and ignoring Althea. Thus she filched both her sister’s therapy dog and the attention of someone who’d talk to her sister about Sherlock Holmes. How was Rowdy to know? As usual, we’d entertained the lobby ladies, taken the elevator, visited people, and ended up on the fifth floor. Everywhere we’d gone, I’d encouraged Rowdy to return greetings, to play up to everyone who liked dogs, to bless everyone with his great gift for making every single person feel loved and special. If some people acted a little odd? If a man we hadn’t met before grabbed Rowdy’s ear and had to be helped to let go? If Nancy cried out at the sight of Rowdy and wailed, “Rowdy, Rowdy, I love him! I love him!” Becoming a therapy dog meant learning to accept ear grabbing, tail pulling, hugs, shrieks, and moans as well as gentle pats, sweet talk, and requests to give his paw. So when Ceci screamed at the sight of Rowdy, flung her arms in the air, dove at him, and threw herself around his neck, how was he to know that he’d been recruited to participate in theft? How was I?

  Rising to her feet and catching her breath, Ceci cried, “Isn’t he the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen? Isn’t he wonderful? Isn’t he a gorgeous big boy? What a handsome dog!” She paused. “Ceci Love. Althea’s sister. Call me Ceci. Love is such a, well, it’s such a name, isn’t it?” Without waiting for me to introduce myself or Rowdy, she gushed, “Why, he looks like a show dog! Is he a show dog?” Before I could answer, she began to tell me about every dog she’d ever owned, most of which had been Newfoundlands. I now understand that although Ceci seemed lost in the past, she remained sufficiently oriented to the here-and-now to plant herself between Althea and me, thus blocking my route to her sister. “Kitty was a jewel, a gem, a perfect, perfect dog, our only Landseer, that’s black and white, you know, all the others were black, never white, white is a Great Pyrenees, lovely breed, but give me a Newfie any day, and she never would sleep anywhere except right at the foot of my bed, if I had to get up in the night to go, well, tinkle, or get a little snack, she’d follow right along with me, and then when I crawled back into bed, she’d lie right down there at the foot and …”

  You get the idea. I tuned out the babble. Instead, I studied the woman, who, on close examination, looked something like a diminutive version of a younger Althea, at least if Althea had slaved over her appearance. Ceci’s face showed Althea’s striking bone structure, but unlike Althea, Ceci wore several different shades of brown and beige eye shadow, dark mascara, eyebrow pencil, blush, and pearly pink-beige lipstick, as well as foundation and, for all I know, six or eight other facial cosmetics as well. Her champagne hair, a little shorter than shoulder length, was skillfully styled to sweep back from her face. She was dressed in lots of apricot-beige jersey—a skirt, a loose top, a matching jacket—and wore leather pumps, pearl earrings, a pearl necklace, and a bright silk scarf with a pattern of blue cornflowers that matched her eyes. I didn’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to realize that Ceci was a woman dedicated to looking good. What I did not sense about her was vanity. On the contrary, I had the impression that the careful hair, the artful makeup, the attractive, flattering clothes and jewelry were meant for other people and, specifically, meant to make other people happy. I sensed in Ceci a little girl who had learned that the way to please people was to be good and that being good meant looking pretty.

  Ceci’s monologue continued. “Ah, Newfs, my husband was mad about them, too. Simon, now, Simon passed on two years ago, and for the first year, the first eighteen months, it was a terrible struggle to keep going alone, to live in that house all by myself, to rely on myself, not that I can’t manage the practical details of life, I manage very capably, but there seemed to be no point whatsoever to going on at all, and of course, I missed Althea’s company dreadfully. We used to go to Symphony and out to lunch, didn’t we, Althea? We had lovely times together. And then, of course, everything happened all at once, one loss after another, Althea having to be moved here—”

  “A fate worse than death,” muttered Althea. Her wry smile made it clear that she was commenting on her sister’s tactlessness rather than on her own move to the Gateway.

  Oblivious to Althea’s remark, Ceci went on. “And not a week later, my Simon died.” Here I heard deep, genuine grief. When she said Simon, she prolonged the syllables. The name alone almost sounded like a question. Her voice broke.

  Sympathizing with the ill-timed death of her husband, I said, “I’m sorry.”

  “Coal-black, he was,” Ceci replied, “not a white hair in his coat, only five years old.”

  Althea, whose hearing was sharp, let forth a peal of triumphant laughter. “Ceci, Holly thought you meant your husband!”

  “Ellis?” Ceci inquired. “Why would she think I meant Ellis? I wasn’t talking about Ellis, was I?”

  “No, dear,” Althea assured her, “you weren’t. Ceci, this is Holly Winter. She brings Rowdy to visit. My sister has already introduced herself.”

  Perhaps sensing the tone of the remark, Ceci took a step backward.

  “How do you do?” I said while taking advantage of the opportunity to squeeze past Ceci and lead Rowdy to Althea.

  As Althea administered a perfunctory pat to the top of Rowdy’s head, Ceci said to me, “You knew what I was talking about when I was telling you about Simon, didn’t you?”

  “Certainly,” I lied. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Althea’s smirk.

  “Simon’s name,” Ceci said, “was from one of their stories. My late husband, Ellis, was utterly obsessed with Sherlock Holmes.”

 
“Lord Saint Simon,” Althea contributed. “Which story, Holly?”

  “I haven’t …”

  “‘The Noble Bachelor.’ You must.”

  “I will.”

  “It was one of their little jokes,” Ceci explained petulantly. “Our Simon was a surgical bachelor. We bought him as a pet, pet quality, you understand, excellent breeder, poor bite, and we promised to, uh, do what we did. And noble he was. The perfect gentleman.”

  Translation: The breeder had insisted that a dog with a poor bite be neutered.

  “Ceci,” ordered Althea, “enough dog talk!”

  Ceci responded by accusing Althea of failing to respect her feelings about Simon. Althea replied that Simon had been dead for two years and that it was time for Ceci to stop indulging herself in prolonged and excessive grief. With genuine pain in her voice, Ceci said that Simon had been her soul mate, her dearest friend, and her constant companion. Furthermore, what kept her going now was the knowledge that his spirit was still with her.

  “Piffle,” said Althea.

  “Conan Doyle didn’t think it was piffle,” Ceci snapped. “Nor, may I point out, does he now.”

  I had no idea what she meant. Althea looked uncomfortable. I assumed that she felt as awkward as I did about the presence of a stranger during a family spat. I tried to leave the sisters to their incomprehensible argument, but when I said goodbye and reminded Althea that Rowdy and I would be back on Friday, Ceci announced that she was leaving, too. Hugging Althea and kissing her tenderly, she said, “I love you dearly, you know.”

  Althea replied, “I love you, too, Ceci. Thank you for coming. You have brightened my life since the day you were born.”

  In the corridor, Ceci tagged along with Rowdy and me. “It breaks my heart that Althea has to be in this place,” she confided, “but she was completely unable to manage. She’s ninety, you know.”

  I pressed the elevator button. “Rowdy, wait.”