The Barker Street Regulars

by Susan Conant

  Summoning help struck them as a good idea. Before long, a couple of detectives and more uniformed men arrived, as did an emergency medical vehicle with E.M.T.s who examined Hugh for injuries and led Artie Moore away, under police supervision, to have his bruised and swollen right hand treated.

  It was during Hugh’s absence that Robert made what I took to be a gentlemanly effort to distract a member of the fair sex from the distressing circumstances in which she found herself. By then, I had withdrawn to the alcove and was sitting in one of the rattan chairs. On a loose lead, Rowdy eyed the potted palms. Watching him, I reflected that it didn’t take an animal psychic to read his mind. At the moment, he was reminding himself that the greenery, being indoors, was off-limits for leg lifting. He was also contemplating the prospect of taking a swift, satisfying bite of palm leaf.

  Seating himself opposite me in the other rattan chair, Robert said, in tones suitable for making small talk at a dull party, “Well, have you solved Hugh’s little puzzle yet?”

  “What puzzle?” I asked.

  Robert looked offended. “While visiting you,” he reminded me, “we observed the one-volume Double-day edition.”

  “Yes.”

  “And Hugh issued a challenge.”

  “He challenged you,” I replied. “I’m no expert. It would be a waste of time to ask me about Holmes trivia.”

  “Now, now,” Robert said soothingly. “You underrate yourself.”

  “I can’t even remember what the puzzle was.”

  “As Hugh was close enough to see, and I was not, the volume was open to …?”

  I searched my memory. “It was open to The Valley of Fear.”

  “Excellent!” Robert cried.

  “Elementary,” I responded.

  Robert was overjoyed. “Open to a certain work that makes a singular yet cryptic allusion to your own profession,” he informed me. “And contains a doubly allusive line. Quote the line! That was the challenge.”

  “Well, I’m afraid I’m not up to meeting it. You were supposed to be able to answer it. It didn’t have anything to do with me.”

  “It certainly did,” Robert replied. “Your profession?”

  “Dog writing? Dog training? I don’t think there’s even a dog in the story.”

  “Ah, but the allusion is cryptic.”

  “Well, it’s too cryptic for me.”

  “Consider the tools of your trade,” Robert hinted.

  “Pens? Paper? A computer? There aren’t any … Well, in the story, there’s that business about the dumbbell, but it’s a different kind of dumbbell. It’s the kind people use for exercise. It isn’t the kind that dogs retrieve.”

  “Cryptic,” Robert said, well, cryptically.

  “Okay, so a dumbbell is an allusion to my profession,” I admitted. “Sort of.”

  “And singular? A singular allusion?”

  “There’s one dumbbell, isn’t there? The other one is missing. Oh, I remember. It turns out that the missing dumbbell was in the moat. It was used as a weight to sink something in the moat.”

  “Excellent! The case hangs upon the missing dumbbell. One dumbbell. The singular allusion. And the doubly allusive line?”

  “Robert, I’m sorry, but I have no idea.”

  Robert tried to prompt me by quoting the beginning of the line. “This is what we are after …”

  “This is what we are after,” I repeated. “And I don’t have a clue what comes next.”

  Hugh suddenly appeared. “Ah hah! The doubly allusive line!” With a look of triumph, he added, “This is what we are after, Mr. Barker—this sodden bundle, weighted with a dumbbell that we have lifted from the mud of the moat.”

  “No, no!” Robert almost shouted. “Your own challenge, and you’ve botched it! This is what we are after, Mr. Barker—this bundle, weighted with a dumbbell, which you have just raised from the bottom of the moat.”

  “Mr. Barker,” I said to Hugh. “And dumbbell. Doubly allusive. My profession. Very clever.” Then I remembered the other line that Robert had just quoted: The case hangs upon the missing dumbbell. In a certain sense, this case did, too. It hung not on a dumbbell, but on a heavy object used to weight something that was to be submerged in water. I had to get home. Abruptly excusing myself, I cornered one of the detectives and demanded to be allowed to phone Kevin.

  “Or call him yourself,” I went on. “He’s my next-door neighbor. Call him at home. If he isn’t there, talk to his mother. She’ll tell you that it’s perfectly all right to let me go.”

  The detective rolled his eyes.

  “Okay, I can see that you might not want to take his mother’s word,” I conceded. “But would you at least try to reach him? I swear that I’ll answer any questions anytime you want. Just not now! Would you please call Kevin Dennehy?”

  I won. As it turned out, the detective knew Kevin, whose idea of speaking up for me was to assert that I was a complete dog nut.

  Eavesdropping on the detective’s end of the conversation, I said, “Tell Kevin that I absolutely have to see him tonight.”

  The innocent request generated a lot of guffawing back and forth. I didn’t try to straighten out the misunderstanding. I just wanted to get home to Cambridge so I could finally hand over to Kevin the crucial evidence that rested at the back of a closet.

  And as I’d begun to say before leaping backward, when I finally reached home and again presented Kevin with the evidence, he got understandably defensive. But then I explained that the cosmos is, after all, a harmonious whole in which people, animals, and objects communicate with one another all the time. I didn’t actually need to explain the phenomenon to a cop. Kevin understood it already. Cops know more than I do about trace evidence. You know that old saw about killing two birds with one stone? Well, maybe Artie Moore had it in mind when he tried to drown Tracker. The stone he’d used to weight the pillowcase communicated its history. It spoke to the police laboratory. The stone said that it had been in contact with the scalp of Donald Lively. And with Artie Moore’s hands. Oh, and the missing shovel used to bludgeon Jonathan Hubbell? Where would you guess it was? I guessed right. Kevin believed me. The police had no difficulty in dredging up the weapon in almost the exact spot where Artie Moore had tried to dispatch Tracker. Kevin was smug about the discovery. He’d always told me to beware of that lonely stretch of Greenough Boulevard.

  Chapter Thirty-three

  IRENE WHEELER WAS APPREHENDED not in California, but at Logan Airport in Boston. She was, however, about to board a flight for San Francisco. In her possession was a large amount of cocaine. She was evidently making off with her confederate’s entire stash. Its value, I am told, was enough to endow a small foundation. Charges were also brought against her in connection with the murder of Jonathan Hubbell. In the apparent hope of saving herself, she tried to place all blame for the slaying on Artie Moore. Artie, she maintained, had acted entirely without her knowledge or consent. She was perfectly open about having enlisted Artie to manage Simon’s “appearances.” Indeed, she took pride in having made every effort to gratify an old woman’s wish for earthly reunion with her departed pet. Her instruction to Artie had been to acquire a Newfoundland. Until informed by the police, she had no idea that the dog had been stolen. Or so she claimed. When Artie showed up with a dog of the wrong breed, she was unhappy with him, but soon realized that the substitution of a live Great Pyrenees for a dead Newfoundland was nothing more than a kindly white lie.

  As to the murder of Jonathan Hubbell, Irene insisted that Artie alone was guilty. He had made a full confession to her, she stated, just before her final visit on Norwood Hill. As she had been horrified to learn, on the Saturday of Jonathan’s death, Artie had violated her client’s confidentiality by lurking outside the alcove during the discussion she’d had with Ceci and Jonathan. After her departure, Artie had returned to his van, which was parked on Lower Norwood Road, and had mulled matters over with a dusting of chemical assistance. From Artie’s point of view, nothin
g would look more natural than the apparently accidental death by overdose of the yuppie grandnephew. His boring old aunt goes to bed. He turns to coke. What else? To Artie’s stoned amazement, however, Jonathan spared him the trouble of breaking into the house or luring his victim out. Armed with a flashlight, Jonathan appeared in the yard. The beam slowly made its way down toward Lower Norwood Road. Cocaine had a less beneficial effect on Artie Moore’s reason than it did on Holmes’s. Artie impulsively revised his plan. Now, the yuppie grandnephew leaves the house to do his coke, he overdoses outdoors instead of inside. As Jonathan neared the bottom of the yard, Artie got out of the van. His eyes apparently focused on the vehicle unexpectedly parked on the dark street, Jonathan stumbled, dropped the flashlight, and fell, striking his head on the shovel that his great-aunt had abandoned on the ground after her abortive attempt to disinter Simon’s ashes. In response to Jonathan’s soft cry of pain, the false Simon, the Great Pyrenees incarcerated in Artie’s van, gave a low growl. The twin sounds threw Artie into a panic. He neither fled nor carried out his revised plan. Rather, he rushed at Jonathan, grabbed the shovel, and silenced him forever. Taking the murder weapon with him, he departed. Until reading the newspaper, he had no idea that he had inadvertently left traces of cocaine on the body. That was Irene’s story, anyway. I have wondered whether the police challenged her about the obvious inconsistency in her account. If I’d had the opportunity, I’d have wanted to know why a psychic, for heaven’s sake, had had to wait for her confederate’s admission. If she could read dogs’ minds just by looking at photographs, couldn’t she read guilt on a human face?

  So far as I know, no one questioned Irene Wheeler about Tracker, either, and I know for sure that the numerous charges brought against Artie Moore were limited to drugs and murder, and included nothing about animal cruelty. Not that Artie is innocent of the official charges! But viciousness is viciousness. I witnessed his myself. Lacking Irene Wheeler’s paranormal gifts, I do not know whether she asked her confederate to rid her of her unwanted cat. Perhaps she asked him to dispose of Tracker at a shelter, where the ugly, old, sick little animal would immediately have been put to death. I do know that Althea was right about Tracker’s ownership. According to Irene Wheeler’s neighbors, the cat I saved from drowning—my cat—was definitely Irene’s.

  Irene Wheeler and Artie Moore made the Boston papers, which seized the opportunity to commit to print a countless number of headlines about Wheeler and the Dealer, Wheeling and Dealing, and so forth. Indeed, the nomen omen again. Gloria and Scott—remember Gloria and Scott? Steve’s accusers? Irene’s shills?—remained loyal to Irene for a few days after the story broke. Once word spread throughout the world of dogs, however, Gloria heard from a number of people she’d referred to Irene who were furious that Gloria had recommended a con artist. What turned Gloria against Irene wasn’t resentment about those complaints or disenchantment with the psychic’s paranormal powers. Rather, Gloria discovered that she’d received her kickback for only half the people she’d sent to the psychic. According to a rumor I heard at a show, Gloria is planning to take Irene to small claims court to recover the money she says Irene owes her. I really don’t care how that case turns out. I’m just glad that Gloria is now so focused on Irene Wheeler that she has apparently forgotten all about Steve.

  Speaking of Steve, I should report that he has forgiven me for interfering with what I now admit was none of my business. In fact, he accompanied Rowdy, Kimi, and me to the celebration held at Ceci’s house a month after the arrests of Artie Moore and Irene Wheeler. The festivities were not some sort of tasteless celebration of incarceration. Indeed, the party was notably tasteful. It took place on an exceptionally foggy spring evening. Hugh and Robert were there. So was the false Simon, as I still thought of him, the Great Pyrenees, whose name was, in fact, Bear. With him was his owner, Rita’s patient, Mary Kingsley, who kept apologizing about the terrible state of Bear’s coat and who pinned Steve in a corner to interrogate him about whether dogs suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and if so, whether Bear now had it. Rowdy and Kimi behaved remarkably well in Bear’s presence. Both were perfect angels during dinner, but only because I took the precaution of crating them in the car just before the food was served. Ceci offered them the run of her fenced yard, but I declined. I just didn’t trust the place. Also, I harbored a neurotic fear that they might desecrate Simon’s newly restored grave. Accepting the finality of his departure from this life, Ceci had filled in the hole and planted it with spring flowers. The dog had been unearthed too many times already, I thought. He didn’t need living dogs digging up his grave.

  Tracker was also invited. Ceci understood completely when I explained that the cat was happiest in my study and was only beginning to make brief, carefully supervised trips to the top of my refrigerator. For the obvious reason, car trips had unfortunate associations for her. Also, she wouldn’t enjoy the company of three big dogs. Bear might be fine with her, for all I knew, but Rowdy and Kimi had yet to complete my love-the-little-kitty retraining program. In fact, they still haven’t graduated. I persist nonetheless. After all, everyone assures me that I can do anything with dogs. I can’t, of course. For instance, I can’t keep the dead alive. With Vinnie, I no longer try as I once did.

  Rowdy now has his Rx.D. title. We continue to visit the Gateway. We have lost a few of our people. We have gained a few. One is a woman who speaks to no one except Rowdy. Another is a man who used to run a dog team in Alaska. We see Helen Musgrave now and then when she isn’t bustling to or from her activities. She has a new roommate, a woman who is afraid of dogs. Helen does not miss Althea. She doesn’t remember her. Every time Rowdy and I visit the Gateway, I miss our visits with Althea. We still enjoy her company, of course. Now, we see her at home. The celebration at Ceci’s was a homecoming of sorts. Althea has moved. When we visit, we sometimes find her in her own private room, which is on the ground floor and was originally her brother-in-law’s library. The bookshelves that line the walls hold the late Ellis Love’s collection as well as Althea’s own volumes and the bits of Sherlockiana she kept at her bedside at the Gateway. On chilly days, however, Althea sometimes sits beneath the portrait of Lord Saint Simon to enjoy the warmth of a cozy fire.

  And speaking of fires, kindled by Hugh and Robert, my own interest in the Master is blazing. I have even been invited to present a paper at the Red-headed League of Boston. The paper isn’t finished yet, but I am working on it. The evidence is overwhelming. Let me summarize for you the detailed presentation I made to Althea one sunny April morning as she and Rowdy and I sat among the potted palms in the alcove, which Ceci has thoughtfully rearranged to accommodate her sister’s wheelchair.

  So here’s the gist: In “The Resident Patient,” Holmes says to Watson, “What would you say to a ramble through London?” And this is how Watson describes his walk with his Master: I was weary of our little sitting-room and gladly acquiesced. For three hours we strolled about together.… His characteristic talk, with its keen observance of detail and subtle powers of inference, held me amused and enthralled. The walk together? Master and …? For three hours, during which Watson, instead of getting bored or irritated the way a person would, remains amused and enthralled in the manner of a …? Or let me quote Holmes to Watson. Off on a little adventure, Holmes says to his loyal companion, “There is no prospect of danger, or I should not dream of stirring without you.” Then there’s Watson’s unusually keen sense of smell. “The Devil’s Foot”? And in that same adventure, his declaration that helping the Master is his greatest joy and privilege. The clues are everywhere. In “The Illustrious Client,” Watson comes close to spilling the truth. By long experience, he informs us, I had learned the wisdom of obedience. And the telegram that Holmes sends to Watson in “The Creeping Man”? Come at once if convenient—if inconvenient come all the same. From whom does Holmes demand a reliable recall, for heaven’s sake? From a woman? Surely not. And look at the dialogue! In “The Naval Treaty,” Hol
mes says, “Come along, Watson.” The response? The telling response? A human, “Oh, no, I don’t feel like it”? Of course not. What the loyal Watson replies is, “Where are we going now?” I know that response perfectly. I get it every time I pick up a leash. I know that eagerness to accompany me, that enthrallment with my every word, that attitude of unconditional loyalty. I virtually speak the words Holmes spoke: “Rowdy, come! Kimi, come!” Except, of course, that Holmes doesn’t call Rowdy or Kimi. No, no. He calls his own Best Friend: “Come, Watson, come! The game is afoot.”

  That bull pup that appears in “A Study in Scarlet” and never again? “I keep a bull pup,” Watson tells Holmes. Watson keeps a bull pup? He assuredly does. He keeps that pup well hidden between the lines of every adventure. Watson was a woman? Certainly not!

  When I had finished my presentation, Althea nodded solemnly. “When you have eliminated the impossible,” she quoted, “whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” And the truth is …? Watson was the bull pup! Elementary? “Indeed,” agreed Althea, “Watson assuredly was a dog.”

  About the Author

  Susan Conant, 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 eleven Dog Lover’s Mysteries and has just completed the twelfth, Evil Breeding.