The Barker Street Regulars (22 page)

Success! The door slammed in my face. Confident now that I had, indeed, played my role to perfection, I climbed to the second floor. Rapping on the door, I felt eager to repeat my performance. To my disappointment, no one came to the door. After once again knocking and waiting, I made my way up the stairs to the third floor. The effort of ascending one short flight of steps wasn’t nearly enough to make my heart pound. Rather, the extra beats were from second thoughts. Jehovah’s Witnesses, I decided, did well to go in pairs. In lieu of an animate companion—preferably canine, but I’d have settled for a mere person—maybe I should have protected myself with something other than a disguise that left my face readily recognizable. There was a Sherlock Holmes story called “The Veiled Lodger.” For a second, I couldn’t remember anything about it except the title. Who was the lodger? Oh, yes. A woman who’d been mauled by a lion. Too bad that Jehovah’s Witnesses weren’t required to cover their faces. But whatever awaited me in the third-floor apartment couldn’t be worse than a hungry lion. Could it?
A living dog is better than a dead lion,
I thought. Two living dogs would’ve been twice as good. The villain who’d tried to drown Tracker was obviously no animal lover. Maybe he was terrified of big dogs. Maybe my impersonation was a terrible mistake. Last night, after hurling the white bags of hair coloring, the man had vanished down
a side street only a few blocks from this shabby building. Was it possible that …?

Slowly inhaling and exhaling, I rapped on the door. This time, it took courage to paste on the smile of joy. Clutching the Bible, I felt tempted to raise it directly in front of my face.

I heard brisk footsteps. Maybe because the yellow-faced creature on the first floor had opened the door, I somehow expected this door, too, to open, if only an inch or two. It did not. Cambridge is, after all, a city, and few city dwellers simply open their doors to strangers.

Through the closed door, a male voice inquired, “Who is it?”

Once again mimicking the dowdy woman, I repeated the line about sharing Good News. In my own ears, I sounded nervous. I felt like an actress who has lucked into a small part only to botch her one line.

The door opened nonetheless. It opened wide. Before me, binoculars dangling from a strap around his neck, stood Robert, looking, as usual, as if he ought to be wearing a kilt. At his heels was Hugh. I felt like a total flop. If I recalled correctly, on not a single occasion had Watson ever come close to penetrating any of the Master’s disguises. Robert and Hugh, of course, recognized me instantly.

“Good News,” repeated Robert, cocking his distinguished head.

“A religious term,” Hugh informed him, “referring to—”

“I am familiar with the expression,” Robert replied impatiently.

I yanked off the headband and wiped the sappy look off my face.
“I never was more glad to see anyone in my life,”
I quoted.

Robert responded with the quickness of a well-trained dog.
“Or more astonished, eh?”

“Well, I must confess so,”
I said.

“
Confess
to it.” Having set me straight, Robert added, “
The surprise was not all on one side, I assure you.
”

Except for my misquote, the dialogue was straight from
The Hound of the Baskervilles.
I was disguised as a religious fanatic, right? It made sense to quote the Bible. My tactic worked. Hugh and Robert invited me in.

Perhaps I should make it clear that the grubby apartment opposite Irene Wheeler’s was the abode of neither Hugh nor Robert. Rather, they’d rented it, as Robert explained to me, as an aerie in which to perch while casting eagle eyes on everything that went on across the street. The place was such an ugly, depressing mess that my first response was relief that no one had to live there. From the walls cascaded strips of hideous flower-patterned beige wallpaper inadequately coated with a primer of white paint that had also been applied to the woodwork. Paint chips leaped from the window frames, doors, and baseboards. Bare lightbulbs hung from the stained ceilings of some rooms. Other ceilings sprouted spidery masses of electrical wire. Scattered on the dirty, worn wood floors were coat hangers, crumpled bits of paper, and other debris that neither the last tenant nor the landlord had bothered to sweep up. I didn’t see the kitchen or the bathroom. And didn’t want to.

In tidy contrast to the rest of the place was the observation post that Hugh, I suspected, had set up in the living room near the front windows, which formed a little bow that overlooked the street. I could now see that what I’d mistaken for curtains were, in fact, brand-new
white sheets, their creases visible, nailed across those front windows. Right by the shrouded windows, mounted on tripods, stood a powerful-looking spotting scope and a camera. Nearby were two aluminum folding chairs and a narrow folding cot on which lay a rolled-up sleeping bag. Between the chairs, a big cooler served as a makeshift table that supported two stainless-steel thermos bottles. Hugh’s laptop computer rested on the floor by one of the chairs. If I hadn’t known better, I’d have assumed that Hugh and Robert were avid birders who’d camped in this improbable location in the hope of adding some exotic species to their life lists.

“You’ve made yourselves very comfortable here,” I remarked. “Just like the Man on the Tor.”

That, too, is from
The Hound.
The mysterious Man on the Tor turns out to be Holmes, who has camped out in an abandoned hut on the moor. Naturally, Watson doesn’t connect the mystery man with the Master until Holmes reveals himself:
“It is a lovely evening, my dear Watson,” said a well-known voice. “I really think that you will be more comfortable outside than in.”
The inside of the hut, however, is pretty comfortable. Holmes has blankets, cooking utensils, food, and water. For the sake of fidelity to the Canon, I should add that he also has a half-f bottle of spirits and a pannikin, but since I have no idea what a pannikin is, maybe I’d better skip that part. Anyway, in that part of the story, Holmes is all excited, and so were Robert and Hugh, who described themselves as hot on the trail.

“Could we back up a little?” I asked. “I don’t understand why you decided to, uh, observe here to begin with.”

With the air of one who quotes, Robert pompously announced, “
These strange details, far from making the
case more difficult, have really had the effect of making it less so.
”

Hugh came to my rescue. “In this case, the jarring feature is the presence of the psychic.”

“So,” I said, gesturing toward the curtained windows, “what have you observed?” I paused. “Besides me.”

“We confess ourselves,” replied Robert, “at something of a loss as to how to account for your presence there.”

“Let’s say that my mission was more or less the same as yours,” I said. “Among other things, it seems clear to me that Ceci Love is the victim of a con game, and that the con artist”—I pointed toward Irene Wheeler’s house—“is preying on Ceci’s grief about her dog. That bothers me a lot. In itself, that’s an evil thing to do. I’ve also wondered whether Jonathan Hubbell had the same idea and whether that’s why he was murdered. It’s also a little more complicated. There’s a friend of mine who’s also being victimized, in a minor way.”

Hugh and Robert exchanged glances.

“And would your friend,” asked Robert, “be a
tall
man?”

“A lot of men are tall,” I said to Robert. “You, for example.” Steve, of course, is tall, lean, and muscular.

Hugh took his turn. “Thin?”

“Lean.”

“Hair color,” said Robert. “Brown.”

“Yes.”

Hugh and Robert held another silent conference.

“The owner,” Hugh said, “of a large dog.”

Steve’s pointer, Lady, is medium size, but India—no slight intended, far from it—is a good-sized bitch. “Yes,” I said.

The privilege of making the final, magical Holmesian pronouncement fell to Robert. “Your friend drives a black panel truck,” he proclaimed, as if pulling a rabbit from a hat. “His most prominent facial feature is an exceptionally bulbous forehead.”

H
IS MOST PROMINENT FACIAL
feature is an exceptionally bulbous forehead.

The statement transformed my vision of Hugh and Robert. They seemed suddenly frail, elderly, and hopelessly innocent, as vulnerable as a poor, sick cat tied in a pillowcase weighted with a large stone. I had spotted the binoculars from the street. Anyone else might do the same.

“You are,” I asked them, “strictly limiting yourselves to
observing
what goes on?”

Has there been a male yet who wants to be a man of
inaction?
My remark had an unintended consequence. Hugh and Robert, instead of assuring me that they were doing nothing except monitoring comings and goings, thanked me for reminding them of the need to return to their duties. Then they politely showed me to the door. Patting his pocket, Hugh informed me that he had his revolver. Robert, he said, was also prepared to defend himself. Like Holmes, Robert preferred to arm himself with a stick. I felt anything but reassured. In parting, I did, however, extract the promise that Hugh and Robert
would desert their post for long enough to visit Althea the next morning. Reluctant though I was to burden a ninety-year-old woman with worries about matters she could do nothing to control, I counted on Althea’s intelligence and common sense and on her influence with her old friends. She, at least, understood the Great Game as a strictly literary pastime. To Robert and Hugh, she was
the
woman. With luck, their Irene Adler would divert them with some purely Sherlockian puzzle or send them safely back to another dog show to collect yet more harmless tufts of show coat.

I now realize that in counting on Althea’s intelligence and influence I made a serious miscalculation. She proved herself as sharp as I’d expected. I now see, however, that far from persuading Hugh and Robert to diverge from the hot and dangerous trail they were on, she set me on the same hazardous track. If I’d been clever, or maybe just irresponsible, I’d have taken care to arrive at Althea’s room at the Gateway ahead of Hugh and Robert. As it was, Rowdy and I got to the Gateway that Friday morning at our usual time, ten-thirty, the earliest hour at which visitors were welcome, and we fulfilled our obligations to the people awaiting the regular visit of their therapy dog. More than ever, I felt caught between the desire to give each person ample time with Rowdy and the sense that we needed to press on. Ordinarily, what hurried me was my empathy for the remaining people who looked forward to Rowdy’s weekly visit. Today, in my impatience to get to Althea’s room, I hustled Rowdy from person to person.

By the time we finally entered Althea’s room, the three Sherlockians were deeply involved in a collaborative analysis of the evidence. Pausing briefly just inside the room, I felt my view of the three undergo yet another
transformation. Through my newly Holmesian eyes, I’d previously seen Hugh and Robert as cooperative actors who shared the roles of Holmes and Watson in a long-running performance of the Great Game. In appearance, the tall, distinguished, keen-eyed Robert was a natural for the part of the Great Detective; Hugh made a rather short and hefty Holmes. It was Hugh, however, who’d have conducted the stinky chemical experiments that had absorbed Holmes, Hugh whose laptop computer was the present-day version of the albums in which Holmes had stored and catalogued his files. Or did the laptop also cast Hugh in the role of Watson? The computer was, after all, the ultimate recorder. And it was Robert who armed himself with the Master’s favorite weapon. Hugh, like Watson, favored a revolver. As for Althea, I’d accepted Hugh and Robert’s plain assertion that for both of them, Althea Battlefield was Irene Adler. She was
the
woman. And who was I? At most, I was the anonymous Reader. In the world of Sherlock Holmes, I was no one at all.

Now, pausing before entering the drama, I sensed a reassignment of the immortal roles. Ignoring Althea’s near blindness, Hugh and Robert were presenting her with photographs. Hugh stood on one side of her, Robert on the other.

“Is this woman attractive?” Althea asked.

“Moderately,” Robert replied grudgingly.

“Moderately,” Hugh agreed, stroking his pale mustache.

“A man,” said Althea, “visits an attractive woman. What further explanation is required?”

“The man,” said Hugh in ominous tones, “is the owner of a large dog.”

“An inference,” Robert continued, “drawn from the creature’s response when we approach the vehicle in
which it is incarcerated. The vehicle is a windowless van of sorts.”

“A panel truck,” Hugh said. “The cargo area at the rear has no windows.”

“Just so,” Robert agreed.

“What Robert is trying to say,” Hugh said, “is that we attempted to observe the dog on two occasions, last night and the night before, but each time, the dog created a ruckus that would have drawn attention to our presence.”

“How disappointing,” Althea commented. “How ordinary! The
incurious
incident of the dog in the nighttime.”

The story was “Silver Blaze.” There,
the dog did nothing in the night-time
—and
“That,”
as Holmes remarks,
“was the curious incident.”
When someone approached, why did the dog do nothing? Because the intruder was no stranger to the dog. And Nicole Brown Simpson’s Akita? Ponder it. “Silver Blaze”?

“The depth and volume of the dog’s barking,” Robert reported, “were sufficient to establish the size of the animal.”

“Data,” Hugh said, “consistent with evidence collected at the scene of the murder concerning a tall white male dog with exceptionally large feet.”

As Hugh and Robert took turns presenting information to Althea, I continued to ask myself who was who in this Holmesian scenario. Speaking almost with one voice, Hugh and Robert were two halves of Holmes: Robert, the contemplative thinker; Hugh, the scientific analyst. I thought of Rex Stout’s lighthearted essay. If Watson was a woman, had Althea now become Watson? Clearly not. It was she who was being presented with the evidence, she who was apparently expected to make something of it. Ah hah! Hugh and Robert, the
men of action, collected the evidence and were now reporting to Althea, who never left the Gateway. Mycroft Holmes! Sherlock’s brother, need I inform you? Yes, Mycroft, who, according to Holmes himself, possessed better powers of observation than Sherlock, but lacked ambition and energy, and only in times of crisis left his lodgings in Pall Mall for anywhere other than the Diogenes Club, where every member was forbidden to take any notice whatsoever of any other member. So, Althea was now Mycroft: the great brain lodged in a largely immobile body. The Gateway was her club. The murder victim was, of course, the unfortunate Jonathan Hubbell. The client, albeit an unwitting one, was Ceci. I felt a strange satisfaction in having squeezed the present situation into the Holmesian mold.