Authors: Susan Conant
Tags: #General, #Fiction, #Mystery & Detective, #Women dog owners, #Women Sleuths, #Winter; Holly (Fictitious character), #Dog trainers, #Dogs, #Maine, #Massachusetts, #Indian captivities, #Women journalists
Animal Appetite (3 page)
After the ceremony, the guests were invited to what turned out to be a sumptuous catered lunch in a big hall in the temple. The tables were elaborately set and had beautiful centerpieces of flowers, as well as carefully lettered place cards. I knew only three people in the big crowd, Marsha and her parents, who were making their way to what was obviously a family table, where I didn’t belong. Milling around, I eventually located my name card at a place to the right of a handsome elderly man with twinkling blue eyes. He rose, helped me to my seat, and graciously introduced himself as George Foley, a name so legendary in the world of dogs that I did a momentary and, I hope, imperceptible double take. The dog man—the
real
George Foley, as I at first thought of him—presided over the Foley Dog Show Organization, published
Popular Dogs
, and was a charter member of the Dog Writers Association of America. It didn’t surprise me at all to have the name crop up anomalously attached to someone else. As I’ve said: meaning and harmony. Or as the bumper sticker on Steve Delaney’s van reads: Dog Is My Copilot.
real
George Foley, as I at first thought of him—presided over the Foley Dog Show Organization, published
Popular Dogs
, and was a charter member of the Dog Writers Association of America. It didn’t surprise me at all to have the name crop up anomalously attached to someone else. As I’ve said: meaning and harmony. Or as the bumper sticker on Steve Delaney’s van reads: Dog Is My Copilot.
Fortunately, I’m not shy, and neither was this George Foley, who turned out to be Marsha’s mother’s maternal great-uncle and lived on Fayerweather Street in Cambridge, not far from my own house. Within a minute or so, we’d established an area of common interest, and I heard all about his late bulldog, Winston. As I was sympathizing, an attractive-looking young couple appeared. They greeted my new friend as Professor Foley and took seats to his left. During the introductions, I learned that the newcomers, named, incredibly, Dick and Jane (was Spot at home?), were graduate students in the Harvard history department, from which Professor Foley had recently retired. Jane said that she was Marsha’s cousin. I said that I was Marsha’s dog trainer.
As the four of us exchanged the usual remarks about how well Marsha had done, I felt so outclassed that I let fall what was meant to be an impressively casual comment about the subject of Marsha’s speech, Jael, who, I said, had made me think of Hannah Duston. Dick and Jane didn’t seem to recognize the name. Professor Foley, however, not only knew who Hannah Duston was but—in contrast to the ignoramus who’d raised the subject—actually knew something about her.
“Taken captive six days after the birth of a baby. One presumed motive: The infant was killed almost immediately. Curious episode,” he told me with what appeared to be genuine, even childlike, interest.
An admission of ignorance felt like my only defense: “Actually, I know practically nothing about Hannah Duston.”
When George Foley smiled, happy lines radiated upward from his eyes and from the corners of his mouth. “The beginning of knowledge.”
I asked, “Would you happen to know if there’s a book about her?”
“Well,” he replied, “you’ll want to check Coleman, of course,
New England Captives Carried to Canada
—she’s in there somewhere—and then Thoreau discusses her, Whittier, Hawthorne, June Namias’s
White Captives
.” He mentioned a few other names. “But your best bet if you’re just getting started is Cotton Mather.
Magnalia
. Mather draws the same parallel you did: Jael, Hannah Duston. There’s a sermon, too, I believe. Mather’s about as close as you’ll get to a primary source: Hannah told her whole story to him. Oddly enough, though, I was discussing Indian captivity at a conference only a week or two ago, and someone told me about a privately printed book dating back to the thirties, if I recall correctly. I’ve been meaning to track it down. Probably something by one of her descendants or commissioned by the family, something of the—”
New England Captives Carried to Canada
—she’s in there somewhere—and then Thoreau discusses her, Whittier, Hawthorne, June Namias’s
White Captives
.” He mentioned a few other names. “But your best bet if you’re just getting started is Cotton Mather.
Magnalia
. Mather draws the same parallel you did: Jael, Hannah Duston. There’s a sermon, too, I believe. Mather’s about as close as you’ll get to a primary source: Hannah told her whole story to him. Oddly enough, though, I was discussing Indian captivity at a conference only a week or two ago, and someone told me about a privately printed book dating back to the thirties, if I recall correctly. I’ve been meaning to track it down. Probably something by one of her descendants or commissioned by the family, something of the—”
As I was about to pull out a notebook to jot down authors and titles, the arrival of two new people cut Professor Foley off. Actually, only one of them did. A woman named Claudia Andrews-Howe dramatically seized upon my last name, Winter, to relate the circumstances surrounding the death of her first husband, Jack Winter Andrews.
Claudia’s appearance so unambiguously proclaimed her place of residence that if I’d encountered her on a street in Bangkok, in a restaurant in Buenos Aires, or in a car on the Trans-Siberian Railroad, I’d have stepped right up to her and announced, “Hi! I’m from Cambridge, too!” Marsha and her parents, I now realized, had considerately placed me at a table where I’d feel at home. Although Claudia must have been close to sixty, her gray-streaked brown hair hung limply halfway down her back and was held away from her makeup-free face with the kind of handcrafted leather barrette that looks nailed to the crown of the head by a dowel driven through a hefty chunk of scalp. Her flowing multicolored handwoven garments were what peasant women would wear if they had tons of money and no desire to rise above their station, and her big gold earrings, necklace, and bracelet bore deliberate hammer marks. To a bat mitzvah in Massachusetts in November, Claudia wore open-toed Birkenstock sandals over bright green stockings. In Cambridge, comfort is everything.
Her late husband, Jack Winter Andrews, she informed me, had been murdered eighteen years earlier by a business partner greedy for Jack’s insurance money.
At a loss as to what to reply to Claudia’s announcement, I said simply that, as far as I knew, the victim and I hadn’t been relatives.
“Jack was poisoned,” she proclaimed, as if she’d only seconds ago discovered how he’d died. “I was the one who found him!”
“That must have been terrible for you,” I murmured.
By now, we’d been served salads of radicchio, arugula, and avocado, and I was more interested in enjoying mine and in pumping Professor Foley about Hannah Duston than I was in listening to Claudia, especially if she moved on to unappetizing details, as she promptly did.
“There were rats in the building,” she informed me.
“Damned Yankee Press,” Professor Foley interjected.
“Oh, the guides,” I said. The series was (and still is) popular:
The Damned Yankee in Maine
and so forth.
The Damned Yankee in Maine
and so forth.
Claudia ignored our efforts. “That’s what this partner of his used—rat poison slipped in Jack’s coffee. Jack was addicted to caffeine, always kept a thermos of coffee on his desk.”
“Jack was a very fine man,” Professor Foley informed all of us. “Student of mine. We always stayed in touch. A dear friend.”
“Fine man,” agreed a deeply tanned, bald, muscular fellow about Claudia’s age whose style was so entirely different from hers that I’d been surprised to hear him introduced as her husband, Oscar Fisch. He wore a conventional dark suit, a white shirt, a paisley tie, and no jewelry and nothing even vaguely reminiscent of Chinese rice growers, American factory workers, medieval serfs, or any other Cantabrigian icons. To judge from Claudia Andrews-Howe’s last name, though, it must have been Oscar Fisch who’d adapted to her world. Among Cambridge intellectuals, it is considered inexplicable, even somewhat bizarre, for a woman to assume the surname of her husband. Hyphens are still acceptable—Howe must have been Claudia’s maiden name—but I predict that they’re doomed, too. If the trend spreads throughout the country, the only creatures in the United States to share family appellations will be interrelated show dogs who bear the names of famous kennels. I wondered whether the pleasant-looking Oscar Fisch minded that his wife had retained Jack Andrews’s name and failed to add his. If so, he showed no sign of the resentment. On the contrary, he sat quite close to Claudia and eyed her proudly, as if she were an exotic bird that he hoped would perch on his arm.
As servings of poached salmon arrived and were consumed, the conversation became general, and I learned that Claudia was an associate professor at what Cambridge calls “the” Ed School, as if there were none other—the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Her field was child care policy. Oscar taught at what is invariably called “the” Business School. Dick and Jane, of course, were in “the” history department; George Foley, as I’ve mentioned, was a Harvard professor emeritus of history; and except to insert vegetable sticks and heavily laden pieces of silverware, I for once kept my mouth shut and wished that my magazine subscriptions extended beyond approximately thirty thousand dog magazines. If that had been the case, maybe I could have contributed something more intelligent than the sound of my incisors ripping through carrots and celery.
After a while, though, Claudia, in what may have been a peculiar effort to include me in the conversation, returned to the topic of her first husband’s murder. By then, she’d learned that I train dogs. “We were supposed to believe that Jack committed suicide,” she announced. “We were meant to. And at first we did. But Shaun made one major error!”
“Shaun McGrath,” Professor Foley murmured. “Jack’s partner. Died before he went to trial. Never even arrested.”
“His murderer!” Claudia corrected fiercely, as if Professor Foley had declared Shaun McGrath innocent. “Jack had a
dog
, you see,” she continued in the tone appropriate to proclaiming that the dead man had doted on a pet tarantula. “And the dog went everywhere with him. Everywhere! But when Jack was alone in his office, the dog was always running around loose. It was only when Jack had someone else there that he tied it up.”
dog
, you see,” she continued in the tone appropriate to proclaiming that the dead man had doted on a pet tarantula. “And the dog went everywhere with him. Everywhere! But when Jack was alone in his office, the dog was always running around loose. It was only when Jack had someone else there that he tied it up.”
I nodded.
“To keep it from bothering people.”
I nodded again.
“And that’s how we eventually realized that Jack hadn’t committed suicide.”
“Yes?” I asked.
“He’d been murdered!” Claudia again proclaimed. “We knew! Shaun tried to disguise it as suicide, but we knew! We knew someone else had been there! Because when we found Jack’s body, the dog was still tied to his desk.”
“Oh,” I said. Then, without censoring what must have sounded like an odd query, I asked the question that’s a reflex with me: “What breed of dog was it?”
Claudia blinked.
I clarified: “What kind of dog?”
“A golden retriever,” she answered, raising her hand and pointing a finger in a manner that reminded me of the statue of Hannah Duston. “It was a golden retriever.”
My parents raised golden retrievers. I, Holly Winter, grew up with the breed. Jack
Winter
Andrews. A
golden
. Claudia’s Hannah-like gesture felt like the finger of fate. The finger pointed directly at me.
Winter
Andrews. A
golden
. Claudia’s Hannah-like gesture felt like the finger of fate. The finger pointed directly at me.
Claudia brandished an empty fork. “Everyone knew. There was no mystery about it. As soon as we saw that it was murder, we knew immediately that it had to be Shaun McGrath.”
“It’s common knowledge,” said Oscar Fisch.
“Written up,” Professor Foley commented. “Chapter in a book.”
Claudia almost leaped on him. “A dreadful book! Written by the prototype of the pompous ass!”
“All I meant, my dear Claudia, was that Shaun McGrath had been identified in print.” Professor Foley paused. “Not that it matters at all.”
“Certainly not,” said Oscar Fisch. “The man was undoubtedly guilty. In any case, one can’t libel the dead.”
CHAPTER 3
The canine press abounds with stories ofi dogs that detect drugs or arson, rouse trauma victims from comas, or entice children from autistic states.
Dog’s Life
alone must have published two dozen articles about family pets that awakened households when the smoke alarms failed, valiant canines who dragged sleeping infants from flame-licked cribs. In revealing Jack Andrews’s apparent suicide as murder, however, his golden retriever had served humankind in what struck me as a fresh and publishable way. I should be able to whip off a little piece about the heroic golden in no time at all. Hannah Duston represented a radical career change; dog writing was my real métier. Until people writing started to pay off, I couldn’t afford to quit my day job, not yet.
Dog’s Life
alone must have published two dozen articles about family pets that awakened households when the smoke alarms failed, valiant canines who dragged sleeping infants from flame-licked cribs. In revealing Jack Andrews’s apparent suicide as murder, however, his golden retriever had served humankind in what struck me as a fresh and publishable way. I should be able to whip off a little piece about the heroic golden in no time at all. Hannah Duston represented a radical career change; dog writing was my real métier. Until people writing started to pay off, I couldn’t afford to quit my day job, not yet.
On Sunday, the day after Marsha’s bat mitzvah, I checked the phone book for Claudia and found her listed (“Andrews-Howe, Claudia & Oscar Fisch”) on Francis Avenue in Cambridge. Our Fair City, as it’s known, has two fancy neighborhoods. The famous one, the area surrounding Brattle Street, is only a few blocks from my house, but on the patrician side of Huron Avenue. Francis Avenue and the other streets that begin at Kirkland and run back toward the American Academy of Arts and Sciences are a sort of quiet version of Off Brattle. The houses are just as discreetly immense, the vegetation just as lush, the residents just as reliably university-affiliated, and the walk to Harvard just as short as from high-traffic Brattle Street. Furthermore, there’s no disguising the monied exclusivity of Brattle Street; but from Francis Avenue, it’s only a couple of blocks to a decidedly working-class section of Somerville, so if you’re both very rich and very egalitarian, you can take comfort in your proximity to those who work with their hands.
When I reached Claudia and asked how she’d feel about my writing up the story of Jack and his revelatory dog, I made the mistake of saying “heroic,” and she churlishly pointed out that the dog hadn’t actually
done
anything at all, really. Rather, in remaining tied to the desk, the dog had been nothing more than a piece of passive evidence. My readers would not object, I assured her. Did I have her permission to write the story? I did. We made an appointment for eleven o’clock the next morning at her office. She promised to bring a photograph of Jack and, if she could find one, a picture of his dog, too.
done
anything at all, really. Rather, in remaining tied to the desk, the dog had been nothing more than a piece of passive evidence. My readers would not object, I assured her. Did I have her permission to write the story? I did. We made an appointment for eleven o’clock the next morning at her office. She promised to bring a photograph of Jack and, if she could find one, a picture of his dog, too.
Claudia’s office was on Appian Way, only a few blocks from Harvard Square, in Larsen Hall, a peculiar-looking mid-sixties fortress with high, blank walls of red brick and, except in a sunken courtyard, almost no windows. The architect’s message, as I read it, was that at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, one had definitively arrived and thus need look nowhere else. The design did, I suppose, minimize hard feelings about who got stuck with offices in the interior of the building. Claudia’s was an airless beige cube to which she’d added personal touches evidently selected to create the illusion that she worked in Santa Fe. Woven into the red-patterned ethnic rug was a faded yellow motif of what looked like interlocked swastikas. A Hopi pot on her desk held pens and pencils. On one wall hung a large framed poster of a desert landscape with prickly pears in bloom. There wasn’t a toy in sight. Go to any canine training center you like, any dog show, any small-animal veterinarian’s office, and take a wild guess at what the decorations depict, usually in bewildering number and variety. The objects in my own home-office are precisely what you’d expect: a gold-framed copy of Senator Vest’s Eulogy on the Dog; photographs of Rowdy, Kimi, and my late goldens; snapshots of dogs sent by people who read my column; ribbons and trophies; and, on top of a bookshelf, a wooden urn containing the ashes of my last golden retriever, Vinnie, with a leather collar fastened around it and a little brass plate that bears her name and the years of her birth and death. Nothing in Claudia’s office, however, even remotely suggested an interest in children. Not that I expected cremated remains.
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