Evil Breeding

were any more political than dog people are in this country right now.”
    Althea corrected me. “Here, in this country, we enjoy the luxury of choosing whether to be political. Or perhaps the luxury of imagining that we are not. In Germany in the Nazi era, that choice did not exist.”
    “Althea, I just cannot see Mrs. Dodge as someone who wanted to kill off the poor or sterilize people against their will, and I cannot see her as a Nazi sympathizer. But...”
    “Yes?”
    “She had German judges at her shows in the thirties, and not just in the early thirties.”
    “And?”
    “And I just found, on the Web—”
    Althea came close to snorting. One of her Sherlockian friends, a man named Hugh, is a computer type from way back who is hooked on the World Wide Web and persists in futile efforts to introduce Althea to its wonders. But she does know what the Web is.
    “Well, I did find it on the Web!” I insisted. “And I must have known this before, but maybe I’d forgotten. The point is that when the Nazis took over, they took over everything, including, believe it or not, dog clubs. They disbanded every breed club and every training club, every dog organization throughout Germany, and they nationalized all dog activities and events under the control of one government-run organization. And Mrs. Dodge absolutely must have known that. So when Mrs. Dodge invited German judges to her shows in the mid- and late thirties, they didn’t just come here as individuals. These people arrived with Nazi blessings. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have been here.”
    “You are shocked that the Nazis took over a part of your world? And sent it here?”
    “Yes, I am.”
    Althea’s expression was slightly cynical, but her tone was kind. “Holly, have you ever heard the word totalitarian ?”
    “Of course,” I replied.
    “Well, my dear, what did you think it meant?”
     

Chapter Thirteen
     
    THE STAR OF DOG TRAINING that Thursday evening was, for once, a human being, a woman named Sherry who’d joined the Cambridge Dog Training Club about six months earlier. Sherry’s dog, Bandit, was a bright, eager Aussie—Australian shepherd—who harbored a prejudice against Rowdy and Kimi, whom he apparently saw as a threat to sheep. I didn’t hold Bandit’s opinion against him. I thought he was right. To avoid arousing Bandit’s sheep-protective instincts, I usually kept my dogs away from him. Consequently, I hardly knew Sherry. Tonight I risked Bandit’s wrath by easing Rowdy into the little crowd that surrounded Sherry, who, it turned out, lived within a half mile of the Motherways. What’s more, Sherry’s best friend had gone to high school with Jocelyn.
    The Motherways were already the main subject of talk in the advanced class when Rowdy and I arrived at the Cambridge Armory, which is on Concord Avenue within easy walking distance of my house. At the end of the hall close to the entrance, the big beginners’ class was laboring over such rudiments of civilization as sit and stay, but at the far end of the room, Roz, our advanced instructor, was working individually with a single dog-handier team at a time. At the moment, Ray Metcalf and one of his Clumber spaniels had all Roz’s attention. Everyone else was clustered around Sherry, a plump woman with short, gray-blond curls. At a guess, she was fifty, about Jocelyn Motherway’s age. Age was the only thing the women had in common, I thought, age and, as I soon learned, the friend who’d gone to high school with Jocelyn. In particular, Sherry had the self-confidence and animation that Jocelyn sorely lacked.
    “Ask anyone!” Sherry exclaimed. “The old man was always, always stinking mean to Peter, who was, believe me, no sweetheart, but you have to ask yourself, If you’d been raised like that, what would you be like?” Bandit, sitting squarely at Sherry’s left side, kept his eyes fastened on her face and listened with anticipatory interest, almost as if he expected her to order him to go fetch Mr. Motherway and shape him up. “When Jocelyn and Peter got married,” Sherry continued, “it was just awful. Peter’s father had a fit—and for the stupidest reason, which was that Jocelyn was adopted. Peter’s father figured she wasn’t good enough for his son because she didn’t know who her parents were, like it matters. And it wasn’t like Peter was some great catch, either. He flunked out of the academy, where his father taught, and then he got kicked out of