Evil Breeding

Kevin, that really was a very personal crime. It wasn’t like having a bank get robbed. My mother used to take me to the Gardner and tell me about how it used to be Mrs. Gardner’s house, and now it was everyone’s because she gave it to us. After the heist, lots of people felt as if they’d been robbed of things that belonged to them. The letter is silly, but it’s true that Mrs. Gardner gave her house and her art to the public in a direct, personal way. Geraldine R. Dodge did the same thing when she gave dog shows. She gave them as personal gifts.” Need I mention that I’d told Kevin about Mrs. Dodge? Of course I had. I went on. “Maybe the papers really should express some gratitude by saying that Mrs. Gardner was gorgeous. What does it matter now?” I sipped my melted milk shake. “Kevin, have you ever been there?”
    “Where?”
    “The Gardner Museum.”
    “Me?”
    “Well, you should go. It’s beautiful.”
    Kevin had almost demolished the third cheeseburger. He rolled his eyes, swallowed, and changed the subject. “What else you know about these Motherways?”
    “That’s what I wanted to tell you about. Actually, it’s going to be show-and-tell.”
    Five minutes later, the fast-food debris was in the trash, the table was covered with everything sent to me in the mystery mailings, and I’d filled Kevin in on what Soloxine was.
    “I was beginning to think it was Peter Motherway who was sending this stuff,” I said. “Or I wondered, anyway. Obviously, it wasn’t.” I tapped a finger on the most recent material, which consisted of a snapshot of Wagner, the growly black shepherd, a photocopy of Christina Motherway’s death notice, yet another Soloxine leaflet, and a newspaper clipping about Peter Motherway’s murder. “Peter,” I said unnecessarily, “was in no position to send this. I don’t know who did. Possibly Jocelyn, his wife. Possibly someone else, including someone I don’t even know.”
    Kevin grunted.
    “The implication,” I continued, “as I see it, is that Christina Motherway was murdered. The recurring item is this leaflet about Soloxine. Thyroid medication for hypothyroid dogs. Sent to me. So at first I naturally assumed that in a cryptic way someone was telling me something about dogs.
    In a way that’s true, but what I think now is that the real message, from the beginning, was about Mrs. Motherway, |hristina. The message I didn’t get was that she’d died of thyrotoxicosis. The Motherways have a lot of dogs. What I didn’t know at first, but what I’ve heard since, is that there’s a lot of hypothyroidism in those lines: a lot of dogs, a lot of Soloxine, a lot of brochures.” I hesitated. “And when I put that together, I thought maybe it had been more or less a mercy killing, although I’m far from sure that that kind of death is merciful. Anyway, that’s what I thought. Christina was dying, and the family really wanted her to be able to die at home, not in an institution. I could sympathize with that. I know you disagree, Kevin, but in some circumstances, I don’t see that as murder.”
    Kevin named a doctor and made a slanderous accusation.
    “Many doctors,” I insisted, “would have sympathized with a family that decided to speed the death of a woman who was dying anyway, and dying confused and in pain, at least in psychic pain. Besides, there wasn’t necessarily anything to arouse suspicion. Christina was terminally ill. The whole idea was to let her die at home. And then she did. A person who was disoriented to begin with, a person with advanced Alzheimer’s, got to die in familiar surroundings. Good! She died at home. What could be more natural? Why ask questions? Or maybe you wonder about them in private, but why ask them in public?”
    “Why ask you?” Kevin demanded. “No doctor’s going to ask you.”
    “I know that. What does seem possible is that the family didn’t do this together. Someone ended Christina’s life. Someone else knew that and didn’t consider it mercy killing. But in that case, the logical thing would be to go to Christina’s doctor and start asking questions. Or go to the police. I mean, why send mysterious collections of hints to someone who’s writing a book about famous old dog shows? Believe me, Kevin, it doesn’t make any more sense to me than it does to you. But what’s solid, what’s not just speculation, is that Peter Motherway was murdered. And this strange collection of stuff that’s been sent