Evil Breeding

isn’t it? There’s nothing specifically canine about the distinction, of course. All of us could go around knifing, shooting, poisoning, and garroting one another. We could, yet most of us do not and will not. Still, the potential is always there.
    For instance, Ceci and Althea’s housekeeper, Mary, could have slipped a toxin into the tea that Althea and I were soon sipping. Before leaving to have her hair done, Ceci could have tampered with the lemon wafers Mary innocently served us on a bone-china plate patterned with delicate violets. Even so, I drank my tea and nibbled the wafers with the same sense of relaxation I felt in watching Althea happily violate my taboo on feeding a dog at the table by treating Rowdy to lemon wafers. Proof of my trust: If I’d harbored the slightest doubt about the wholesomeness of those wafers, I might have risked a taste myself, but I wouldn’t have let a lemony crumb pass Rowdy’s lips. Had Christina Motherway felt a hint of suspicion when she’d eaten her last meal, taken her last drink, or swallowed her last medication? Leaving the cargo terminal at Logan Airport, had Peter Motherway glanced suspiciously around in fearful search of a would-be attacker? Christina Motherway had had Alzheimer’s. Perhaps she had suffered for years from the delusion that her loved ones meant her harm. For all I knew, her son, Peter, had been chronically plagued by the lunatic conviction that someone was trying to kill him.
    “Caffeine,” Althea said with satisfaction. “Of all the drugs that age has forced upon me, it is by far the most effective. Yes, B. Robert, Bro, brother. The brother of Eva Kappe, who attended high school in Princeton, left at the end of her sophomore year, worked as a maid in Germany, returned to this country by 1939, and joined the staff of Geraldine R. Dodge at Giralda. At Giralda, Eva had her photograph taken. She wrote a note to her brother. She evidently gave satisfaction. She left, apparently of her own accord, with a good reference.”
    “And returned to Germany?” I wondered aloud. “And was killed in the war.”
    Althea’s lips pursed in disapproval. “She returned to the economic disaster of the Third Reich while leaving behind three strong letters of reference? Or she took them with her, only to have them sent to the U.S. after she was killed, perhaps, in the firebombing of Dresden? Or after her death in a concentration camp?”
    “Sorry,” I said. “I see what you mean.”
    Althea tilted her head upward toward the chandelier above the table. It was on. She can see light. “On this side of the Atlantic,” she said censoriously, “Bro, if we may call him that, your Mr. Motherway, receives a note from his sister, a note that he does not destroy.”
    “He keeps it,” I contributed.
    Althea sighed. “He does not tear it up. He does not bum it. He does not throw it out. Indeed, it survives to this day. In whose possession we do not know. And who does know?” The question was not rhetorical. “Mr. Motherway, presumably,” I answered. “Christina might have known. Peter might have. Christopher? Jocelyn? Jocelyn does the housework. Maybe there are cleaning people who come in, but she does at least some of the housework. Jocelyn would be likely to know what was where.”
    “The location of family memorabilia,” Althea said with approval. “Photographs, letters, documents. Birth certificates, for example.”
    “Christina Heinck’s,” I supplied. “Christina Heinck Motherway’s.”
    “A woman,” exclaimed Althea, “who was not who she seemed!” Now and then, Althea succumbs to the Holmesian devotion to melodrama.
    “I think she assumed the name of a child,” I said, “a child who died young.”
    Althea slowly raised her teacup to her lips. Her hands trembled lightly, but she drank without slurping or spilling. Then she slowly lowered the cup and placed it neatly in her saucer. “And all of this information,” she said, “is sent to you. By whom? By someone with access to it. By a member of the Motherway household. Moreover, by a surviving member of the household. The elder Mr. Motherway, Bro, B. Robert, has no conceivable reason. The grandson, it seems, dislikes and mistrusts you. There remains the daughter-in-law. Jocelyn.”
    “She took care of Christina,” I said, “so Christina wouldn’t end up in an institution. She was in a position to know how Christina died. She acts browbeaten. Timid.”
    “Has she any reason to trust