The Barker Street Regulars

an evergreen hedge, a black chain-link fence with an earthly wrought-iron gate. To the right of the path, a few yards from the hedge, stood a granite sundial. Robert and Hugh were busily examining an area a few feet from its base. Adding the beam of my flashlight to the light from their lanterns, I saw a roughly dug hole that suggested someone’s premature and abandoned attempt to plant a small shrub in the frozen lawn.
    “That,” said Ceci, pointing to the shallow hole, “is where poor Jonathan caught his foot.”
    Robert cleared his throat. Hugh grunted.
    “And,” Ceci continued, “he reached out for the sundial to catch his balance, you see, but missed it. His hand slipped, and he fell and injured his head.”
    The scenario Ceci proposed was outright impossible. The hole, in which someone really might have tripped, was so close to the sundial that if Jonathan had caught his foot, lost his balance, and fallen in the direction of the sundial, he’d have bruised his upper thigh, perhaps; to have hit his head, he’d have had to be the height of a small child.
    “Jonathan sensed Simon’s presence, you see,” Ceci explained, “and felt suitably ashamed of himself for saying those cruel things to Irene. I have never been so humiliated in all my life! As I told Jonathan when I shared my joy about Simon, all transactions are exchanges of energy, you see, and Irene’s time, as well as her gifts, of course, are her energy, and she is perfectly entitled to receive energy in exchange. It’s only fair.”
    I said, “But Jonathan didn’t see it that way.”
    “I should never, ever have told him about Simon,” Ceci agreed. “It was just that when Jonathan happened to call—he was really very good about staying in touch—I simply couldn’t keep the news to myself. Simon had just made his first material appearance, just the evening before, and I was so absolutely thrilled! And, of course, I couldn’t tell Althea, of all people. Althea does not understand at all.”
    “When was this?” I asked.
    “Well, Simon first came back on Monday. So, it was Tuesday that Jonathan called.”
    Three days later, on Friday morning, Althea had been excited about her grandnephew’s impending visit. The sequence made sense. On Monday, Irene stages Simon’s appearance. On Tuesday, Ceci can’t help telling Jonathan all about the wonderful psychic whose daily consultations have culminated in the material return of a dead dog. By Wednesday, Jonathan has made plans to come to Boston. He calls the sensible great-aunt, Althea. He arrives on Saturday and meets Irene. At his insistence? According to Ceci, he is unpardonably rude to Irene; in other words, he charges her with conning his elderly great-aunt. Soon thereafter, he dies a violent death. And my hypothesis about a drug deal? I tried and failed to work in the cocaine. White powder, the paper had said. Instead of doing the coke indoors, Jonathan goes outside? Where the wind might be blowing? All I could think of was the sneeze scene in Annie Hall.
    “Jonathan had an officious streak,” Ceci told me. “In retrospect, I can see that it was most unwise of me to say a word to him. Not, of course, that my affairs were any of his business.”
    As Ceci talked, Robert and Hugh arranged numerous little evidence bags in a long, narrow box meant for index cards. As they worked, they exchanged cryptic Sherlockian references. I was proud to catch an allusion to “The Dancing Men.” In the story, mysterious little stick figures, the dancing men, had been drawn, among other places, on a sundial. And what clues had Hugh and Robert found? Blobs of ectoplasm? Wasn’t that what spirits came back as? Gelatinous matter, chilled and slippery, like flavorless Jell-O. Had psychic zealots had the guts to taste this glop? Not that I expected them to substitute it in a recipe for molded lime salad. I mean, to a spiritualist, ectoplasm is human remains, of a sort, and consuming it might accordingly be considered a form of cannibalism. But if intrepid psychic researchers had gone ahead and sampled this stuff, strictly for the sake of science, “flavorless” probably wasn’t how they described it. Rather, they probably gave the report you always hear about everything from frog legs to rabbit to human flesh: It tastes like chicken, only not quite.
    “Ceci,” Robert demanded, “what is this hole doing here?”
    “I was concerned,” she replied with dignity, “that Simon was repelled to find