The Barker Street Regulars

my own, and we are his, too, for that matter. He told me so himself. You see, there are no other family members.” As if in response to my unspoken speculations about who would inherit now that Jonathan was dead, Althea added, “Except ourselves, of course. I myself am now Ceci’s heir, I suppose, although the matter is strictly hypothetical. Ceci is a relatively young woman. As for me?” Here, Althea produced a mischievous smile that took sixty years off her face. Wagging a finger at Hugh and Robert, she said, “As for me, I suppose I’d better be careful if the two of you install yourselves in the next room and suspend a bellrope near my bed!”
    Delighted with myself, I said a bit too loudly, “ ’The Speckled Band’!”
    Remember that one? Dr. Grimesby Roylott? His stepdaughters? The ventilator? The bellpull? And the deadly snake, the swamp adder, that is the speckled band.
    Hugh and Robert greeted my interjection with glances of withering scorn. Resuming the interrogation, Robert asked whether Jonathan had been in a position to reveal the shameful secrets of some highly placed personage. I struggled to sense how light the banter really was. Althea, I was certain, understood the game as just that; in pretending that the Canon was the true record of the exploits of Sherlock Holmes, she reveled in what she knew was fantasy. Of Hugh and Robert I felt less certain. At some level, they could tell fact from fiction. It seemed possible, though, that just as I could imagine Holmes and Watson as real people, so Hugh and Robert could conceive of them as historical beings. Why not? Didn’t the entire world believe in Sherlock Holmes?
    “Jonathan did not move in the circles of the illustrious,” said Althea.
    Narrowing his eyes, Hugh demanded in low tones, “Freemasonry?”
    As Althea was shaking her head, I felt like asking what Conan Doyle had had against Freemasons. In his work, they were always portrayed in a hideously sinister fashion that I’d never been able to comprehend. A reference to Conan Doyle as a writer of personally biased fiction would, however, have seemed like a spoilsport’s effort to ruin the game. Furthermore, although Hugh and Robert were successfully distracting Althea from what might otherwise have been gloomy thoughts of the demise of her family and the restrictions of her life at the Gateway, the strained atmosphere of forced gaiety and the scorn that had greeted my own contribution made me reluctant to say anything more. Responding to my discomfort or perhaps to the oddity of the whole situation, Rowdy grew increasingly restless. Instead of playing up to Althea, Hugh, or Robert, he focused exclusively on me. For the first time since our initial visits to the Gateway, he whined noisily in what I heard as a plea to go home. I didn’t linger, but excused myself by claiming that he needed to go out, as in a sense he did.
    Once we left Althea’s room, Rowdy stopped his noise and seemed in no hurry at all. As we waited by the elevators, an attendant, Ralph Ryan, according to his name tag, appeared from around the corner with an ancient, emaciated man in a wheelchair. Rowdy gave the frail-looking man his usual happy tail wag. “Do you like dogs?” I asked brightly. To Rowdy, I whispered, “Wait.”
    The man said nothing. It occurred to me that he may not have heard me. When I’d found myself in similar situations on previous visits to the Gateway, I’d tried to read the person’s facial expression and body language. Now, I found nothing to read. The attendant, Ralph, was almost as unresponsive as his charge. I hated to seem like the kind of person who acts as if people in wheelchairs can’t speak for themselves (“Does he like dogs?”). Some people at the Gateway, however, really Were unable to speak for themselves. Most of the employees would tactfully let me know when someone couldn’t see or couldn’t hear and whether the person did or didn’t welcome the attention of a therapy dog. Ralph yawned and checked his watch. Rowdy and I might have been invisible and inaudible. When one of the two elevators arrived, I let Ralph and the man have it to themselves. In the absence of information about the old man’s wishes, it seemed best not to trap him in a small enclosed space with a big dog.
    As Rowdy and I waited, a woman wearing a bright red dress and baby blue bedroom slippers joined us. She said how beautiful Rowdy was, but declined my invitation to pat him. He was too big