The Barker Street Regulars

investigation of Jonathan’s murder be an elaborate smokescreen? With Jonathan dead, Althea was Ceci’s heir. Oh, yes! Althea would inherit not only Ceci’s money, but her house on Norwood Hill. The money would be more than sufficient to pay for round-the-clock care. And unlike any institution, this grand and beautiful house would be a suitable residence for the woman.
    Irene Wheeler was supposed to visit Ceci this evening. Were Hugh and Robert really here to set a trap for Jonathan’s murderer? Or to frame the psychic and her confederate for the murder they themselves intended to commit? Hugh, I reminded myself, had sent one man to the hospital. And another to the morgue?
     

Chapter Thirty
     
    I F HUGH AND ROBERT had murdered Jonathan, they were here tonight to reenact their Baskervillian drama. This time, however, Ceci would play the victim. Rowdy, I imagined, would find himself miscast as the demonic hound. Did I, too, have a role? Or was I caught not in a Holmesian play, but in a psychic con game? Irene Wheeler had already duped me. I didn’t blame myself. Gaining misplaced trust was how she made her living. Violence was not her game. It was, of course, her confederate’s. He’d tried to drown a sickly, aging cat. He’d fled at the sight of Kevin Dennehy, a cop whose face had appeared in the papers and on television in connection with the murder of Donald Lively. If the man with the bulbous forehead had murdered Jonathan, he’d made an unexpected move in Irene’s game. Then there was Ceci’s metaphor, the one she’d borrowed from Conan Doyle: the joyous image of the gates that were not shut, the great news that the dead were not lost to us, but eager to communicate, ready to speak, to listen, and even to return to those who loved them.
    But the Holmesian drama was a game, wasn’t it? The Great Game: the pretense that fiction was history. And Irene’s con game was her drama. The people of the drama: Irene as the grifter, Gloria and Scott as her shills, and Ceci as the perfect chump. And the content of the game, the theme of the play, was the illusion of reality, or perhaps the reality of illusion. To Conan Doyle, who was, after all, in a position to know, Holmes and Watson were creatures of the imagination; to Hugh and Robert, the Great Detective, the Friendship, and the Sacred Writings were overarching realities. Conan Doyle’s true mission was not to create a Canon more real than reality, but to awaken the world to the reality that was the substance of Irene Wheeler’s con game, the same illusion that was now Ceci’s reality, the splendid news that death itself was an illusion and that its gates swung open in both directions. Until Jonathan tried to lock that gate.
    The actual gate to Ceci’s yard, the iron gate, was shut but unlocked. When it came to spectral dogs, mundane security precautions evidently did not apply. For all I knew, maybe the gate had never had a lock. And if it had been Ceci who’d murdered Jonathan, she obviously had no need to protect herself against the murderer’s return. As to Simon’s access, Ceci must credit him with the power to undo latches or maybe to pass through material barriers. When I pushed the gate inward, it squeaked on its hinges. Why had Jonathan left the house? Because he had heard something outside: the squeal of this gate.
    Robert made genteel noises of objection and asked what I thought I was doing.
    Hedging my bets, I wanted to say. Heading away from violence: the two of you. The man with the bulbous forehead. Even if Ceci had killed Jonathan, she was morally innocent of murder. Besides, she was no physical threat to me. Furthermore, she knew I was the last person in this world or any other to stand between a loving owner and a beloved dog. Far from trying to hurt me, she might tell me what she’d done. She’d already have spoken about the deed to Irene Wheeler. Ceci would have wanted to communicate with Jonathan. She’d have required Irene’s help. And in any case, Ceci would have assumed that the psychic would know without having to be told. If so, Ceci needed another kind of help. Violence was not the psychic’s style. But blackmail was.
    When I closed the gate behind me, its hinges gave another horror-movie squeak. The noise reminded me to remove Rowdy’s rolled-leather collar with its collection of jingling tags. I pulled him close to my left side, held still, and found my bearings. The fog was still thick. I had to rely on my