Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 125, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 763 & 764, March/April 2005

Stevens heard him out without batting an eye until the detective paused for breath. Then the barber said in his own defense, “My people were Bruinists, a Puritan sect. Perhaps you’ve heard of us.”

Ganelon shook his head decisively, as if to deny such people existed.

Stevens continued, “They were Puritans, but not of the sort Macaulay recently described who hated bearbaiting because it gave pleasure to the spectators, not because it gave pain to the bear. No, the Bruinists believed that setting dogs upon a bear for sport was an abomination in the eyes of God. They actively opposed the practice, coming in the night to free bears captured for that purpose and releasing them back into the wild. For this they were much persecuted as common thieves by King, Protector, and Parliament.”

“I would have thought the wild would be in short supply in England,” ventured Ganelon.

“Correct,” said Stevens. “Most were smuggled abroad. Fortunately, my great-grandfather, an itinerant barber, discovered that beneath the fur a bear’s skin is as white as yours or mine. Faces and arms shaved, they bore a passing resemblance to humans. Dressing them up in cloaks and hats, my people spirited them out of the country, claiming the bears were the sons of noblemen whom they were taking abroad to complete their educations.

“In recent years, as bearbaiting fell out of favor, we found we could buy the bears from their owners. But years of persecution had impoverished us. So my father came up with the Caravan of Wonders as a way to finance our mission, the purchase and transportation of bears to wildernesses on the Continent.

“The Madam Stevens you saw, the Pig-Faced Lady, was a bear tied to a chair and eating at a table in middling light. We called her ‘Mother.’ That was just our joke. Not a cruel one, I hope. Poor Mother, we tried to explain it to her but she never really understood that she was helping us free her kind. At first, her shaven face horrified her. Later she would be horrified if we left her unshaven.” The tailor pointed to the wall mirror. “So we never let her see her reflection.”

Ganelon frowned. “But that was thirty years ago. Beyond a bear’s lifespan. She should be long dead.”

“That was Mother,” said the barber. He nodded toward the bedroom door. “This is Sister. And that is another story. You see, after the Caravan of Wonders left San Sebastiano we toured Europe for several years, sending money back to England to buy the freedom of other bears. But then the show fell on hard times. I had become a bit long in the tooth for a trumpet prodigy and the ropedancers were smoking more and dancing less. They took off with the parrot and the mathematical goat in lieu of wages due the night we reached Kiev.”

“Kiev?” asked Ganelon, his interest in the narrative quickening.

“Yes, and that was a stroke of luck for us,” said the barber. “The very next day we got word that England had outlawed bearbaiting and the last captive bear had been ransomed. All we had to do was release Mother into the wilderness which stood at our doorstep and our Bruinist work would be done. So we dressed her up in her finest, walked her several miles into the woods, and left Mother there with her favorite spice cake, telling her we’d be back soon.

“Our plan was to start for England that very night. But then Father had a brainstorm. You see, my skin still had a blue cast from the dye from my Little Boy Blue act. Father thought we could make some quick traveling money by advertising me as the World’s Oldest Consumptive Trumpet Prodigy on His Final Concert Tour.

“Well, Kiev flocked to see me, hoping, no doubt, that I’d die in mid trumpet cadenza. So we decided to rent a theater on the Boulevard des Anglais and settled in for an extended run of the show. We ate nightly at Smith’s Chop House and rented space to keep our caravan behind the Bristol Hotel.”

“Sounds like Kiev had a large English colony.”

“I’ll say,” laughed the barber. “In fact, there was a jolly little song making the rounds in the music halls, ‘Oh, To Be in England Now That England’s Here.’ I think Mr. Browning paraphrased from it for one of his poems.

“Anyway, on our last night in Kiev we heard a scratching on the caravan door. It was Mother, her clothes all in tatters and desperate for a shave. Somehow she’d found her way back to us. But she was so shaken by the experience, we knew we could never release her into the wild again. So we had to find Sant’Ursula Maggiore.”

“And just what was that?”

“A nunnery operated by the Poor Clares,” explained Stevens. “You see, in the very beginning, the Bruinists had an understanding with the Franciscan friars, who took the animals from us at Calais. The males they dressed in monks’ robes, guided them to some wilderness, blessed them, and let them go. The Poor Clares took the females to this secret nunnery somewhere in Italy and cared for them until they died. But many years ago, this arrangement broke down in an argument over some minor theological point or other. It now became my father’s dream to find the place and leave Mother there.