A Study in Sherlock

“Nor bothering to divorce him,” the sheriff said. “And he didn’t make any effort to go down there and find her, now did he? Perhaps that hurt her. I don’t know. In any case, according to her son, she decided she didn’t want to leave Cuba or her family. She told him his father had died of yellow fever. We have no opportunity to ask her what her motives were, and it hardly matters now. As for the colonel’s wealth, her own family is extremely wealthy—wealthier than the colonel, by what the colonel told me. They own a sugar plantation.”

Alice subsided.

“Anyway,” the sheriff went on, “Robert—his son—was told on his twenty-first birthday that his father the soldier had not died of the fever, as Robert had long believed, but was alive and well. He was given some papers that helped him to track down the colonel—no difficult thing, after all. He came up here last year, and the colonel was delighted to meet him. Welcomed him into his home, couldn’t have been prouder.”

“Look, we came over here several times to try to get to know Robert,” Anthony said. “Welcome him into the family, all that. We just became convinced he was a con man taking advantage of our uncle.”

Anderson turned to give a hard stare to the Simmses. “He told me himself that he had no doubt that Robert was his son, but that his nephews and niece weren’t taking it too well.”

“Nephews?” Wishy said. “Plural?” He looked around as if expecting to find another of the colonel’s relatives hiding behind a chair.

“My men are still looking for Carlton Wedge, his other nephew.”

“Carlton Wedge!” Wishy said. “Now I look at you, Mr. Simms, I see a family resemblance—no insult intended. You could knock me over with a feather. Never knew he and the old man were related!”

“Well, Uncle really hasn’t been part of our lives until recent years,” Alice said. “Our mother and Carlton’s were much younger than the colonel. He was their half brother—after his mother died, our grandfather married a much younger woman.”

“Apples not falling far from trees,” Slye murmured to me.

“My uncle was a grown man, out west fighting Indians when his sisters were born,” Alice went on. “He was hardly ever home. So the family has never been what one might call close-knit. But in the last five years or so, my uncle has been doing his best to change that.”

“Carlton Wedge,” Wishy repeated. “Can’t think how one would find him. Gambled away the homestead years ago.”

“Before the Volstead Act,” Slye said, “one would merely have to ask which bar was doing the most business. Now I suppose it will be necessary to search for him in speakeasies.”

“As we mentioned to the sheriff,” Alice said, “Carlton also drives a Model T.”

“No help. So do tens of millions of other Americans.” He turned to the sheriff. “Where is Robert Harris? Er—I assume the newly found son is using the colonel’s surname?”

“Yes. As for where he is—he is in Mercy Hospital, fighting for his life.”

This announcement drew astonished gasps from Hanslow and me, but Slye only said, “As fascinating as these family histories are, I see we have interrupted you too often. Would you please give us the tale from the beginning?”

“Yes, certainly. As I said, the colonel and his son, Robert, had breakfast at six this morning, then spent time together in the colonel’s study. Rawls believes they were going over some business papers—apparently the colonel has been including Robert in more and more of his business dealings. The phone rang at eight, and the colonel answered it himself, as is his custom. Then both gentlemen hurried from the house without telling any of the servants where they were bound. They left in the colonel’s Model T.

“Shortly before nine o’clock, the housekeeper looked out from one of the upstairs windows. Though it was raining, she caught a glimpse of the colonel’s car returning, coming up the road through the woods. She made her way downstairs, to tell the cook that the gentlemen would soon be back, and might want something to eat. But the gentlemen did not enter the house.”

He paused, then said, “She is getting on in years, and visibility was limited, so perhaps she was mistaken about the vehicle, because a short time later, Mr. Simms and his sister arrived. They tell me their uncle had asked them to come here, to speak to them about Carlton.”

“Carlton had called him in a drunken rage,” Alice said. “Threatened him. Said he was convinced Robert was a fraud, pretending to be someone he couldn’t possibly be.” She looked pointedly toward Wishy, who was busily writing notes. Hearing her pause, he looked up. She smiled at him in the way a shark might smile at a sardine, then said to Slye, “I hasten to add that Uncle wasn’t in the least afraid of Carlton—in fact, he’s rather fond of him. But he thought it was time to have the dear boy committed to a sanitarium.”

“Sheriff Anderson,” Slye said, “have you asked Rawls about this threatening call?”