A Study in Sherlock

We walked together toward the outbuildings. Hanslow studiously avoided looking at the horse barn. Before we had drawn very close to it, he said, “I’ll meet you back at the house, then. But if you should need me—you know I’ll come, Bunny.”

Slye put a hand on his shoulder. “Never a doubt of it, Wishy.”

Hanslow looked at me, for what was probably the longest period of time he had ever gazed directly at my face, then said to Slye, “You can tell him about her if you’d like. Understanding sort of fellow, Max.”

“Yes, he is. Thank you, Wishy. See you in a bit.”

“Oh—ah, Bunny, what am I looking for?”

“You might come across a gun, muddy clothing, or some other important clue.”

“Right!” He marched off with renewed purpose.

Slye said nothing more until Wishy was out of earshot, then smiled at me. “You’ve had an honor bestowed on you, Max.”

“So I gather,” I said, watching his friend head for the building farthest away from the horse barn.

“When I left for the war, Wishy was the best horseman in the county. Raised and trained thoroughbreds, won races. He was too big to be a jockey, of course, but he loved few things on earth more than to take a fast horse for a gallop in a meadow.

“Unlike the colonel’s family, the Hanslows are close-knit, and Aloysius was an especially devoted brother. Adored his little sister. Gwendolyn. Five years his junior and bidding fair to become a beauty. Gwen was easy to adore. She was vivacious, smart, and if, like her brother, she was a chatterbox whose enthusiasm sometimes outpaced good sense, she was also, like her brother, generous and sweet-natured. She worshipped him.”

He fell silent, his face set in lines of grief. He didn’t speak again until we were nearly to the stable doors.

“Wishy saw it happen. One moment he was enjoying a pleasant spring afternoon, turning back toward the stable, when Gwen came racing toward him on a horse. She gave a great whoop, called out, ‘Look at me, big brother!’ and fell—for reasons no one has been able to explain to Wishy’s satisfaction—breaking her neck. She was dead before he reached her.

“He didn’t blame the horse, and even refused his father’s demand that the animal be put down. But he sold all his horses, and razed his stables. A few months later, he became an automobile enthusiast.

“He experienced one other change. Wishy’s mother told me that her son has been dressing like Sherlock Holmes—or his notion of Holmes—since shortly after his sister died. Her theory is that the idea of being like Holmes, able to solve mysteries, to explain the inexplicable, to see the small clue that has gone overlooked, makes Wishy more comfortable in a world that has battered him with its random misfortunes and senseless sorrows.”

“You know, Slye,” I said after a moment, “where we were, one couldn’t help but think of the lost dreams and desires of fallen comrades, the theft from the world of their potential. But I think we sometimes forgot that even before the influenza pandemic, here at home there were losses that were no less bitter for being faced one by one.”

“No.” He sighed. “But we must go forward, even with these hitches in our gaits. Let’s see what we can do for the colonel.”

He pulled the stable doors open. There was straw strewn about in the center aisle, in a building that had not housed horses for five years.

“From Carlton’s night of sleeping off a binge?”

“No, someone trying to cover up parallel tracks of mud, unless I miss my guess,” Slye said.

The car was in the fourth stall down, the one nearest the ladder into the hayloft. I thought we might need Hanslow to verify that it was the colonel’s Model T—and I supposed we’d have to take it out of the stables to do that—but there was no doubt in either of our minds that we had found the missing automobile. Slye bent to examine something on the floor of the stall, while I moved closer to the car.

“Slye, there are bloodstains on the backseat!”

He didn’t answer, and when I looked back at him he was standing stock-still, his face drained of all color, a look of abject terror on his face.

I damned myself three times over for not thinking of the effect—the cumulative effect!—this day’s events might have on his mind.

“Boniface Slye,” I said, quietly but firmly. “You are here with me.”

He blinked, swallowed hard, reached a trembling hand up to his head, then held it up to me, palm out. There was blood on his fingers. “Slye!” I cried. “But how …”

He looked up, and as he did, a drop of blood fell on his face. He looked back at me, and said in a faint voice, “Is it real, Max? Or am I imagining that it is raining blood again?”

“It’s real, only—not what you’re thinking, Slye! The hayloft!”

He seemed to come back to himself then, and we raced up the ladder. We found the colonel—alive, awake, and mad as fire, but in a seriously weakened condition. “Do what you can for him,” Slye said as I worked to remove the gag from the colonel’s mouth. “I’ll fetch your medical bag from the car.”

“Robert!” the colonel croaked. “Help him.”