Hanslow held up a large magnifying glass and bent closer to Simms.
“Now, see here!” Simms protested. “I don’t know what you’re blathering about but I don’t care to be—”
Wishy straightened and said with resignation, “No, might not be. But it is a smudge. And it’s improperly buttoned.”
Simms peered down at his vest in dismay and hastened to correct the buttoning problem.
“I thought you said they were here to help,” Alice said to the sheriff. “I really don’t think an itemized list of my brother’s sartorial mishaps is what we were hoping for.”
Sheriff Anderson ignored her and invited us to take seats near the fire, then began to tell us about the case. “At six this morning, Colonel Harris, an early riser, had breakfast with his son.”
“His so-called son,” Alice interrupted.
“If you please, Miss Alice!” the sheriff snapped.
She sighed dramatically, then fell silent.
“I should explain,” the sheriff said, “that the colonel had only recently been reunited with his son. It seems that during the colonel’s service in the previous war—er, well—I should say, the war with Spain.”
“Ah, yes,” Slye said. “The ‘splendid little war.’ He fought in Cuba.”
“Yes,” the sheriff said. “Not a Rough Rider, but with the regular army. A major at that time, then promoted again not long before he left the military. He had been in the cavalry since the Civil War.”
“Bunny and I used to love to listen to his war stories,” Wishy said.
“When we were children, yes,” Slye said. “But you were going to tell us about his son?”
“Yes, of course,” the sheriff said. “The colonel has outlived his two sisters, his only siblings, but to the surprise of their offspring, he recently revealed that while he was in Cuba, he married an American woman whose family had been living in Havana for some years.”
Alice said, “Oh, no. We’ve known about the marriage for years. It was Uncle’s Tragic Love Story. At the ripe old age of fifty-three, he fell head over heels for his nurse—a dark-haired woman thirty years his junior—while he was delirious with yellow fever. Typical silly old man, wasn’t he? He recovered and was shipped back before he could make arrangements for her to join him. But here’s the thing—according to my uncle, she died there. I remember Mama saying it was for the best, or we would have been mortified by the spectacle he would have made of himself. For my own part, I thought it was good to know the old dickens had had a bit of fun.”
“The colonel didn’t quite look at it in that way,” the sheriff said repressively. “He thought the woman he loved had died. Turns out, she didn’t. That is, not at that time. She gave birth to a son, and continued to live in Cuba until she died two years ago.”
“Never contacting her husband—her
“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?”
“Yes. He confirms that the colonel not only received a call from Mr. Wedge yesterday, but that two days earlier, Mr. Wedge, while in an inebriated condition, attempted to visit him. The colonel barred him from the house, told him to sleep it off in the horse barn, and, according to Rawls, added that he’d better not show his face around here again until he’d gained some sense. But he also added that the colonel was embarrassed about Mr. Wedge, and never discussed him with the staff.”
“Mr. Simms, did you know of this drunken visit?”
Anthony Simms glanced at his sister, then shook his head.
“No. Shocking.”
“He mentioned it to me,” Alice said. “Sorry, darling,” she said to Anthony. “I should have told you.”
“Interesting,” Slye said. “But we are interrupting again. Sheriff, please do continue.”
The sheriff consulted his notes. “Shortly after the Simmses arrived, a delivery truck from the village grocer