1920
The beginning was a bit boring, but then it gets better, and it grows interesting. It’s really not that difficult to guess the murderer, but the story is good enough.
It’s once again a case for Fleming Stone, and this time he had a boy with him, nickname Fibsy.
The story:
Sam Appleby Senior was a governor years ago, and now he wants to campaign to get his son Sam Junior in that position.
For some reasons he thinks that to achieve his goal he needs the support of Mr Wheeler, so he goes to visit him with his secretary Mr Keefe and his assistant Miss Genevieve Lane.
When Appleby was governor, Wheeler who was of a opposite political party, was accused of forgery (or something) and convicted, then he was pardoned but on condition.
The Wheeler family still say today that he was innocent, but that doesn’t change the fact that the man can’t leave the state of Connecticut, and since his wife to inherit some money HAD to leave in Massachusetts, she had a house built right on the border, so that she could inherit while her husband only used a half of the house, the part in Connecticut.
No argument will convince Wheeler though, they are of very different political ideas.
Young Maida Wheeler is in love, and engaged, to Jeffrey, but he works in Boston and she won’t go there as long as her dearest father won’t be allowed to, so they too suffer from the condition.
Appleby really wants his support, so he tells Maida that he must convince her father because he has found the real heir to the money her mother inherited, and if he gives that name the Wheeler will have nothing.
She thinks and thinks but nothing will convince her father.
She keeps the secret.
Appleby tries to get her to marry his son who wants her, but she doesn’t want to.
There’s a small fire in the garage, and then Appleby is found dead, shot.
The three Wheeler confess, each of them did it, clearly to protect the other two. They seem to be the only people with a motive, and also opportunity.
Keefe and Jeffrey had gone to the fire, so there was nobody else.
Sam Appleby Junior says he will not run for governor now, and also that he can’t believe the Wheeler did it so he calls for detective Fleming Stone to come and investigate.
Keefe tells Maida that he learnt from Appleby Sr’s private documents that he’s the heir, but if she will marry him her family won’t lose anything, and also he will get the real criminal and she’ll be safe, and also that one day he’ll be governor and have her father fully pardoned.
Mrs Wheeler is the first to admit she didn’t do it, and then Mr Wheeler is confronted by Stone with good reasons why he couldn’t have done it, so he admits that he saw Maida killing the man… which very soon appears clear that he didn’t, not really, he just thought it had to be like that.
When Keefe presents Stone and Maida with a signed confession by a dying man, everyone believes it (it was presented well enough) but Stone already knows the truth, that Keefe did it, starting the fire to draw a diversion, running to shoot the man from outside a window, so that without his father Sam Jr would step back and Keefe himself could run for governor.
Appleby had wrote that Wheeler might go to Massachusetts when the old sycamore tree decided to go to Massachusetts, but it had to be on its own, without human hands involved.
At the end there’s a great storm, the tree falls down, on the side of Massachusetts, so yeah!
Maida is quite happy now!
The peculiar thing is that Keefe is the first character we meet, together with Miss Lane, so we are taught about Appleby’s personalities by him, and we are lead to believe that these characters are the epitome of all that is noble and just, and yet as you go along and meet Maida and her family you really start to wonder… and at the end I was totally on Wheeler’s part, pretty sure Appleby framed him too.
I can say I didn’t like Appleby from his way of talking to Miss Lane, but these books are indeed quite old so it is often the case that they speak about women in a certain (annoying) way.
For example, he says:
“No, Miss Lane, you keep out of this. I don’t believe in mixing women and politics.”
and also he says that he’s sure she’ll hate Miss Wheeler as soon as she’ll see that the other girl is prettier than her…
and also he encourages Keefe to talk to Maida, to convince her to speak to her father and make him accept their proposition, and to do that he can say as many lies as he want because:
“you can make a woman swallow anything.”
Sycamore Ridge, in Connecticut, was the Wheeler’s home, named that because of a “tall, old sycamore tree standing alone on a ridge.”
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