by Andrew Lane
‘And your answer?’ Mycroft asked.
‘It was us, wasn’t it?’ Sherlock said, realizing. ‘It must have been. We were the only new thing!’
‘Indeed.’ Mycroft glanced at Phillimore. ‘Or, more precisely, it was probably the fact that Mr Phillimore told Mr Throop that he had a business meeting. Mr Throop made the assumption that this meeting had something to do with this important letter, that Mr Phillimore was going to discuss something with us that had to do with this letter, and so he decided to act.’ He paused. ‘What is the next thing that strikes you?’
‘The fact that the gang wanted to keep Mr Phillimore alive, rather than kill him.’
Mycroft nodded. ‘Very good. And your answer?’
Sherlock had already considered this, and had his answer ready. ‘It was because they hadn’t finished with him.’
‘Correct. They wanted to be able to come back and question Mr Phillimore further, once we had left of our own accord. They obviously wanted this letter, and they were willing to go to extreme lengths to get it. Perhaps they thought that Mr Phillimore was lying to them, but they knew we were waiting outside and so they put him somewhere safe while they went away for a while and waited for us to go. Next?’
‘Why did they pretend to be decorators in the first place?’
‘Quite right. That one is obvious, however.’
Surprisingly, it was Phillimore who answered. He was watching the interplay between Sherlock and Mycroft like a cat watching a table-tennis match. ‘I presume,’ he said, ‘that they wanted to have free and easy access to my house so that they could search for the letter if it had arrived, or intercept it when it did arrive.’
‘Very good, Mr Phillimore. That tells us they knew that an important letter was due, and they placed themselves here at the right time.’ He glanced at Sherlock. ‘That allows us to make a significant deduction, by the way.’
Sherlock thought furiously. ‘They couldn’t guarantee that Mr Phillimore would take them on instantly,’ he said slowly. ‘That means they knew they had some time in hand. So – the letter wasn’t sent from anywhere in England, otherwise it would have arrived too quickly for them. It was sent from abroad, meaning that they had time to get in place to intercept it.’
‘Very good.’
Sherlock looked over at where Phillimore was slumped on the sofa. ‘How did you employ these men?’ he asked.
‘A pertinent question,’ his brother rumbled.
Phillimore frowned. ‘They turned up on the doorstep. They said that they were in the neighbourhood, and that another job had been cancelled suddenly. They offered me a discount if I had any work that needed to be done. They said they could turn their hands to anything – exterior building, gutter cleaning, chimney clearing, interior decoration, gardening . . . I had been thinking about having the house redecorated ready for . . .’ He paused, and looked over at Mycroft apologetically. ‘Ready for my dear Emma to move in as my wife, if you gave your blessing to our union. They turned up at just the right time, so I employed them on the spot.’
Mycroft looked at Sherlock, but didn’t open his mouth; Sherlock, knowing what the question would have been, said: ‘They took advantage of Mr Phillimore’s good nature, and his desire for a bargain. Everyone has something about their house that they want correcting or improving. They knew if they offered a low enough price that he would agree to employ them.’
Mycroft nodded. ‘There are certain rules in life that should be followed,’ he said. ‘Never take the first cab that turns up is one of them, never employ a workman who turns up unannounced at your door is another one.’ He shrugged. ‘Never mind. That leaves us with the most important question of all.’ He turned towards Phillimore, and the man quailed under the intensity of his gaze. ‘What is it that you do, or who do you know, that makes it so important that these men wanted to intercept a letter that they knew had been sent to you? You are not a diplomat, you have no position with the Government, and you are not rich. Why are you so interesting to these men – or, to be more precise, why are you so interesting to whoever has employed them?’
‘I have no idea,’ Phillimore said. ‘Perhaps the letter might tell us.’
The following silence stretched until Sherlock thought it might snap.
‘You have the letter?’ Mycroft said. His tone of voice was calm, but Sherlock could hear the restraint in it. His brother was not a particularly patient man at the best of times, and this was not the best of times.
‘I do,’ Phillimore said.
‘You had the letter all the time that Mr Throop and his thugs were questioning you, and all the time they were walling you up in your own house?’
‘I did.’
‘Why,’ Mycroft said with incredible calmness, ‘did you not give it to them and save yourself all this trouble?’
‘I wasn’t going to give in to their demands,’ Phillimore said, affronted. ‘I mean, what kind of world would it be if every bully who came along could take what he wanted just by making threats of physical violence?’
‘A very good question,’ Mycroft replied. He glanced at Sherlock, and Sherlock could tell that his brother was reluctantly adjusting his opinion of their sister’s fiancé. Perhaps he wasn’t as much of a wet fish as he had seemed. ‘Where is the letter, Mr Phillimore?’
‘In my top hat, of course.’
Mycroft stared at him. ‘Of course,’ he repeated. ‘In your top hat.’ He paused, and Sherlock could sense that he was searching for the right words to continue. ‘Why is the letter in your top hat, Mr Phillimore?’
‘Because I used to have a briefcase,’ the man said simply.
Mycroft kept staring at him, not blinking. ‘Of course you did.’
Sherlock decided to come to his brother’s aid. ‘I think,’ he said gently, ‘that Mr Phillimore is trying to tell us that he used to have a briefcase, but he lost it. He has probably lost several briefcases. In order not to lose important things like letters, bits of paper and pens, he now keeps them in his top hat. A man can lose a briefcase, but he doesn’t often lose a top hat.’ He smiled. ‘I noticed that you have had your top hat for many years, Mr Phillimore. It is a treasured object.’
‘Quite right,’ Phillimore said, smiling at Sherlock. ‘I see you have a brain like mine. Yes, I do keep leaving briefcases on trains, or in cabs, or in tea shops and restaurants. Very careless, I know. Sometimes I have retrieved them, but sometimes they have been lost – taken by some other person. In desperation, I decided that I would sew a series of little pockets inside my top hat where I could keep all the important things I was carrying around in safety.’
‘Very . . . commendable,’ Mycroft said. ‘Sherlock, with Mr Phillimore’s permission, would you care to retrieve his hat from the hall, where I remember seeing it when we entered, and bring it in here.’ He glanced at Phillimore, who nodded his agreement.
The top hat was still sitting on the table in the hall. Sherlock picked it up. Resisting the urge to turn it upside down to see what was inside, he returned to the sitting room and handed it to Mr Phillimore, who delved inside it.
‘Bill from the butcher,’ he murmured, looking at something in the hat, ‘note to myself to remind me to pay the bill from the butcher . . . ah, yes – the letter!’
He pulled it out of the hat and waved it. ‘I knew it would be here!’
‘If I may?’ Mycroft held out a large hand, and Phillimore handed the letter across to him.
‘It does not appear to have been opened,’ Mycroft pointed out.
‘I had not got around to it.’ Phillimore shrugged. ‘I have particular times when I feel like opening letters and particular times when I do not. I have been waiting until I felt like it.’
‘May I?’ Mycroft asked, holding the letter up. ‘Or would you rather open it and read it yourself first? Having already pulled one of your walls apart, I do not feel as if I should presume any more on your good nature.’
Phillimore waved a hand. ‘Oh, open the blessed thi
ng. I have no secrets – certainly not from the brother of my intended bride. There will be nothing of a personal nature within.’
Mycroft gazed at the envelope for half a minute, turning it over in his hands, holding it up to the light and even sniffing it. Phillimore watched, entranced. Eventually Mycroft took a slim folded knife from his pocket. He noticed Sherlock looking at him with surprise as he unfolded it, and said, ‘You may scoff, young man, but I take my personal security very carefully.’ Instead of inserting the knife through a gap in the side of the envelope and then slicing along the top as Sherlock had expected, he carefully prised open the sealing wax that held it closed. Sherlock noticed that he didn’t even break the wax.
Mycroft glanced at Phillimore. ‘People do not pay enough attention to envelopes,’ he said calmly. ‘The paper from which each is made, the way it has been addressed, the way it has been sealed, the stamp, the postmark . . . each of these things can tell a story. For instance, I can tell you that this letter has been posted from Egypt. It was posted about two weeks ago, which would be about the time it would take a ship to make the journey from Cairo to London, and then for the letter to make its way here to Arundel. Its writer is a professional man, highly educated and trained, but he is currently living in rough surroundings and is not eating properly. He is disturbed by something that has happened, and he seeks your help.’ He looked again at the envelope, and frowned. ‘He posted this letter himself rather than let a servant do the job.’
A thought struck Sherlock. He frowned, leaning forward while it coagulated in his mind. A letter – a letter that was important enough for three men to pose as decorators, search a house and imprison the house’s owner in search of it?
‘Mycroft,’ he said slowly; ‘Is it possible that these are the same three men whom we found in father’s library – the men who were searching our house?’
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘Hmmm.’ Mycroft leaned back in his chair and frowned. ‘An interesting supposition, but one not currently supported by the facts. The coincidence of numbers is interesting, yes, but here they were looking for something in particular – the letter addressed to Mr Phillimore. What could they have been looking for in our house?’
Sherlock opened his mouth to answer, but Mycroft’s hand slammed down on the arm of the chair, interrupting him.
‘I am a fool of the first water!’ Mycroft yelled, surprising James Phillimore. ‘Of course! The answer is obvious!’
‘It is?’ Phillimore asked.
‘The letter was not obviously here,’ Sherlock said. ‘The three men searched for it extensively. Therefore it must have been somewhere else. It would have occurred to them – perhaps because you said something, or perhaps because of the photograph you have framed here – that you were engaged to be married. It is possible, they thought, that you had given the letter to your fiancée for safe-keeping. They found out where Emma lived and decided to break in and make a search.’
‘They could hardly pretend to be decorators,’ Mycroft pointed out. ‘We did not need any decoration and besides, we had been bereaved. That was hardly the best time for them to turn up on the doorstep offering plastering and wallpapering services.’
‘They had to hide their faces,’ Sherlock pointed out. ‘Obviously, if they were discovered in our house, the game would be up. Emma at the very least might have recognized them, if she had seen them here, at Mr Phillimore’s house.’ He glanced at Phillimore. ‘Had she?’
‘I believe she may have been here when they were working,’ Phillimore said, frowning. His gaze flicked up to Mycroft, and then to Sherlock, and he blushed. ‘We were chaperoned, of course,’ he protested. ‘Emma’s aunt – your aunt – was here with us all the time.’
Mycroft shrugged. ‘We have more important matters to worry about now than chivalry and morality. These men might well have killed my brother in their search for the letter, once he discovered them, and I fully believe that they would have been prepared to torture you until you gave them the letter. They are men without principles – dangerous men. Something needs to be done.’
‘The key,’ Sherlock pointed out, ‘is probably in the letter. We need to find out what is in it. Did they want the letter because there was something in it that they wanted to know, or did they want to stop Mr Phillimore from receiving it?’
‘Egypt?’ Phillimore said suddenly, frowning. ‘Did you say that the letter was from Egypt? I believe I was offered a job in Egypt. I was not offered it in the end, but I was not unduly upset – too hot, too far to go. I did not want to leave dear Emma for any length of time.’
‘Indeed,’ Mycroft said drily. ‘I’m sure she would have pined terribly.’ He pushed against the sides of the envelope, opening it up, then slipped the letter from inside. He glanced at Phillimore, eyebrow raised, checking that it was still all right to read the letter. Phillimore nodded.
‘“Dear Brother,”’ he read.
‘Good Lord!’ Phillimore exclaimed, ‘it’s from Jonathan – my younger brother!’ He frowned. ‘But why on earth would he be writing to me?’
‘You and he have fallen out?’ Mycroft asked.
‘We did. I have not seen him for years. We both trained as engineers, but there was a great deal of competition between us, and we argued.’
Mycroft nodded. ‘It happens in many families,’ he said. ‘I shall continue.’
‘I apologize for writing to you out of the blue like this. I know this letter will be a surprise to you, given our mutual history of either competing with each other or ignoring each other. When we were children together I recall that we were inseparable, and got up to all kinds of tricks. I regret the fact that things changed, and that some kind of invisible wall appeared between us.
‘I am writing from Egypt because I know that you had applied for the engineering job upon which I am currently employed. I hope that you can put any bad feeling over the way I have treated you behind you and find in yourself the ability to provide some assistance to a man who finds himself in a quandary. I have never been able to hold a candle to you when it comes to providing assistance to those in need.’
‘Ah!’ Phillimore cried. ‘I knew it! Whatever I had, he had to have, and whatever I wanted, he wanted as well. That is why I have no intention of telling him about my dear Emma!’
‘You were interviewed for this post?’ Mycroft asked.
‘I was, but I received a letter telling me that my experience was not sufficient for their purposes. It is probably a good thing – the temperature and the disease in Egypt is not to my taste. I think I was going through some kind of romantic rebellion when I applied. I have got over it now.’
Mycroft raised an eyebrow. ‘What was this work?’ he asked.
‘It was a French-led project to dig a canal between the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea,’ Phillimore replied. ‘They were hiring all kinds of engineering expertise, and I thought I might stand a chance. It is, as far as I can see, a very ambitious project.’
‘I believe I have heard something about it,’ Mycroft sniffed. ‘The project is nearly complete. The British Government is against such an overambitious and foolhardy venture. We are quite happy with the current situation in terms of shipping and international trade.’ He continued to read.
‘You will, I am sure, already know that the project I am currently involved with is a very important one. Digging a channel 102 miles long and 26 feet deep between the Mediterranean and the Arabian Sea and filling it with water is, perhaps, the most difficult engineering job ever attempted. The rewards, however, are great – if it works, if we are successful, then ships will be able to use this channel in order to get to markets on the Western side of Africa, in India and in China. The project is not purely an economic one, however – the passage around the Horn of Africa is, as you must know, perilous, and many seamen from many countries lose their lives every year attempting it. If we can create this canal then the lives of many good Englishmen will be saved, and this is the reason why I am so ent
husiastic about it.
‘I do not know to what extent (if at all) you have been following the progress of this project in the newspapers. I do know that the British Press, reflecting the opinions of the British Government, is not in favour of the shift in economic power that is likely to result when the canal is completed, and so does not report on it in favourable terms. There is, I believe, more emphasis on the fact that the workers on the project are effectively slave labourers (a situation that would not be tolerated in England, of course, but which has been common here since the construction of the pyramids) and the fact that many hundreds of them have unavoidably died – some of injuries received during the digging and some from diseases which are endemic to the area. These are tragedies, of course, but any project of any importance will result in deaths. Just think of how many men died during the construction of England’s railways. Does anybody seriously think that the railways should not have been built just because people would and did die as a result? And at least those British workers were paid!
‘Anyway, the canal, when it is finished, will probably be called the Suez Canal (or, in Arabic, Qanāt al-Sūwais). This is based on the fact that the southern terminus will be at Port Tewfik at the city of Suez. The northern terminus is at a place called Port Said. Neither is a location at which I would wish to spend any great length of time, I must admit. This entire country is too dirty, too hot and too chaotic for my liking, but I am being well paid to provide my engineering expertise and so I will just have to endure these privations for the sake of future financial stability.
‘It might interest you to know that the canal will be single-lane, unlike most of Britain’s canals, with passing places at Ballah and the Great Bitter Lake. It will contain no locks; instead, seawater will flow freely through it. In general, the canal north of the Bitter Lakes will flow north in winter and south in summer, while the current south of the lakes will change as the tide changes at Suez.
