The Whole Art of Detection

by Lyndsay Faye

  “You never thought of writing me at all, then?”

  “It was dozens,” he said fiercely. “Forty-seven that I can recall specifically, when I actually went so far as to lift a writing implement and set it down again for caution’s sake, and every day for three years in the more general sense. I am machinelike, yes, and I am unfeeling, demonstrably, but I am not stupid; I am something of an expert where John Watson is concerned, and I have never in my life gained any pleasure by inflicting pain on the undeserving. What do you take me for, a foul creature along the lines of Dr. Staunton? If so, why should you have suffered my company for this long? No one else on earth has the slightest desire to, after all.”

  Sighing, I pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes. “I do not suffer your company, Holmes. And I ought not to have asked about the letters when I knew it would distress you. That was very unworthy of me.”

  “No it wasn’t. It was a perfectly fair question.”

  “Nevertheless.”

  “So to continue on the topic of the day I returned, as that seems to be what you desire to discuss, I told you that I had wished to write to you, and could not. I also told you that I found myself in my old armchair in my old room, and wishing only that I could have seen my old friend in the other chair. Unsurprisingly, I seem to wish the identical thing whenever you are not present, and so I’ll ask you plainly: come back to Baker Street.” He paused, eyes determinedly fixed upon his knee. “Implying it would be for your sake was not untrue, but it was partial. You would do better to leave your house and practice, and I would do better to see your chair occupied in a more permanent fashion. I said that I owed you a thousand apologies—allow this to be my first. Please. Say yes at any moment and I give you my word I’ll stop talking.”

  Chuckling helplessly, I dropped my head back against the seat cushion. As was so often the case, seconds before I had been furious with my friend, and now I could think of him only as the most marvelously strange fellow it had ever been my good fortune to meet. Returning to Baker Street, I thought, would be financially prudent, mentally stimulating, and occasionally maddening. It would be sublime.

  “I’ll think about it,” I told him.

  “But we—”

  “Holmes.”

  My friend wisely subsided, and pulled out a pair of cigarettes, and we spent the remainder of the journey quietly smoking. I did think about it, as I had promised him. And before the month was out, the furniture van pulled up to my door.

  Notes Regarding

  the Disappearance of

  Mr. James Phillimore

  Beginning this tale is impossible without confessing that penning it is academic in nature; it will never see the light of publication. Sherlock Holmes and I are in complete agreement that the matter cannot possibly be made widely know despite the fact it featured an extraordinary client—one unlike any we had ever encountered previously—and excellent examples of my renowned friend’s powers.

  Even so, I find myself writing the narrative, and for an eccentric yet definite purpose. Not for The Strand—I should never set down in what Holmes rather waspishly terms the “promiscuous” popular accounts of his exploits anything which might harm the innocent or even unjustly malign the guilty—but for my own reasons. I will be certain to elucidate them carefully at the close of this exercise, that I might explain to Sherlock Holmes why I bothered to scribble a story no one on earth is destined to read save for the one man who wishes I would not write about him quite so assiduously. The irony is not lost upon me. But in any event, I find I cannot resist recording the opening act of the drama, representing as it does a textbook example of those qualities which serve to make my friend one of the worst fellow lodgers in London—and no less, as I shall later demonstrate paradoxically, one of the best simultaneously.

  Following his dramatic return from abroad, Sherlock Holmes prevailed upon me to reinstate myself at our familiar rooms in Baker Street. The man is possessed of unearthly powers of persuasion when once he sets his unparalleled mind to a project, and since I have always shared his taste for adventure and intrigue, there seemed no option more agreeable than to throw in my lot with my comrade of old. Within a night or two of sleeping in my familiar bedchamber, the leaves of the plane tree in our back area rustling a friendly homecoming welcome just beyond my window, I felt as lucky a fellow as was possible under the circumstances. My profound happiness over these incredible developments did not mean, however, that Sherlock Holmes has ever been an easy man with whom to reside. On the contrary.

  “Good heavens!” was all I managed to ejaculate upon my descent into our sitting room on the morning of May 26th, 1894.

  Sherlock Holmes stood in the middle of the comfortable parlor wearing his dressing gown and slippers, feet wide and lean arms akimbo, aiming a medium-sized bow fitted with a steel-tipped hunter’s arrow at my writing desk several yards distant. This furnishing he had cleared of all my papers, several of which were freshly organized bills incurred in the process of moving house. They lay scattered upon the floor as if he had simply swept an arm across the surface and sent all flying helter-skelter. The documents, along with several notebooks, a fountain pen and holder, my blotting paper, and a surprisingly ample check for my recently sold home and practice, had been replaced by a haunch of cured ham which already evinced the excellent marksmanship my friend boasts in the realm of archery, with several arrows protruding from its center. Holmes is not the world’s foremost shot with a revolver, but for reasons which he has characteristically never disclosed, his skill with a bow is admirable.

  “Do not tell me,” said I, holding both hands up as I ventured between the detective and the unfortunate piece of meat. “Allow me the dubious pleasure of guessing. You have been engaged over a case which hinges on close-range arrow shots, most probably a murder—”

  “Dear me, mistaken already. I haven’t been engaged,” Holmes interrupted, his always brusque tenor rendered stinging in his exasperation at my interference. “Lady Deborah Garry, the aunt of the notorious rake Alfred St. Edward Garry, died in an unfortunate hunting accident while I was in Montpellier. I read of it in Le Monde. Her demise was not an accident, however, but rather a killing of the most ruthless variety, which I am about to prove if you would only—”

  Crossing my arms, I continued, “After seeing that the surface of the dining table is currently occupied with our breakfast settings, and that your own worktable is still covered in the chemical study you were engaged upon yesterday, you saw fit to clear my desk of objects in the most expedient manner possible—”

  “Your grasp of the profoundly self-evident is in rare form this morning, my dear fellow.”

  “And now, probably because you haven’t had a case since last week, you are conducting an experiment which effectively renders every surface of our flat unusable.”

  “That is definitively untrue, as it is being used at present.”

  “Not by me, however.”

  “I do not dispute the fact. Watson, you’re terribly in the way.”

  Holmes owns, I have remarked many times, a masterful presence. His great height would likely render this true even in the absence of his casually forceful nature, but I have never been accused of unmanly meekness, and my friend had already been trying my patience for days. My shoulders must have bristled, for his lip curled combatively.

  “Extend me the small courtesy of assuring me that my desk will return to its previous state, sans any trace of ham, within the next ten minutes, and I shall happily move.”

  “Impossible,” he scoffed, gaunt features twisting in impatience. “Detailed measurements must be taken.”

  “Steps toward restoring my belongings must be taken.”

  “Watson, I have never before witnessed you obstructing the cause of justice,” he averred snappishly.

  “Clearly my character has continued to develop quirks over time, as doubtless has your own. It
is a natural phenomenon associated with aging. Pick up my things or the results of yesterday’s studies of potassium iodide are going out that window,” said I, pointing.

  “You wouldn’t,” he said in unfeigned horror.

  “Try me,” I shot back.

  The door of our sitting room opened after a discreet knock and Mrs. Hudson poked her head within. “There’s a gentleman to see you, Mr. Holmes. He hasn’t any card, but he says his name is Mr. Edward Phillimore, and it’s a most urgent matter, . . . Oh, heavens!”

  It is a testament to the marvelously phlegmatic nature of our landlady that the sight of Holmes aiming an arrow more or less in my direction earned merely a mild exclamation and an uplifted eyebrow on her part. Fiddling with the lace at her neck, she shyly ventured farther into the room.

  “My dear lady, I am presently occupied upon an experiment which has presented grievous unforeseen difficulties,” Holmes answered without turning away from me.

  “Can I be of any help? Only I wonder whether it’s quite safe and all, Mr. Holmes, erm . . . well, wielding such a thing indoors.”

  “I can assure you that I am a trained expert as regards the wielding, but distractions at a juncture this critical I admit are very vexing indeed. Now, off with you.”

  “But the poor gentleman’s brother is missing, and he claims that only you can help him.” Mrs. Hudson persisted. “He is most upset.”

  “Forgive us for startling you, Mrs. Hudson. Please send him straight up,” I requested, draping the haunch with a napkin from the table. Smiling gratefully, she turned to go, shutting the door behind her.

  “What the devil are you playing at? You are not the manager of my career!” Holmes exclaimed, at last setting the weapon on the sideboard.

  “And this is not the only set of liveable rooms in London!” I cried in my profound annoyance.

  Holmes appeared very satisfyingly shocked, grey eyes wide and mouth open upon a scathing retort I was never destined to learn. Mr. Edward Phillimore entered a few seconds later, and, after making all necessary introductions, I settled myself in my armchair to hear him out.

  Mr. Edward Phillimore was indeed, as Mrs. Hudson had indicated, upset. He was a slight man, quietly dressed in a black suit with a grey waistcoat and a rounded hard felt hat with a modest charcoal band, a slender silver watch chain and a temperance pin his only ornaments, and I did not need my friend’s powers of observation to note that he had been badly shaken by the disappearance of his sibling. His hands were noticeably palsied, his general air of agitation was pronounced, and his eyes were glistening at their edges, lashes wet with distress. The poor fellow’s clothing hung a bit loose upon his frame, as if his appetite could not be roused in the absence of his missing kin and tragedy had shrunk him. He reminded me of nothing so much as a dull-coated mouse, all nerves and flat eyes and twitching, directionless energy.

  Rather than greeting our guest, Sherlock Holmes proceeded abruptly to snatch my papers up from the floor and arrange them into a neat pile on his own chair, a development which was as gratifying as it was unexpected and which I watched with satisfaction. He spared a mere glance at Mr. Phillimore, but his hawklike gaze sliced across his client with the cutting precision that informed me he had already reached several conclusions.

  “You find us somewhat disorganized this morning, Mr. Phillimore. Apologies. I am presently engaged upon a matter of some importance and thus can spare you but limited time for consultation. Therefore, consult. Aside from the evident facts that you are a bachelor, an importer of Kashmiri silks, a teetotaler, and an identical twin, I know very little of the matter you are here to discuss.”

  For a moment, I thought Mr. Phillimore looked so surprised as to be physically ill. His brow glowed with sweat following this remark, and his lips gaped in fishlike wonderment, which caused my less than tactful friend to snort mildly.

  “Come, come. Your marital status and your aversion to strong spirits I know from the ring finger of your left hand and your lapel pin.” Holmes commenced retrieving my notebooks as I stared, mesmerized at the sight of him actually tidying—a miraculous enough development apart from the fact he was doing so in front of a client. “The rest of my deductions about your case are frankly meretricious, as I learned them in the Daily Telegraph this morning. Your thriving importation business—Phillimore, Saxon, and Greer Textiles, I think it was—has recently been helmed by your partners while you conduct a widespread search for your missing twin, Mr. James Phillimore, and that estimable publication provided me with no further details as to your conundrum.”

  A pause followed this address. “Pray continue from there, if you would be so kind,” I urged as my friend wandered the carpet gathering scattered pens. “You have our full attention.”

  Our guest swallowed with difficulty, pressing his hands together hard enough to mask the shaking. “You must help me, Mr. Holmes. I am at the end of my wits. My brother James and I reside together—and, as you say, we are identical in nearly every fashion. Our establishment is a bachelor one, but happy and peaceful for all that, for I am of retiring habits and find myself entirely contented with the simple comforts of work and family. Three days ago, James departed our residence in Enfield Town, Middlesex. Upon realizing at once that the fineness of the morning would likely not last through the afternoon, he prudently returned for his umbrella. Since that time, no one has seen him.”

  My friend had moved on to restoring my ink pot and blotting papers to their rightful home, so I continued in my self-appointed role as interlocutor.

  “Remarkable,” I said sympathetically. “You are obviously close—it is small wonder that his unexplained absence has so affected you.”

  “The anxiety over him, the dreadful uncertainty . . . Mr. Holmes, I can bear it no longer!” Mr. Phillimore cried in a blatant bid for a scrap of the detective’s consideration. “The maid, a most reliable and careful girl, is prepared to swear that she witnessed him leaving as she watched through the parlor window where she was clearing away the breakfast things. She offered him his umbrella on his immediate return, left him in the foyer consulting his Bradshaw, and did not hear the outer door close again. Indeed, she shut and locked it herself after feeling a queer draft some quarter of an hour later. My brother has vanished utterly, Mr. Holmes, and I find myself a lost man.” He drew a deep breath, eyes shutting despairingly.

  “Where were you at the time?” my friend questioned, casually hoisting what appeared to be a gigantic napkin-draped pincushion, transferring his ham from my desk to a space he had cleared upon the dining table. Had Mr. Phillimore’s circumstances been less distressing, I am sure I would have struggled not to laugh.

  “At my importation firm in Stepney. Mr. Holmes, please say that you will take my case,” the unfortunate man begged. “My brother is . . . he is not altogether well. I fear that some of his habits have led to dissolution in the past, and at present, it pains me grievously to think that he quit the house in some undiscovered manner and met with misadventure. The thought quite horrifies me. It is most unlike him to keep me in the dark in this fashion. I have always been the steady one, and James has had reason to bless my generosity previously. But we have ever reconciled despite our differences, have never flagged in our devotion to each other, and I cannot stand to imagine that one of his former associates caused him physical harm.” Choking, Mr. Edward Phillimore pulled out his handkerchief.

  To my severely stifled amusement, Holmes had by this time actually polished the surface of my desk with his own kerchief and had swiveled to sit upon it, lighting his pipe. The effect of his new client’s heartfelt devastation was sobering to say the least, however, for both of us, and he fixed his eyes on our visitor with focus regained.

  “Habits, you say,” my friend commented delicately, in that engaging manner he could switch to with such readiness when once a client had gained his goodwill. “I fear I must ask you to elaborate on your twin’s f
oibles, Mr. Phillimore, if you believe they could prove of any ultimate use to me in finding him.”

  The poor man winced gamely. “I would do anything to locate him, even if it means ruining his already soiled reputation. Where to begin? James gambles and loses to dangerous parties. Perhaps that is the most perilous aspect. He drinks to excess. I have known him to experiment with opiates in the past. His taste in women is both unwise and indiscreet. For a time, he kept a mistress who worked in a low music hall. Please do not think ill of him for his past trespasses, but given the situation at hand, I hardly know what to think, sir.”

  “You are very right to explore all avenues. Was he in the midst of a crisis when he vanished?”

  “Not of which I was aware. James has been far steadier of late before this altogether unprecedented disappearance. I had thought him quite recovered from his previous licentiousness. Or at least . . . he gave me cause for hope.”

  “But as you’ve admitted, you could easily be mistaken. Are you in contact with any of his companions in infamy?” Holmes persisted, studying the ceiling.

  “Yes, I’ve made efforts in that direction, fearing the worst. They are hardly to be trusted at the best of times, but they have revealed nothing these three days—not to me, nor to the Yard. I feel as if I am suffocating in this complete darkness, Mr. Holmes. I can neither sleep nor eat nor conduct my business with any mindfulness. My brother imagined it might rain and he evaporated into the clear blue,” Mr. Phillimore said with a bone-racking shudder.

  “It’s really rather piquant, isn’t it?” Holmes directed at me with the sinister air of enjoyment he is so seldom capable of hiding.

  “Sudden disappearances are not generally characterized as ‘piquant,’ ” I reminded him.

  To anyone else, Holmes might have appeared unmoved, but I could see a hint of chagrin tighten his stark features. “Quite. Why haven’t you calling cards, Mr. Phillimore?”

  “Calling cards? Why, my fresh order is at the printer’s and in my distress, I have not yet secured it.” The afflicted man’s eyes teared once more. “Please will you agree to help me, Mr. Holmes?”