The Whole Art of Detection

by Lyndsay Faye

  “Mr. Phillimore, I have only one question to put to you, but I must beg you to answer it truthfully,” my friend said in the peculiarly gentle tone he reserves for those who are much affected by neuroses but with whom he sympathizes.

  “Yes?” Mr. Phillimore replied, lips quivering.

  “How did your brother, Mr. Edward Phillimore, die?”

  I was shocked, my eyes flying first to my friend and then to his piteous client. The effect this blunt but kindly delivered query had upon our new acquaintance was most alarming. His already writhing features collapsed, and he half-fell forward onto the desk with a piteous sob. I averted my gaze in pained silence, but Holmes continued staring with the same intense focus he devotes to all unique specimens, be they human or otherwise. After a few seconds, however, he approached his client and gripped him firmly by the shoulder.

  “Come,” said he, as commanding as ever. “I cannot blame you for expressing your sorrow, but I can assure you that I’ve no desire to add to your woes.”

  “God, I am the last man on earth to deserve your mercy, sir, but I daresay no one has greater need of it.” Mr. James Phillimore dropped his forearms and sat shakily staring at damp palms. “Oh, what you must think of me!”

  “My friend Watson here will tell you that I’ve my own peculiar definitions when it comes to wrongdoing. If there has been but a single crime committed—that of perjury, which is what I suspect occurred—then after you have made your case to us, I will act as my conscience dictates rather than by the letter of the law, which in my experience can include a bit too much of the alphabet. Now, then! Bear up, man, I cannot be of any assistance otherwise. Oh, very well, shall I tell it to you myself? Your clothing, while nearly fitting your thinner form, instead belonged to your late brother, a man who by all accounts was a most upstanding gentleman. And Edward Phillimore was reportedly plagued by an anxious character, but you are instead suffering from opium withdrawal.”

  My amazement at Sherlock Holmes’s revelation was echoed upon the face of the unmasked James Phillimore, who straightened his shoulders and managed a definite nod. My friend rounded the desk and sat in the chair before it, crossing his legs and adopting an air of blank neutrality.

  “I take it you have seen the signs before,” Mr. James Phillimore murmured, eyes downcast in shame.

  “Yes—agitation, spasms, palsy, abundant tearing, et cetera—all of which you displayed at Baker Street; and a stronger hint was given me in Stepney.” Holmes directed an abstracted gaze at the Turkey carpet as he reflected, perhaps in a belated effort to spare his client further distress. “Stop me if I go astray, but I believe I’ve all the threads in my hand. You had reformed your scandalous habits for a time, but continued secretly to nurse an opium addiction which you could not seem to shake off; stronger men than yourself have succumbed to the poppy habit. Three days ago, you relapsed still further into old errors, falling into the debt of Mr. Atlantus B. Conger—a regrettable sort of person in every particular.”

  “How can you know that?” Mr. Phillimore demanded, raising his head.

  “I earn my bread and cheese by knowing what most do not know. I cannot do more than surmise as to what passed between you and your brother Edward when you arrived home after your spree, however, so you must assist us on that count.”

  Shivering, Mr. James Phillimore answered Holmes in a wracked whisper. “I was barely aware when I arrived home—for days I had been using myself wretchedly, drinking and playing at cards only to reach for the pipe and fall into soft dreams when I could no longer see straight, staggering between the tables and the cots Conger keeps for revelers on a binge. My brother, God rest him, went through my pockets after finding me in a state of helpless stupor upon the settee. The only item he discovered out of the usual was a note indicating I owed this scoundrel Conger well over three hundred pounds. My twin . . . Oh, heaven save me,” he gasped, attempting to wrench himself back into control.

  “He was shocked, doubtless.” Holmes said slowly. “He took the news as a blow to the pair of you.”

  “Edward was always delicate of constitution. He had nursed a weak heart for many years. And the sum mentioned . . . We are not rich bachelors, Mr. Holmes, though we live well enough between his importation firm and my own work as a solicitor’s clerk. We cannot afford to reside in London, as you see. We have debts. The house is in need of repairs. You can imagine the picture I am painting—setting these concerns atop his heartbreak over my complete relapse, the amount quite broke him. When I awoke in the small hours, my sibling was dead of nervous prostration, and it was at my hands and mine alone.”

  When Mr. Phillimore again collapsed into weeping, Holmes said quietly, “Which leads us to the crime. It was the middle of the night, with no servants afoot to distract you from your mad idea or to hamper you in its execution. You have met unsavory types in your wild spells. You contacted some of them and requested that they arrange to bury your brother in secret. I have no doubt that you paid a pretty penny for these denizens of the underworld, whoever they were, to whisk your brother’s remains away from this house with no one the wiser, as it is the only possible explanation for events as they later unfolded. So—you called for help, and they took Edward away to his final resting place before dawn. Did you deliver him into the hands of anatomical scavengers? Or was the ceremony a legitimate one?”

  “I would never have dishonored Edward’s remains!” the stricken man cried. “Not on my own life, Mr. Holmes! It was in the wrong parish with the wrong name, but . . . yes, all else was aboveboard, though it cost me dearly.”

  “Then no crime which need concern me has been in fact committed . . . yet,” Holmes concluded with a sharp look at Mr. James Phillimore. “After your twin’s stealthy burial, you dressed as yourself and left the house, immediately returning for your umbrella and being very careful that the maid should see and remember your doing so. You then went upstairs and simply donned your twin’s attire, and the switch was complete. Thereafter, it must have been an easy matter to escape your residence undetected, and you reappeared as Edward when you returned. My hat is off to you for a truly ingenious and remarkable ploy, though similar substitutions have taken place in Plymouth and Limoges. After the initial deception succeeded, you wired Phillimore, Saxon, and Greer to say that you were searching for James and could not return to work until he was found. Your only true mistake was to forget to carry his calling cards, an oversight no conscientious man of business would make. My sole remaining question is . . . what do you plan to do with the rest of your life, Mr. Phillimore?”

  Our client dashed a cloth over his eyes, nodding.

  “I have borrowed heavily at a usurious rate, but plan to repay Mr. Conger this afternoon,” he replied in a rasping voice. “My purpose in delaying my arrival at the textile concern was to thoroughly learn the accounts and pore over my brother’s records. Edward was a better man than I will ever . . . the best man I . . .”

  Finding he could not continue on this topic, James Phillimore struck his fist violently against the desk. “James Phillimore is dead, Mr. Holmes, and I set you an impossible task that you might prove so to the authorities should they ever question me. Who could doubt I had done all I could to find him when I took the trouble of calling in the renowned Sherlock Holmes? I am sorry to have deceived you, but my anguish was real. I will repay my debts, I will mend my ways, and I mean to honor his name by being the best Edward Phillimore of which I am capable. That is my plan, Mr. Holmes—for the good son to live on, and for the prodigal who was forgiven in vain so many times to die in obscurity.”

  My friend considered this for several dragging seconds, faint lines of worriment etched along his high brow. Then he nodded, stood, and returned his black hat to his head. “Come, Watson,” said he, and we departed the brilliantly jewel-toned house of grief.

  Once we were outside, my friend turned to me, catching me by the arm.

  “You dis
approve?” he asked, brows plunging together.

  “Not in the least,” said I, as certain of that fact as I have ever been of anything.

  Pursing his lips, Holmes added, “Not everyone is given the opportunity to return from the dead, and to grow better than he was before to boot. You mentioned earlier . . .”

  He stopped, giving a small, distressed cough, looking as exasperated as I have ever seen my aloof comrade. Holmes’s square chin was tense with frustration, and his entire thin form uncharacteristically rigid. Understanding, I smiled, and steered us in the direction of the railway station.

  “Baker Street is not the only set of liveable rooms in London, but it is certainly the most desirable to me personally,” I assured him. “And if you read about yourself in The Strand, then you must already know that I never imagined you any better than you were in the first place.”

  Sherlock Holmes, ignoring me in favor of checking his pocket watch and muttering something about trains, thankfully seemed to believe what I had told him, for he dropped the topic. And on the next occasion this often extremely trying gentleman forgets the salient fact that my admiration for him is not affected by his myriad eccentricities, I shall hand over this unpublishable manuscript, since he apparently from time to time ignores evidence which is every bit as clear as a printed magazine page.

  The Adventure of

  the Willow Basket

  “An artisan of considerable artistic skill,” Sherlock Holmes answered in reply to my latest challenge, producing a thin cigarette. “A glass-blower to be specific, although I nearly fell into the rash error of supposing him a professional musician. Shocking, the way the mind slips into such appalling laxity after a full meal—I’ll be forced to fast entirely tomorrow in case my wits should happen to be called upon.”

  Staring, I marveled at the man before me, who scowled at his nearly exhausted supply.

  “Dear me, I shall have to stop for tobacco on our—”

  “No, I won’t have it!” I lightly slapped the white linen tablecloth between us, causing our whiskeys to shiver with a sympathetic happy thrill. “Eight in a row is quite too many, Holmes! Even you cannot pretend to clairvoyance.”

  “You wound me, my good fellow.” He lit the cigarette to suppress an impish expression. “I have never pretended to clairvoyance in my life, though I have placed eleven such repellent creatures in the dock for swindling the credible out of their hard-earned savings. One, a Mr. Erasmus Drake, defrauded over a dozen widows using only a mirror, a pennywhistle, and a cunning preparation of colored Chinese gunpowder. He won’t be free to roam the streets for another three years, come to think of it.”

  “Well, well, never mind clairvoyance then, but you have just identified the professions of eight individuals at a single glance! I shall have to commence approaching complete strangers and demanding they give us a full report of their lives and habits in order to corroborate your claims.”

  “Watson, surely you know by now that you needn’t trouble yourself.”

  “All right—how do you know he is a glass-blower?”

  The detective’s eyes glinted as brightly as the silver case which he returned to his inner coat pocket. We sat at our preferred table in the front of Simpson’s, before the ground-glass windows where we so often watched the passersby. But despite the glow bestowed upon London minutes before by her army of gas-lighters, the illumination beyond the wavering panes no longer sufficed for even my friend’s keen gaze to pick out those details by which he had built his reputation, and thus we had shifted in our seats to examine the restaurant patrons instead.

  Holmes’s turbot and my leg of mutton had long since been whisked away following our early repast, and we sat in a small pool of quiet amidst the throng of hungry journalists and eager young chess players, their sights fixed upon sliced beef in the dining room or cigars and checkered boards up the familiar staircase. There seemed not a man among them my friend could not pin with the exactitude of a lepidopterist with a butterfly; and, while his remarkable faculty always gives me as much pleasure as it does him, on that evening we reposed with the more luxurious complacency of two intimate companions who had nothing more pressing to do than to order another set of whiskeys.

  “I know he is a professional glass-blower because he is not a professional trumpet player,” Holmes stated in a teacherly manner, gesturing with flicks of his index finger. “His clothing is of excellent quality, only a bit less so than yours or mine, suggesting he is neither an aristocrat nor a mean laborer, but rather a respectable chap with a vocation. His cheeks are sunken, but the musculature of his jaw is strongly developed, overly so, and there are slight indications of varicose veins surrounding his lips. His lungs are powerful—I don’t know if you heard him cough ten minutes ago, but I feared for the crystal. He has been expelling air from them, with great strength and frequency. At first I nearly fell into the callow error of supposing him an aficionado with some brass instrument, possibly playing for an orchestra or one of the better music halls, for which failing I blame the exquisite quality of the Simpson’s seafood preparations.”

  “But then?”

  “When I glimpsed his hands, I instantly corrected my mistake—his finger-ends display no sign of flattening from depressing the valves, but they do evince a number of slight burn scars. Ergo, he is a glass-blower, one I would wager ten quid owns a private shop attached to his studio if the cost of his watch chain does not mislead me, and you need not disturb his repast, Watson.”

  I was already softly applauding, shaking with laughter. “My abject apologies. I was a fool to doubt you.”

  “Skepticism is widely considered healthy,” Holmes demurred, but the immediate lift of his narrow lips betrayed his pleasure at the compliment. My friend is nothing if not gratified by honest appreciation of his prodigious talents.

  For some forty minutes and another set of whiskeys longer, we lingered, speaking or not speaking as best suited our pleasure, and I admit that I relished the time. My friend was in a rare mood—for, while he is tensely frenetic with work to energize him, he is often brooding and silent without it. The extremities of his nature can be taxing for a fellow lodger and worrying for a friend, though I suspect not more so than they are burdensome for Holmes himself. It was a pleasure to see the great criminologist at his ease for once, neither in motion nor plastered to the settee in silent protest against the dullness of the world around him.

  I was just about to suggest that we walk back to Baker Street when we wearied of Simpson’s rather than flag a hansom, for it was mid-June and the spring air yet hung blessedly warm and weightless before the advent of summer’s stifling fug, when my friend’s face changed. The languid half-lidded eyes were honed to needle points, and the slack draft he had been taking from his last cigarette tightened into a harder purse.

  “What is it?” I asked, already half-turning.

  “Trouble, my dear Watson. Let us hope it is the stimulating and not the unpleasant variety.”

  It was then I spied our friend Inspector Lestrade casting his gaze around the dining room, turning his neatly brushed bowler anxiously in his hands. His sharp features betrayed no hint of their usual smugness, and his frame, already small, seemed to have shrunk still farther within his light duster. When I raised a hand, he darted toward our table with his head down like a terrier on the scent.

  “By Jove, there’s been a murder done!” Holmes exclaimed, as usual failing to sound entirely displeased by this development. “Lestrade, pull up a chair. There’s coffee if you like, and—”

  “No time for coffee,” Lestrade huffed as he seated himself.

  Holmes blinked in urbane surprise, and I could not blame him. I too suspected that beneath the inspector’s obvious anxiety lurked another irritant—while Lestrade is often officious, he is never curt, and he had not bothered to greet either one of us.

  Musing, I took in the regular Yarder’s stiff s
pine and brittle countenance. My examinations drew a blank save for the obvious conclusion that his nerves had been somehow jangled. I could not imagine what the matter might be, for the year was 1894 and I had not seen the inspector since April and the arrest of Colonel Sebastian Moran. Surely following Holmes’s return from his supposed death in the grim plunge at Reichenbach Falls, if Lestrade had cause to consult the great detective, he ought to have been reassured rather than dismayed at the chance, since we had worked so often and so well together before.

  “Tell me about the murder,” Holmes requested, “since you decline to be distracted by coffee.”

  “Beg pardon?” Lestrade growled, for he had fallen into a reverie, with his fingertips pressing his temples.

  “Report to me the facts of the homicide, since you refuse the stimulating effects of the roasted coffee berry.”

  “I do speak English, Mr. Holmes.” Lestrade coughed in fastidious annoyance, recovering himself. “It’s a bad business, gentlemen, a very bad business indeed, or I should not have troubled you. I applied at Baker Street and Mrs. Hudson said you were dining here.”

  “That much I have deduced by your—”

  “Shall we skip the parlor tricks, Mr. Holmes?” Lestrade proposed with unusual asperity.

  Holmes’s black brows rose to lofty heights indeed, but he appeared more curious than offended. As I had not observed the pair interact other than during a terse welcome back to London from Lestrade at Camden House in April, followed by some professional discussion of the charges Colonel Moran would face, I sat back against the horsehair-stuffed chair in bemusement which verged upon discomfort.

  “It is a murder,” Lestrade admitted, clearing his throat. “Mr. John Wiltshire was discovered in his bedroom in Battersea this late morning, stone dead, without a trace of any known poison in his corpse nor a single wound upon his body to suggest that harm had been done to him.”