The Disappearance of Mr James Phillimore

by Dan Andriacco

  “Good grief!” I said. “What a plot! I think I’ll use it.” Sometimes I forget that I don’t try to write fiction anymore.

  “Professor McCabe built a convincing case of circumstantial evidence that Robinson was no more than a collaborator on The Hound, the man who gave him the initial idea, while the writing and plot development were Conan Doyle’s,” Faro said.

  “An English author named Paul Spiring is now the reigning expert on that subject.” Mac hoisted his pint. “His researches into Robinson have far exceeded my long-ago efforts.”

  The waitress came and took our food orders. I opted for fish and chips, old bean. When she retreated, Faro picked up the conversation where Mac had left off.

  “A friend of mine, a private collector, recently acquired an extraordinary document that settles the Hound controversy once and for all,” he said. “It’s a notebook belonging to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Sir Christopher Frayling owns Conan Doyle’s diaries for that period, but this is something different - a small book in which he jotted down ideas for the story as they came to him. There are even places where he asks questions, noting holes that needed to be filled in later. You can see the writer at work building the story. It eliminates any doubt that Conan Doyle was the true author of The Hound of the Baskervilles.”

  “Remarkable,” Mac boomed. “I would be very interested to see that!”

  Mac doesn’t consider himself a collector, but everybody else does. He was also responsible for getting the third largest collection of Sherlockiana in private hands donated to St. Benignus College. Murder ensued, but that’s another story. The point is, artifacts interest him.

  Faro sat back with a smile. “I think that can be arranged. I’ll call Phillimore in the morning. That’s my friend - Arthur James Phillimore.”

  I have a bit of a reputation, well earned, as a close man with a dollar - or a euro or a pound, for that matter. So I knew about Arthur James Phillimore, the financial whiz, from reading The Wall Street Journal. But it wasn’t pound signs that I saw register in my spouse’s eyes, it was stars. Phillimore was best known to the general public as Mr. Heather O’Toole, a.k.a. HO’T.

  “How curious that a Holmesian should happen to have the name James Phillimore, even if preceded by the Arthur,” Mac commented.

  “The strange disappearance!” Lynda said in the same voice she used on the plane when yelling out the answer to a crossword puzzle question. Still new to Sherlock Holmes, she obviously got a kick out of picking up on the reference. “That’s one of the untold tales that Dr. Watson mentions without ever telling the whole story. He says something about the strange disappearance of Mr. James Phillimore, who stepped back into his house to get his umbrella and was never seen again in this world. Even Holmes couldn’t solve that one.”

  “As a magician, I have always had a special fascination for that untold tale,” Mac said.

  “It’s not a coincidence that Phillimore is a Sherlock Holmes fan,” Faro told Mac, without giving Lynda the verbal pat on the back that she deserved. “So many people mentioned the Holmes story to Phillimore as a young man that it drove him to the Canon.”

  “And to the Binomial Theorists,” Mac said.

  “How did you know he’s a member?”

  “You just told me.” Mac chuckled. “Until then I was guessing. I am not above guessing, even though Holmes called it ‘a shocking habit, destructive to the logical faculty.’ We were talking about the Binomial Theorists right before you brought up the subject of this unique notebook. It’s a natural deduction that discussing the society led you to think of Phillimore because he’s a member. Besides, he’s a Holmesian and a friend of yours. Why wouldn’t he be a Binomial Theorist?”

  This had gone far enough. I needed subtitles to follow this conversation, like when Lynda drags me to the opera, and I wasn’t getting them. “Okay, I’ll bite. Who are the Binomial Theorists?”

  “A very exclusive society of Holmes enthusiasts,” Mac said.

  “No more exclusive than the Baker Street Irregulars in the States,” Faro retorted, “although we are much smaller. There are just a handful of us in the Binomial Theorists of London.”

  “Isn’t that a strange name for a Sherlock Holmes society?” Lynda asked.

  “Not at all, my dear.” Faro said “my dear” in an avuncular way, so I didn’t have to hit him. “It refers to Professor Moriarty’s most famous work, his paper on the binomial theorem, which had a European vogue. Just don’t ask me what a binomial theorem is - I haven’t a clue.”

  “At any rate, it was good of the Theorists to sponsor the pastiche contest,” Mac said.

  This I knew about. Mac’s debate with Sir Stephen Fresch was sponsored by King’s College, at Mac’s request, but there was a sideshow: a contest to write the best pastiche, or imitation Sherlock Holmes story. The winner would be announced at the debate, take a bow, and collect a small library of Holmes-related books as the prize. Mac was one of the judges.

  “Our pleasure,” Faro said. “I’m expecting some interesting entries - but not as interesting as that ACD notebook, I’m sure. And you’ll enjoy meeting Phillimore, too.”

  Excerpt from the Professor’s Journal

  June 6, 2012

  McCabe has arrived in London. I didn’t expect him to bring an entourage with him when I set my plan in motion. But that won’t hurt anything. It just means that his wife and in-laws will watch his undoing close up. The bigger they are, the harder they fall. And he is going to fall very hard indeed.

  2 See the bonus short story, “The Adventure of the Vatican Cameos,” at the back of this book.

  Chapter Four

  No Joke

  The morning after the disappearance of Mr. (Arthur) James Phillimore, we picked up a copy of The Daily Eye to read Faro’s account of it.

  Instead of its accustomed position down the right hand side of page one, his column was splashed across the top of the page under the headline VANISHED! The subhead added: Billionaire money maven walks into Deadly Hall, not seen again. The story began like this:

  Arthur James Phillimore, investment guru to celebrities and the super-rich and slated to be named next week to the Queen’s Birthday Honours List for 2012 according to Buckingham Palace sources, disappeared Thursday from his own storied residence, familiarly known as Deadly Hall.

  This reporter was one of three Eye-witnesses to the bizarre event, not counting the household staff at the Phillimore estate near Reading.

  Mr. Phillimore was scheduled to have lunch at his local pub, the Bear and Beaver, with the American mystery writer Sebastian McCabe; his brother-in-law, Jefferson Cody; and yours truly. He had, in fact, got into the car...

  I’d gotten this far when Lynda, reading over my shoulder in the hotel restaurant, snorted. “Eye-witness? Give me a break. That kind of breathless writing style went out with the bustle.”

  “You can’t argue with success,” I said.

  “Sure I can. You just heard me.”

  Ignoring her, I kept reading. Faro had managed to reach Heather O’Toole - even in this story he called her HO’T after the first reference - and got a nice quote from Barbados: “Naturally I am greatly concerned about my husband and I can’t imagine what happened to him. I am returning to England immediately. If the situation is as it has been described to me, I will be filing a missing persons report with the police.”

  “I still think it’s a joke or a publicity stunt,” Lynda said.

  “Like Arthur James Phillimore needs publicity,” I mumbled.

  “And this affair has gone rather too far for a joke,” Mac added, pulling up a chair. Kate was right behind him, looking bleary eyed. Her red hair was piled on top, as usual, but stray strands poked out here and there. She looked like a caffeine fiend in need of a fix.

  “Don’t tell me you’re losing sleep over this
,” I told her. “Or is it jet lag?”

  “It’s Brian and his endless texting,” she said. “As smart as he is, he can’t seem to grasp the concept that nine o’clock at night in Erin is two o’clock in the morning in London.”

  If you’d turn off the damned smartphone, Kate, you wouldn’t have that problem. I didn’t say that for two reasons. The first is that people in glass houses, etc. The second is that my wife has trained me to curb my instincts to offer helpful advice. If the training hadn’t worked, I’m not sure she ever would have become my wife.

  Lynda passed Kate a cup of high-test coffee, which my sister grabbed as if it were a lifeline.

  “So, Mac,” Lynda said, “I suppose you’re going to tell me you’re utterly confident that Phillimore was nowhere in that house when you went back in.”

  “That would, perhaps, be too grandiose a claim. I have already given you my perception of what happened after we rang the doorbell the second time. I am sure you have discussed Jeff’s impressions and I see that you have been reading Faro’s account, which I have not read. Are there any discrepancies?”

  Lynda shook her head, sending her honey-blonde curls flying. “No. There were some differences in details, but no contradictions.”

  With a little gentle prodding from Faro, Trout had agreed to let us split up and look all through the house. Being assured by Faro that Phillimore wasn’t a practical joker kind of guy, we were concerned that the lord of the manor might be lying hurt somewhere.

  Headley Hall may not be on the grand scale as far as English manor houses go, but it was plenty big for a guy who lives in a carriage house apartment. Still, it didn’t take that long for the three of us to look in every room and open every closet and bathroom door. When we all assembled back in the hallway and agreed that Phillimore was nowhere to be found, Mac said, “All right, then, we shall look again, each of us taking a different room.”

  We kept doing that until each of us had been in every room. I guess with stealth and luck it’s just barely possible that Phillimore, presuming he staged his own disappearance, might have slipped from one room to another so that he was always hiding in a room being searched by somebody who was in on the gag. But I can assure you that didn’t happen.

  “Magicians disappear from the stage all the time,” Mac said as he dug into his breakfast. “They usually reappear in the audience. Stage magic is a very different proposition from close-up magic, however - much easier to control. Granted, I myself have performed close-up magic making small items disappear, but that - ”

  “Such as what?” I snapped. The lack of sleep had me irritable. It had also clouded my better judgment, which would have kept me from giving him such an opening.

  “Such as your watch, old boy.”

  Like a chump, I pulled back the sleeve of my jacket and gave him the gaping expression he was looking for. My wrist was naked.

  “Give it back, damn it.”

  “Of course.” Mac reached into the sugar bowl and fished out my Timex. I grabbed it from him and put it in my pocket, determined to never wear a watch again. Who needs one when you have a smartphone?

  The worst part of the stunt was watching Kate and Lynda trying not to smile.

  “This isn’t a magic trick and it isn’t a joke,” I said. “And considering the billions of other people’s dollars and pounds and euros that Phillimore has under investment management, it’s a big deal. What are you doing?”

  This last was said to Lynda, who was texting away. “You’ve convinced me. Big deal means big story. I’m seeing if Megan wants me to cover it for Grier.”

  As president of Grier Ohio NewsGroup, Megan Whitlock is Lynda’s hard-charging boss. She’s also her mentor and chief cheerleader, having created the position of editorial director specifically to make good use of Lynda’s considerable talents in reporting, writing, and social media.

  “I hope you don’t wake her up,” I said.

  “No worries. She never sleeps.”

  Surprisingly, Ms. Whitlock didn’t text right back. We moved on to breakfast and discussion of our plans for the day.

  “We have to go to Baker Street,” Lynda said. “You can’t go to London and not see Baker Street.”

  Being a good sport, I did not demur - not even silently in my head, because Lynda can hear that, too.

  “Indeed not!” Mac agreed. “I have been there many times. Unfortunately, I shall be unable to join you today. Duty calls. I have to read entries in the pastiche contest. You will recall that the winner is to be announced at the debate, which is only two days away. Perhaps I will be able to join you later, if the entries are quickly dispensed with.”

  “Well, I’m free now,” Kate said. “Let’s hit the bricks before I fall asleep.”

  I have to admit that the apartment where Sherlock Holmes hung his deerstalker, 221B Baker Street, is one of the most famous addresses in the world. That’s where we started out, sort of. You probably know more than I do about the controversy over the “real” 221B, an address that didn’t exist in Holmes’s day. But the Sherlock Holmes Museum claims that address, and that was good enough for my newbie Sherlockian, Lynda. For six pounds each, we got to do more than just ogle another recreation of the sitting room at 221B. We actually sat in the sitting room, imagining what it would have been like. Lynda put on a deerstalker cap provided by the museum and cajoled me into wearing a Watson-like bowler. If I ever find the photo I’ll destroy it.

  That was the cheap part. After a trip downstairs, to the gift shop, Lynda walked out with a shot glass for her collection, her own deerstalker cap, a ceramic Sherlock Holmes teapot, and a bag of books to add to our already over-crowded shelves.

  “Do you realize how small my apartment is, Lyn?” I said. Just asking!

  “That’s why we need to buy a house, darling.”

  At this point I realized it would be pointless to remind her that (A) e-books are cheaper and easier to carry across oceans, and that (B) she does most of her book reading on her iPad. Holmes sickness does not bend to such rational considerations.

  My sister picked up a long tie with a familiar silhouette, deerstalker and pipe, replicated dozens of times.

  “Mac will never wear that,” I scoffed. He sticks to bow ties, a major character defect.

  “Of course not,” Kate said. “I will.”

  I took pictures of Lynda and Kate standing in the rain in front of the museum, and then in front of the “Bar Linda” Italian café with Sherlock Holmes décor across the street at 226, and then next to a big bronze statue of You Know Who outside the Baker Street Underground Station on Marylebone Road.

  Then, having no mercy on me, the women insisted that we pony up for tickets to Madame Tussauds Wax Museum just down the street. I found myself wishing I could trade those wax politicians for the real thing.

  After buying some postcards to send back to my administrative assistant, Aneliese Pokorny (a.k.a Popcorn), and my favorite police chief, Oscar Hummel, we went back to the hotel to drop off our purchases. We found Mac in high good humor.

  “This pastiche is a most remarkable story,” he said, holding up his iPad.

  “How so?” Kate asked, stifling a yawn.

  “I believe it holds the secret to Phillimore’s disappearance. A trip to the British Library should be sufficient to confirm my theory. Meanwhile, all of you should read it. It is rather cleverly called ‘The Adventure of the Magic Umbrella.’ And Arthur James Phillimore wrote it.”

  Chapter Five

  The Adventure of the Magic Umbrella (Part I)

  “What do you know of the Paradise, Watson?”

  “Very little,” I replied, somewhat perplexed. “I am not a religious man, Holmes.”

  “Good old Watson! This Paradise is a music hall. Here, read this. It came this morning.”

  Sherlock Holmes reached
across the breakfast table to hand me a letter along with its envelope.

  It was July of 1895. We had just returned from Norway, where Holmes had concluded a matter of such delicacy that even now respect for the royal houses of Scandinavia stays my hand from recording the particulars. The letter was dated the night before.

  The Paradise Music Hall

  Covent Garden

  Dear Mr. Holmes,

  I am at my wit’s end. Trusting in the good sense of my friend Major Pond, it is upon his advice that I wish to consult you in the most mysterious disappearance of my business partner, Mr. James Phillimore. I will present myself in your quarters at 10:05 A.M.

  Faithfully yours,

  Phineas T. Ruffle

  “Well, what do you make of it, Watson?”

  I held up the paper to the light, attempting to apply my friend’s methods. “Strong bond and a watermark. Our prospective client is either successful in his enterprise or has another source of wealth, such as marriage or inheritance.”

  “Good, good. What else?”

  “He is greatly upset by this matter - see how he wrote quickly, in a rather shaky hand, not even bothering to blot the ink.”

  “Excellent! You are scintillating this morning, Watson!”

  Buoyed by this rare praise, I said, “I trust that I have deduced everything possible from this letter.”

  “Hardly that, my dear fellow,” said Holmes. “Surely it is obvious that the writer is a left-handed retired army colonel in his late 50s or early 60s who keeps a cat?”

  “Holmes!”

  “You don’t see a slant like that unless the writer is left handed. His age is more difficult, but I have made a special study of the effect of aging upon penmanship. I am even guilty of a small monograph upon the subject. Now consider the content of the letter. Surely only a military man used to giving orders would be so bold about setting an appointment and so precise as to the time he will arrive here. He also mentions his friend, the major. He must be of equal rank or higher. Colonel is not an unreasonable deduction.”