The Disappearance of Mr James Phillimore

by Dan Andriacco

  “And the cat?”

  Without a word my friend pointed to the tiny chew marks on the outside of the envelope in my hand.

  “Now let’s see what we can learn about our visitor from the index.” Holmes pulled down from a shelf the great volume in which he had for many years docketed items of potential interest. He paged through the combination of news accounts and case notes that, in his unique filing system, he had bracketed together under the letter R. “Russian crown jewels. Red-headed League. Redstone, the blind archer. Cincinnati Red Stockings - a sporting team, mind you, Watson, not an article of clothing! Jephro Rucastle. Rembrandt Van Jones. Ah, here we are - Colonel Phineas T. Ruffle. So my inference was not so very bold after all! Served in South Africa... mentioned in the dispatches during the Boer rebellion of ’80... now co-owner of the Paradise Music Hall. But surely here is the man himself!”

  Our visitor was a stout fellow, taller even than my companion, with gray hair and a walrus mustache. He strode into our room as if he owned it, clutching a top hat tightly in his right hand. His eyes darted from Sherlock Holmes to me and back again.

  “Mr. Holmes?”

  “I am Sherlock Holmes. This is my friend, Dr. Watson.”

  He pumped our hands vigorously. “Good to meet you, Mr. Holmes. Major Pond never stops talking about how you solved that rum business of the singular suicide at the Cavendish Club.”

  “It was a trifling affair, though not without interest,” said Sherlock Holmes, but I could tell that my friend was pleased by this praise. “Someday friend Watson may wish to share an account of the matter with the public, but not until certain august personages involved have departed the stage. Please sit down and tell us your problem, Colonel Ruffle. Aside from the obvious fact that you are a widower with a young child or children and an inattentive manservant, I know very little about you.”

  Colonel Ruffle’s eyes bulged with almost comical surprise. “How in the world - ?”

  “Come, come,” said Holmes briskly. “When I see a man whose coat is unbrushed in a way no loving wife would ever tolerate and he is wearing a small black ribbon on the hat he carries in his hand, I should be a dull fellow indeed if I did not mark him down as a widower whose manservant nods. And when there is a bag of marbles sticking out of his coat pocket, it is no great leap to infer a child to play with them.”

  “Remarkable, sir! Most remarkable! Indeed, my dear wife died a year ago and I mourn her still. It may interest you to know, however, that the child in question is a cat named Freddy.”

  Sherlock Holmes laughed heartily, though with a rueful expression on his face. “Well, Watson, we were right about the cat, at any rate! Now, Colonel Ruffle, your story.”

  “And a strange story it is, Mr. Holmes.”

  “Leave nothing out, I beg you. We are all attention.” Holmes opened his notebook and began writing.

  “Well, sir, after I left the army I made my way into business. Found I had a talent for it. I dabbled in a number of different ventures, as you might call them, until I met Mr. Charles Kenworthy. He owned the Paradise Music Hall. Had a wonderful head for entertainment - he’d been a magician himself. But he was no businessman, Mr. Holmes, no businessman at all. He was losing money and needed help. I invested a goodly sum in the hall and we became partners. The Paradise was thriving when Mr. Kenworthy sickened with consumption about three years ago and died.”

  Holmes looked up.

  “And you did not inherit his interest?”

  “No, sir. His wife had died many years ago, but he had a daughter, Jane, and he left her his share. She became my partner.” Colonel Ruffle shook his head. “She was clever, Mr. Holmes, I admit that. But she was a woman! I could not tolerate a woman as my partner. Could not tolerate it at all. I tried to buy her out, but she wouldn’t have it and I couldn’t force it. Fortunately, she married within a few months. Her husband, Mr. James Phillimore, assumed the role at the Paradise formerly held by her father. He was a bit of an odd one, but he knew the acts.”

  “Odd in what way?”

  “He spoke very little, for one thing. And he always carried a large purple umbrella. Called it his magic umbrella. I guess it was magic at that - it made him disappear, you see.”

  “What!” Holmes and I interjected together.

  “It happened a week ago. We were to go to a meeting together at the City and Suburban Bank on a small matter of business. I picked him up at his home, The Windings, in Surrey. He’d barely settled into the cab next to me when he suddenly became very distraught. ‘Oh, drat,’ he said. ‘I forgot my umbrella.’ ‘Well, it doesn’t look like rain,’ I said. ‘Surely you can go to the bank without it.’ ‘No, no,’ said he, ‘I must have my umbrella.’ He hopped out of the cab and went into his house. I waited ten minutes, twenty minutes. Finally after half an hour I knocked on the front door. The maid answered. She said Mr. Phillimore wasn’t in. That was preposterous, Mr. Holmes, preposterous! I demanded to see Mrs. Phillimore. She told me her husband had left the house half an hour before and she hadn’t seen him since!”

  “This is a most interesting narrative,” Holmes said. “Pray continue. Obviously, Mr. Phillimore is still missing.”

  Our client nodded. “I went to the police right away but they said they could do nothing until he had been missing longer. Now that a week has passed they have still done nothing that I can see. I am quite lost without my partner, quite lost. Major Pond suggested that I should come to you for help in this dark matter.”

  “Yes, we are the court of last appeal,” Holmes said dryly. “Well, let’s see what we can do to shed some light. I am most anxious to see the home from which Mr. James Phillimore disappeared and to speak with his wife. How fares Mrs. Phillimore?”

  “As you would imagine, she is quite worried and puzzled over her husband’s disappearance.”

  “Doubtless. Does she know that you have come to see me? No? Well, that’s no great matter. Can you go with me to Surrey, Watson?”

  “Nothing would please me more, I assure you.”

  “Capital!”

  Within the hour we were in the train to Surrey, Holmes having promised to rejoin our client later at the Paradise.

  The Windings was a handsome villa in the Queen Anne style about three miles from Aldershot. The solid reality of the red brick building seemed far removed from the strange tale we had heard of the vanishing showman. We were met at the door by the maid, an Irishwoman of advanced years. She looked at us skeptically, took my companion’s card, and asked us to wait in the hall. “I’ll see if missus is receiving visitors,” she sniffed in a thick brogue. I tried to imagine Mr. James Phillimore walking through this door to fetch his large purple umbrella and then... what?

  We were not kept waiting long.

  The woman who swept down the staircase was a tall, handsome woman with jet black hair done up in ringlets. She was solemnly dressed in a dark blue frock as if almost but not quite in mourning.

  “I have heard of you, Mr. Holmes,” she said without preamble. “Please tell me that you bring good news.”

  “I bring no news at all, madam. I have been retained to look into the disappearance of your husband.”

  “That is itself good news. I suppose that Colonel Ruffle hired you?”

  Holmes acknowledged the accuracy of her guess. “And this is my friend, Dr. Watson. He has been of considerable help to me in my investigations.”

  “Yes, of course. I know his name as well. Please come and sit down.”

  We moved into the parlour.

  “Colonel Ruffle has given us his account of the morning your husband disappeared,” said Sherlock Holmes. “I should be pleased to hear what happened on this side of the door.”

  “There is little to tell, I’m afraid. James told me at breakfast that he and Colonel Ruffle were going to their bank to conduct some business
. The colonel was to come by at nine o’clock. At the appointed hour James left and I went upstairs. That’s the last I saw of him.” She wiped her eyes with a lace handkerchief.

  “You did not hear him return to get his umbrella?”

  “No, but that is not surprising. This is a big house and I do not hear the door opening when I am upstairs in my room.”

  “How about the maid?”

  “Annie heard nothing. I hope she wasn’t too rude to you when you arrived. This was my father’s house and she has been in service here most of my life. She’s very devoted to me and very protective.”

  “May I speak with her later?”

  “Of course. She has already talked to the police.”

  “The police!”

  “Yes, I had reported James missing. An Inspector Hopkins came to make inquiries yesterday.”

  “I see. Our client was unaware. Well, better late than never. I’m sure we will cross paths with friend Hopkins eventually. Can you explain your husband’s apparent attachment to his umbrella?”

  Mrs. Phillimore smiled faintly. “His magic umbrella, as he called it? I have no idea, Mr. Holmes. He would never tell me. I believed it was some sort of superstition, perhaps a good luck charm. He took it with him everywhere.”

  “And yet, there it is now in the umbrella stand in the hallway. Your husband has been parted from it at last.”

  The missing man’s wife shivered. “That is the most unsettling fact of all.”

  “May I look at it?”

  “Please do.”

  Holmes fetched the large brolly and examined it closely. “Other than the fact that the owner had a small hand, a cautious nature, and medium stature, I can deduce nothing. How did you come to know your husband, Mrs. Phillimore?”

  “His late father was an old friend of my father. We met when he came to offer me condolences after Father’s death. He was so kind that we formed an attachment very quickly.”

  Holmes nodded. “I see. Do you have a photograph of Mr. Phillimore?”

  “Yes, up-stairs in my room.”

  “Would you please bring it here so that I can see it?”

  “Certainly.”

  As soon as she left, my friend threw himself upon the floor and pulled out a tape measure. “Watch the stairs, Watson! Let me know when she’s coming back.”

  With amazement I saw that Holmes was measuring the floor. When he finished that he whipped out his lens and studied the point where the floor met the walls.

  “Whatever are you looking for?” I asked.

  “A discrepancy in room sizes that would indicate there is more to this house than meets the eye.”

  “A hidden room, you mean! Then you think James Phillimore engineered his own disappearance by hiding in a concealed chamber?”

  “I think that is certainly a possibility,” my friend said. “It wouldn’t be the first time in our experience that something of the sort happened.”

  Before he could comment further, I alerted Holmes in an urgent whisper that Mrs. Phillimore was coming down the stairs. She entered the parlour with her hand extended, giving Holmes a cabinet-size photograph. James Phillimore was a soft-featured man with a full beard. In the photo he stood erect, umbrella in hand, wearing a bowler hat.

  “Is this the only photograph of your husband?”

  “Why, yes, Mr. Holmes.”

  “May I see your husband’s room?”

  “Of course.” She took us up-stairs. Holmes examined every coat, shirt, tie, collar, and pair of pants in the wardrobe. He held up a collar and examined it with his pocket lens. “Glue, Watson! What do you make of that?”

  “I cannot think.”

  “Surely that cannot be important, such a little thing,” Mrs. Phillimore said.

  “Oh, the little things are always the most important,” Holmes said carelessly.

  Chapter Six

  The Brigadiers Club

  That was as far I got on the first attempt at reading the short story. Kate was sleeping in her room and Lynda was on the bed surfing with her smartphone. She’d read the story first, being both more interested and a faster reader than me, while I caught up on the rest of the news in The Daily Eye. Miley Cyrus was getting married (who is that and why should I care?), Queen Elizabeth was all smiles after visiting Prince Philip in the hospital, and the Prime Minister was in Germany working on the European debt crisis.

  After all that, “The Adventure of the Magic Umbrella” was a relief. I’d gotten about halfway through when I heard the noise from my iPhone telling me there was a text message.

  How about a nap? It was from Lynda, who was lying down about nine feet away.

  JEFF: I’m not sleepy.

  LYNDA: Neither am I, tesoro mio.

  JEFF: Oh. Be right there!

  So I hadn’t gotten any further in the story when Mac called a half-hour or so later.

  “We’re meeting Faro in twenty minutes at the Brigadiers Club in Pall Mall,” he announced.

  “And I’m sure there’s a reason for that.”

  “Indeed there is, old boy. I need Faro’s connection with Heather O’Toole to get us back into Headley Hall so I can demonstrate how Phillimore disappeared.”

  I sat up. “You’re that sure of yourself?” Silly question!

  “Let us say my research at the British Library proved fruitful. Meet me downstairs in the lobby as soon as you can.”

  “We’ll be right there.”

  But Lynda, having heard every booming word of Mac’s end of the conversation, shook her head vigorously. “Count me out, darling. I’d rather go shopping with Kate in Covent Garden when she wakes up than hang around some stodgy old club with that journalistic fossil.”

  “Did you hear that?” I said into the phone.

  “Fossil he may be,” Mac acknowledged, “but Faro knows how to fish where the fish are. He apparently spends some highly fruitful afternoons at the Brigadiers Club cultivating his sources on the upper end of the social scale.”

  I saw what he meant by that when we got to Pall Mall. With its marble stairs and columns, the Brigadiers Club would have looked right at home as a bank - maybe a small branch of the Federal Reserve, for example. And it wasn’t the only impressive building in the neighborhood.

  “Pall Mall and nearby St. James’s Street are home to a great number of private clubs,” Mac explained. “In fact, this area is sometimes called Clubland because the Athenaeum, the Carlton, the Travellers, the Reform Club, and so many others are located on the two streets. Mycroft Holmes belonged to the Diogenes Club here on Pall Mall. Perhaps it was this very club. By the way, I sincerely hope that dear Lynda is not upset with me for spiriting you away.”

  “No more than usual,” I said in all truth. That’s because she’s never upset with him, even when I am. I don’t know how he does it.

  Inside the Brigadiers Club, I felt like whispering. The staircase in the central entranceway was grander than grand, the floor was inlaid marble, the carpets were out of the Arabian Nights, and the chandeliers hanging from the two-story ceiling could have been made out of diamonds for all I knew. So this was how the one percent lived. Not that Faro would have that kind of super wealth. But with his daily scribbling and his frequent appearances on both British and U.S. cable channels, I suspected he was more than comfortable. And besides, sometimes pounds and dollars aren’t the only coin of the realm that counts. Faro had influence.

  A distinguished gray-haired gentleman with the ramrod-straight bearing of royalty and a tailored blue jacket that could have been an admiral’s uniform if it had the stripes, met us inside the door.

  “May I help you, gentlemen?” He sounded doubtful.

  “Thank you, my good man,” Mac said in the same British accent he had used when playing the role of Mycroft Holmes i
n the play 1895 the month before. With Mac being of Irish extraction, that took a lot of McCabe-ish nerve. I was sure the accent didn’t convince the major-domo of the Brigadiers Club, but he was too polite to show it. “We are here at the invitation of Mr. Welles Faro.”

  “Ah, yes, of course. Mr. McCabe and Mr. Cody. Mr. Faro is in the Morning Room. I’ll take you to him.”

  We walked through the enormous foyer past marble statues of military-looking types and larger-than-life-size paintings of gentlemen who would look right at home on currency and coin of the realm. Off to one side was a long bar with a bartender on duty. The handsome wood was probably part of a tree chopped down by William the Conqueror, or maybe Richard III - one of those English guys, anyway. A quick look was enough to tell me that the array of beverages was heavy on Scotch, but Kentucky bourbon was not unknown here.

  The major-domo led us into a large, rectangular room with tall windows, a grand piano, and more bookcases than the Erin public library. He faded away before I even had a chance to say, “Cheerio and all that rot!”

  It must have been teatime or something because only a handful of men and women, mostly middle-aged but a few older, populated the room. We quickly spotted the shaggy-haired Faro at an oxblood leather divan, talking to another knight. Okay, I had no idea whether he was a knight, but he could have been. He was taller than me, with a high forehead and a patrician nose. We didn’t meet him, not then, because he got up, shook Faro’s hand, and hustled out just as we came in the room.

  Faro saw us right away and waved us over.

  “No problem getting here, I see. Good, good. Sit down.”

  “This is a most impressive office from which to gather information,” Mac commented as we joined our countryman on the divan.