The Disappearance of Mr James Phillimore

by Dan Andriacco

  “Not too shabby for a poor boy from Wisconsin,” Faro said. Aw, shucks.

  “I assume this is where the Binomial Theorists of London meet.”

  Faro’s eyes narrowed as if he were trying to figure out whether that was another guess. Then he must have remembered that he himself had told Mac they met in Pall Mall. “To what do I owe the pleasure of your company this rainy afternoon? You didn’t elaborate over the phone.”

  “That is because I come with my metaphorical hat in hand to ask for a favor.”

  “Anything I can do, of course! Just name it.”

  “I want to get back into Headley Hall. You could accompany me, of course.”

  “What for?”

  “To show how Phillimore disappeared.”

  “What? How?” Faro leaned forward, a gleam in his journalist’s eyes.

  Mac shook his head. “Talk is all too cheap. I would prefer to show you. That would make an excellent follow-up to today’s column, would it not? I was hoping you could prevail upon Ms. O’Toole to let us return to the scene of the... well, I do not believe it was in itself a crime. Can you do that?”

  Faro stroked his beard in a Mac-like gesture. “I think so. She was furious at me for months after I reported that her beautiful violet eyes, so frequently compared to those of Liz Taylor, came from contact lenses. But she’s speaking to me again. As you saw in my column, I reached her on her cell phone in Barbados.”

  “How did she sound?” Mac asked. “Was she sincerely distraught?”

  Faro shrugged. “She’s an actress. If you’re asking whether she knows what happened to Phillimore, I would love to know that myself. At any rate, I think we can get into Deadly Hall. I have to tell you, though, that we may be just one step ahead of Scotland Yard.”

  Mac raised an eyebrow, which was all the encouragement Faro needed to continue:

  “I have just received the shocking information that my old friend Phillimore may have been running a huge Ponzi scheme, something on the order of Bernie Madoff and R. Allen Stanford. He may have bilked thousands of people out of millions of pounds. There’s a Scotland Yard investigation underway right now.”

  “Well,” said Mac, “that eliminates one mystery.”

  “What’s that?” I said, realizing too late that’s just what he wanted me to say.

  “Why Arthur James Phillimore disappeared.”

  As we left the Brigadiers Club, I marveled aloud to Mac about Faro’s sources of information.

  “He must have a contact near the top of the food chain at the Yard to get the jump on a juicy story like that,” I said. “Lynda will be lime green with envy.”

  “Near the top indeed,” Mac agreed. “Did you notice the man who was just leaving as we arrived?”

  “You mean the obvious millionaire or nobleman with the high forehead?”

  “Actually, he is an Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Service - Scotland Yard - in charge of specialist crime and operations.”

  I didn’t even try to hide my surprise. “How the hell do you know that?”

  Mac chuckled, damn him. “Common knowledge, old boy. Assistant Commissioner Andrew Madigan is also a member of the Binomial Theorists of London.”

  Faro had tried calling Heather O’Toole before we left, but no dice. I’m always amazed at how cell phones have made me available twenty-four hours a day, but not anybody else. Or so it seems sometimes. Faro promised to get back to us as soon as he heard from her.

  I nagged Mac all the way back to the King Charles Hotel to tell me what he figured happened to Phillimore, but he wouldn’t budge.

  “Finish reading the pastiche,” he insisted. “Perhaps it will suggest the answer to you as it did to me.”

  Chapter Seven

  The Adventure of the Magic Umbrella (Part II)

  After some additional little time spent exploring the missing man’s room, Holmes pronounced himself satisfied. We headed back down-stairs.

  “A few minutes of conversation with your maid and I shall be finished here,” Holmes told Mrs. Phillimore as we descended the staircase.

  “Of course. I shall send Annie to you in the parlour.”

  The Irishwoman joined us shortly, still displaying on her broad face an expression that if not actually hostile was certainly wary.

  “You wanted to see me, Mr. Holmes,” she said.

  “Yes, Annie. I will only take a few minutes of your time.” I was struck as I had been so often by my friend’s manner of speaking up to the humble and down to the haughty. “Do I understand it correctly that you didn’t see Mr. Phillimore return for his umbrella on the morning that he disappeared?”

  “No, sir. I mean yes, sir, that’s the way it was.”

  “I take it that he always carried his umbrella.”

  “Oh, yes,” she answered hastily. “Always, sir.” Apparently feeling that she was on firm ground with this subject matter, Annie’s wariness disappeared.

  “Well, then, do you have any idea why he forgot it that morning?”

  She thought for a moment, perhaps no longer so sure of herself. “No, sir.”

  “He wasn’t, for example, distracted or worried about something?”

  “Not so’s I could tell, sir.”

  “Thank you. I just have one more question, Annie. How did Mr. and Mrs. Phillimore get along?” He held up a hand. “Forgive my impertinence, but we are trying to find your employer.”

  Annie regarded Holmes sternly. “Missus is my employer, sir, just like her father before her. She and the mister were a most united couple, if you have to know. I swear they couldn’t have been closer.”

  “And that,” said Holmes in the train back to London, “was the oddest thing I heard today.”

  “Odd?” I repeated. “What do you mean? Surely it’s perfectly natural for a husband and wife to be close.” Perhaps this was something my bohemian friend with his strange humours couldn’t understand. I thought back with bitter sweetness to my own all-too-brief marriage.

  “It is odd,” said Holmes as he lit a pipe, “because in the only photograph this woman has of her husband - the only one, mark you! - the husband is by himself, his only companion being his celebrated umbrella. Why aren’t husband and wife pictured together?”

  I threw up my hands in exasperation. “But surely that is a trivial matter compared to the disappearance of Mr. James Phillimore! Do you see any indications as to how he vanished?”

  “There are more than just indications, surely.” Holmes sat back, wreathed in pipe smoke. “I think the general outlines of the solution are in sight. What seems mysterious becomes fairly obvious when one reasons backward.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “The glue was the key, Watson, the glue! You can hardly be blamed for not seeing its significance. You couldn’t know that it was the type of glue known as spirit gum, the very adhesive that I myself use to apply false beards and mustaches. So whoever wore that collar was in disguise. The implication is obvious: The man that Colonel Ruffle saw walk into this house, never to return, was in fact not Mr. James Phillimore but someone in his guise. I fear that the lovely Mrs. Phillimore is engaged in a low intrigue that required her husband’s removal from the scene. Cherchez l’homme!”

  “But the maid, Annie, assured us that the marriage was a happy one!”

  “And yet there was no photograph of husband and wife together. That was suspicious from the first. No, Watson, there’s another man in the case, mark my words. Annie was lying to protect her beloved mistress, to whom she is so clearly devoted. When one combines the use of theatrical makeup with the dramatic nature of the scheme, I think we shall have to look for our man no farther than the Paradise Music Hall.”

  We arrived in Covent Garden to find Colonel Ruffle slumped behind his desk in an attitude
of defeat. When Holmes entered the room, he arose and spoke excitedly. “Thank God you are here, sir. No doubt you have solved the mystery! Is Mr. Phillimore alive?”

  “I very much doubt it,” Holmes said, “but I believe we at least know how he disappeared. Think back to the last time you saw him. He was only in the cab with you for a few minutes but he was somehow different, wasn’t he? Perhaps you noticed a difference in his voice. Or perhaps he held his face away from you.”

  The big man was already shaking his head before Holmes finished the question. “No, no, there was nothing like that. I told Inspector Hopkins - ”

  “Hopkins was here?”

  “He still is. He’s talking to Masterson the Magnificent.”

  “Well, well, lead us to him.”

  Holmes had a fondness for the young inspector, who had not yet in those days achieved the fame that he enjoys today. Hopkins, for his part, held Holmes in highest esteem but also took delight in those rare occasions when he was a step ahead of the better-known private inquiry agent.

  Colonel Ruffle took us to a dressing room where we found Hopkins in conversation with a young man whose image was identical to that on a poster behind him. Masterson the Magnificent was red-haired, short but powerfully built, and sported a large handlebar mustache curled on the ends.

  Hopkins sprang up. “Mr. Holmes! Always glad to see you, sir!” He pumped my friend’s hand vigorously. “I’m afraid you’re a bit late this time, though. We already have the culprit in hand.”

  The other man appealed to us with a desperate look in his eye. “That’s not true!” He spoke with an American accent.

  “This gentleman is Mr. Grant Masterson,” Hopkins went on calmly. “He’s a magician. Who better to make someone disappear than a magician, eh?”

  “Surely you have a better reason than that for suspecting this man,” Holmes said.

  Hopkins pulled out his notebook. “I have information that Mr. Masterson and Mrs. Phillimore had formed an attachment.”

  “Who told you that?” the magician demanded.

  “I’m not at liberty to say.”

  “It was the Elusive Endicott, wasn’t it? He’s just jealous that my act is more popular than his escape routine.”

  “Do you deny that you and Mrs. Phillimore - ”

  “I deny what you’re trying to imply. I am very fond of her, I’ll admit that. Okay, too fond - I’ll admit that, too. So I told her more than a week ago, before her husband disappeared, that she had to stop being my assistant. It wouldn’t be proper, me working with her every day, feeling the way I do. She’s a married woman.” His hands balled into fists. “I’ll make Endicott sorry that he sullied Jane’s reputation!”

  “Oh, Jane, is it?” Hopkins said with a leer. “And you’re a bit quick with your fists, I’d say.”

  “How does it come to be that the wife of Mr. James Phillimore, co-owner of the Paradise Music Hall, was your assistant?” Holmes asked the magician.

  “She stepped in when Lola got sick. Well, to tell you the truth, Lola’s in a family way, poor girl. Mr. Phillimore heard I needed an assistant in a hurry and he said his wife could fill in. She had experience. She worked with her father in his act years ago - the Incredible Carlo. He was a good magician, though not very famous.”

  For a moment my friend stood silent, and then he burst out: “I’ve been an imbecile, Watson! I should move to the Sussex Downs and keep bees. Hopkins, you are wasting your time. I assure you that this man is innocent. Come along, Watson, we have work to do.”

  Leaving Hopkins, Masterson, and Colonel Ruffle gaping in our wake, we took our leave of the Paradise Music Hall. I was no less confused than that trio of gentlemen.

  “But Hopkins’s theory seems to be very much in line with your own,” I protested as we walked out of the building. “Surely Masterson is the lover you were looking for, the man who impersonated Phillimore!”

  “By no means, my dear fellow! Grant Masterson could never pose as Phillimore. His ears are all wrong. He has almost no lobes, not like Phillimore at all. You saw the photograph. Always note the ears, Watson! You can’t disguise the ears with spirit gum and hair. At best, you can only conceal them. You protest? Oh, Ruffle may not have observed that, I grant you, but he could scarcely have failed to notice that Masterson had broader shoulders and shorter height than Phillimore. Now I suggest that you go back to Baker Street and await me there.”

  “But where are you going?”

  “To Somerset House.”

  Knowing that it was useless to question Holmes further, and having little desire to watch the detective pour over some dusty government records, I agreed to return to Baker Street. Some hours later I was nodding over a medical journal when Holmes came into our rooms. His mood was buoyant.

  “What did you find out?” I asked.

  “What I expected to find out. Can you accompany me to Surrey tomorrow? Good. I am confident that a brief interview with Mrs. Phillimore will bring this matter to a successful conclusion. Meanwhile, I think supper at Simpson’s would be a suitable reward for our labours.”

  “You have solved the crime, then?”

  “There was no crime, Watson.”

  He would say no more on the subject, limiting his conversation over our meal that evening to the balance of power in Europe in the wake of the Bruce-Partington matter, the fifth proposition of Euclid, Verdi’s Falstaff, and the upcoming American presidential election of 1896.

  The next morning, in the train to Surrey, Holmes was scarcely more communicative.

  “You mustn’t be surprised at anything I say to Mrs. Phillimore, Watson,” he instructed. “Our success may depend on it.”

  I am surprised at what Sherlock Holmes says more often than not, but I gave my word that I would try not to show it. “Stout fellow!” Holmes responded.

  The maid, Annie, was in manner no less unwelcoming than on our first visit, but kept her counsel as she quickly summoned her mistress.

  “What is it?” Mrs. Phillimore asked. “Has something happened?”

  “There has been an arrest,” Holmes said, to my unexpressed surprise. “Mr. Grant Masterson has been charged with the murder of James Phillimore.”

  “What!” The woman’s wide brown eyes opened still wider as her delicate mouth hung open in shock. “That cannot be! This is an injustice, Mr. Holmes. You must do something!”

  Holmes shook his head. “I am afraid that only you can save your noble admirer.”

  “What do you mean? What can I do?”

  “You can tell the truth, Miss Kenworthy. There never was a James Phillimore, as attested to by the fact that there is no record of his birth or marriage at Somerset House. James Phillimore was an illusion you created with a false beard and a man’s suit.” My friend stepped boldly forward and lifted the woman’s ringlets to expose her ears. “But the ears would have given you away. It was clever of you to hide them.”

  “You’re the clever one,” Miss Kenworthy - as I now must call her - replied. She stood taller, chin out. “You are everything I have heard about you, Mr. Holmes, including devious. Did those fools at Scotland Yard really arrest Grant, or was that a lie intended to shock the truth out of me?”

  “It was a near thing, but I advised Hopkins against it.”

  “Then I thank you for that. I suppose you will want to hear my story. Come sit in the parlour. Does Dr. Watson take notes or does he just remember?”

  “Doubtless your account will not be one I should ever forget,” I said somewhat coldly.

  “All right, then. My tale is really rather simple and quickly told. As you may already have learned or surmised, I grew up in the music hall. From the time I was a young girl I was assistant to my father, the Incredible Carlo. For a short while I even had my own act as a male impersonator. Oh, you found that out, too? I must say I was
quite good at it and I rather enjoyed the freedom of men’s clothing. When my father bought the Paradise, I saw quickly that he was not very good at business. I had some suggestions that would have helped, but he rejected them because I was a woman. We were losing money when Papa brought in a partner, Colonel Ruffle. He is a good man in most respects, but impossible when it comes to the rights of women. When Papa died, he refused to accept me as his partner and I didn’t want to sell. The situation was untenable until I hit upon the happy idea of marrying. I knew of no acceptable gentleman at the time, so I invented one and announced our marriage. Colonel Ruffle was quite convinced by my male disguise. Our partnership was a happy and successful one. Notions that the Colonel would have rejected out of hand from Jane Kenworthy he accepted as genius from Mr. James Phillimore.”

  “Then why end the masquerade?” I burst out.

  “Mr. Grant Masterson, no doubt,” said Holmes.

  “Exactly,” Miss Kenworthy confirmed. “I grew to like him very much in a short period of time. He is intelligent, amusing, and very kind. When he expressed similar feelings for me in the most honorable way imaginable, I knew that I had found a worthy mate. But first, Mr. Phillimore would have to leave the scene. I am not sure of the law, but I know that after a certain period he would be declared legally dead and I should be free to remarry. Perhaps I erred in making his departure so dramatic. What are you going to do now, Mr. Holmes?”

  Holmes turned to me. “Has any law been violated here, Watson?”

  “I should think not,” I said, knowing the question was a rhetorical one.

  “Then I see no reason to disturb your happiness, Miss Kenworthy. Unless Hopkins errs again and imperils another innocent man, I will let the matter rest. Perhaps, Watson, it would be best if you let your readers believe this case to be another of my failures. After all, it almost was.”

  Thus my friend showed that he had not only a great brain but a chivalrous heart.

  “This is not at all what I expected,” Miss Kenworthy said with a joyful expression on her attractive features. “I am much in your debt, Mr. Holmes. How can I ever repay you?”