The Disappearance of Mr James Phillimore

by Dan Andriacco

Mac waved that away as trivial. “Obviously he had an accomplice who helped him escape later. Whoever it was replaced the blankets and closed the window seat so that we saw nothing amiss when we searched the first time. Other than Phillimore himself, that co-conspirator is probably the only one who can answer the really big question:

  “Where is Arthur James Phillimore now?”

  Excerpt from the Professor’s Journal

  June 9, 2012

  McCabe is acting exactly as I had expected. I should feel triumphant, vindicated that I read him so well. Alas, I’m actually rather disappointed. Where is the challenge in a game with no surprises? Who would go to a sporting event if you knew exactly what was going to happen in every period? Well, perhaps Act II of our little drama - to mix metaphors - will add a dash of the unanticipated.

  Chapter Eleven

  Simpson’s in the Strand

  Lynda pulled the iPad out of her purse and started writing her story while we were still in the car. Almost certainly Lynda’s boss, Megan Whitlock, would send it on to Grier News Service, which serves the whole Grier newspaper chain plus dozens of other papers that use it as a supplementary wire to the Associated Press.

  Faro watched Lynda in the rearview mirror as he drove. If he was chagrinned that she was going to score an international scoop, he had the grace not to show it. Whatever his story lacked in exclusivity, it made up for in color. The headline on his column splashed across the front of The Daily Eye the next day read BILLIONAIRE’S BIZARRE BOLT HOLE.

  “Mine reads more like a news story, not a graphic novel,” Lynda sniffed over breakfast. “Megan texted me that it was picked up by a lot of papers.”

  Faro’s florid account of yesterday’s adventures was accompanied by two uncredited photos which Lynda took, at Faro’s request, using his camera. Fair is fair, and Lynda had to admit that she wouldn’t have even been there without his intervention with Heather O’Toole, not to mention his driving us to the house.

  Heather’s reaction to events seemed to be a mixture of surprise that there really was a secret room at Headley Hall and outrage at this confirmation that her husband had done a bunk. “If he’s hiding out on a South Seas island with some other woman and never gets found, I’ll kill him,” she said. My mind was still trying to process that illogical rant when she left to call her lawyer. Now that it was clear that her husband was on the run, she was worried about her legal standing with regard to the fraud and the O’Toole-Phillimore family assets that might get attached to reimburse investors. To me this mess was already looking like a lawyer full-employment plan.

  After eating another cholesterol-loaded breakfast, we went with the McCabes to Westminster Cathedral for Sunday Mass. Not to be confused with the more famous Westminster Abbey, which is Anglican, the Cathedral is the mother church of English and Welsh Catholics. It’s a brick and stone building in neo-Byzantine style, not much more than a hundred years old.

  Lynda wore the cameo necklace that I had bought her at the Vatican, which had been stolen in Rome but recovered.

  As we were leaving the Cathedral, Lynda pulled out her smartphone and emitted a cry of surprise. “Faro wants to be my Facebook friend! What should I do?”

  “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer,” I said, not claiming any points for originality. “Maybe he’ll post something indiscreet on his status and you’ll get a leg up.”

  She Friended him.

  After lunch, we visited the National Gallery, right near our hotel on Trafalgar Square. We saw so many paintings by Italian artists that we could have been back in Rome or Florence. Kate was in her element, often telling a racy anecdote about the artist or calling our attention to a master stroke that made a painting genius and not just a nice picture. But I could tell Lynda’s mind was elsewhere, churning over the next stories to be researched and written.

  She dressed in red that night for dinner at Simpson’s in the Strand and the debate at King’s College. Lynda’s favorite colors are the bright yellow of her Mustang - which she drives too fast - and red. I’ve noticed that she wears red when she wants to make a splash or when she’s in a particularly buoyant mood. And it looks great on her. Tonight she donned a scarlet skirt, a frilly white blouse displaying her generous bosom to good advantage, and a mostly-red Pashmina scarf that she had bought at the market in Florence. She picked up the same color theme on her toes and lips.

  She stood in front of me in our room and pinned on the scarf a colorful enamel pin of a parrot that I had bought her a couple of weeks before the wedding. “How do I look?”

  “The expression ‘woo-woo’ comes to mind.”

  I moved closer. The smell of Cleopatra VII, Lynda’s favorite scent, filled my nostrils.

  “Down, boy. Don’t mess up my hair, smear my lipstick, or disarrange my scarf.” Other than that, have your way with me!

  Seeing the pout on my face, Lynda smiled. “I have to give you something to look forward to, don’t I?”

  I couldn’t argue with that. After dinner with some fussbudget professor and the owner of Fresch Airlines, followed by a debate over the oh-so-gripping question of whether C. Auguste Dupin or Sherlock Holmes was the most important fictional detective, I would deserve it.

  But the first part of the evening turned out to be much more enjoyable than I had expected, and the last part ended with a shock I won’t soon forget.

  Simpson’s in the Strand, just a short walk from our hotel, was opened in 1828. From advance research, I knew that it was best known for carving beef at the table and for its role in the history of British chess. We sat in one of the very booths once occupied by the legendary chess great Henry Staunton and his mates.

  You’re probably ahead of me on the restaurant’s Sherlockian connections - Holmes and Watson ate there in two stories, “The Adventure of the Dying Detective” and “The Adventure of the Illustrious Client.” Simpson’s website even lists Sherlock Holmes among its famous patrons, along with Charles Dickens, Vincent van Gogh, and George Bernard Shaw.

  Well, okay, but none of them were at our table that night before the great debate, just Professor Althea Ralston and Sir Stephen Fresch. Neither one was quite what I had expected. Sir Stephen was balding, in his early sixties, with a thick mustache and a not-so-thick Eastern European accent. I wouldn’t have pegged him for an innovative captain of industry, but then, what do I know?

  Ralston was the big surprise, though. No aging academic, she was just a little older than me - say, around forty - and striking in appearance. She had pure white hair like Andy Warhol, worn ear length, and a strand of white pearls across her slender chest. Her complexion was pale, the opposite of Lynda’s. Everything else about her was either black or gray. She wore a long black skirt, a light gray blouse of soft material under a black bolero jacket with sequins, and obsidian earrings. I could imagine her smoking a cigarette through a long, black holder, like a socialite in a New Yorker cartoon.

  “Althea is the perfect moderator for our little debate,” Mac rumbled after we had gone through the introduction ritual. “As a historian, she is perfectly neutral.”

  “Not exactly,” Ralston said, sounding veddy, veddy British. “It’s quite true that as between Holmes and Dupin, I could argue both sides as to which was the most important fictional detective, but I have my preferences in the genre.”

  “She likes the tough guys,” Sir Stephen said. “I’ve read your book, Professor.”

  My ears perked up. “I haven’t had that pleasure,” I told Ralston. “Tell me about it.”

  Lynda rolled her eyes. She never did share my affection for hard-boiled private eyes, and now she had fallen for Sherlock Holmes. We’ve agreed to disagree about our different literary tastes. I thought I’d been a pretty good sport about what had largely turned into a Sherlockian pilgrimage to London. I didn’t even complain about being dragged to Baker Street. So I felt t
hat a little side trip onto the darker side of the street was not asking too much.

  “It’s called Murder Without Manners,” Ralston said. I wondered whether she dyed her hair white; Warhol had. “It’s a critical history of the detective story, finding elements of the hard-boiled hero in some unexpected quarters. In other words, it’s not just about Sam Spade, Philip Marlowe, Amos Walker, and so forth, or the characters of James Hadley Chase and Peter Cheyney on this side of the ocean.

  “For example, Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe may be in the mold of the eccentric sleuth like Dupin or Holmes, but Archie Goodwin would have been quite at home with the other tough guys in Black Mask magazine. It was Stout’s particular genius to successfully combine the two strains and attract the fans of both.”

  “Mike Hammer is a long way from Baker Street,” I pointed out. “I suppose you’re not a Holmesian.”

  “On the contrary!” She pronounced the last word almost as if it only had two syllables. Her gray eyes gleamed. “I’m a member of the Sherlock Holmes Society of London. Holmes has a lot in common with your American private eyes. Like them, he’s something of a vigilante, a free agent who often breaks the law in the name of justice. And even though he’s a professional, he can’t be bought and often works for free.”

  This was ringing a bell. I’d heard something of the kind a while back in Erin at a talk delivered by my favorite private eye writer, Al Kane. I didn’t buy it then, either.

  Ralston paused to sip a Bombay Sapphire martini, straight up. Refueled, she ploughed on:

  “I think the second half of the last Holmes novel, The Valley of Fear, is a ripping good hard-boiled detective story about Birdie Edwards, and I agree with Steven Doyle that it was the first of that sub-genre ever written. Many of the later Holmes stories have a lot of grit, almost like film noir. For example...”

  And so forth. She kind of lost me for a while. It wouldn’t be fair to say she was full of herself, but she was certainly full of her subject - and gin. I kind of perked up when she shifted topics and said, “I’ve enjoyed reading your books about Mac’s adventures, Jeff. I must say, you are even handsomer than the photo on the back cover. Have you ever thought of writing your own mystery novel?”

  “You wouldn’t believe it if I told you,” I said. The subject of my multiple unpublished Max Cutter adventures was still a bit of sore spot with me.

  At some point, after drinks and before dinner, Kate managed to gracefully turn the conversation toward Sir Stephen. My sister was wearing a peaked cap, perched jauntily over her piles of hair, and the Sherlock Holmes tie she’d bought in Baker Street. “How is it that an Englishman comes to be the premier collector and defender of America’s Edgar Allan Poe?” she asked.

  He chuckled. Light from a chandelier danced off of his bald pate. “Perhaps the better question is how I came to be an Englishman! The small town in which I was born under a different name is now part of Poland. The opportunities there under the old communist regime when I was a boy were, shall we say, somewhat limited.

  “Well, I won’t bore you with the details of my illegal and harrowing journey, but I left when I was very young. I intended to make my way to your United States because I have always admired America. I thought England was just a way-station.” He smiled. “But I stayed because this country has been very good to me. I made my fortune here.” He frowned. “Apparently I have lost a good deal of it here as well. It seems that millions of pounds that I entrusted to Phillimore have been lost, and a lot of my investment gains were never real. I only hope that I am not ruined!” He gulped the scotch in front of him, his face flushed. “That bastard, I wish I had him here!”

  I looked at Lynda. Behind her comely oval face, I could see the wheels churning. Perhaps Sir Stephen would consent to an interview about what it felt like to be screwed by a fellow billionaire. My own reaction was somewhat more gut-level. Maybe that Fresch Air plane we flew in on from Venice will be repossessed. Good thing we’re flying home on Delta.

  “Try to keep your mind on Poe, just for tonight,” Lynda told Fresch in a transparent attempt to ingratiate herself with a potential interviewee. “You need to be up for the debate. You were explaining how you came to be a collector of Poe.”

  The dark clouds on the Fresch countenance cleared. “Perhaps it’s my admiration for all things American that led to my obsession for Edgar Allan Poe, a true American original. I have read his stories since I was a boy and I have been collecting his books and manuscripts for decades now.”

  “I am afraid that will not be enough tonight, Sir Stephen,” Mac said cheerfully. “No doubt you are a worthy antagonist, but I have the better argument.”

  “I think not,” Sir Stephen said with the assurance of the fabulously wealthy. “I have a silver bullet. By the end of the evening, I assure you, even you will concede I won the debate.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Hot Air vs. Fresch Air

  “You should have had the Silver Fox as a history teacher,” Lynda said with a strained smile as we took our seats in the auditorium at King’s Strand campus.

  “????” (That was the look on my face.)

  “You were hanging on every word she said.”

  “Only the first part,” I corrected. “When she said ‘Sherlock Holmes,’ I kind of zoned out until she started talking about my writing.”

  Lynda looked skeptical.

  If I didn’t know better, love of my life, I’d think you were just a smidgen jealous. But that never happens to you, does it? Jealousy is my gig!

  “What are you smiling about?”

  Before I had a chance to explain that I was just reveling anew in the joys of the marital state, Faro came on stage to welcome the assembled multitudes, a hundred people at most, to The Great C. Auguste Dupin-Sherlock Holmes Debate. Standing at a podium, he looked suitably professorial with his long, squared-off Walt Whitman beard.

  Curiously, there didn’t seem to be many young people in the audience. Where were the students? I figured the gray-hairs (or the white-hair, in the case of Althea Ralston, a.k.a. “the Silver Fox”) could have included faculty as well as members of the Binomial Theorists and the Sherlock Holmes Society of London. Faro had introduced us to one of the Theorists when we arrived at the auditorium, a stiff-upper-lip type in his early forties with a blondish mustache presented as Mr. Aiden Kingsley, Member of Parliament. Apparently we were supposed to know his name because he was also a novelist of some repute, but the moniker didn’t strike a bell with me.

  “Before the first verbal volleys of this stimulating debate are launched, it is my pleasure as a representative of the Binomial Theorists of London to announce the winner of our pastiche-writing contest,” Faro began. “A panel of distinguished Sherlockians, led by Professor Sebastian McCabe” - he nodded in Mac’s direction - “have given the laurels to a story called ‘The Adventure of the Magic Umbrella,’ based on the canonical references to the strange disappearance of Mr. James Phillimore. Unfortunately, the author, Mr. Arthur James Phillimore, cannot accept the prize because he has disappeared.”

  I guess I was too close to the situation to laugh. Most of the others in the auditorium weren’t under that handicap, even though they all had to know that Phillimore’s exit from the scene just ahead of Scotland Yard was no joke to thousands of his investors.

  They were still laughing as Faro ceded the stage to Althea Ralston and the two combatants. Faro joined Kate, Lynda, and me in one of the front rows. Ralston went through the very simple rules of the debate, which specified that cheering and booing were not only permitted but were encouraged. Maybe this was to make Mr. Aiden Kingsley, M.P., feel at home.

  Luck of the draw had Sir Stephen Fresch speak first. I took notes throughout the debate so I could churn out a press release and an article for our alumni magazine. I even tweeted. But I’m not going to give you all of it, just the highlights on both sides
.

  “The detective story was already well established by the time the first Sherlock Holmes novel appeared in 1887,” Sir Stephen began. “Edgar Allan Poe had invented it in the 1840s. Poe wrote only short stories, but Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Émile Gaboriau, and Anna Katherine Green expanded the genre to novel form in England, France and the United States, respectively. Sherlock Holmes even commented to Dr. Watson on his fictional predecessors during the early days of their friendship, calling Gaboriau’s Lecoq ‘a miserable bungler’ and Poe’s amateur sleuth Auguste Dupin ‘a very inferior fellow’ who was ‘by no means such a phenomenon as Poe appeared to imagine.’

  “However, when an admirer of Poe attacked Conan Doyle in verse in 1912 for this dismissal of the American writer, Conan Doyle separated himself from his character’s attitudes in a poetic response called ‘To Undiscerning Critic.’ He ended his verse with these often-quoted words:

  “‘He, the created, would scoff and would sneer,

  Where I, the creator, would bow and revere.

  So please grip this fact with your cerebral tentacle:

  The doll and its maker are never identical.’”

  That drew the biggest laugh of the night, even though it was so familiar to some that I noticed a few audience members reciting it silently along with Sir Stephen.

  “Conan Doyle was, in fact, a great admirer of Poe. When hearing that William Gillette was going to be touring in Baltimore, he asked this actor so famous for bringing Sherlock Holmes to life on the stage to place a wreath on Poe’s tomb for him. And in his memoirs, Conan Doyle wrote: ‘If every man who receives a cheque for a story which owes its inspiration to Poe were to pay a tithe to a monument for the master, he would have a pyramid as big as that of Cheops. He is not only the root, but one of the flowers on his own stem.’

  “Nor was Conan Doyle wrong, or even exaggerating. In the course of his three Dupin tales plus ‘The Gold Bug,’ Poe established such familiar conventions as the eccentric amateur detective, the admiring friend, the bumbling police, the least likely suspect solution, the locked room mystery, the hidden-in-plain-sight gambit, and the cipher that must be solved.”