The Disappearance of Mr James Phillimore

by Dan Andriacco

  “Aren’t you going to carry me over the threshold?”

  As I have often noted, Lynda is a self-proclaimed “old-fashioned girl” and this would be the first time for us to enter the apartment as a married couple. We had spent our wedding night at the Winfield Hotel, where we’d had our reception.

  “Sure, but let’s put the luggage inside first.” What I meant was, I didn’t want to carry her up the steps. I work out, but so does she, and we all know that muscle weighs more than fat. So we dealt with the luggage and then I ceremoniously carried my bride inside our apartment.

  After I put her down, we hugged and kissed and so forth for a bit. Well, it was more than a bit, actually. When we finally disengaged, Lynda looked around as if seeing the place for the very first time.

  “It’s good to be home,” she said.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  The Confession

  Two days after we got back to Erin, Mac received the following e-mail from Welles Faro, sent from the address igotaway@bmail.com:

  My Dear McCabe,

  As you read this I am on my way out of Ireland, heading for the country where I will reside in considerable comfort under a long-prepared false identity. I intend to fully enjoy the fruits of my labours, the several million pounds I have deposited over the years in a numbered offshore bank account.

  Having completely vanquished you in our little contest, except for the minor matter of you figuring out all too late that I was the player on the other side, I have magnanimously decided to answer a few questions you may still have. I’ve even attached an online journal of my thoughts, which you might find interesting. Despite your vaunted cleverness, I’m sure you don’t know it all.

  First of all, I’m the Professor. More on that later.

  You may have learned by now that I left the United States fifteen years ago because the local authorities, not to mention my employer at the time, took a dim view of my hacking into voice-mails to get a story. The UK welcomed me with open arms, however. I suppose part of my success in Britain was the novelty factor. I was the outrageous transplanted Yank, and therefore I could get by with almost anything. I didn’t give up my aggressive and sometimes-illegal journalistic techniques with the change of venue, but I found that even without them people were often willing to tell dear old Faro the most amazing things.

  After a few years of this, I began to realize that some things I found out had more value than a leader in The Daily Eye. I wouldn’t use the word blackmail, but neither did Charles Augustus Milverton.[3] I did a nice sideline in this for awhile. But when Carstairs came to me with the story of Phillimore’s Ponzi scheme, expecting me to expose it in my column, I knew I’d hit the jackpot. All I had to do was kill Carstairs. Then I went to Phillimore and told him I would keep his secret, and even advance his enterprise, in exchange for a healthy share of the action. I told him that Carstairs was my source. The subject of his “suicide” never came up, but Phillimore either knew the truth of the matter or was even better at lying to himself than he was at lying to everyone else.

  Within a year or so a kind of Stockholm Syndrome relationship developed between Phillimore and me. We became friends and partners. The sword I held over him was no longer mentioned. We discovered our mutual passion for Sherlock Holmes. I’d always admired the real Holmes of the stories, not the whitewashed image you have in your head. Holmes is no agent of the law. He is a law unto himself, which means that he is totally lawless. How many times does he commit burglary, set murderers free, and allow criminals to die before they can have their day in court?

  But, of course, his shadow self, Moriarty, is my real hero. You would have understood that from my brilliant article if you hadn’t been so focused on proving your own cleverness by shooting me down. The Binomial Theorists of London is not a Holmesian club at all, but what you might call a Moriartian club, a kind of League of Criminous Gentlemen. Just as the head of the Baker Street Irregulars is called “Wiggins” after the young boy who led the original Baker Street Irregulars, my title as leader of the Binomial Theorists is “the Professor” in honor of our real hero.

  Phillimore’s trite warning to Madigan, “Don’t trust the Professor,” was the one genuine clue in this case - and it seemed to point to you! As you can imagine, I was surprised and delighted in equal measure. Call it a romantic impulse, but I had insisted that all members of the Binomial Theorists own The Penguin Complete Sherlock Holmes for just such a purpose as Porlock used Whitaker’s Almanack in The Valley of Fear.

  The Binomial Theorists afforded a convenient cover for me to meet with a number of collaborators without drawing any attention - especially Madigan, a bent copper with an expensive mistress. You may recall that his former boss, the commissioner, was criticized for meeting with executives and editors of News of the World for lunch or dinner several times during the Yard’s investigation of the paper’s phone hacking. But if Madigan and I happened to be together with Aiden Kingsley and other members of the Theorists for a few pints and a chat, what’s the harm in that? Who would know that the others didn’t really have an interest in Sherlock Holmes? Kingsley doesn’t read anybody’s books but his own, by the way, and he’s on the take.

  It was all going so smoothly... too smoothly. I was getting bored. I decided to take a bit of a risk. I stuck out my neck with my essay on Holmes and Moriarty - and you chopped it off. You must have been very proud of the way the other robots piled on in print. I decided to make you pay for that pleasure.

  Just as I was trying to figure out how to do that, I got word from Madigan that the Yard was on to Phillimore. There was nothing he could do to derail the investigation, although he did manage to slow it down a bit. I gave you the impression that I’d first learned about it that day you saw me talking to Madigan at the Brigadiers Club, but he’d actually told me weeks ago, in a panic. He knew that if Phillimore went down, he would crack like an egg and we would all be in jeopardy. It was obvious that Phillimore had to go, just like Carstairs before him. I decided that he would go in a spectacular fashion that would engage your interest - and then I would frame you for the crime. Beautiful, isn’t it?

  First I lured you here with that debate - a debate in which I knew I could engineer your defeat and humiliation among your peers. Once you were here in the UK, I dragged you into the Phillimore case with the lure of the ACD notebook. I’m sending it to you under separate cover. I think you’ll find it quite a good forgery.

  The pastiche was designed to lead you to the priest hole and make you think it was your own clever idea. Maybe I went overboard with that reference to “the singular suicide,” but I couldn’t resist. I knew the clear reference to your dreadful Nothing Up My Sleeve would puff up your ego and keep you reading to the part I really wanted you to read. Then in Phillimore’s house I sat on the window seat precisely to draw your attention to it. If you hadn’t suggested looking there, I would have had to stumble onto it myself.

  Of course, you were intended all along to figure out that Phillimore’s death wasn’t suicide. I knew that you would catch on to that “honor” right away. It pointed to murder, and by an American, but certainly not to me because I write in British English for a living. No, the American that it pointed to was you... especially after I thoughtfully informed the Yard about your ownership of a weapon similar to that used on the hapless Phillimore.

  The irony was delicious: You couldn’t help showing off by making the deductions that pointed straight to you. It was a kind of jujitsu, using your own self-satisfied cleverness against you. I had Madigan assign Heath to the Phillimore case because I knew he was a fool for that tripe you write and would immediately think of the double bluff in Sleight of Hand when you turned up clues that pointed to you. So what might have made you look like a less likely suspect did just the opposite.

  And I’d provided you with a motive suitable for a Sherlock Holmes collector. The exchange of e-mail
s that I wrote between you and Phillimore should have clinched the case against you. Maybe Heath just didn’t want to believe - another slight miscalculation on my part.

  But I also didn’t expect you to tumble onto Carstairs. I didn’t think anybody would remember him, a nobody. I’ll have to pay Ralston back for that some day.

  Naturally, I tried to keep track of your actions without being too obvious. It helped that my irrepressible rival, Ms. Teal, accepted my Friend invitation on Facebook. When she posted a photo of what I recognized as Fresch’s plane, I rushed out to Stansted to find out what you were up to. I was going to ask Fresch, but I encountered you first. Even better! By then I’d already decided how to get rid of Madigan. When he called me in a fresh panic and said you were asking about Carstairs, I knew that he had to go. Your reference that day to the delightful Kate gave me the idea of supplying you with tickets to the play so that you would have only the flimsiest of alibis for the time of his murder.

  You’ll remember how I at first dismissed the significance of Phillimore’s message, until you deciphered it and it turned out to be one that could turn back on you, Professor McCabe. Then I shoved it right in Heath’s face, but he wouldn’t bite.

  Even without knowing about Phillimore’s warning to Madigan, I realized it wouldn’t be easy to kill a veteran police officer who had reason to be wary. So I went well prepared, with the .32 hidden in the book and a trick up my sleeve. Not surprisingly, he greeted me at the door with his service revolver in his hand. We went to his den. Following my instructions, one of my Fleet Street Irregulars - a young man with a bottomless capacity for following orders without asking questions - set off a series of firecrackers behind the house. As I had anticipated, the noise startled Madigan. In the second that he jumped, I pulled out my gun and shot him, the noise indistinguishable from that of the firecrackers to any neighbors who might have heard.

  Of course, the same young man set off one more firecracker about fifteen minutes later as I was standing outside the front door with your overeager sister-in-law and her neurotic husband - my alibis for Madigan’s shooting.

  When you asked me to meet with you that last day, I was almost certain that you were on to me. But I couldn’t resist letting the scene play out to see how much of it you had deduced. You got very lucky, I must admit, but I was ready to move on anyway. All of my efforts since I decided to kill Phillimore were just aimed at buying time to get my escape plan ready to execute.

  I think that’s everything. This e-mail address was set up for this exclusive use and will no longer be monitored after I click Send. If you have any questions, you will have to ask them when we meet again.

  And we will meet again, McCabe. Count on it. And when we do, I will destroy you. If you are wise, you will spend every day until then on the lookout for the return of the Professor, who I assure you will look or sound nothing at all like,

  Yours truly,

  Welles Faro

  3 Editor’s Note: The master blackmailer in “The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton,” a Sherlock Holmes story.

  Short Story Bonus!

  The Adventure of the Vatican Cameos

  Lynda Teal’s Own Case

  The body of Roberto Crocetti, 27, was found Monday in his apartment on the Via Monte del Gallo. The freelance photographer had been shot and his apartment ransacked, according to the police. There were indications Crocetti had been tortured before being killed, the police said. They suspect drugs were involved...

  - La Repubblica, page 3, May 29, 2012

  My husband, Thomas Jefferson Cody, is the most infuriating of men. Why do I put up with him?

  Because he’s adorable, of course! My friend Felicia once called him a combination of Woody Allen and Humphrey Bogart. I’d say he’s more like Woody Allen trying to be Humphrey Bogart. But he’s so cute about it.

  Still, it was maddening that on the second day of our idyllic Italian honeymoon I was already forced to keep a secret from my new husband. Fortunately, what I didn’t tell him did help me solve the thefts of the Vatican cameos. Oh, and the murder, too.

  My road to deception began on that first night in Rome.

  “What do you mean you want to read?” I asked Jeff.

  “I always read before I go to bed.” He held up a book, a Red Maddox private eye novel called Bodies in Toyland.

  “We’ve been in bed for an hour, sweetheart. Haven’t you noticed?” (If you’re expecting any more details on that, you’ve come to the wrong place. Try one of those explicit Rosamund DeLacey romance novels that Jeff’s wonderful administrative assistant is always reading.)

  “I mean before I go to sleep,” my redheaded and now red-faced darling clarified.

  Well, I would have thought he’d be too worn out to read (I certainly felt relaxed), but apparently not. This presented me with something of a dilemma. I hadn’t brought anything to read. A girl just doesn’t think she’s going to need a book on her honeymoon.

  Totally fluent in Italian, thanks to summers spent in Italy with my nonna as a girl, I tried reading La Repubblica for a while to catch up on what had been happening in the world while I’d been otherwise occupied. The world was still a mess, and so was Rome - the usual mix of political crises, a young man murdered in his own apartment, an investigation of alleged police corruption, and even more depressing celebrity news (breakups of people I didn’t know were together). Quickly tiring of all the bad news delivered in the world’s most beautiful language, I closed my eyes and reflected with contentment on my first day back in the Eternal City.

  We’d been married on Saturday and flown out of the Greater Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport on Sunday. After an enjoyable one-night layover in New York, we arrived in Rome at 11 A.M. Tuesday. It took more than an hour to get through customs. We finished just in time to find out that the cab drivers had all gone on a twenty-four-hour strike at noon.

  “This must be why your grandparents left this country,” Jeff muttered.

  I rolled my eyes. “We’ll take the metro to Termini station and walk from there to our bed and breakfast. It’s not that far. The hike will make up for some of that lost time at the gym you were complaining about.”

  Jeff grunted.

  We were staying just a couple of streets over from the Vatican Museums. At first Jeff hadn’t liked the idea of a B&B, given what had happened the last time he stayed in one. But the price was too good to pass up and he is a cheapskate. My other suggestion was Madre Pie, but when Jeff found out it was a convent he wanted nothing to do with it.

  On the way there we walked through St. Peter’s Square.

  “This is incredible!” Jeff said. “The pictures I’ve seen just don’t do justice to the size.”

  “Uncle Guido always says there are two things the Church has plenty of: time and property.”

  Jeff chuckled. “Uncle Guido, eh? What is he, a Mafia don?”

  Actually, he is Guido Cardinal Goldini, the patriarch of Venice. Three of his predecessors in the twentieth century were elected pope. Not all of my relatives are scandalous. But I didn’t think Jeff was ready to learn about that particular branch of my family tree yet. I was trying to break him in slowly.

  The hostess at our B&B, Sogni d’Oro (Dreams of Gold - quite a lofty name for a three-story building), was a vivacious, buxom, auburn-haired woman in her sixties named Sophia Belisamo. She was a real Roman; I could tell by the accent. My mother’s family was from much farther north, hence the honey blond color of my curly hair.

  We settled in, admired our ceramic tile floor and the view of St. Peter’s dome, took a fifteen-minute power nap to stave off jet lag collapse, and then hit the bricks.

  Why had I been away so long? The Eternal City is an eternal delight, and sharing it with Jeff doubled the pleasure. What is Rome? Rome is graffiti, gypsies, ancient buildings, ev
en more ancient obelisks, cats, flowers, nuns in habits, priests in cassocks, dog dirt, motorbikes, crazy driving, tiny cars, double parking, political posters (fascist, communist, and anarchist), churches upon churches, pizzerias...

  “And such beautiful, well-dressed women!”

  That was Jeff talking.

  “Down boy. You’re taken.”

  I took his hand.

  We dined that night at my favorite restaurant in Rome, Dino & Tony, at Via Leone IV 60, just a few blocks from our B&B. I suppose the hostaria-pizzeria has a menu, but I’ve never seen it. I always just sit down and stocky, effervescent Dino or one of his waiters (there is no Tony) starts bringing food - two plates of antipasti, two pizzas, two plates of pasta. And so it was on our first night in Rome. We passed on the main course to make room for dessert, which turned out to be tiramisu, caramel custard, coffee ice cream, and a plate of cannoli. Have I mentioned that we drank a carafe and a half of red wine with dinner, espresso with dessert, and limoncello to round out the meal?

  “This was” - dramatic pause - “fantastico!” Jeff proclaimed with a contented look on his face and the last of the limoncello in his hand. That was Jeff Cody, linguist. And for a skinny guy, he sure can eat.

  After two and a half hours of Roman food, we headed back to the B&B hand in hand across St. Peter’s Square. I love the square at night, with the lights shining on the fountain and the obelisk. The obelisk, one of dozens in Rome, was already almost two thousand years old when the Emperor Caligula looted it from Egypt in 37 A.D.

  I pointed up at a lighted window in the Apostolic Palace, my other favorite site. “That’s the pope’s apartment. I think the light means he’s up there right now.”

  “I don’t suppose he’s watching - I don’t know - Fringe or Desperate Housewives?”