by Andrew Lane
Sherlock glanced past her to the floor that lay between her and the pantry. ‘There’s flour on the floor,’ he pointed out. ‘Mr Phillimore couldn’t have left that way without leaving footprints.’
‘Unless this good lady here scattered the flour after he had passed,’ Mycroft pointed out.
The cook seemed to swell up with anger. Sherlock pushed past her quickly, before she could explode, and went into the pantry. The shelves were stocked with food, and there was the door leading out into the back garden that he remembered seeing earlier. He glanced out through the glass. The door opened out directly on to the lawn, but there were still no marks to indicate that anybody had walked in the soft earth, and the droplets of water from the earlier rain still clung to the blades of grass. ‘It’s no good,’ he said, returning to the kitchen. ‘I can’t see any trace of anyone going out this way.’
‘Then where has the man gone?’ Mycroft demanded, thudding his cane down on the tiles of the kitchen floor. ‘Where can he possibly have gone?’
Sherlock closed his eyes and thought for a moment, trying to break through the puzzle that had been presented to them.
‘Do you agree with me that none of the decorators who left the house could have been the man we saw on the doorstep?’ he asked, eyes still closed.
‘I do,’ his brother answered. ‘They were shorter, and wider at the shoulders, and the physiognomy of their faces was completely different to that of Mr Phillimore.’
‘It occurs to me,’ Sherlock said, ‘that we don’t actually know if the man we spoke with was Mr Phillimore. The maid went back into the house, and then he appeared, but we never saw the two of them together. The same with the cook here.’
‘If you are suggesting that either of these ladies here is Mr Phillimore in some kind of disguise then I would suggest you rethink your theorizing. They are both far too short, and neither of them is thin enough.’ He glanced critically at the maid and the cook. ‘I suppose that there could be some padding involved, but the height of the gentleman who spoke to us outside would be impossible to disguise – and he was not wearing anything that would have made him look taller. I gave his shoes a thorough investigation, as I do with everyone I meet. Shoes can be very instructive, I find.’ He paused for a moment. ‘I grant that the man we spoke to might not have been Mr Phillimore, as we were never formally introduced, but whoever he was, he is now missing.’
Sherlock glanced at the maid. ‘Do you have any photographs of Mr Phillimore around the house?’ he asked.
‘I believe there is one in the drawing room,’ she said dubiously. After a long moment she added: ‘Would you wish me to get it for you, sir?’
‘If that wouldn’t be too much trouble.’
The maid scurried off. The cook glanced at Mycroft and Sherlock, sniffed, and said: ‘If you don’t mind, gentlemen, I’ll return to my duties. These pies won’t make themselves.’
‘Let us get out of your way,’ Mycroft said. The two of them walked back to the hall just as the maid was emerging from the drawing room. She held a small photograph in her hand. ‘This is the master,’ she said, handing it across.
Sherlock and Mycroft both checked the photograph. It showed the man they had spoken to outside the house – the tall man with the sideburns, the moustache and the watery blue eyes – standing beside a seated woman. The woman was their sister, Emma.
‘Evidently this relationship is important to Mr Phillimore,’ Mycroft observed, ‘if he went to the expense of having a photograph taken of the two of them together.’
Sherlock had noticed something else in the image. ‘Emma looks happy,’ he said quietly. ‘More than that, she looks contented.’
‘Does she?’ Mycroft replied. ‘I will take your word for it.’
‘At least we know that the man we met was James Phillimore,’ Sherlock observed.
‘That would appear to be the case, but the question remains – where is the man?’
‘And the other question,’ Sherlock pointed out. ‘Why has he disappeared so suddenly?’
Something was nagging at the back of Sherlock’s mind. He took a moment to let it come to the forefront, where he could consider it. He had seen something – something upstairs.
‘The roll of carpet!’ he announced.
‘There was a roll of carpet upstairs?’ Mycroft nodded. ‘I presume that there was carpet missing from one of the bedrooms?’
‘There was!’
‘Then Mr Phillimore must be inside the roll of carpet,’ Mycroft announced. ‘Once the impossible has been eliminated from your mind, then whatever remains must be the truth, however improbable it seems.’
The two of them rushed up the stairs to the hallway. Sherlock indicated the roll of carpet that had been left running alongside the skirting board. ‘It doesn’t look large enough to hold a man,’ he pointed out.
‘Perhaps not, but appearances can be deceptive. Remember that Mr Phillimore is tall and thin.’
‘Not that thin.’ Sherlock bent down and took hold of the roll. ‘Only one way to find out,’ he observed, and pulled. The carpet unrolled across the hallway.
There was nothing inside but dust.
‘Well, the thought was good,’ Mycroft observed as Sherlock rolled the carpet back up again.
Sherlock stayed crouched down for a moment, hand resting on the carpet. ‘There is still something bothering me,’ he said slowly. ‘Something I saw up here.’
‘I have sometimes observed that distracting the mind with a different subject can often allow it to make connections that one might otherwise have missed,’ his brother observed. ‘We do not understand the workings of the mind in the same way that we understand the workings of the body, which is a great shame. The man who could explain how the brain works would, I think, become famous. How is Charles Dodgson, by the way?’
The abrupt change of subject threw Sherlock for a moment. ‘He is . . . as well as he ever is, I suppose,’ he said. ‘He still talks of beading rooks rather than reading books, which gives you an indication of how he plays with words, but he has a fine brain.’ As he said the words it was as if a light suddenly illuminated his brain. ‘Of course! The wallpaper!’
‘It worked,’ Mycroft said with a self-satisfied tone in his voice. ‘What have you realized?’
Instead of explaining, Sherlock sprang to his feet and rushed into the bedroom that was in the process of being decorated. Mycroft followed him.
‘Look around,’ Sherlock said excitedly. ‘What strikes you?’
‘It strikes me that the plastering work is slapdash, and that the wallpaper is not straight,’ Mycroft observed. He frowned. ‘It also strikes me,’ he went on slowly, ‘that decorators usually let the plaster dry on a wall before putting the wallpaper on, but here they appear to have started papering the wall before the wall is ready.’ He pointed. ‘Look, the wallpaper has already started to peel back at the corners because the wall underneath is damp.’
The two of them looked at each other.
‘Can we?’ Sherlock asked in a hushed voice.
‘Look at it this way,’ Mycroft replied. ‘Either we will be saving a man from a bizarre and unusual imprisonment, and possibly saving his life into the bargain, or we will be ruining his house and destroying our sister’s chances of a happy marriage.’
‘So – the stakes are pretty high then.’ Sherlock glanced at his brother’s face. Mycroft’s expression was serious. ‘How sure are we about this?’
‘As I said – when the impossible has been eliminated from your mind, then whatever remains must be the truth, however improbable it seems. It is apparently impossible for James Phillimore to have left this house, therefore he is still inside. You have checked all the rooms and the attic, and not found him. He must, therefore, be between the rooms. It is the only option left.’
Sherlock nodded. Taking a deep breath, he leaned forward and took hold of a corner of the new wallpaper, then pulled.
The wallpaper peeled away from the wall eas
ily. The plaster underneath was indeed still damp, like the plaster on the other three walls. Some of it came off on the back of the paper, revealing fresh horizontal wooden laths that had been nailed between vertical wooden beams.
‘A decent decorator does not put wallpaper on wet plaster,’ Mycroft said. ‘Not unless he is trying to cover something up. Can you pull some of those laths off the beams?’
Sherlock grabbed the discarded hammer from the floorboards and inserted the chisel-like end of the head into the gap between two laths. He pulled hard. The lath pulled out from the wall with a squeal. Sherlock quickly pulled the next lath out.
The sun, shining through the glass of the bedroom window, illuminated the space between the laths of this wall and the wall of the next door bedroom.
And the frantic face of Mr James Phillimore.
He had been gagged with a dirty cloth that had been tied behind his head. Only his face was visible, but Sherlock assumed that his hands and legs had been tied as well. His eyes bulged and he was desperately jerking his chin: the only part of his body apart from his eyes that he could move.
‘Get him out,’ Mycroft said darkly.
Sherlock tore at the laths, flinging them to one side as each one came free. They revealed more and more of Mr Phillimore’s dust- and plaster-covered suit. Ropes were tied around his chest, pinioning his arms, and around his legs.
As Sherlock removed more and more of the laths, James Phillimore fell forward. Sherlock and Mycroft caught him and pulled him out of the space in the wall where he had been hidden. They laid him on the floorboards and Sherlock pulled the gag from his mouth.
‘Those men are not real decorators!’ he cried.
‘I believe we had already deduced that for ourselves,’ Mycroft said drily. ‘Can you tell us what happened?’
‘I went to talk to Mr Throop, but he assaulted me, knocking me unconscious. When I woke up, a few moments later, he and his men had tied me up and were fastening the laths across the wall. I heard them quickly slapping some plaster across the laths, and then I think I passed out again. I really don’t understand – what on earth is happening? I was not that unhappy with their work.’
‘First let us get you downstairs and get some hot, sweet tea inside you,’ Mycroft said. ‘Once you have recovered from your ordeal we can talk about the reasons that Mr Throop – if that is even his name – might have for imprisoning you in such a bizarre way. Sherlock – please untie Mr Phillimore’s arms and legs and help him downstairs.’
A few minutes later Mr Phillimore was slumped in a chair in his drawing room, and Sherlock had bullied the cook into making a pot of tea. Mycroft and Sherlock sat on either side of Mr Phillimore while he sipped gratefully at the tea. His jacket and trousers were covered in dust, and there were drips of plaster in his hair and down his face. His hair stuck up wildly.
‘Now,’ Mycroft said, settling back in a chair that was too small for him. The arms squeezed his bulky body around his hips, pushing his stomach up like a baking loaf that was spilling over the edge of its tin. ‘Tell us everything. Leave nothing out: the smallest, most insignificant fact may prove to be vitally important.’
‘Very well.’ Phillimore raised a hand to his forehead. ‘The two of you had arrived outside the house. I came out to talk to you. We arranged to go into town for a spot of afternoon tea. I went back into the house to retrieve an umbrella, as I was of the opinion that it might rain. As I was pulling the umbrella from its stand the decorator, Mr Throop, came down the stairs. I said that I was going out. He frowned – I remember that distinctly – and asked where I was going. I told him in no uncertain terms that it was none of his business where I was going. He insisted on knowing, and was very rude about it as well. I was of a mind to tell him that it was none of his business, and that he was employed to decorate my house with as much professionalism and as little fuss as possible rather than to ask impertinent questions, but in order to facilitate my leaving the house rapidly I decided to answer his question. Given that my affairs of the heart, and my integration into your family, are none of his business, I merely told him that I had a business meeting. The news seemed to disturb him. With the arrogance typical of the working class he presumed to ask me what kind of business meeting I had, with whom I was meeting and what I would be discussing. At that point I told him that my business was none of his business, and that I would be grateful if he could return to his decorating activities forthwith. At which point he descended the remaining stairs, walked up to me and punched me firmly on the chin.’ Phillimore raised a hand to his chin and stroked it gently. ‘I have never,’ he said, offended, ‘been punched before. Not at school, not in my apprenticeship, not on any of the engineering projects I have worked on. Never.’
‘What happened after he punched you?’ Mycroft asked.
‘What happened was that I was knocked unconscious for a few minutes. I awoke to find myself tied up in the spare bedroom upstairs. I was lying on the floor, and they were standing over me, looking down.’
‘Who exactly was there?’ Mycroft asked, leaning forward.
‘All of them! Every single decorator that I had employed to remodel my house was there in the room, and a fierce lot they looked too.’
‘So the whole crew was in on it,’ Mycroft said, glancing at Sherlock. ‘It seems obvious, but it is worth checking.’ He turned back to Phillimore. ‘And then what?’
‘Mr Throop kept asking me questions. “Where is the letter?” he said. “What have you done with the letter? Has the letter arrived yet?” I tried to tell him that I didn’t know anything about any letter, and that no post had arrived for several days, but he didn’t seem to believe me. “We’ve been waiting for days for it to turn up!” he said. “But it ain’t!” He spoke in a very common manner. Very lower class. “Is there an office it could have gone to?” he asked, but I told him there was not. My office is here, in the house. He had the temerity to search me, would you believe – rummaging with his dirty hands through all my pockets, but he didn’t find what he was looking for. Eventually he and his men decided that I didn’t have this letter they were looking for, so they shoved me into a hole in my own wall! I tried to protest, but the brutes had gagged me as well! All I could do was to make noises like some kind of animal while they were manhandling me and then sealing the hole up with laths and plaster.’ He closed his eyes and placed the back of his hand against the eyelids. ‘I feared for my life, Mr Holmes. I do not mind telling you that I thought I was about to meet my Maker. I could hear the plaster being applied to the laths, sealing me in. I could smell it.’ He took his hand away, opened his eyes and stared at Mycroft with an offended expression on his face. ‘I have to say that the plastering they were doing was very shoddy work. They were just slapping it on willy-nilly. I employed them specifically because they assured me that they treated decoration as an art rather than a trade, but I did not get that impression from the way they were working earlier today.’
‘If it’s any consolation,’ Sherlock said mildly, ‘they were probably more concerned with hiding you away than doing a good job.’
‘Yes,’ Mycroft said, ‘and the question why they wanted to hide Mr Phillimore here away is something we shall come back to, but for the moment – what happened next?’
Phillimore thought for a moment. ‘It was dark. The laths and the plaster blocked out all the light. I tried to struggle, to break myself free, but the ropes had been tied too tight. I was having difficulty in breathing, as well. My mouth was obstructed, so I was breathing through my nose, but my sinuses are often inflamed and swollen due to various allergies, and often I have no choice other than to breathe through my mouth.’ He glanced at Mycroft apologetically. ‘I do snore terribly,’ he said. ‘I wake myself up sometimes with my snoring. Do you think Emma will mind, once we are married?’
‘I do not know and I do not care,’ Mycroft said with a tone of suppressed impatience at the way Phillimore’s train of thought kept wandering. ‘Please continue with your
story!’
‘I thought I was going to suffocate! I really did!’ Phillimore said. ‘I was concentrating on trying to get as much air through my nose as possible, but stress makes my nostrils close up, and –’
‘The story!’ Mycroft snarled.
Phillimore’s head jerked back as if he had been slapped. ‘Very well,’ he said, offended. ‘You don’t have to be so unpleasant about it – I have had a most disagreeable experience.’ He took a breath. ‘Anyway – I was trying to take breaths through my nose, as I said, but I distinctly heard the sound of wallpaper paste being applied to the wall, and then wallpaper being hung. I could even hear the sound of the knife they used to cut the paper where it overlapped the skirting board at the bottom of the wall and the architrave at the top.’ He shook his head. ‘How Mr Throop can claim to be a reputable decorator when he hangs wallpaper on damp plaster I really do not know. If I see him again I shall have strong words with him.’
‘Undoubtedly,’ Mycroft said, with some restraint.
‘I do not know how long I was there, in the dark,’ Phillimore continued. ‘Part of me was hoping that this was some jape, some joke that was being played on me. Perhaps some old colleagues of mine from the engineering profession had decided to trick me, and had paid these men to help. However, another part of me was of the opinion that I was being left there to die, and that part was definitely getting stronger the longer this went on. And then, just when I thought that I was doomed to be incarcerated in my own wall for eternity, you arrived.’
Mycroft leaned back, as much as he was able, in his chair, and glanced at Sherlock. ‘What strikes you about this situation?’ he asked.
Sherlock thought for a moment. ‘There are several things,’ he said eventually. ‘Ignoring this mysterious letter for a moment, as we have no idea what it might be or why Mr Throop and his men might want it, I think there are five questions that I would want to have answers to. Firstly, and most importantly, why did they act now? They have been working here for several days without questioning Mr Phillimore. What set them off?’