by Paul Gilbert
‘He was clearly in a state of great agitation and perplexity and this was made evident by the way he constantly wrung his hands together. Phillimore was a man in his fifties, of medium height and build and dressed like a solicitor or financier. He could evidently have been successful at either of these professions, had he so chosen, for his clothes were of the finest quality and despite their recent drenching, retained a sharply pressed crease. His prematurely white hair was frizzled and sparse.
‘I have transcribed our conversation with him should you wish to hear it.’ I suggested.
‘By all means, Watson, this is far better than your earlier ramblings!’
‘“Gentlemen!” Phillimore suddenly began. “Let me simply cut to the chase. My brother, James, has disappeared under the most bizarre set of circumstance one can think of!”
‘Holmes, the expression of excitement on your face, upon hearing Phillimore’s pronouncements, was in as marked a contrast to your earlier one of lethargy as can be imagined. You leant towards him as a pointer dog might towards his quarry and, despite our client’s obvious discomfort you could not suppress a smile of anticipation and excitement from playing upon your lips.’
‘Précis please, Watson, précis,’ Holmes urged with an exaggerated gesture of exasperation. ‘The interview itself is far more important than my reaction to it.’
‘Very well then, I shall continue with the transcription.
‘“Mr Phillimore,” you addressed him, “with all due respect, I should point out that I seldom involve my practice in a missing person’s investigation. However, if you inform me of the exact events and circumstances that led you to my door, on so inclement a morning, I can assure you that I shall devote my full attention to your concern.”
‘Phillimore bowed his head in appreciation of your offer and then added: “Mr Holmes, this is not simply a missing person’s investigation, for my brother has disappeared in the literal sense of the word. However, I am ahead of myself. Let me first explain something of the nature of my relationship with James. My brother and I inherited a less than successful investment brokerage from our late father. Despite having careers of our own at the bar, we both resolved to turn our father’s company around and we established a partnership, the terms of which were agreeable to us both. We are not twins, indeed James is six years younger than myself; however, there is a family resemblance between us that borders on the uncanny. Gentlemen, imagine myself with a somewhat fuller head of hair and you have my brother!
‘“Any resemblance between us, it must be pointed out, begins and ends with the physical. That we are both confirmed old bachelors is, perhaps, the only aspect of our characters or lifestyles that we share. Whilst I tend to be quiet and reserved, James is outspoken and effervescent. I have taken a small house in one of the quieter suburbs, so my brother’s home is but a few minutes from the centre of town. As I am at my most content in sitting before my fire with a glass of old port and a good book, James’s lifestyle embraces the theatre, fashionable restaurants and the attendance at every kind of social event to which he is regularly invited.
‘“Inevitably these differences between us led to mutual reservations and misgivings regarding the initiation of our intended partnership. However, I must point out that these very differences in our natures have proved to contribute towards the success of our company. James’s social skills have led to the building of a huge portfolio of well-connected and affluent clients willing to entrust their investments to our hands. Whereas my own more grounded and steadfast financial skills ensure that their trust is not misplaced and that our client’s accounts are well managed; as a consequence Phillimore and Phillimore is a name that resounds throughout the financial world.
‘“Now, gentlemen, to the events of last Tuesday morning …” At this juncture, Holmes, you interrupted our client to enquire as to why Phillimore had allowed a week to pass before bringing this case before you.
‘“It may seem as if I have allowed the grass to grow under my feet, but I assure you that I informed the police at the moment the mystery revealed itself. However, their enquiries revealed nothing and, to tell you the truth, I do not think that they attached too much credence to my account of the events I shall now outline to you. Inspector Bradstreet seemed to think that the nature of my brother’s disappearance would appeal to your own singular taste in crime and implied that the regular force viewed James’s fate with an air of indifference, hence my journey to Baker Street this morning.”
‘“I am not at all surprised at the ineptitude of the regular force,” you replied. “However, Bradstreet normally displays above average diligence and intelligence, so I shall bow to his recommendation and beg you to proceed.”
‘“The facts, then, are these, gentlemen. Last Tuesday morning, in our capacity as principle directors of Phillimore and Phillimore, my brother and I were required to attend the annual general meeting of our company. Since James is not the most punctual of men, it was decided that it should fall to me to procure a cab and collect my brother in plenty of time, at approximately nine o’clock, a.m. You might recall that the weather was decidedly bad; the early-morning mist combined with a fine drizzle to form a most dreary outlook and upon arriving outside my brother’s home a full ten minutes before the appointed time, as is my wont, I viewed the impending wait with some apprehension.
‘“Because of the inclement conditions I dispatched the driver to ring for my brother at ten past the hour, only for him to return with a message from James’s valet to the effect that he would be ready to join me in but a few minutes. I received the news with a certain resigned indignation, and sat there drumming my fingers, repeatedly glancing at my watch as the minutes ticked away. When he did eventually emerge he stood reflectively under his porch before announcing the last words I would ever hear him utter: ‘I must go back in to retrieve my umbrella!’ he called through the grey swirling haze, before disappearing back into the house.
‘“My mood was darkened by increased frustration and when James failed to reappear after a further five minutes had passed, I decided to dispense with the services of the driver and to seek out my brother for myself. I rang on the bell pull impatiently and repeatedly and after two or three minutes Jarvis, James’s valet, finally opened the door to me. He greeted me with a strange questioning glance, as if unaware of my reason for standing there.
“‘Yes sir?’ he queried.
“‘Jarvis, please be so kind as to give my brother this message. Let his umbrella be hanged! He must join me in the cab this instant or we will surely be late for our own meeting!”
“‘Now I should point out that, although Jarvis had not been in my brother’s employ for very long, he had proved himself to be a most loyal, efficient and level-headed kind of fellow and a most able manservant. Therefore his reaction to my explosive rhetoric was all the more surprising.
“‘I beg your pardon sir,’ he replied in his customary quiet, measured tones, ‘but Mr James has already retrieved his umbrella and returned outside to join you. Surely he has not mistaken another cab for your own?’ There was a slim blue and white Chinese vase, by the front door, wherein James always stowed his umbrella, but which was now empty and Jarvis pointed to this to confirm the validity of his previous statement.
“‘What nonsense!” I rejoined. “No other vehicle has passed this way since I pulled up outside, a full half-hour ago. My brother is merely malingering, as is usual, and employing you to stall for him for his own inexplicable reasons. Let me pass, Jarvis, and I shall search the house for myself!” With that I shoved the poor fellow roughly against the wall and barged my way through. I went from room to room, leaving no stone unturned, even pausing to ascertain that each window was still locked from the inside. Then, to my annoyance and great confusion, I had to concede that Jarvis had been speaking the truth. My brother was nowhere to be seen!”
‘At this point, Holmes, you caused him to pause and asked him to explain why he had thought it necessary to check
the locks on each window, since it displayed surprising presence of mind in the unusual circumstances. His reply was as follows:
“‘James is well renowned for his eccentric behaviour and it would have come as no great surprise to find that in order to avoid both me and the annual general meeting, an event he had no great desire to attend, he had left his house by a less than conventional means.”
“‘Mr Phillimore, you are indeed describing a most singular event and I can assure you now that I shall take up your problem with all dispatch. Please describe your subsequent course of action.”
‘With understandable and considerable relief, Phillimore bowed in acknowledgement of your pledge before continuing with his remarkable story.
“‘After offering Jarvis a thousand apologies, I had to acknowledge that James could only have departed through the front door and that a combination of the poor visibility and my constantly glancing at my timepiece, had caused me to miss his hurried departure. Though why he chose to avoid me and the cab, heaven alone could know.
“‘However, upon my rejoining the cab, the driver confirmed everything that I had seen and was also unable to offer a rational explanation of the events we had just witnessed. He offered to drive me around the empty neighbouring streets to see if we could discover James departing on foot. Mr Holmes, we drove around for a full hour, before returning to my brother’s house in the vain hope that he had returned. Jarvis was undoubtedly as bemused as were both myself and the driver and so, as a last resort, I handed the matter over to the police. Alas, their response and results they achieved proved to be as negative as I have previously described to you.”
‘With that, Phillimore completed his narrative and shortly afterwards he reclaimed his partially dried clothes and departed, encouraged by the hope that you would solve the mystery of his absent brother.’
‘A hope that proved to be vain and somewhat premature, eh, Watson? As I recall, our visit to Phillimore’s home proved as fruitless as that of Bradstreet and his men, and Jarvis and the driver of the cab merely confirmed Montague Phillimore’s story. Matters were further complicated by the disappearance of Jarvis only days after that of his master, and my own enquiries at various domestic service agencies did nothing to enhance our knowledge of Jarvis’s previous employers or his background. Of course the singular demise of Lord Chalfont, whose left index finger was neatly removed and subsequently dug up in one of his flower-beds, diverted and occupied us for several days during that period, so that the mystery of James Phillimore remained exactly that. Now to the papers and let us hope that they can, belatedly, enlighten us.’
‘Your recollection of subsequent events is most accurate,’ I said, whilst putting my now redundant notes to one side and gathering up the day’s papers. As I began to read from the first of these I glanced up at Holmes’s expectant face, his left forefinger laid across his lips, his eyes wide and alert. ‘I am well aware of your desire for brevity and I will précis these accounts as well,’ I assured him.
This was a task that I was well able to do, for the various articles that I read through contained little new information that was relevant to our case. Holmes growled impatiently as I skipped over article after article and by the time that I had reached the Financial Times we knew as much as we could want to about Montague Phillimore’s family background and his achievements, but nothing that would enlighten us as to the whereabouts of his missing brother.
Only speculation as to the reasons for Phillimore’s suicide attracted Holmes’s attention and this took the form of numerous allusions to a financial scandal in the Phillimores’ company. We were on the verge of consigning the Financial Times to the same fate as its fellow journals when it occurred to us that the answer might yet have lain on its inner pages.
Sure enough, a small column on page twenty-three made a passing reference to Montague Phillimore’s tragic and untimely demise, but devoted rather more space to the story concerning the misappropriation of company funds of which he had been accused. This had first been brought to the attention of company shareholders at the annual general meeting that Montague had been forced to attend alone.
‘Holmes, it says here that Montague took his own life the night before an extraordinary general meeting, which had been called for with the express intention of having Montague driven from the board of his own company!’ I told him excitedly. ‘No mystery, then, as to the reason for his suicide. He surely wished to avoid the ignominy of scandal and ruination and, in the absence of his brother, could not face this alone.’
‘Is it not most suggestive that his brother conveniently disappeared on the very morning of the meeting at which this scandal was first made public?’ Holmes asked rhetorically through the dense fog of his old shag.
‘Normally I would agree with you,’ I replied while continuing to glean further information from the paper, ‘but it says here that the company accountant first discovered the missing funds a full two weeks before the date of the annual general meeting and that he was required to keep this information confidential until all the shareholders were called together. Surely that would have been the appropriate time for James Phillimore to have staged his disappearance, would it not?’ I speculated.
‘Perhaps …’ Holmes stood there in an enrapt silence, thoughtfully rubbing his chin while smoke billowed out from his pipe. He then added enigmatically: ‘Perhaps I made enquiries at the wrong type of agencies.’
‘You have formulated a different theory then, I take it.’
‘Only a germ of one, Watson, only a germ. I will leave you with a puzzle to chew over in my absence. Would it not have made more sense if James Phillimore had attempted to convince his brother of his absence rather than his presence under the circumstances?’ Holmes asked whilst donning his coat.
‘I do not understand; besides, where shall you go now? Back to Phillimore’s house?’ I asked in some confusion. Holmes merely smiled mischievously, then he was gone.
So convinced was I of Holmes’s ultimate success in bringing the Phillimore affair to a conclusion, that I spent my two hours alone in our rooms in shaping my notes of the case into a form of literary order. However, even in this new form, they shed no further light on the reason for Holmes’s sudden departure, nor on his intended destination.
Observing Holmes’s dour countenance upon his return, I feared that my optimism had been sadly misplaced. There was no sign of the triumphant smile on his face, nor of the customary jauntiness in his step. Instead he dragged himself wearily into the room and sank dejectedly into his chair.
‘I am sorry your enquiries produced so little success,’ I offered by way of consolation. ‘I presume that the intervening months have further obscured Phillimore’s trail and that his disappearance is as much a mystery as it was before.’
Holmes’s languid eyes glanced towards me with a puzzled regard. ‘Oh no, on the contrary. I met with immeasurably more success than I could have possibly anticipated.’
‘Then I do not understand. Surely the closure of so unsolvable a mystery should produce a somewhat lighter mood?’ I observed.
‘Watson,’ Holmes began, leaning back in his chair with a heavy sigh. ‘There can be no sadder occurrence than that of brother turning against brother. Far worse, of course, when a single act of selfish greed should cause one to be blamed for the crimes of the other and subsequently lead to his untimely and tragic demise. The fact that through my own deductive inadequacies I should have failed to foresee and prevent this tragedy is, indeed, the unkindest cut!’
‘I cannot even begin to speculate as to what you can possibly mean, yet I am certain that you are being far too hard on yourself.’
‘Surely my meaning is clear. You see, for once my own eventual conclusions concur with those of Inspector Bradstreet and our colleagues at Scotland Yard, though for different reasons. There was no real need to conduct a thorough search for James Phillimore, at least not at the time of enquiry, because he was never there!’
‘He wa
s never there?’ I repeated incredulously.
‘No, Watson, he never was there, or at least he had not been there for the intervening fortnight between the misappropriation of funds from Phillimore and Phillimore, and the morning of the annual general meeting. Too late I have realized that the singular occurrence that Montague witnessed on the morning of his brother’s supposed disappearance was not only improbable but was also impossible.
Short of a belief in magic, which I do not have, the only possible conclusion to draw would be that one of the three witnesses, to wit: the driver of the cab; Jarvis the valet, or Montague Phillimore himself, was lying.
‘Since the assertions of Jarvis were the only ones that could not be corroborated by either of the others, my suspicions incline towards him.’
‘But why? What possible reason could there be for Jarvis to lie in such a fashion?’ I asked.
‘Do you remember my last words before going out this afternoon?’
‘Of course. You said something about James convincing his brother of his absence rather than of his presence and that you had made enquiries at the wrong kind of agencies. Yet those statements make as little sense to me now as they did then.’
‘Very likely so, yet consider this. If James had been the guilty party behind the theft of the company funds, surely his departure at that time would have led to suspicion falling squarely on his shoulders alone, thereby making it very difficult for him to escape unhindered. By convincing Montague and, no doubt, others of his continued presence after the theft, he confused the issue and delayed the pointing of an accusing finger in his direction until the time of the annual general meeting. By that time, of course, he was already living in opulent exile, leaving his hapless brother to face the fury of the shareholders.’
‘But Montague says he saw his brother leave and then re-enter his home!’ I protested.
‘That is certainly what he was supposed to have seen. Remember, however, that the air that morning was thick with mist and drizzle and that James Phillimore was partly obscured by his own protective clothing. Even his own brother would assume that the illusion of his presence was, in fact, reality. A skilled actor, which Jarvis surely was, would have had no great difficulty in removing the disguise before Montague could gain entry to the house, and then being able to convince him of the subterfuge. You will no doubt recall from Montague’s statement that it took Jarvis two to three minutes to open the front door, this despite the urgency of Montague’s tugging at the bell pull. Of course the disappearance of Jarvis, or to use his theatrical name Terence Middleton, a short while afterwards was the final nail in Montague’s coffin.’