The Secret Files of Sherlock Holmes

by June Thomson

  With Miss Page’s departure, Mr Nelson seemed more at ease and, as I re-entered the room, I found him leaning forward in his armchair in earnest tête-à-tête with Holmes, who, holding up a hand, cut short his prospective client’s account.

  ‘One moment, Mr Nelson, if you please. Now that my good friend Dr Watson has rejoined us, may I take the opportunity to recapitulate the facts of the case for his benefit?’ Turning to me, he continued, ‘Mr Nelson has been telling me that it is his custom to accompany his friend, Mr James Phillimore, every morning to Clapham Junction station in order to catch the 8.05 train into Town where they both have their places of work, Mr Nelson as clerk at Murchison and Whybrow’s, the solicitors in King William Street, Mr Phillimore at Gudgeon’s in St Swithin’s Lane where he is employed as head-waiter. You have heard of Gudgeon’s, of course, Watson?’

  ‘Indeed I have,’ I replied, seating myself in the chair which Miss Page had just vacated. ‘It is a well-known restaurant in the City, much frequented, I believe, by bankers and members of the Stock Exchange.’

  ‘Quite so. Now it seems that every morning, on the dot of half past seven, as Mr Nelson described it, he would walk from Magnolia Terrace where he has lodgings …’

  ‘Just off Lavender Hill,’ Mr Nelson broke in.

  ‘… into Laburnum Grove where his old friend, Mr Phillimore, would be waiting for him at the gate of number seventeen. They would then set off together down Lavender Hill for the station. And then, three days ago …’ He looked across at Mr Nelson, inviting him to resume his account at the point where, it seemed, it had been interrupted.

  Mr Nelson was eager to pick up the story.

  ‘Well, Mr Holmes, as I was saying, it was Tuesday morning. There was Jim – Mr Phillimore – standing at his gate as per usual. There was nothing out of the ordinary about him except, as I got close up to him, he said, ‘I fancy I can smell rain in the air, Charlie. I’m just popping back into the house for my brolly. It’s in the hall so I shan’t be more than half a jiffy.’ So he gets out his keys, walks back up the garden path, opens the front door and goes inside, leaving the door ajar. And that’s the last I saw of him.’

  ‘You waited, I assume?’ Holmes asked.

  ‘Of course I did, Mr Holmes. I hung about at the gate for a good five minutes, expecting him to come out of the house at any moment. Then, when he didn’t appear, I went up to the house myself, thinking he’d been taken ill of a sudden. I pushed open the door and went into the hall, calling out his name. But there was neither sight nor sound of him in either of the downstairs rooms. It was while I was looking and calling that his housekeeper heard me and came out of the kitchen. When I explained what had happened, she went with me up the stairs to look in the bedrooms. It’s only a small house, Mr Holmes, and I swear we searched every inch of it, under the beds, in the wardrobes, even the cupboard under the stairs. But we found nothing.’

  ‘What about the garden? You searched that, too?’

  ‘Oh, yes, Mr Holmes. It is only a few yards square but there was no one there neither. It was as if he’d vanished into thin air.’

  ‘Could he have climbed into a neighbour’s garden?’ I put in.

  ‘No, he couldn’t, Dr Watson. The fence is too high as you’ll see for yourself if you come to the house; that is, if Mr Holmes is willing to take up the case.’

  He turned to look at Holmes in appeal but my old friend, puffing away imperturbably at his pipe, refused to be drawn and merely nodded in my direction to encourage me to continue my line of questioning which I did with some hesitation, anxious not to appear a fool nor to assume Holmes’ role of detective.

  ‘Then is there any other means of exit from the premises? A back garden gate, for instance?’

  ‘No, sir, there isn’t. The only other way Jim – Mr Phillimore – could have left was by a passage which runs along the side of the house to the back door. It’s the tradesmen’s entrance. But he didn’t go out that way. As I explained, I was standing at the gate for a good five minutes and I would have noticed him if he’d left by that route. There’s a few people about at that time in the morning, like me and Jim making their way to work, but I know every one of them by sight and there’s not enough of them for him to have slipped away unnoticed. Nor did his housekeeper see him pass the kitchen window which he’d have to do if he went out that way. And, like I said, by the time I went into the house, he’d already vanished.’

  I could think of no other questions to put to Mr Nelson and I was relieved when Holmes, leaning forward to knock out the ashes of his pipe into the coal-scuttle, resumed charge of the interview.

  ‘Tell me a little about your friend. What type of man is he?’

  ‘Oh, a very quiet, unassuming man, Mr Holmes. Very regular in his habits.’

  ‘Not the sort to take it into his head suddenly to disappear?’

  ‘Quite out of character. That’s why I’m so worried about him. He’s a steady, reliable fellow who I’d trust with my last shilling.’

  ‘Any problems at his place of employment?’

  ‘Quite the contrary. The management of Gudgeon’s are as concerned as I am about his disappearance. When I called round there to explain the situation to them, they spoke most highly of him.’

  ‘Then is he in any financial difficulties?’

  ‘Not that I know of, Mr Holmes. He lived very modestly, never spending more than he earned which, seeing as he was a head-waiter, were decent wages, not to mention the tips he’d get as extras.’

  ‘Tips!’ Holmes exclaimed, as if he had never heard of the word.

  Mr Nelson regarded him in surprise.

  ‘Yes, Mr Holmes, tips; small gratuities which a satisfied customer offers for good service.’

  ‘Yes, yes, of course. I understand that. Pray continue, Mr Nelson. When I interrupted you, you were speaking of your friend’s modest style of living.’

  ‘And so it was, sir. He didn’t drink, didn’t smoke, didn’t gamble. His only extravagance was to treat himself occasionally to a seat in the upper circle at a music-hall. I know for a fact that he had over a hundred pound saved up. And he didn’t have to find a weekly rent neither. There’d been a bit of money in the family. His parents had owned an eating-house in the City Road. In fact, it was there where Jim got his foot on the first rung of the catering ladder, so to speak. As a lad, he’d worked for them, waiting at table. But, in his quiet way, Jim’s ambitious and gradually he moved on to higher things, eventually finishing up as head-waiter at Gudgeon’s. After his father died, his mother sold up the business and with the proceeds bought the house in Laburnum Grove, partly to retire to and partly to give Jim a home. He was living in lodgings at the time. Then, when old Mrs Phillimore died last October, he inherited the house along with its contents.’

  ‘Where, I assume, he intended setting up home with Miss Page after their marriage?’

  Nelson gave Holmes another of his contrite glances.

  ‘I’m sorry about her coming with me, Mr Holmes. I had hoped to speak to you in private. But once she heard I had written to you for an appointment, she wouldn’t take no for an answer. She’s a very determined young lady is Cora. And naturally, she’s upset by Jim’s disappearance. As she told you, they were due to be married next month. Jim had been putting the wedding off on account of Cora and his mother not seeing eye to eye and neither of them willing to share the same house with the other. Mrs Phillimore was a bit of a Tartar, between me and you; crippled with arthritis in her later years and as deaf as a post. But that didn’t stop her getting her own way. It was on her account that Jim took on Mrs Bennet as a live-in housekeeper so there’d be someone to look after his mother when he was out at work. By the way, sir, I took the liberty of mentioning to Mrs Bennet that you might be calling at the house to make inquiries.’

  He again looked appealingly at Holmes but when he failed to respond apart from nodding encouragement to the man to continue, Nelson resumed his account.

  ‘Old Mrs Phillimore led
him a terrible dance when she was alive. Boss him about! I’ve never heard the like of it. Not that Jim ever complained and he was a good son to her. Taught her and himself to lip-read so that the two of them could still have some means of communication. Anyway, once she died, Cora – Miss Page – insisted on Jim naming the day and the wedding was fixed for June 14th, reception afterwards in the private room over the Farriers’ Arms and a honeymoon in Bournemouth.’ Mr Nelson stared down gloomily into his bowler hat which he was nursing between his knees. ‘It don’t look as if it’ll come off now, does it, Mr Holmes? Not with the bridegroom gone and vanished off the face of the earth.’

  ‘It would seem highly unlikely,’ Holmes agreed.

  ‘So what do you say, sir?’ Nelson continued eagerly. ‘Will you take the case? I don’t know who else to turn to. The police aren’t interested. They say that as Jim is over-age and there’s no sign of foul play, there’s not much they can do. He might turn up. Or then again he might not. It’s all very worrying and bothersome. He’s been a good friend to me, has Jim, and I would be more than grateful if you would make a few inquiries. I don’t know what your fees are but I have a bit of money put aside for a rainy day which I’m willing to part with for Jim’s sake for, with him disappearing the way he did, I reckon that day has already arrived.’

  Holmes seemed to come to a sudden decision for, springing to his feet, he held out his hand.

  ‘I shall certainly take on the case, Mr Nelson. As for the fees …’ He made a deprecatory gesture. ‘Payment will be by results. If I fail to find your friend, Mr James Phillimore, then there will be no charge. That seems a fair arrangement.’

  Before Mr Nelson could protest or even express his thanks, Holmes had ushered him out of the room and down the stairs to the ground floor where presumably Nelson found Miss Page for, a few minutes later, as Holmes and I stood at the window, we watched the two of them walking away down Baker Street, the lady clasping her tall, ungainly companion by the arm and talking vociferously while he listened, head bent, to her monologue.

  Holmes chuckled sardonically.

  ‘Unless Mr Nelson is very careful, he will find himself married off sooner or later to his friend’s fiancée,’ he remarked. ‘As he himself described her, she won’t take no for an answer. Well, what do you make of it, Watson? Not that particular relationship but the case of Mr James Phillimore, the vanishing head-waiter.’

  ‘It is certainly very strange,’ I replied. ‘Phillimore seems a man from a respectable enough background …’

  ‘Who also possessed a very keen sense of smell,’ Holmes added in a jocular fashion. ‘As I remember, Tuesday morning was particularly fine with not a cloud to be seen. And yet he assured Mr Nelson that he could smell rain and insisted on going back to the house for his umbrella. I think I detect a whiff of conspiracy. Come, Watson, get your hat. We are going out.’

  He was already striding towards the door.

  ‘Where to?’ I demanded, snatching up my hat and stick and hurrying after him.

  ‘Where else but seventeen Laburnum Grove, Clapham, to examine the scene of Mr James Phillimore’s extraordinary disappearing act?’

  The house, as we discovered when the hansom cab deposited us at the gate, was a small, red-brick villa of the type erected in such areas as Clapham and Brixton for clerks, shop-assistants and minor tradesmen and their families. A narrow strip of front garden, just wide enough to accommodate two rose bushes and a tiny patch of lawn, separated it from the road where a few trees, too young yet to have developed beyond the sapling stage, grew out of the paving-stones between the gas lamp-standards.

  The garden path, a mere few yards in length and paved with red and yellow tiles, led up to the front door where Holmes banged on the knocker.

  The door was opened by an elderly, grey-haired woman, dressed in clean but shabby black, with tired, lined features – Mrs Bennet, the housekeeper, I assumed.

  ‘Come in, sir,’ she said, dropping a little bob of a curtsey. ‘You must be Mr Sherlock Holmes, the famous detective. I’ve read about you in the illustrated papers. Mr Nelson said you might be calling on account of Mr Phillimore’s disappearing. He said I was to answer any questions – Mr Nelson, that is.’

  After Holmes had introduced me and Mrs Bennet had dropped another curtsey, a difficult manoeuvre in Phillimore’s narrow hall, still further encumbered by a large hat-stand, she showed us into a small sitting-room which overlooked the back garden where she waited just inside the door, her work-worn hands folded on the front of her apron.

  I have remarked elsewhere* on Holmes’ skill at putting a humble witness at ease. It was so with Mrs Bennet. It is also worth recording his own ability to appear totally relaxed in whatever surroundings he may find himself, whether it be the splendours of a panelled library in a ducal mansion or the fetid basement of an opium den in Limehouse.

  On this occasion, he drew out an upright chair and, seating himself upon it, crossed his legs as if perfectly at home in Mr Phillimore’s cramped but tidy living-room, with its ugly furniture, too large for the space yet polished to a high gloss, its potted plants and its family photographs, most of them featuring a heavy-chinned, disagreeable-looking old lady who could only be the late Mrs Phillimore.

  ‘There is no need to be nervous,’ Holmes said, addressing Mrs Bennet and giving her one of his most cordial smiles, for when Holmes is in a good humour, there is no kinder nor more charming man in the whole world. ‘I shall ask you a few simple questions, nothing more. First of all, I should like you to tell me in your own words exactly what Mr Phillimore did on Tuesday morning from the time he rose until he left the house.’

  ‘Rose, sir?’ Mrs Bennet seemed surprised that the great detective should have come all that way to question her about such trivial domestic happenings. ‘The same as he always did. He got up at half past six as usual, washed and shaved – I took him up a can of hot water – dressed and came downstairs for his breakfast.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘He put on his coat, called out goodbye to me and went out by the front door to wait at the gate for Mr Nelson.’

  ‘Nothing else happened before he left? No post came? No messages?’

  ‘Only the paper, sir, which he glanced at over his breakfast.’

  ‘Ah, the morning newspaper!’ Holmes seemed unwarrantedly pleased by this information. ‘And which morning newspaper does Mr Phillimore subscribe to?’

  ‘The Times, sir.’

  I was surprised to hear this. It seemed an unusual choice of reading matter for a head-waiter and one which I could only ascribe to Phillimore’s contact with Gudgeon’s City clients who no doubt had influenced his taste towards a more superior daily paper. Holmes himself, however, appeared not to find the information significant for, when I glanced at him to observe his response, apart from commenting ‘Really?’ in an uninterested voice, he passed on to other matters.

  ‘Tell me what happened after Mr Phillimore left the house.’

  ‘Why, nothing at all, sir, until I heard Mr Nelson in the hall calling out Mr Phillimore’s name. I was in the kitchen, washing up the breakfast things and, when I went out to see what Mr Nelson wanted, he told me that five minutes before Mr Phillimore had come back into the house to get his umbrella and hadn’t come out again. We looked all over and Mr Nelson searched the garden but there was no sign of him.’

  ‘I see he did not, in fact, take his umbrella,’ Holmes remarked. ‘It is still in the hall-stand.’

  ‘Is it, Holmes?’ I interjected. ‘I had not noticed.’

  ‘He didn’t take nothing!’ Mrs Bennet burst out, her mouth beginning to tremble. ‘He’s left everything behind – every stitch of clothing he owned down to his winter overcoat and his best boots. Oh, sir, what’s happened to him? And what’s to happen to me and the house? My wages is paid up until the end of the month and the police have told me to stay on in case he turns up. I can’t think where he can have gone to or why. He’s never done anything like this before. H
e’s so regular, I swear you could set Big Ben by him. He’s not even so much as gone away on a holiday except for that week he spent in Margate after his mother died and the doctor ordered him a complete rest and a change of air.’

  ‘Margate?’ Holmes inquired. ‘Do you happen to know whereabouts in Margate he stayed?’

  ‘I couldn’t say, sir, except it was a boarding-house with a funny, foreign-sounding name.’

  ‘I see. And apart from his holiday in Margate, have there been any more recent changes in Mr Phillimore’s routine?’

  ‘Well, not really …’

  Seeing her hesitate, Holmes asked quickly, ‘But you have noticed something?’

  ‘Only his wardrobe, sir. He took to locking it over the past few days. I noticed on Monday morning when I went to his room to hang up a coat I’d sponged and pressed for him.’

  ‘But it is unlocked now?’

  ‘Why, yes, sir, so it is!’ Mrs Bennet exclaimed. ‘How did you know that?’

  ‘It seemed a possibility,’ Holmes answered carelessly before continuing, ‘There is one more question and then I shall not need to detain you any longer, Mrs Bennet. After Mr Phillimore left by the front door, did you notice anyone pass by the kitchen?’

  ‘No, sir; I did not. I was stood by the sink in front of the window from the time Mr Phillimore left the house until Mr Nelson called out and not a blessed soul went past it. I’d take my Bible oath on that.’

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Bennet,’ Holmes said gravely. ‘You have been most helpful.’

  ‘Has she, Holmes?’ I asked, after Mrs Bennet had left the room. ‘I can’t see she has added anything of significance to our knowledge of the case apart from reiterating the same information we have already learned from Mr Nelson.’

  ‘You underestimate her contribution, Watson. There is the matter of the locked wardrobe.’

  ‘Oh, that!’

  ‘Never dismiss the smallest fact, however unimportant it may appear. It is the basis on which all successful deduction is founded.’