The Disappearance of Mr James Phillimore

by Dan Andriacco

  Title Page

  THE DISAPPEARANCE OF MR. JAMES PHILLIMORE

  A Sebastian McCabe – Jeff Cody Mystery

  By

  Dan Andriacco

  Publisher Information

  First edition published in 2013

  © Copyright 2013

  Dan Andriacco

  Digital edition converted and Distributed in 2013 by

  Andrews UK Limited

  www.andrewsuk.com

  The right of Dan Andriacco to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998.

  All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without express prior written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted except with express prior written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act 1956 (as amended). Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damage.

  All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. The opinions expressed herein are those of the authors and not of MX Publishing.

  Published in the UK by MX Publishing

  335 Princess Park Manor, Royal Drive,

  London, N11 3GX

  www.mxpublishing.com

  Cover design by www.staunch.com

  Dedication

  This book is dedicated to

  STEVE AND BARBARA WINTER

  in memory of our adventures in England

  (but we’ll always have Paris)

  Chapter One

  Deadly Hall

  Welles Faro, the Daily Eye tabloid columnist, and Sebastian McCabe had been friendly rivals for years. But they’d never actually met until Mac went to London for the debate. If Lynda and I hadn’t been in London, too, on the second leg of our honeymoon, we never would have gotten caught up in the murders.

  But I’m getting ahead of myself, as usual. The disappearance came first.

  On the morning of our second day in London, I regarded my full English breakfast of back bacon, eggs, grilled tomatoes, pan-fried mushrooms, baked beans, toast with butter, sausage, and tea with a critical eye.

  “What - no kippers?” I asked my bride of twelve days.

  “You wouldn’t eat them anyway,” Lynda said, accurately. “But what you’re really thinking is that almost everything on your plate is fried and you’re afraid that if you eat it all you’ll be dead of a heart attack in, like, twelve seconds.” She knows Jeff Cody so well. “You could have had yogurt and porridge, you know.”

  “Are you kidding? If I have to pay sixteen pounds for breakfast, I’m going to make it worthwhile even if it kills me. And it might.” No, I am not cheap; I’m thrifty. I shoveled in some eggs. “This isn’t so bad,” I added. “I was getting a little tired of Italian pastries for breakfast. And that’s not exactly health food, either.”

  Not that I was complaining about the all-too-short sojourn in Rome, Florence, and Venice during our first week as a married couple. It was glorious. Curly, honey-blond hair and English surname (Teal) notwithstanding, Lynda is half-Italian and fully fluent in that most melodious of languages. Being with her in the country where she had spent her summers growing up was like traveling with my own personal tour guide.

  Plus, we were newlyweds. And we were alone then. As I said, glorious.

  Now we were camped out at the elegant King Charles Hotel in the heart of London with my best friend, Sebastian McCabe, and his wife, who happens to be my sister, Kate. Mac, who has no concept of money as a limited commodity, had chosen the digs. A main reason seemed to be the many references to the nearby Charing Cross area in what he reverently refers to as the Canon - i.e., the Sherlock Holmes stories. “Why, the agent Hugo Oberstein was captured right in the smoking room of the Charing Cross Hotel in ‘The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans’!” he’d informed me, eyes aglow. I suppose we would have stayed there if there’d been an opening.

  I looked around the bright, classy surroundings of the restaurant and told myself it was a good thing that my freshly minted wife was so well compensated for her executive position with the nefarious Main Stream Media, Ohio division.

  Lynda reached over and took my left hand, the one that didn’t have a fork in it. “Thank you for such a wonderful honeymoon, tesoro mio,” she said in her husky voice. “I know we’ll always treasure every magic moment.”

  So, hang the cost! In a New York minute I was lost in my beloved’s deep brown eyes flecked with gold. Lynda’s nose is a little crooked and she isn’t as beautiful as her world-famous mother, but that’s the face I want to wake up with every day for the rest of my life. Her smile and her curve-hugging bright yellow dress with the scoop neckline was all the sun I needed on this rainy London day. Just as I was about to say so, or some similar expression of romantic tenderness, I heard a booming voice coming from behind us and moving our way.

  “Ah, the honeymooners - fueling up early, I see!”

  “Don’t worry,” I assured him. “We left you some. Shame about the kippers, though.”

  Mac raised an eyebrow inquiringly. I kept eating.

  Sebastian McCabe is three inches shorter than my six-one, but big in the other direction. If he isn’t quite a hundred pounds overweight as I’ve estimated elsewhere, he’s close to it. You may have recognized his bearded face from the photo on the dust jackets of his many best-selling mystery novels or from his occasional appearances on television hawking those fairy tales. Even on vacation he was wearing his trademark bow tie and a sport coat.

  He and Kate sat down at our table.

  “How’d you two sleep last night?” my sister asked Lynda and me. Do you really want to ask a couple of honeymooners that, sis?

  Almost as tall as I am, and with the same shade of red hair but a lot more of it, Kate is my protective big sister. In fact, it was a relief to have Lynda around to protect me from her protectiveness.

  Once we had discussed the firmness of the mattresses, the size of the beds (and rooms), the pressure of the water coming out of the showerhead, and all the other earth-shattering issues that traveling couples talk about the morning after their first night in a new place, I asked how the three McCabe children were faring under the watchful eye of Mac’s parents back in Ohio.

  “They’re never more than a text away,” Kate said.

  “Mrs. McCabe texts a lot?” Lynda asked.

  Kate shook her head. “No, the kids do, especially - ”

  She was probably going to say Brian, age eight, but Mac’s smartphone cut her off. It’s hard to keep talking over a ringtone of Ride of the Valkyries.

  “Yes,” Mac answered. “Oh, good morning, Welles.” He listened for a while, and then said: “We’d be delighted! Thank you for arranging it. What time? See you then, my good fellow!”

  The gist of that was pretty clear, but Mac spelled it out after he’d hung up. “Faro has arranged for us to have an informal lunch with Arthur James Phillimore at a pub near his home. He will drive us there. I must confess I am most eager to examine that notebook that Phillimore has acquired.”

  You’d probably heard of Phillimore, investment guru to the stars, even before the hubbub that summer. I certainly had, and I was looking forward to meeting him. He was the financial whiz that Hollywood actors and dot.com billionaires entrusted with magically multiplying t
heir dough. Normally people like him only showed up in the pages of Forbes, Fortune, and The Wall Street Journal. But he became regular fodder for magazines like Us, People, and Tick when he married one of his celebrity clients.

  “Will Heather be there?” Lynda asked with stars in her brown and gold eyes.

  “Alas, no,” Mac reported. “Ms. O’Toole is shooting on location in Barbados this week, Faro informs me.”

  The raven-haired Irish-American beauty Heather O’Toole, who had launched her acting career with a small part in a Harry Potter movie a decade ago, was cast as the latest Bond girl in the upcoming thriller Dragonfly. The tabloids had a habit of referring to her by the initials HO’T, especially in headlines. I knew that from grocery shopping. But I didn’t know until later that the too-cute idea originated with Welles Faro in his Daily Eye column.

  Lynda and Kate looked at each other. Always close, even (I found out later) when Lynda and I weren’t on speaking terms, they act more like sisters than sisters-in-law. They don’t even have to use words to communicate.

  “You boys can go to your luncheon,” Kate said. “We’ll stick with the day’s itinerary and go to the Tower of London for a look at the crown jewels. Lynda may even buy a few, Jeff.” This was apparently a witticism aimed at my alleged cheapness. I ignored the attempted drollery.

  After Mac and Kate ate, we spent the rest of the morning prowling around the Strand, Trafalgar Square, and Pall Mall. Eventually Mac and I were expected to actually work on this trip, but that wasn’t on the agenda yet. I was still in honeymoon mode. And there was the rub! As noon approached and we headed back to the hotel, where Faro would pick Mac and me up, I suddenly realized that this would be the longest Lynda and I had been apart since our wedding.

  “Are you sure - ” I began.

  “I’m sure,” she said as we stood on the sidewalk outside the Charing Cross Station. She kissed me gently on the lips. “Look, I would be bored if I went along. And Mac would be lost without you if you went with me, especially if there was some crime and he had to solve it without his Watson there to take notes.”

  “I’m not his Watson, damn it.” Well, yes, I have written three books about his successful adventures as an amateur sleuth.[1] But they were my adventures, too!

  (You may wonder why I didn’t say this out loud. One critic even suggested that I’m a coward because I think in italics. I prefer to believe that I’m an introvert who doesn’t have to vocalize his every thought for an audience. Lynda says she likes the coward theory.)

  Lynda and I parted in front of our hotel a few minutes later with a minimum of blubbering, though the rain fit my mood. She kissed me on the ear, making me tingle all over. “Have fun and don’t even think about me, darling.” Fat chance.

  A short while later Welles Faro pulled up in an ancient red Ford Mondeo with the steering wheel on the wrong side.

  “Hop in, gents,” he said cheerfully. We did so.

  Faro spoke in a slight British accent acquired from living a number of years in London - especially apparent when he broke out in Britishisms like “Brilliant!” - but he was actually an American. That seemed to give him something of a cachet in British journalism, and excused his every carefully cultivated eccentricity. He had long hair and a long beard, both streaked with gray, and a chunky build. I wasn’t sure if he looked more like Walt Whitman or Karl Marx.

  “You actually drive in London,” I observed with a mixture of fear and admiration, holding on to the seat in front of me.

  “I like the challenge,” he said, looking back at me. “I’ve driven in Manhattan, too.”

  Keep your eyes on the road! The drivers in London aren’t as crazy as in Rome, but they drive on the wrong side.

  “It’s a bit of a drive out to Berkshire,” Faro said. “Hope you don’t mind. This is Phillimore’s country place, near Reading. Kate Middleton’s parents live in Berkshire, you know.”

  Mac chuckled. “Well, you know what Holmes said about the country.” No, but I’m sure you’re going to tell me. He did. “‘It is my belief, Watson, founded upon my experience, that the lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside.’”

  That should have warned me.

  By the time Mac finished the sentence, Faro was reciting it along with him.

  Maybe because my father is a successful Realtor, I’ve always been interested in houses, so I asked about Phillimore’s.

  “It’s a big old manor house - Headley Hall,” Faro said. “I call it Deadly Hall.”

  “Why?” Mac asked.

  “Because that’s a more interesting name, don’t you think? The place was in the Headley family since before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock. But taxes did them in, finally, and they sold out to Phillimore for about a million pounds. Like most billionaires, he has a bit of an edifice complex. Size matters to that sort. Nice enough chap, though.”

  Everything was new and interesting to me as I stared out the windows from my perch in the back seat, so the trip didn’t seem too long. Gradually the rain let up and I could see the scenery better as city gave way to suburb. I suppose it was an hour and half or so before Faro pointed in the distance and said, “There it is, Headley Hall.”

  Well, it wasn’t Downton Abbey, but it was bigger than any private residence in Erin, Ohio. Headley Hall was a stone and brick pile with a red tile roof, so Tudor in style that I almost expected Henry VIII to come swaggering out the front door munching on a turkey leg.

  “How many other homes does Phillimore own?” Mac asked Faro.

  “Five. Why do you ask?”

  “Just to see whether you knew the answer.”

  The driveway was longer than Main Street in Erin. When we finally pulled up to the massive front door I was surprised there wasn’t a doorman, like at a fancy hotel or a restaurant. There was a doorbell, though, and Faro rang it. I couldn’t hear it ringing, so I don’t know whether it belted out “Rule, Britannia!”

  Have you ever seen a professional tennis player wearing a tailored suit? That’s what the man who answered the door looked like. He was handsome, athletic, about six feet tall, with light brown hair and blue eyes, maybe thirty years old. His fair skin was closely shaved. He looked like a million dollars - roughly 620,000 pounds - and he made me feel like pocket change.

  “Hello, Trout,” Faro said familiarly.

  The butler bowed the way he’d been taught in Jeeves School. “Good afternoon, Mr. Faro. Good to see you again, sir. You are expected. Please step in. Mr. Phillimore will be with you in a moment.”

  We stepped in. I was glad that it had stopped raining because I wouldn’t want to drip on the oak floors.

  I looked around the hallway, which was roughly the size of Mac’s five-bedroom house, wondering whether the suit of armor came with the manor or had to be negotiated into the sale. I was pretty sure the Phillimore coat of arms framed above the archway was new - probably very new.

  My gawking had gotten no further when the lord of the manor himself appeared, hand outstretched and bonhomie extended. “Faro! Good to see you! And McCabe - I have all your books! I brought that item you were so interested in.” He patted his breast pocket. “Oh, this must be Thomas Jefferson Cody - love the name!”

  Phillimore’s high-energy performance left me exhausted, and all I had to do was shake his hand.

  This whirling dervish wasn’t what I had expected from the magazine and newspaper photos I’d seen where he was always wearing gray and overshadowed by some celebrity, such as his second wife. Today the only gray was in his hair and his thin mustache. He was wearing a blue blazer with brass buttons, a white polo shirt, khaki pants, and tennis shoes (which I have since learned are called trainers in jolly old England). The only thing missing was the yachtsman’s hat.

  Phillimore was sixt
y-one, making him thirty-three years older than Heather O’Toole - I’d Googled that - but he could have passed for maybe a decade younger. He was a little shorter than Trout and no more than ten pounds overweight. Phillimore was handsome, as well as fit, with a strong chin parted in the middle by a dimple.

  “Ready for a spot of lunch at the Bear and Beaver?” he said.

  “Right-o,” I chimed in, trying to get into the spirit of the thing. “Lay on, Macduff!”

  “Yes. Well. It’s only a short drive.”

  “We can take my car,” Faro offered. “It’s still warmed up.”

  Faro got behind the wheel of the Ford while Mac and I resumed our previous posts. Phillimore was halfway into the back seat with me when he stopped. “I’d better get my brolly. Just wouldn’t do to be caught in the rain without it. Won’t be a moment!” He jogged back into the house.

  “Nice place,” I said after a while, to kill time. “I wonder if he’d sell? Lynda and I are looking to buy a place of our own eventually. We need some space for kids, lots of them. This might do.”

  My companions didn’t respond. As the wait went on, Mac looked as if he wanted to light one of his odious cigars but was too polite to do so, or even to ask permission.

  After a while, Faro looked at his watch. “It shouldn’t take fifteen minutes to get an umbrella. There was an umbrella stand in the hallway, one of those horrid elephant leg things, and it was full of umbrellas.”

  Before Mac or I could say a word, Faro was out of the car. We were right behind him. He rang the doorbell. Trout answered with admirable dispatch. In a clear violation of the Jeeves Code, he looked surprised.

  “Yes, Mr. Faro?”

  “Is something wrong, Trout?”

  “Wrong, sir?”

  Faro turned red behind his beard. “Yes, you heard me, damn it, I said ‘wrong’!”

  “What do you mean, sir?” The poor man was on the verge of stuttering.

  “Mr. Phillimore came back in here fifteen minutes ago to get his umbrella and he never returned,” Mac explained.