The Disappearance of Mr James Phillimore

by Dan Andriacco

  “I - I didn’t realize that he’d come back, sir. He didn’t call me.”

  Faro brushed past Trout and started calling Phillimore’s name at the base of a massive staircase. Then he started poking his head into rooms, the butler at his side. This went on for maybe ten minutes or so before Faro stated the obvious:

  “He just isn’t here.”

  “It appears that he’s disappeared,” Mac added for good measure, “just like in the unwritten Sherlock Holmes adventure, the disappearance of Mr. James Phillimore.”

  Excerpt from the Professor’s Journal

  June 7, 2012

  The game is well and truly afoot now! The first act of our little drama has gone exactly as scripted. I have no doubt that everything else will proceed according to plan. The impossible McCabe’s egotistical self-assurance will be his undoing. He won’t understand until the curtain falls what part he is playing.

  1 No Police Like Holmes, MX Publishing Co., 2011; Holmes Sweet Holmes, MX Publishing Co., 2012; The 1895 Murder, MX Publishing Co., 2012.

  Chapter Two

  Debates

  You may wonder why Lynda and I were spending any part of our honeymoon with my sister and brother-in-law. So do I. My only excuse is that it seemed a good idea at the time - not to me, but to Lynda.

  Looking back, I see now that it all began when Mac wandered into my office one day three months before the wedding and announced, “I have been challenged!”

  “To a duel?” I asked, not bothering to look up from working on a press release.

  “To a debate!”

  For Sebastian McCabe, that amounted to the same thing, for words are his weapon of choice. Mac is the author of an unconscionable number of mystery novels about a magician and amateur sleuth named Damon Devlin. He’s also the Lorenzo Smythe Professor of English Literature and head of the tiny popular culture department at St. Benignus College, where I also work as the director of public relations.

  I looked up. “Debate” sounded academic, which meant this might be getting into my professional orbit. “Who and what are you debating?”

  Mac sat in one of my visitor chairs, a tight squeeze. “Sir Stephen Fresch, if I accept. The topic is, ‘Who Was the Most Important Fictional Detective - Poe’s C. Auguste Dupin or Sherlock Holmes.’”

  “Wait a minute. Is this Fresch the airline guy?”

  “The same.”

  Sir Stephen Fresch, born in Eastern Europe but now a British subject, had taken the European airline industry by storm over the past five years with a revolutionary old idea: service. His planes actually served real food and cognac in glasses made of glass. Customers willing to pay a little more for these minor luxuries after being hassled by airport security had made Fresch wealthy and knighted.

  “How in the world do you know Fresch and why does he want to debate you?”

  Mac waved a flipper. “I have never met Fresch, nor have I ever corresponded with him until now. I am aware, however, that he is a major Edgar Allan Poe collector and devotee, a passion that his wealth enables him to indulge to the fullest extent. We have a mutual friend and rival, Welles Faro.”

  That was typical. My brother-in-law always knows somebody who knows somebody. He has more than 5,000 Facebook friends, and probably just as many in real life. I’ve even met a few of them. Not being up on international gossip columnists, though, the Faro name meant nothing to me at the time. I said so.

  “Welles Faro is an American living in London, a British tabloid phenomenon,” Mac explained. “He writes a unique page-one column every day in The Daily Eye, mixing opinion with hard news found nowhere else. He is also a Holmesian of some stature.”

  This was a new one on me. “You mean a Sherlock Holmes nut? I thought you called yourselves Sherlockians.”

  He patiently enlightened me. “I believe it was John Bennett Shaw who said, ‘In Britain the Sherlockians call themselves Holmesians, and in the United States Holmesians call themselves Sherlockians.’ At any rate, Faro and I have engaged in correspondence for some years. We had a rather heated debate ourselves several months ago that spilled over into The Baker Street Journal in the United States and The Sherlock Holmes Journal in the UK.”

  Mac pulled out a cigar for moral support, knowing full well that if he lit it in my office I would put it out with a fire extinguisher.

  “Faro wrote an intriguing but ultimately unpersuasive article contending that Holmes needed the existence of Professor Moriarty, ‘the Napoleon of Crime,’ to be fully Holmes. He noted that as early as A Study in Scarlet, the very first story, Holmes complains about the lack of a suitable adversary. Holmes found that worthy opponent only in Moriarty, of course. After the professor’s demise, Holmes again bemoans how singularly dull London has become.

  “Faro argued in his article, ‘The Shadow of Sherlock Holmes,’ that Moriarty was actually what the psychologists call Holmes’s ‘shadow self.’ Holmes has a brother; Moriarty has a brother. Holmes has a right-hand man, Dr. Watson; Moriarty has a right-hand man, Colonel Sebastian Moran. Holmes regularly sets himself above the law; Moriarty acknowledges no law.”

  Being more a fan of Mike Hammer than of Sherlock Holmes, I was rather liking this theory.

  “Since there was a debate, I presume you didn’t agree.”

  Mac waved his unlit cigar. “Oh, it was a clever conceit, a kind of riff on those theories that Holmes and Moriarty were the same person.” Oh, sure. Those theories. “The weakness, as I pointed out, is that many of Holmes’s greatest cases took place after he dispatched the professor at the Reichenbach Falls. It’s a cliché and a canard to say - as so many do, thoughtlessly - that Holmes did his best work earlier. I acknowledge the similarities between Holmes and Moriarty, two men at the top of their professions. However, to say - as Faro did - that Holmes needed Moriarty to be Holmes simply won’t wash. In the end, I am pleased to say that the greatest Sherlockians and Holmesians of the United States, Europe, and Asia took my side. It was all in good fun, of course.

  “Now, Sir Stephen Fresch has invited me to engage him in a more formal debate - in person.”

  “Where?”

  “London. I am inclined to accept. King’s College would make an excellent venue.”

  Mac was already scheduled to be in London in June for a visit to King’s College London, where St. Benignus was sending some popular culture students in an exchange program.

  “I think I can do something with that,” I said, thinking of a press release.

  “Yes,” said Mac, “I think this would be a spot of interesting publicity for St. Benignus.”

  That sounded innocent enough. I had no idea of the danger I was in until it was too late.

  That Sunday, the subject of Mac and Kate’s trip to London came up during brunch. I’d been eating with the McCabes after Mass almost every week for years. Their house is a thirty-second walk from my carriage house apartment above their garage. Now that Lynda and I were engaged, she was part of this Sunday tradition as well.

  “I’ve been all over Europe but never to the British Isles,” Lynda said conversationally.

  Kate put down her fork, her green eyes shining. “You should go with us!”

  I chuckled. “Too bad we already have honeymoon plans.”

  “But we’re not going to London until a week after your wedding,” Kate said, excitement building in her voice. “You could join us there after your time in Italy. You’ll be so close it would be a shame not to do it. We’d have so much fun together!”

  She looked at Lynda, all bright-eyed and enthusiastic. Lynda smiled back. I think that’s when the deal was sealed, but at least my spouse-to-be asked me about it. “What do you think, darling?”

  Hey, sure, I’d love to spend half my honeymoon with my sister and my best friend. Who wouldn’t? Can you come, too, Lynda?

&n
bsp; “Sounds expensive,” I said lamely.

  Lynda rolled her eyes.

  “And that’s a long time for me to be away from work,” I added.

  “Ah, but you could be working part of the time.” All eyes turned to Mac. “This is a perfect opportunity for you to interview some of the St. Benignus students in our exchange program and some of the King’s College teachers.”

  “You mean like for press releases, alumni magazine articles, blog posts, stories in the campus paper, that kind of thing?” Lynda said.

  “Yep, that’s what Uncle Jeff does!” Brian said. He may be eight, the youngest of the McCabe children, but he’s going on sixteen or so.

  “Precisely.” Mac glowed. “At the very least, Jefferson, you could visit London on ‘company time,’ so to speak. Perhaps you could also negotiate for St. Benignus to recompense you for some of your expenses.”

  “With Ralph?” I gasped. “You’re hallucinating.”

  Ralph Pendergast, who holds the purse strings to my office in his capacity as provost and vice president for academic affairs, hates the popular culture program. And he’s none too fond of me. The chances that he would approve a farthing for a trip to London by me to promote Mac’s department were about equal to my chances of winning the Ohio lottery - and I never buy a ticket.

  “Wait a minute,” Kate said. “Aren’t you guys always complaining that when the board of trustees says jump, Ralph asks how high on the way up?” It was a rhetorical question, so she didn’t wait for an answer. “My friend Rosalie Hawthorne’s father, Josiah Gamble, just got appointed to the board. I’m sure he could be helpful with Ralph.”

  Josiah Gamble was the current patriarch of the family that owns Gamble Bank & Trust Co. The building on campus in which Ralph’s office is located was named after his great-grandfather.

  So that’s how, in early June, Lynda and I found ourselves flying from Venice to London on a Fresch Air flight. There had been a debate of sorts in the McCabe house that day at Sunday brunch and I had lost it.

  “I wish I had one of those little foreign phrase books to translate from American to English,” I told Lynda as we buckled ourselves in for the short haul. “All I know is ‘What ho!’ and ‘Top hole, old bean!’”

  “Which I’m sure you’ll say at every opportunity. Don’t worry, Jeff.” She patted me on the arm. “You’ll have Mac to translate, just like you had me in Italy.”

  “I’d rather have you.”

  And so forth.

  Chapter Three

  Welcome to London

  We arrived in London the day after the end of Queen Elizabeth’s four-day jubilee party, celebrating her remarkable sixty years on the throne. We’d watched a little of the celebrations on TV in Venice, the only place in Italy where we had a television in our room. We hadn’t missed TV much in Rome and Florence, being otherwise occupied.

  On the way in to our London hotel from Stansted Airport, I noticed that the remnants of the revelry had been largely cleaned up already. Union Jacks still hung from many of the shops, though. Back home I’d call them stores, but here they were shops.

  Londoners must have been already thinking about their next big moment.

  “Too bad we’re not going to be here for the summer Olympics,” I told Lynda.

  She smiled knowingly. “Ha! You just want to watch the beach volleyball.”

  Hey, those girls are talented athletes.

  “Oh, is that an Olympic sport?”

  “As if you didn’t know.”

  When we caught up to Mac and Kate at the King Charles Hotel, we found out that we already had dinner plans.

  “We are dining at the Sherlock Holmes Pub,” Mac announced. I could have guessed. He already owned a sweatshirt from the place.

  “Cool!” Lynda said. She had developed an unexpected affection for Sherlock Holmes by reading some of the stories in Italian out of a book she bought in Rome. It would be ungracious of me to resent this, since her inexplicable fascination did help her solve a murder and a theft in the Eternal City. But that’s her story, and some day she’ll tell it herself.[2]

  “And we shall not be alone,” Mac added. “Welles Faro is meeting us there. I thought you would be intrigued to meet him, Lynda.”

  “Sure!”

  As editorial director for Grier Ohio NewsGroup, a division of the giant Grier Media Corp., Lynda supervises and coaches news gathering for all of the company’s small-town daily newspapers in Ohio. Before that, she had been news editor of The Erin Observer & News-Ledger. By Mac’s reckoning, she and Faro were in the same field. I wasn’t sure they were even playing the same game.

  After lunch at a little place called Speedy’s Sandwich Bar & Café and a spin around London town on a tour bus, we changed our clothes for dinner that night. Lynda looked smashing in a short, pale blue dress with a bright yellow sunflower design, which she filled out very nicely below the V-neck. Her curly, dark honey hair was pulled behind her ears to reveal blue and gold earrings. I was glad she hadn’t gone Victorian on me. Can we go back to our room now?

  The Sherlock Holmes Pub on Northumberland Street has a bustling bar on the first floor, which the English call the ground floor, and a restaurant on the second floor, which the English call the first floor. “Why can’t they get anything right?” I muttered as Mac explained this on the way up the stairs. Lynda rolled her eyes.

  The first thing I noticed in the restaurant was a replica of the Holmes and Watson bachelor pad at 221B Baker Street. It seemed authentic enough to me, right down to the wax dummy with a bullet hole in its head from “The Adventure of the Empty House.” I’d learned more than I wanted to know about that story back when Mac solved a murder among Sherlockians in Erin.

  Faro was waiting for us. My first impression of the Anglo-American journalist was that Mac may have outgunned him in the pages of Sherlockian and Holmesian journals, but Faro won the beard-growing contest. It extended several inches below his chin. The hair on his head was quite a mop, too. From the salt-and-pepper color, I figured him at maybe a couple of decades older than Mac’s forty.

  He stood as he saw us heading his way, but not very tall. “Sebastian McCabe! We meet at last. And high time.” He put out his hand for a good shake, just to prove he was still an American. “Welcome to London.” The sleeves of his brown sport coat were too long for his arms.

  Mac made the introductions as we positioned ourselves around the table. “I follow you daily on The Daily Eye website,” he told Faro once that ritual was out of the way. “I think of you as a twenty-first century Langdale Pike. I mean that as a compliment.”

  Faro didn’t look complimented.

  My sister must have read the question mark on my face. “Langdale Pike was a gossip columnist who traded information with Holmes in ‘The Adventure of the Three Gables,’” she explained. Kate, pulled to the dark side by my brother-in-law long ago, is a member of the Adventuresses of Sherlock Holmes.

  “Gossip may be defined as idle talk or rumor,” Faro said. “I deal in neither. I break more real news than any journalist in London.”

  “Especially since News of the World went down in that hacking scandal,” Mac said.

  “That was big news all over the world,” Lynda said, “and it hasn’t been all mopped up yet, has it?”

  “By no means,” Faro agreed. “Inquiries are ongoing. But the scandal has already cost the commissioner and one of the assistant commissioners of Scotland Yard their jobs. And it was all so bloody stupid. I didn’t need to hack any phones to get where I am, just hard work. I have sources everywhere - secretaries, maids, disgruntled ex-employees, and my young Fleet Street Irregulars as well as contacts in the top of government, police, entertainment, and the arts. I get out and about all day long. I’m sure you know how it’s done, Ms. Teal. Or is it Ms. Cody?”

  Actually it’
s Teal on the job, Cody at home. But it’s not my place to say so. Pretend I’m not even here.

  “‘Lynda’ will do fine,” Lynda told Faro. “And, yes, I do know how it’s done. I was a working journalist before I became an editor.” That used to be my gag, until it wore out its welcome. It’s a load of bovine excrement, of course, because Lynda will never stop being a working journalist.

  “Langdale Pike, by contrast, spent his days hanging out in the bow window of a club on St. James’s Street,” Mac added. “Doesn’t your Binomial Theorists of London meet at a club near St. James’s Street, Welles?”

  Faro’s eyebrows shot up. “Yes, it’s Pall Mall. How did you know that?”

  Mac looked like the cat that ate a cage full of canaries. “I have sources, too.”

  A waitress took our drink orders. Did you ever try to get caffeine-free Diet Coke at a pub in London? Don’t bother. I asked for a Fuller’s London Pride instead. When in London... They did have bourbon, but the choice was somewhat limited (one brand, and not her favorite), so Lynda ordered the house brew, Sherlock Holmes Ale.

  “You’re a very clever man, Professor McCabe,” Faro said after some further random talk. “Almost too clever. I’ve read about your amateur sleuthing in Cody’s books, of course. I couldn’t help but think about Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, another mystery writer who was quite successful as a detective in real life. But I have to say I’ve been equally impressed by your literary detective work. I’ve been re-reading some of your Sherlockian scholarship. You did a fine job with that Hound of the Baskervilles controversy a decade or so ago.”

  Incapable of blushing or appearing modest, Mac nodded his thanks while the drinks were distributed.

  “I’ve got to read The Hound of the Baskervilles,” Lynda said after a long sip of her ale. “Everybody’s heard of it. So what was the controversy?”

  Kate jumped in. “There’s always been some question as to how much of the plot and writing came from Arthur Conan Doyle and how much from his friend Bertram Fletcher Robinson,” Kate said. “Remember, Holmes isn’t even on the scene for a good chunk of the book. Around the turn of the current century an alleged author jumped the shark by claiming that ACD stole the plot from Robinson, committed adultery with his wife, and blackmailed her into killing Robinson.”