The Disappearance of Mr James Phillimore

by Dan Andriacco

  He regarded us with puzzlement, as if something in his cupboard was out of place.

  “Good afternoon, Trout!” Mac said. Jolly good to see you again, old bean. “You will not be saying ‘you’re expected’ this time, because we are not. I was hoping that Ms. O’Toole was home and willing to spare us a few moments.”

  “I’ll see, sir. One moment.”

  Instead of inviting us in, this time he let us stand outside in the drizzle. The temperature was about sixty degrees. Lynda nuzzled up against me under our umbrella. I’ve had worse waits.

  After ten minutes or so, Trout opened the door again. “Ms. O’Toole will see you now.” His handsome face, impassive as ever, gave no clue as to whether he approved or not. “Follow me, please.”

  I don’t know what the room to which Trout took us had been built for originally - game room? servants’ dining hall? - but now it was outfitted as a gym. When I say “outfitted,” I mean that it had all the bells and whistles of Nouveau Shape, where Lynda and I work out back home, and then some.

  Heather O’Toole, clad in denim cut-offs and a gray and red Manchester United T-shirt, was running hard on a treadmill. Her black hair was gathered into a ponytail sticking out the back of a white Nike cap and bouncing along behind her. Behind the big lenses and dark frames of the glasses she was wearing, her eyes were their presumably natural brown, not violet. She was glistening with sweat, which detracted not one bit from her wholesome attractiveness. When she saw us, she slowed down to a stop.

  “Now what?” she asked. She was either bemused or irritated by our return, but I couldn’t decide which. She was an actress, after all. I was determined to keep that in mind.

  “First of all, we would like to express our genuine sympathy at the death of your husband,” Mac said. “As you know, Jefferson and I met him only once. Even in that short encounter his joie de vivre was quite apparent.”

  Roger Phillimore had rejected Mac’s offer of sympathy, but not his young stepmother.

  “Thanks.” She grabbed a towel and started wiping off the sweat. “You can go now, Bernie.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Trout faded away.

  “It’s been quite a shock, all of this,” Heather said. “First, the man disappears. Then, I find out that he was some kind of master swindler. Before I can even process that, he kills himself.” She sat down on a weight-lifting bench. “I’m trying to work out the tension. Besides, I’m due back on location in Barbados in three days and I’d better be in shape for the bikini scenes.”

  Absolutely!

  “I think you’ll be all right,” Lynda said dryly. If she felt overdressed in a white crepe dress under her khaki raincoat while the Hollywood beauty in front of her was wearing gym wear, she gave no hint of it. Au contraire, as Mac might say, she seemed quite pleased with herself as she pulled a reporter’s notebook out of her purse.

  Mac, meanwhile, nodded sympathetically... before giving Heather O’Toole a verbal kick in the head. “When last we spoke, your references to your husband were quite negative. You even said if he were on an island somewhere you’d kill him.”

  “Yeah, I know. I almost feel bad about that. I was really pissed at him. All the investors must be, but I had a lot more invested than anybody else. He was my husband, for crap’s sake.” Maybe she realized what that sounded like, given that his body was barely cold, because she added: “But I sure as hell didn’t want him to kill himself. I never imagined that he would.”

  “Perhaps he did not.”

  “What?” Her surprise seemed genuine.

  “We have just left New Scotland Yard. Inspector Neville Heath is conducting what he expected to be a routine investigation into your husband’s apparent suicide. However, there are several inconsistencies surrounding Mr. Phillimore’s death that could point in another direction.”

  “That’s hard to believe,” Heather said. “I mean, I’ve never known anybody who was murdered.”

  “I did not say murder,” Mac pointed out. “Why would you assume that the alternative to suicide is murder and not accident?”

  Heather stood up. “People don’t shoot themselves in the head by accident unless they’re playing Russian roulette. I don’t know whether James owned a gun, but if he did, I can’t see him playing with it. That’s not the kind of risk he took. When he gambled, he did it for big stakes with the odds on his side. And he only gambled in business.”

  “He must have been interesting to live with,” Lynda said.

  “You have no idea. He was dynamic, exciting.” Her eyes glistened. Of course, actresses know how to do that. “If you think I married an old man, you’re way wrong. I’m still mad at the bastard for what he did, but when I get over that I’m going to be damned sorry that he’s gone. We actually had a pretty good thing going. Don’t believe anything you might see on Access Hollywood.”

  “Of course not,” Mac assured her. “A woman of your, er, stature is inevitably a gossip magnet. For example, someone suggested to us that you might be romantically involved with Mr. Trout.”

  She laughed, the kind of laugh that in a movie is sometimes followed by a hearty slap. But she kept her hands to herself. “Bernie? That’s rich! I’m not his type.”

  Mac raised an eyebrow.

  “I mean, I’m a woman.” You could say that. “Bernie plays for the other team. He has no sexual interest in women. You’ve been talking to that sniveling Roger Phillimore, haven’t you? I knew it! I can see it in your faces. That twerp! He’s just jealous that his father took me away from him.”

  Lynda fumbled her notebook, almost dropping it. “You mean you dated Roger before you married his father?”

  “Yeah, for a few months. It wasn’t that serious. At least I wasn’t. I met him when his company bought the studio that made one of my early movies. It was one of those leveraged buyout things. He is handsome, I have to admit that, but dull as dishwater. Nothing like James. When Roger introduced me to his father there were sparks between us right away. Things just happened. I traded up.” Wow, family dinners must have been a little tense after that.

  “Nice,” Lynda muttered.

  “Roger’s been spreading gossip about me ever since,” Heather said. “He’s a sore loser, for starters. Plus, he wanted his father’s money, and he thought I was going to wind up with it. Hell, now I don’t even know if anything will be left after the smoke clears. I’m expecting massive lawsuits from James’s investors over that Ponzi stuff.”

  “Undoubtedly the situation will be quite complex,” Mac said. “As heir to the estate, you - ”

  “Actually, I don’t know whether I am or not,” Heather interrupted. “James never told me. Under the prenuptial agreement I signed, I wouldn’t get anything if we divorced within five years of our marriage. I’ve always assumed his will carried a similar provision, but I don’t know for sure. And I don’t think it matters now that his investors are likely to get whatever assets he had. If anybody benefitted from my husband’s death, it wasn’t me.”

  “Suppose you were the detective,” I said. “Who would you put under the bright lights?”

  “Roger,” she said without hesitation. “Or maybe his mother. They must have hated James for leaving her. Killing him might not have gotten them any money, but the psychological satisfaction would be off the charts.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  The Silver Fox

  “I need a nap,” Lynda said as we approached our hotel.

  Be still my beating heart!

  “I’m so tired I can’t keep my eyes open.”

  Oh, that kind of nap.

  “There will be no nap for you, Jefferson,” Mac said. “I am sure you remember that you are going with me to King’s College London this afternoon.”

  “How could I forget?” It’s not like I’ve had anything else on my mind.
/>
  “Well, have fun,” Lynda yawned. “I’m going to write and send my story, then sack out.”

  Actually, she had already slept on the train, leaving me to ponder in silence what we had so far:

  Arthur James Phillimore, Holmesian and swindler extraordinaire, had staged his own dramatic disappearance with the help of an accomplice. Why? Presumably he’d known that Scotland Yard - always portrayed as a bunch of dolts in the Sherlock Holmes stories - was on to his Ponzi scheme.

  While his disappearance was causing an international stir, he’d been holed up in the Langham Hotel, a luxury hostelry with a venerable history stretching back to Victorian days and the Holmes Canon. But he didn’t enjoy it long because he got a bullet in his head.

  Mac was convinced that the suicide note Phillimore seemed to have sent to his wife was a fake produced by a speaker of American English. The dead man’s son, Roger Phillimore, pointed the finger at his younger stepmother, who is an American in addition to being gorgeous and famous. Okay, forget the last two adjectives; not relevant. Heather O’Toole thought her stepson, who was also an ex-boyfriend aced out by his father, was a dandy murder suspect, and so was his mother.

  I toyed with casting Heather for the role of killer just because it would make a heck of a story. She could have helped him escape, too. No, that’s not true. She was in Barbados on Thursday when Phillimore went missing. But she flew back to England right away, so she could have shot him. Wait a minute - she didn’t have to. She could have had somebody do her dirty work for her. Trout was handy.

  All of this was swirling around my head when we left Lynda at the hotel, where she would write her story and then grab a snooze. I’m sure that data was being processed in the McCabe brain as well, except that he would be two or three steps ahead of me.

  King’s College London has five campuses. The School of Arts & Humanities, along with several other schools, is housed in the Strand Building, within walking distance of our home-away-from-home. The debate had been held there. It’s a nine-story, ultra-modern poured concrete building taking up most of a London city block. The shop peddling school ties, mugs, T-shirts, and all that is housed in an adjacent older structure.

  “I am meeting Professor Ralston at two o’clock to discuss our exchange program,” Mac said. “Perhaps you would like to spend an hour or so gathering material and then join us.”

  “Perhaps,” I said, meaning yes.

  So we figured out where her office was (second floor), and then I went off on my own taking pictures of long hallways, close-ups of a Shakespeare bust, empty classrooms, etc. What I didn’t take pictures of was students because there weren’t any. The closest I got was a sign in an oak-framed display case saying, “Welcome Study Abroad Students!” I’d expected to find some study abroad students in summer session, like our kids back home.

  “Excuse me!” I hailed a fellow carrying a dirty mop that looked a lot like his head of gray hair. “I seem to have misplaced your students. Where are they?”

  The maintenance man chuckled. “On ’oliday since May.” He pronounced it My. “Summer School don’t start till July.”

  No students! How was I going to write a press release, an alumni magazine article, blog posts, and so forth about our students in London without talking to students? Damn Mac! I distinctly remembered that he mentioned me interviewing students. He should have known better.

  If I could have gotten my hands around his fat neck at that moment, I’d have wrung it. But that wouldn’t have solved my problem. I had to find a way to justify part of this English sojourn as a business trip for St. Benignus. Let’s see. The pictures I’d taken would help. And I’d already done a lot of Internet research on King’s College. I could talk to Ralston about our students coming here, and then back home I could interview St. Benignus students who were planning to cross the pond to study. Yes, that would work. I’d salvage the situation with a little Yankee ingenuity, no thanks to Mac.

  One thought of St. Benignus led to another. Before I knew it, homesickness was nudging me out of my daydreams of fratricide-in-law. I pulled out my phone and sent a text to Popcorn.

  JEFF: What’s up? Anything exciting going on?

  POPCORN: We’re just having breakfast at Daniel’s.

  JEFF: “We”?

  POPCORN: None of your business.

  Hmm. She never does breakfast with her gal pals. Could it be that my widowed administrative assistant had found romance outside those steamy novels by Rosamund DeLacey that she’s always reading? Age fifty at her birthday in a few days and determined to stop there, Popcorn is a pleasingly plump little package with dyed blond hair. Standing just under five feet tall, she’d be a great catch for some lucky guy. I’d long suspected that Oscar Hummel wanted to reel her in. But if she didn’t want to tell me “what’s on,” as they say in the UK, that was her business. I certainly wasn’t going to pry.

  Oscar doesn’t have a smartphone, just a dumb one, so I sent him an e-mail: “So, what’s new with you? Been out to breakfast lately? Having wonderful crime here in jolly old England. Wish you were here.”

  He’d get back to me eventually, maybe even before I got back home.

  Before I knew it, the hour was over and I presented myself at Professor Ralston’s second-floor office to rendezvous with Mac.

  Seeing Althea Ralston in her natural habitat, an office crammed with books, I had to wonder if she always dressed in black and shades of gray - she must have fifty of them! - to play off of her short white hair. This time she was wearing black teardrop earrings and a sleeveless black dress which showed off a tattoo of Minnie Mouse on her right shoulder. The dress had a high collar. I couldn’t see how short it was because she was sitting down, but I thought it would look good on Lynda.

  Mac turned around when I entered. “Ah, Jefferson, I trust you had a productive afternoon.”

  He was totally ignoring the daggers in my eyes.

  “Well, I had a curious incident with the students.”

  “But there are no students right now,” Ralston protested.

  “That was the curious incident, Professor.” Zing!

  “Touché, old boy,” Mac said heartily. “Hoisted by my own Sherlockian petard! At any rate, you arrive at a timely juncture. Professor Ralston was just propounding a most interesting theory.”

  “I don’t know that I would dignify it by calling it a theory,” she protested, standing up. Her dress was knee length. “It’s merely a conviction. Good to see you again, Jeff.”

  While we shook hands, Mac rumbled on. “She believes that Phillimore didn’t kill himself.”

  Taking my cue from Mac, I acted as though this were a totally new notion. “Really? How do you figure that?”

  “I’ve read more than twelve thousand mystery novels, and suicide is never suicide except in the rare instance where it looks like murder but it’s really suicide.”

  I chuckled. “Well, that certainly convinces me, but I think Scotland Yard is going to need a little more to go on.”

  “There is more, I just can’t remember it.” Mac cocked an eyebrow. “What I mean is that I almost remember something, but not quite. I’ve been soaking up all the details of this case, mostly from Faro’s articles in The Daily Eye. There’s something about Phillimore’s death that seems familiar. I just can’t put my finger on it. But I will.”

  Mac nodded. “Indubitably. Please let us know when you do.”

  Ralston leaned back in her chair, arms crossed, considering Mac. “You know Faro, right?”

  “We have corresponded for some time. I suppose I could claim to know him to a certain degree.”

  “Then maybe you can tell me something: He’s obviously very plugged in. What does he know about this case that he isn’t printing?”

  “So how was the Silver Fox dressed?” Lynda asked as we sat up in bed reading that
night.

  “She had a tattoo of Minnie Mouse right here.” I pointed to my right shoulder.

  “Is that all?”

  Incoming, incoming! Should I describe Ralston’s apparel in detail or pretend I didn’t notice?

  “Uh, no, she had clothes on. Let’s see. I think she was wearing a black dress.” I quickly moved on to relate Ralston’s confident assertion that Phillimore had been murdered, a conclusion apparently based on decades of reading mystery fiction. “And then she asked Mac what Faro knows that he hasn’t written. Of course, Mac hasn’t a clue.”

  “That’s a very interesting question, though. I wonder about that myself, darling. Faro is an American, after all, and Mac thinks an American wrote that suicide text. Two plus two...”

  I shook my head. “You’re getting five. Faro’s been writing British English professionally for about fifteen years. He’d never make the mistake of spelling a word American-style.”

  Solving one mystery in Rome obviously hadn’t turned my sweetheart into a super-sleuth.

  “I don’t like that guy,” she said. No kidding! “And I connected with some friends of mine on Fleet Street today. They tell me the rumor is that Faro left the U.S. under a cloud all those years ago. It had something to do with stealing voice mail messages to get a story. That bears looking into.”

  “You should do that.”

  I closed the book I’d been trying to read, a Max Allan Collins novel. This was the first chance Lynda and I had had to talk about what each of us had done since splitting up. At dinner earlier at Pizza Express, Mac had steered the conversation to Kate’s day at the gallery - possibly to avoid reminding me that I was trying to stay mad at him about the King’s College debacle. That was fine by me, since my head was ready to explode over the Phillimore case anyway. But Lynda had decided to reopen the subject for pillow talk.