The Disappearance of Mr James Phillimore

by Dan Andriacco

  “I had never heard of the site until Faro mentioned it,” Mac said. “Why is it so popular?”

  “I guess its political slant appeals to a certain niche - very left-wing. But my sources tell me the real popularity driver is Nettie’s colorful personality. She pops up on The Today Show and Good Morning America all the time, as well Daybreak here in England.”

  “Is she the woman under the big floppy hat?” I said.

  Lynda nodded. “That’s the one. I think it’s kind of a marketing gimmick.”

  Now I remembered her. It seemed to me that Nettie got hauled out whenever the morning shows were looking for somebody whose views were slightly to the left of Vladimir Lenin.

  “Apparently Nettie thinks her whole deal is a big embarrassment to Phillimore, whose politics are way over on the other end,” Lynda said, “and that’s why she does it. At her last birthday - her sixtieth - she had a big bash attended by like-minded politicos on both sides of the Atlantic. Even the head of the Labour Party showed up. Nettie argued with him loudly about British foreign policy. I’m told that was widely reported in the media, from The Daily Eye to CNN.”

  With all this intel, I felt well prepped by the time we arrived at the refurbished Georgian house in Kensington where Nettie Phillimore maintained both her home and her office. Although not the size of Headley Hall, it was big enough for several employees to slave away on the ground floor.

  A female administrative assistant type, cute but successfully hiding it behind glasses and pigtails, answered the front door. She efficiently led us to Mrs. Phillimore’s office beyond a set of double doors. If you didn’t know you were in a home, you wouldn’t know you were in a home. The square room - probably a former library - was huge and very Fortune 500-looking, but with a touch of elegance provided by real paintings on the walls that would have looked at home in the National Gallery.

  Lynnette Crosby Phillimore, sitting at a laptop computer behind her desk and looking dwarfed by her surroundings, couldn’t have been taller than about five-five and nicely proportioned. I couldn’t guess which Mrs. Phillimore spent more time in the gym, but I bet it was a close thing.

  Nettie was dressed in a business-like but not severe tailored suit of blue skirt and jacket, a soft white cotton blouse with a scoop neck, and a simple gold chain necklace. She wore small pearl earrings. Trademark floppy hat nowhere to be seen, her hair was dyed blond and pulled back in a tight bun. Her roots were dark, not gray like Popcorn’s. When I shifted my attention to her face, I realized that the full lips and wide eyes seemed familiar. She bore more than a passing resemblance to her successor, but in an older model. As I imagined Nettie with her natural dark hair, the similarity increased. She was still an attractive woman, never mind the mileage.

  She looked up from the computer as her administrative assistant announced us and then quickly closed the door behind her.

  “Thanks for seeing us,” Lynda said.

  “I always have time for the news media, honey, but not a lot today,” Nettie said, standing up. “I have a guest coming for dinner - and cocktail hour in this house begins promptly at four.” What, no afternoon tea? Oh, yeah. You’re an American. “So you have an hour. I’m asking the first question. Why the hell does it take four people to interview me? Am I that important? And don’t try to bullshit a bullshitter because it won’t work.”

  I liked her right away. I could tell from Lynda’s smile that she did, too.

  “I was hoping you wouldn’t mind that I brought my husband and in-laws along,” Lynda said. “We’re traveling together. This was supposed to be a vacation.”

  “Supposed to be? You mean before my ex got himself killed?”

  “Actually, my vacation kind of ended when your ex disappeared and then his fraud came to light. Grier Media was interested in me reporting on that from the get-go because we don’t have a London bureau anymore. Budget cuts.”

  “You’re that Sebastian McCabe, aren’t you?” Nettie asked my brother-in-law abruptly.

  “Guilty, madam.”

  “I’ve been trying to remember where I knew you from. I finally remembered that I saw your picture in The Daily Eye. I read that rag religiously, and a damned poor religion it is.”

  If Nettie hadn’t started yapping as soon as we walked in, I’m sure Lynda would have introduced all of us. She did so now as we all sat down in plush chairs.

  “You know from The Eye that Jefferson and I met your former husband only briefly, the day he disappeared, and Lynda not at all,” Mac told Nettie. “You have our sincere sympathy on his passing.”

  She smiled wryly. “I bet you say that to all his wives.” Well, now that you mention it... “I appreciate your sympathy and I assure you that it’s warranted.”

  Lynda was scribbling like mad. “You were still in love with your former husband?”

  Her face did calisthenics as she pondered that one. “Hmm. I haven’t really thought about that. But I am sorry that he’s not going to spend the next hundred and fifty years in prison, watching me do perfectly well without him.” That sounds plausible. But it also didn’t sound like she’d moved on, as her son had insisted.

  Lynda pounced. “Just for the record, did you know that Phillimore Investments was a house of cards, a Ponzi scheme, either during or after your marriage?”

  “I’m pretty sure my lawyer would say I shouldn’t answer any questions about that because we don’t know what my liability might be, or even whether there could be some recovery to investors coming out of my hide.” She shrugged. “But I say, ‘What the hell.’ The lawyer works for me, I don’t work for her. So I’ll answer. The fact is, I had no idea when we were married that James was involved in funny business. I always thought he was a genius, just like everybody else did.” She laughed harshly. “Maybe we thought that because he kept telling us so.”

  “You said ‘when we were married,’” Mac pointed out. “Are we to infer that you learned different after the divorce?”

  She sighed. “I might as well tell you that, too. I don’t see how it could hurt. I got a call a couple of months ago from a friend of mine, a really smart cookie who had some of his money invested with James. I won’t tell you his name, which would be familiar to you, but that doesn’t matter anyway. He’d become suspicious because the returns being reported to him were too high for the kind of investments he was supposed to be in. I told him to call Scotland Yard. I don’t know for sure that’s what brought James down, but I’d like to think so.”

  “Do you have any idea who would have wanted to kill him?” Lynda asked.

  “I’ve been racking my brains over that one, honey. His demise sure doesn’t help me or my son, and I don’t know anybody that it would help financially. There must have been another motive, like hatred or revenge. Or maybe he really did kill himself.”

  Maybe that was it. Maybe Phillimore gave himself a sedative and drank heavily to work himself up to suicide, and maybe the whole drink-and-gun-both-in-the-right-hand thing was a function of somebody disturbing the scene before the crime photos were taken.

  But I could see in his deep brown eyes that Mac didn’t believe that for a minute.

  Nettie’s cell phone rang - an irritating flutter up and down the scale. She pulled it out of her pocket and glanced at the name of the caller.

  “I’d better take this. Excuse me.” I gave her points for the apology.

  “Hello, Hillary. Fine thanks. And you? Good. I suppose you want to bitch about my column today? Uh-huh. Well, I didn’t expect you to agree, honey. Don’t give me that ‘real world’ bullshit, Hill. If you can’t change the real world, what’s the point of being a superpower? I disagree, but let’s have a few drinks and talk about it when you’re in town, okay? You do that. Give Bill my best.”

  Nettie hung up. “Sorry about that.” Hey, she calls me all the time, too! The woman can’t run S
tate without me.

  I hoped my jaw wasn’t hanging open. Mac didn’t even acknowledge the interruption.

  “In my short acquaintance with Mr. Phillimore, he seemed quite an engaging personality,” my brother-in-law said. “He also seems to have had the ability to make people believe in him. I suppose that made him both a successful con man and a convincing fiction writer.”

  “Fiction writer? What do you mean?”

  “I guess you wouldn’t know that your ex-husband wrote a Sherlock Holmes pastiche for a contest,” I explained, just to exercise my vocal chords. “He even won.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “Really? How about that? James always read a lot, but he never said anything about writing fiction as far as I can remember.” Her handsome face took on a wistful look. “When we were young he did write me love letters. He wasn’t very good at it, but I didn’t care at the time. I still have them somewhere. Maybe that was fiction, too.”

  Nettie looked at her Cartier watch.

  “Thank you very much for your time, Mrs. Phillimore,” Lynda said. “We won’t cut into your cocktail hour. You’ve been a great help.” Oh, really? Nettie was good copy, but if she’d said anything to help find her husband’s killer I sure didn’t hear it.

  “Just don’t forget to include the web address of The Net in your story - sixteen million hits so far and growing strong.”

  As we moved to leave, Kate paused by a painting that looked like the cover of a Jane Austen novel, a portrait of a woman with rosy cheeks, an enigmatic smile, and elegant dress, posed against a vague landscape.

  “I like your taste in art,” Kate told Nettie.

  “That’s my favorite painting in this room. Sometimes I wonder what she’s smiling about, and sometimes I think I know.” Nettie smiled herself. “Thanks for the compliment, but my taste has nothing to do with it being here. The art came with the house. I leased the whole shebang as a package from a minor royal who took a drubbing when stocks and everything else fell out of bed in ’08. After the divorce, it didn’t seem wise to do anything too permanent, like buying a house. But I like it here.”

  By this time we were at the front door. Nettie opened it to find a find a man poised as if to ring the doorbell. With carefully coiffed light hair, blue eyes, and a blond mustache, he was handsome but a bit short-changed on the height side, being only medium. His black suit fit as if it was made for him, which I’m sure it was.

  It took me a few moments to figure out where I’d seen him before, but I had it nailed just before Nettie said, “Oh, hello, Aiden. Right on time.” She waived in his direction. “This is Aiden Kingsley, M.P.” She hurriedly pronounced our names as well.

  “We’ve met.” I said it to Nettie, not to the M.P., so it wouldn’t be obvious that I was reminding him of one of those social encounters that public figures are expected to remember and usually don’t. “Welles Faro introduced us at the debate Sunday night.”

  “Oh, yes, of course. Good to see you all again.” His upper lip wasn’t the only thing that was stiff about him. He was trying hard to be cordial, but the effort was taxing him.

  “Aiden is one of the Labour Party’s most promising young back benchers.” By young, she meant that she had him by about twenty years. Lynnette Crosby Phillimore, cougar? I filed that notion under “Possible.” “He’s also a damned good novelist.”

  “I especially enjoyed Abbey Road,” Mac said. “It may be the best novel about England in the Sixties yet written.” You mean best out of, what, maybe five? This cannot be a big genre.

  “You’re very kind.” Kingsley was politician-smooth.

  “I am particularly interested in the Sixties myself. Perhaps you have read my monograph comparing Don McLean’s song ‘American Pie’ to T.S. Eliot’s ‘The Wasteland’?”

  “Er, not yet. As you might imagine, I was stopping by to offer Nettie my sympathy.” Not to mention knock back a few cocktails, dinner, candlelight, soft music... Sometimes I just don’t know when to turn off my imagination. It was getting way ahead of the facts in evidence. I’m sure that Mac could quote something from Sherlock Holmes on that score.

  “You’ve been a good friend, Aiden,” Nettie said warmly. I bet! There I go again.

  The novelist-politician shrugged that off and addressed Mac. “I understand you’re making inquiries into this sad business. Any luck?”

  “Luck is always a help,” Mac said, “but I do not depend on it. So far we have few leads, I am quite pleased to report. ‘There is nothing more stimulating than a case where everything goes against you.’”

  Kingsley seemed more puzzled than charmed by this bit of contrived paradox. “If you don’t mind, then, I’ll wish you luck all the same. Sounds like you need it.”

  Chapter Twenty

  The Unsingular Suicide

  “I like the way she fessed up about the paintings, not taking the credit for them,” Kate said a block or so from the house.

  “She does come across as an honest woman, doesn’t she?” Lynda said.

  “Or somebody trying to seem like one,” I added for no particular reason. “What are you thinking, Mac?”

  “I am thinking that both of Phillimore’s wives, persons who presumably knew him quite well, expressed doubt about his ability to write a piece of fiction.”

  “And why is that important?” Lynda asked.

  “Perhaps it is not. However, it nags at me that ‘The Adventure of the Magic Umbrella’ not only pointed me toward the priest hole but contained a reference to the singular suicide. The latter is both a chapter title in one of my books and a rather fair description of Phillimore’s death. And yet it was supposedly written by Phillimore himself!”

  While I was making nothing of that, Mac lit a cigar.

  “I am also thinking about the dog that did not bark, metaphorically speaking,” he added. “When I threw a quote from Sherlock Holmes at Aiden Kingsley - ‘There is nothing more stimulating,’ etc.- he showed no reaction at all. He is a member of the exclusive Binomial Theorists. Most Sherlockians or Holmesians would be quick to respond by saying, ‘Hound of the Baskervilles, chapter five,’ or something of the sort. He did not. I find that puzzling.”

  I thought he was making a mountain out of a mosquito bite, but I suppressed a snort. “If you say so. The hard fact is that he’s sniffing around Phillimore’s ex-widow” - is there such a thing as an ex-widow? - “just two days after the murder. What do you make of that?”

  “Most likely that is mere vulgar intrigue between an ambitious politician and an attractive, albeit older, woman who possesses both wealth and political influence in substantial quantities. Kingsley’s novels have been justifiably praised, but neither great fame nor fortune has followed. However, I see no motive for him to kill Phillimore. His name was not on the list of victims; none of the Binomial Theorists were.”

  I had an answer to that, but before I could give it, Mac’s cell phone erupted into The Ride of the Valkyries, his oh-so-subtle ringtone.

  “Yes? Oh, hello, Professor. Right now? Yes, we have just left the first Mrs. Phillimore. All right, then. We shall see you shortly.”

  He disconnected. “That was Althea Ralston. She has something to tell us, and she would rather do it in person.”

  “I’ll tag along,” Lynda declared. Maybe she wanted to check out the Ralston tattoo. We didn’t take a show of hands, but there seemed to be a silent agreement that all four of us would go. It would only be Kate’s second visit to King’s College. As we boarded the Underground, I picked up the Aiden Kingsley conversation where we had left off.

  “He may not have had a reason to do away with Phillimore,” I said, “but maybe Nettie wasn’t as eager to see old James rot in prison as she claimed. Maybe she wanted to see him six feet under. And maybe her new boyfriend was happy to oblige in return for a lift up in his career, in addition to whatever
other favors might be involved.”

  Hey, that’s not half bad! I warmed to my own theory as I talked it out. I was on a roll.

  “Kingsley could have been the accomplice who helped Phillimore to disappear. They knew each other from the Binomial Theorists. Suppose Kingsley told him that if he laid low for a while he, Kingsley, could help him get to a country without an extradition treaty with the UK. That would explain how the killer knew he was at the Langham.”

  “And Nettie knew from her unidentified friend - the investor - that something was rotten in the state of Phillimore, and that Scotland Yard was investigating,” Lynda said, speaking rapidly. Excitement grew in her husky voice. She was buying it, at least as an idea with potential. “That gave Kingsley the lever to approach him as a friend wanting to help out. He could have claimed to know about the investigation from his political connections, or even from Assistant Commissioner Madigan.”

  “But why all the drama of the disappearance?” Kate asked. “Why not just kill him in some simpler way?” That was a question that never would have occurred to her husband, who serves up far more complicated plots in his Damon Devlin mystery novels. “Besides, I think a woman scorned would rather see the ex disgraced and imprisoned.”

  “I am inclined to agree,” said Mac. “And yet, I still wonder why the metaphorical dog did not bark.”

  Althea Ralston awaited us in her office, her usually pale cheeks flushed with excitement. She popped up like a jack-in-the-box when she spotted us through her doorway. This time she was wearing black slacks and a tight-fitting sleeveless mock turtleneck - gray, of course. It struck me that she would have looked right at home in an Emma Peel jumpsuit with lots of zippers and rings.

  “I knew there was something I was trying to remember,” she said without preamble. No “nice to see you again” for her. “Phillimore’s suicide sounded too familiar. Then I remembered a name and I Googled it.” She handed Mac a printout. “This is a news story about a man named Peter Carstairs. He killed himself four years ago in exactly the same way as Phillimore, a gun to the head, at the age of thirty-two. And here’s the angle: He was a director, what you would call a vice president, at Phillimore Investments.”