The Secret Files of Sherlock Holmes (3 page)

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. He’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.’

‘Then what about
The
Times
?’
I asked eagerly. ‘I thought, when Mrs Bennet mentioned it, it seemed an odd choice of paper for a head-waiter to read.’

‘Ah,
The
Times
!
One should certainly never dismiss
The
Times.
A most worthy publication,’ Holmes remarked with an abstracted air. He had wandered across the room to examine a pair of french windows which led into the back garden before turning his attention to the two drawers of a large and ugly sideboard which occupied the adjoining wall. ‘Ah! What have we here? Take a look at these, Watson.’

He handed me a small bundle of printed sheets.

‘They’re music-hall programmes,’ I replied, glancing through them briefly. ‘The Tivoli. Collins’s. Oh, I say, Holmes! Look at this one. Lottie Lynne was playing at the Alhambra in February. I wish I had known. I might have gone to hear her. Such a delightful voice!’

‘I have noticed before, Watson, that you have a predilection for small, blonde young ladies,’ Holmes commented with an
amused air, putting the programmes back into the drawer and shutting it. ‘I myself prefer the acrobats. Well, I think I have seen all I need down here. I suggest we examine the rest of the house and then the garden.’

The house was so small that the search took a mere ten minutes, Holmes only pausing to open Phillimore’s wardrobe, still containing his abandoned clothes, but apart from the brief remark ‘Roomy, I see!’, he made no other observation.

The garden was smaller even than the house, a mere few square yards of lawn bordered by narrow flower-beds, all neatly kept, and surrounded on all sides by an eight-foot-high fence which had additional two-foot lengths of trellis nailed to the top of it, making escape by that route impossible, as Mr Nelson had pointed out.

There was not even a potting-shed nor a decent-sized bush where a man might conceal himself. Nevertheless, Holmes stalked all round its perimeter before examining the passage which ran along the side of the house.

It was a narrow path, squeezed in between the building on one side and a continuation of the fence on the other. At the far end, it ran at an oblique angle to join the tiled path which led from the gate to the front door. At the near end, it opened out on to a small paved area outside the kitchen door where presumably tradesmen would make their deliveries.

We left number seventeen Laburnum Grove shortly afterwards, Holmes striding off so briskly down the road towards Lavender Hill that I was hard put to keep up with him. At the bottom of the hill, we turned into the main thoroughfare, where Holmes hailed a cab.

When Holmes had given instructions to the driver and the hansom had started off, he turned to me to ask unexpectedly, ‘Tell me, Watson, what would you say would be the lifetime’s ambition of a hotel or restaurant employee?’

‘To retire, I should imagine, and never have to fold another napkin again.’

‘But suppose, like Phillimore, he was the type who wished to rise in the world?’

‘Well then, to own the establishment in which he’d worked and watch other people fold the napkins.’

‘Exactly, Watson!’ Holmes said with an air of satisfaction and, settling himself back against the upholstery, folded his arms and closed his eyes, his lean, aquiline features taking on an expression of such intense concentration that I knew better than to interrupt his train of thought.

The silence continued until, as we were rattling across Batter-sea Bridge, he roused himself to remark, ‘You know, Watson, there are several unusual elements in this case but the one which strikes me as most extraordinary of all is the timing of Mr Phillimore’s disappearance. Why Tuesday? Why not Monday or Friday? If one wished to vanish, it would seem more logical to choose either the beginning or the end of the week. As far as I can ascertain, nothing remarkable happened on Tuesday morning to make Phillimore decide it was time to disappear.’