The Disappearance of Daniel Question

'Not so, Watson. I made a serious error of thinking and an equally serious error of practice when I failed to identify that greasy rag left by the crossing-sweeper as an Old Chorlotian’s tie. Had I pursued my enquiries at the College I might have saved Smallfish’s life for the hangman. My enquiries of Scotland Yard were to confirm such points as I could.'

'You believe that he killed James Phillimore, then?' I said.

'He killed him or had him killed, and then was himself murdered because he was of no further use to the Black Hand.'

'But how came the real Phillimore to Welton Square?'

Holmes drew a telegram from the envelope which Robinson had given him. 'Here is the reply to an enquiry which I asked the Yard to send to our Consulate at Naples: ‘Person of that description brought here by nuns in 1902 with request for repatriation to England. Unable to establish identity or citizenship. Matter left to local religious charity.’ So poor Phillimore made his way home somehow and lived amongst the poorest of the poor. Who knows what dim recollection drew him to Welton Square and made him return to see, each day, the half-remembered face and hear the half-remembered voice of his mother?'

'Could the Yard confirm any more of your argument?'

'They were able to confirm what I suspected. That Smallfish was an assumed name, based upon the Sicilian ‘Pisciotto.’ It means ‘small fish,’ Watson, and the Black Hand use it in our sense of ‘small fry’ to refer to the petty criminals who carry out the organisation’s routine tasks. Frank Smallfish’s family may already have had connections with the brotherhood in the past.

'The Bank of England traced the stolen funds through France and Switzerland to an account in Naples, held in a false name and emptied before they traced it.'

'Then you have made your case,' I declared, 'apart from your belief that Smallfish killed Phillimore.'

He nodded, pleased as always by acknowledgement of his extraordinary talents. 'The Yard told me something else,' he said, 'and tomorrow, after a Turkish bath which, apart from your companionship, is the only good reason for visiting London, I shall show you.'

The following afternoon we stood in a great cemetery in the East of London. Holmes, after a word at the keeper’s lodge, led me to an unkempt patch of grass, unmarked by headstone or memorial, which lay under a far wall. He pointed with his stick.

'That,' he said, 'is what the keeper calls Plot 643—pauper’s 1903—and there lie the remains of a tongueless labourer with a hand branded on his face. Like the man who impersonated him in life, his body came out of the Thames and had similar injuries to the skull.'

We gazed in silence at the last resting place of the real James Phillimore. As we turned away, Holmes said, 'You see Watson, I have found James Phillimore, though whether your readers in the Strand will relish a story of suicide, murder, and heartbreak, embodying the most fiendishly singular revenge I have ever known, I cannot say.'

THE END