Dan Simmons - The Fifth Heart

I did confirm that Henry James had sent John Hay a hurried cable from Marseilles stating only that he was coming back to America “for private and personal reasons, please tell no one except perhaps Henry A.” and gave the date and rough time of his arrival in Washington and told his old friend that he and “a Norwegian explorer whom I have befriended and who is temporarily traveling with me” would find lodging in a Washington hotel. James received, upon arrival in New York, a cable from John Hay saying, in full:

Nonsense. You and your traveling companion must stay with us for the duration of your visit. Clara and I insist. There shall be room and food and wine and conversation enough for all. Adams is currently away traveling but will be thrilled that you have decided to visit your home country again. By great good coincidence, the diplomatic attaché from King Oskar II, King of Sweden and Norway, is scheduled to be our dinner guest on Sunday night. We all look forward to meeting your intrepid explorer friend!

James showed Holmes the cable on their way to the Jersey City terminal and could not resist a grim smile. “A bit of a problem, perhaps?”

“What is that, my dear fellow?” said Holmes as they waited at the front of the ferry.

“Does the disguise of Mr. Jan Sigerson include a native’s facility with the Norwegian language?” James asked most pointedly. “Perhaps you had better stay at a Washington hotel, visit Hay and Adams only upon careful occasion, and be indisposed this coming Sunday evening.”

“Nonsense,” said Holmes and smiled. “It is a great advantage to stay with the Hays. You said that their home was near that of Henry Adams’s?”

“Next door and contiguous,” said James. “Just like Sweden and Norway.”

“There you have it then,” said Holmes. “We shall leave the representative of King Oskar the Second of Sweden and Norway to sort things out for himself on Sunday.”

Their rail tickets were nominally “first class” but there was nothing resembling a private compartment. Luckily, the first-class carriage was not crowded this Friday morning and, while sitting across the aisle from each other, Holmes and James could lean forward and converse in private when they wished. James also noticed that while the disgusting American male habit of constant expectoration had not disappeared, there seemed to be somewhat fewer spittoons visible everywhere than there had been in the early 1880’s during his last visit and the red runner down the aisle of the first-class carriage was not so spongily porous with liquified tobacco as so many rugs and carpets had been ten years earlier. James had decided in 1883 that he could never again live in—and possibly never again visit—America if it was only because of the universal spitting.

“Tell me about the Five Hearts,” said Holmes as they left Philadelphia. For this conversation, the detective had crossed the aisle and was sitting uncomfortably close to James, knee to knee as it were, and was perched on the north-facing seat across from the south-facing writer. Holmes leaned on his northern-European-style walking stick. James wished that he had brought a stick to the compartment, if only to use as a barrier between them.

James set his palms firmly on his knees as if that created a structure separating them further. “In truth,” he said, “they referred to their small group not as the Five Hearts but as the Five of Hearts.”

“Tell me then about the Five of Hearts,” said Holmes.

“In truth, it was Clover Adams’s salon ,” said James. “A very uniquely American salon , I might say.”

“How so?”

James paused a second to comprehend exactly what he had meant. “It was not, as are so many scores of salons I’ve known in France and Italy and elsewhere, centered on things or people literary, nor upon artists and art, nor upon that most central trinity of salons —money, aristocracy, or notoriety, although the Adamses might not be found wanting in any of the three of those categories.”

“Really?” said Holmes. “I thought there was no aristocracy in the United States of America.”

James smiled almost pityingly at the younger man. James was turning fifty in a few weeks and Holmes had mentioned that he was currently thirty-eight years old, turning thirty-nine in April, but at this moment Henry James felt very much the wiser, older gentleman. “Every society has its subtle aristocracies, Mr. Holmes . . . er . . . Mr. Sigerson. If not based on birth, then upon wealth. If not upon wealth, then upon power. And so forth.”

“Yet isn’t Henry Adams a member of the ruling aristocracy in Washington?” asked Holmes.

James frowned before answering. Was the insufferable detective trying to be provocative? Pretending to be dense? After a few seconds of thought, James decided not. He was simply naïve.

“Henry Adams is a grandson of one American president and the great-grandson of another, both on his paternal side of course, but he has never held any political power of his own. He is rich, yes. He and Clover were at the center of Washington social power in the first half of the eighteen eighties, yes. But while being a member of what French philosophers or Jefferson might have called ‘a natural aristocracy’, Adams never controlled power, per se. I mean, he started as a Harvard professor, for heaven’s sake!”

Holmes nodded. “Let us return to Mrs. Adams. Describe your former friend Clover to me . . . as briefly and succinctly as you can, please.”

James felt his infinitely delicate feathers ruffle again at this peremptory command. “You are asking me to reveal personal details of a dear, departed friend of mine and the wife of a friend of mine, sir,” he said stiffly. “You must remember that I am, while not English by nationality, a gentleman. And there are things which gentlemen simply cannot do.”

Holmes sighed. “Right now, Mr. James, and for the foreseeable future, you are an American gentleman who has agreed to help solve the possible murder—or at least the mystery surrounding someone annually claiming her death to be murder—of a fellow American citizen. In that sense, sir, your responsibilities to your friend as a witness outweigh vague conceptions of gentlemen not discussing their friends. We must both get beyond that if we are to decide whether your friend Clover Adams was murdered or not.”

Easy for you to get beyond it , thought James. You are not a gentleman .

He sighed aloud. “Very well. What do you wish to know about Clover?”

“Her appearance to begin with.”

James felt himself bridle again. “Why should her appearance be a factor, Mr. Ho . . . Mr. Sigerson? Do you have the theory that someone murdered her because of her looks?”

“It is a simple piece of a complex puzzle,” Holmes said quietly. “And somewhere to start. What did Clover Adams look like?”

James paused again. Eventually he said, “Shall we say that Henry Adams did not marry Miss Marian Hooper in June of eighteen seventy-three for her beauty alone. She was . . . plain-looking, although, as Henry himself once wrote to me years ago, she should ‘not quite be called plain’. And she was petite. But Henry Adams, as perhaps you will see, is also a small man by modern standards. But, although it was not unduly sharpened by education, Clover had a lively and intelligent mind.” He hesitated again. “And, I must admit, a quick and acerbic tongue. During the five years they lived in Washington before her death, Clover made many enemies—especially amongst social climbers, shunned senators, and their wives.”

“So you would categorize this Five of Hearts salon at which she was the center as more exclusionary than not?” asked Holmes.