Dan Simmons - The Fifth Heart

James remembered writing, in 1879 or thereabouts, putting down his thoughts on Hawthorne and his contemporaries—“It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature” and “One might enumerate the items of high civilization, as it exists in other countries, which are absent from the texture of American life, until it should become a wonder to know what was left.” Perhaps this is why he had added, in Chapter VI of his Hawthorne book—“It is, I think, an indisputable fact that Americans are, as Americans, the most self-conscious people in the world, and the most addicted to the belief that the other nations of the earth are in a conspiracy to undervalue them.”

No, it had not made him popular to American readers and reviewers.

Now James shrugged and set all that ancient emotion away from his thoughts as he finished his trout and sipped the last of his less-than-mediocre white wine.

Holmes had ordered only tea and then let the poor American imitation of his choice sit unsipped in its Pennsylvania and New York, New Haven, and Hartford Railroad–crested cup. James was not certain that he’d seen the detective actually eat anything since their dinner in Paris on the evening of March 13, now eleven days in the past, and was beginning to wonder how the gaunt detective stayed alive.

“We were talking about Mrs. Clover Adams,” Holmes said so suddenly that it startled James.

“Were we? I thought we had moved on to her husband and other members of the Five of Hearts.” James made sure that no one was seated in their half of the emptying dining car or any waiter within earshot before he spoke. And even then he spoke very softly.

“You mentioned that Clover made enemies, partially through excluding people from her salon, but also with her wit . . . perhaps you said because of her ‘sharp tongue’,” said Holmes. “Can you give me some examples of her saying or writing specific things that hurt specific people?”

James dabbed at his lips with the linen napkin as he thought about this. Then, in a choice so rare as to be all but unique, he chose to share a story in which he had been the butt of the joke.

“The last time I was here in America,” he said, “a decade ago, I wrote to Clover before boarding my ship back to England and in that missive I explained to her that I had chosen her to receive my last note from our common country because I considered that she—Clover—how did I put it? ‘Because I consider you the incarnation of your native land’ is the precise wording, I think. Clover wrote back at once, saying that she considered my gesture ‘a most equivocal compliment’ and, she continued, ‘Am I then vulgar, dreary, and impossible to live with?’ ”

James looked up at Holmes but the detective showed no response. Finally Holmes said, “So the lady did have wit and a sharp tongue. Do you have another example?”

James quenched a sigh. “What good do such stories do now, sir?”

“Clover Adams was a victim of a murder,” said Holmes. “Or at least of someone’s cruel hoax that she was murdered. In either case, learning who the lady’s enemies were—even enemies created by the sharpness of her own acerbic wit—is the obvious way to approach this case.”

“Unless, of course, as was the case in this instance, it was not murder at all but rather a suicide,” said James. “In which case your list of suspects in the so-called ‘case’ is quickly narrowed to one name. Elementary, my dear Mr. Holmes.”

“Not always,” Holmes said cryptically. “I have investigated obvious suicides that were the result of other people’s murderous schemes. But please continue.”

James did sigh now. “My other friends in the Five of Hearts had, for years, expressed their admiration, if not outright adoration, of my fiction,” he said. “Henry Adams, John Hay, Clarence King, even Clara Hay, were genuinely enthusiastic about my stories and novels. Clover Adams was always . . . more reserved. At one point, an interlocutor who . . . shall we say . . . knew the lady well said that in an argument with her husband and John Hay on the literary merits, or lack of same, of a certain Henry James, Clover was quoted as saying, ‘The problem with Harry’s fiction isn’t that he doesn’t chaw what he bites off, but, rather, that he chaws more than he bites off.’ ”

“Droll,” said Holmes. “And I presume the American colloquial dialect was meant to be part of the humor.”

James said nothing.

“I am surprised that someone close to both of you chose to report that particular bon mot to you,” said Holmes.

James remained silent. It had been told to him in one of the finest of London’s clubs by no less than Charles F. Adams, Henry Adams’s brother—a man whom Henry James had always found to be vulgar in the extreme. Charles Adams had a cruel sense of humor, so unlike his brother’s generosity, and enjoyed—James knew—seeing the edge of that humor embarrass or hurt others. Yet James had no doubt that Clover had said precisely those words; it was her dismissive style and, yes, her Boston Brahmin’s use of rude American dialect. It had hurt James’s feelings extremely upon the hearing. But he had kept Clover as his friend, and that barb—and others Charles Adams and others had relayed to him—had done nothing significant to lessen his sorrow when James had learned of her death more than seven years earlier.

If Henry James wished to be truly indiscreet about Adams’s brother Charles, he could have reported the cruel statement by Charles that John Hay had relayed to him as far back as the announcement of Henry Adams’s and Clover Hooper’s marriage—“Heavens! No! The Hoopers are all as crazy as coots. Clover’ll kill herself just like her aunt!” Indeed, Clover’s Aunt Carrie had killed herself when she was several months pregnant.

And upon return to Boston after many months of the newlyweds’ honeymoon in Egypt and Europe, it was William Dean Howells who had written to James about yet another truly vulgar comment in a letter from Charles Adams to Howells—“To see Henry these days, I have—quite literally!—to tear him from the arms of his new bride! For Henry’s always in clover now! (Joke! ha! ha!)” The “ha! ha!” alone would have made James distrust Charles Adams for life.

“Tell me more about Henry Adams,” said Holmes.

James found himself shrugging—a gesture he had long ago given up in Europe. It was a sign of how upset even retelling the Clover-anecdote had made him. “What more do you need to know?”

“Far more than we can cover before this railway voyage ends in Washington,” said Holmes. “But for now we shall settle for what else Henry Adams was known for at the time of Clover’s death other than being descended from two American presidents and being a member of his wife’s salon of the Five of Hearts.”

“If I gave the impression that the Five of Hearts was solely, or even primarily, Clover’s salon , I was mistaken to do so,” James said rather waspishly. “Everyone in it, except perhaps Clara Hay, was a powerful personality. For four of them, save for Clara who tends toward the literal in a pleasant way, their wit and even their sense of humor matched perfectly. They punned without mercy. I once observed in person that when one of the Adamses’ terriers came home with a scratched eye, John Hay immediately announced that it was obviously a cat aract. Clarence King’s instant addition was . . . a tom-cat aract.”

Holmes waited.

“Henry Adams was a respected lecturer in medieval history at Harvard University,” said James. “He turned from academic circles to become one of America’s most respected historians. He and Clover were consummate collectors—Adams continues to be so—and, as you may see if Adams is home and invites us to visit, their home reflects an astounding level of both high and advanced taste in everything from Persian carpets to Ming vases to exquisite works of art, including Constables and Turners, chosen before most art collectors could recognize those estimable gentlemen’s names. Their home, designed by the late H. H. Richardson as was the Hays’, is a work of art.”