Dan Simmons: The Fifth Heart

“Please be so kind as to release me at once,” said James in as stern a tone as he could muster. His outrage at being handled made him forget that Holmes—he was certain it was Sherlock Holmes—had just saved his life. Or perhaps that salvation was another mark against this hawk-nosed Englishman.

“Tell me when we met and I shall,” said Holmes, still gripping the front of James’s overcoat. “My name is Jan Sigerson. I am a Norwegian explorer of some renown.”

“A thousand apologies then, sir,” said James, feeling absolutely no apology in his heart. “I am obviously mistaken. For a second here, in the darkness, I thought you to be a gentleman I met four years ago at a tea-party benefit in Chelsea. The party was given by an American lady of my acquaintance, Mrs. T. P. O’Connor. I arrived with Lady Wolseley, you see, along with some other writers and artists of the stage—Mr. Aubrey Beardsley, Mr. Walter Besant . . . Pearl Craigie, Marie Corelli, Mr. Arthur Conan Doyle, Bernard Shaw, Genevieve Ward. During the tea, I was introduced to Mrs. O’Connor’s house guest for the weekend, a certain Sherlock Holmes. I see now that there is . . . no real resemblance.”

Holmes released him. “Yes, I remember now. I was there at Mrs. O’Connor’s estate briefly while solving a series of country home jewel thefts. It was the servants, of course. It always is.”

James straightened the front of his overcoat, arranged his cravat, firmly planted the tip of his umbrella, and resolved to leave Holmes’s presence without another word.

Ascending the dark steps, he realized with a shock that Holmes was walking beside him.

“It’s amazing, really,” said the tall Englishman in the slight Yorkshire accent James had heard at Mrs. O’Connor’s tea party in 1889. “I’ve used this Sigerson disguise for the past two years and passed close by—in daylight!—personages I’ve known for years, without their recognizing me. In New Delhi, in broad daylight in a sparsely populated square and for more than ten minutes, I stood next to Chief Inspector Singh, a man with whom I’d spent two months solving a delicate murder in Lahore, and the trained professional never glanced at me twice. Right here in Paris, I have passed by old English acquaintances and asked directions of my old friend Henri-August Lozé, the recently retired Prefect of Police for Paris with whom I’d worked on a dozen cases. With Lozé was the new Prefect de la Somme, Louis Lépine, with whom I have also had a close working relationship. Yet neither man recognized me. And yet you did. In the dark. In the rain. When you had nothing but self-murder on your mind.”

“I beg your pardon,” said James. He stopped out of sheer shock at Holmes’s effrontery. They were on the street level now and the rain had subsided a bit. But the numerous street lamps there still held their halos.

“Your secret is safe with me, Mr. James,” said Holmes. He was trying to light his pipe despite the damp. When the match finally flared, James could see even more easily that this was the “consulting detective” whom he’d met at Mrs. O’Connor’s tea party four years earlier. “You see,” continued Holmes, speaking now between puffs on the pipe, “I was there for the same purpose, sir.”

James could think of no reply to that. He turned on his heel and headed west along the sidewalk. Holmes caught up to him with two strides of his longer legs.

“We need to go somewhere for a late meal and wine, Mr. James.”

“I prefer to be alone, Mr. Holmes. Mr. Sigerson. Whomever you are pretending to be this night.”

“Yes, yes, but we need to talk,” insisted Holmes. He did not seem angered or perturbed by being found out. Or frustrated that his own suicide-by-Seine had been interrupted by the writer’s arrival. Only fascinated that James had seen through his disguise.

“We have absolutely nothing to discuss,” snapped James, trying to walk more quickly but only making himself look foolish in a portly way as the tall Englishman easily kept pace.

“We could discuss why you were ending your life with your sister Alice’s ashes in a snuffbox clenched so tightly in your right hand,” said Holmes.

James came to a full stop. After a moment he managed, “You . . . can . . . not . . . know . . . such a . . . thing.”

“But I do,” said Holmes, still working with his pipe. “And if you join me for a late snack and some good wine, I shall tell you how I know and why I know you will never complete the grim task you assigned yourself tonight, Mr. James. And I know just the clean, well-lighted café where we can talk.”

Holmes grasped James’s left elbow and the two began walking arm-in-arm up the Avenue de l’Opéra. Henry James was too shocked and astonished—and curious—to resist.

Despite Holmes’s promise to lead them to a “well-lighted place,” James expected a dimly lighted out-of-the-way café opening onto some back alley. Instead, Holmes had brought him to the Café de la Paix, very near James’s hotel and at the intersection of Boulevard des Capucines and Place de l’Opéra in the 9th arrondissement.

The Café de la Paix was one of the largest, brightest, and most vividly decorated establishments in all of Paris, rivaled in its elaborate décor and number of mirrors only by Charles Garnier’s Opéra directly across the plaza. The place had been built, James knew, in 1862 to serve guests at the nearby Grand-Hôtel de la Paix and had come into its full fame during the Expo Exhibition of ’67. It had been one of the first of Paris’s public buildings to be lighted by electricity, but as if the hundreds or thousands of electric bulbs were not enough, bright lanterns with focal prisms still threw beams of light onto the grand mirrors. Henry James had avoided the place over the decades, if for no other reason than it was a common saying in Paris that to dine in the Café de la Paix meant one would eventually run into friends and acquaintances. The place was that popular. And Henry James preferred to choose the times and places that he would “run into” old acquaintances or friends.

Holmes seemed undisturbed by the crowds, the roar of conversation, and scores of eager faces looking up as they entered. James listened as the faux-Norwegian explorer requested his “usual table” from the maître d’—in fluent and properly accented French—and they were led to a small, round table somewhat away from the primary hustle and bustle of the buzzing establishment.

“You come here often enough to have a ‘usual table’?” asked James when they were alone. Or as alone as they could be amidst such bustle and noise.

“I have dined here at least three times a week in the two months I’ve been in Paris,” said Holmes. “I’ve seen dozens of acquaintances, former police partners in my detection business, and clients. None have looked twice at or through my Jan Sigerson disguise.”

Before James could respond, the waiter appeared and Holmes had the effrontery to order quickly for the both of them. After designating a rather good champagne, and perhaps due to the late hour, he ordered a huge after-Opera assortment for two: le lièvreen civet, pâtes crémeuses d’épeautre accompanied by a plateau de fromage affinés and a concurrent platter of la figue, l’abricot, le pruneau, en marmelade des fruits secs au thé Ceylan and biscuit spéculos , concluding with mousse légère chocolat .

James had no appetite. His delicate stomach was upset by the shocks of the past hour. More than that, he did not care for hare—especially jugged hare with the heavy and grainy French wheat-sauce ladled on it—and this night he had no taste whatsoever for the fruit. And after indulging in it far too much when he was a small boy in France, he detested chocolate mousse.