Dan Simmons - The Fifth Heart

The writer—Dr. John H. “James” Watson? Arthur Conan Doyle? A bizarre blend of the two hacks?—has forgotten all about the son, Edward. The boy with the “oversized head” and reported penchant for evil. It’s obvious that all of the characters, including his former governess, Miss Hunter, had also forgotten that Edward was supposed to exist. With the happy ending of Mr. Rucastle having his throat torn out by a hungry and impossibly baying mastiff, Edward just seems to have vanished. Poof!

Lying in the warm darkness, James thinks of a future story about a governess that he’s contemplated writing from time to time: his story, should he ever write it, would be from the governess’s mentally clouded point-of-view and would deal with a palpable—although imagined—evil that seems to threaten the child or children in the remote country house. James sees it as a ghost story without any certain ghost and knows it will require the lightest and subtlest of touches to make the increasingly nervous reader begin to wonder if the governess is insane . . . or evil . . . or if it is the children who are evil. Or perhaps there is a ghost (or ghosts, James hasn’t decided), despite all the psychological suggestions to the contrary.

His brother William would almost certainly like such a “psychological” tale.

All James knows for certain is that the tale will require all of his hard-earned skills and the most delicate of authorial brushstrokes to help the reader slowly become aware of the multiple levels of honesty, lying, guilt, and innocence—not even to mention survival—even while keeping the story explicit enough to chill the reader to goosebumps. But everywhere and always he will have to leave the reader in deep doubt about what has “really” happened and which of the events are only in the increasingly unstable governess’s mind.

Smiling slightly from the pathetic absurdities of the “Copper Beeches” and thinking ever so gently of ghosts and of the human mind in murky conflict with itself, Henry James falls asleep in the warm Washington night.

Sunday was quiet in the sprawling Hays household—at least until Henry James cornered Sherlock Holmes.

Clara Hay had gone to church after informing everyone that she would be doing some charity volunteer work for hours after the church service proper. John Hay had hosted his two guests at breakfast but then disappeared into his beautiful study for hours of his own sort of literary or historical devotion. The huge home was quiet except for the reassuring sound of horses’ hooves and buggy wheels on the street outside and the occasional nunlike hushed rustle of servants moving efficiently to and fro within the light-filled, mahogany-scented mansion.

It was late morning when Henry James knocked on “Jan Sigerson’s” guest room door. Holmes, smoking cheap shag tobacco in his disreputable black clay pipe, let the writer in and beckoned to an extra chair near the window where he’d been reading. James was carrying a book of his own but he carefully kept the cover and spine hidden while the two men took their seats.

“Clarence King will be here in a few hours,” said James.

“Yes,” said Holmes. “I’m very much looking forward to meeting him.”

“I think you should not.” Henry James’s soft voice could be firm to the point of hardness when he willed it to be. He willed it so now.

“I beg your pardon?” Holmes batted the ashes from the old pipe into a crystalline ashtray on a side table.

“I think you should not put the household through this farce,” said James. “John Hay may be busy in his study until tea time. I propose that you pack your bags and leave while you can.”

“And why would I do that?” Holmes asked softly. “Henry Adams won’t even be back until sometime next week. I’ve hardly begun the investigation into his wife’s death.”

“That’s all humbug,” snapped James. “Clover Adams suffered from a melancholic disposition. She fell to a low after her father’s death and never recovered. Melancholy ran in her family, as her brother Ned’s suicide attests. Turning it into a mystery is humbug.”

Holmes looked as if he were interested in what the writer was saying. “Then what about the annual ‘She was murdered’ notes sent to . . .”

“More humbug,” Henry James said firmly. “I shall not allow you to re-open old griefs in such a way. I have no idea why I’ve gone along with your insanities this long. But no matter. It must end. Today. You pack and leave and I shall think of something to tell the Hays and Clarence King and the others. I myself shall leave early tomorrow.”

“So you no longer think me capable of solving this mystery?” asked Holmes, repacking and relighting his pipe.

“I no longer think that you are Sherlock Holmes.” There , thought James. I’ve said it .

The other man looked up from his pipe with obvious surprise and an even greater expression of interest. “James, it was you who identified me from memory—despite my Sigerson disguise—near le Pont Neuf.”

“I was mistaken. Or perhaps I had met you at Mrs. O’Connor’s garden party four years ago, but you were in disguise then as well.”

“In disguise as . . .”

“As Sherlock Holmes. A fictional character.”

“Oh hoh!” cried the man whom James had known as Holmes. “So now you agree with me that Sherlock Holmes does not really exist! What changed your mind, James?”

“This.” The writer held out the tan edition of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes .

“May I?” asked the man with the pipe. He took the book gently in his long, strong fingers and began to flip through it. “I was vaguely aware that the American edition of Watson’s collected Strand stories was coming out this year, but I had no idea it would be published here so early.”

“Last month,” said James and wished that he hadn’t spoken.

“The illustrations by Sidney Paget are rather good, aren’t they?” asked the other man. His tone held mild amusement.

“If they purport to be of you,” said James, “they flatter you.”

“Oh, absolutely!” cried Holmes. He removed the pipe from between his teeth as he laughed. “But, you see, I’ve never met Mr. Sidney Paget. Nor have I allowed a photograph to be taken of me. Paget uses his brother as a model for his ‘Sherlock Holmes’—or so I am told. His brother is an even more well-known illustrator and Watson informed me that the Strand people had meant to hire him rather than his brother Sidney, but the letter went to the wrong Paget.”

James stared blankly at Holmes—at the man whom he still thought of as Holmes—until finally he could stand the silence no longer. The smoke from the shag tobacco made him cough before he could get a sentence out. “I now believe, sir, that you are some person . . . some deranged person . . . pretending to be the fictional character Sherlock Holmes who, in turn, is pretending to be a fictional explorer named Jan Sigerson.”

“Oh, I say! ” cried Holmes, removing his pipe again and smiling most broadly. “Very good, James. Very good indeed. That hypothesis makes much more sense than my own . . . that is, that I simply don’t exist outside these little”—he held up the book—“fictions.”

“So you admit it,” said Henry James. He felt a strange and not very pleasant but quite persistent invisible weight press against his chest.

“Admit that I am deranged? I can hardly defend myself against that accusation. Admit that I am someone other than the possibly—quite probably—fictional character Sherlock Holmes? Alas, I cannot confess to that, sir. I am either the real Sherlock Holmes or the fictional simulacrum of same. Those are my sad choices at the moment.”