Dan Simmons - The Fifth Heart

“Did she say as much?” asked Holmes.

“No, no, not in the least,” laughed Clemens. “But once when her cousin Clifton took the wrong chair at dinner—next to her, not what couples or guests do at another’s table—she’d said, ‘You’ve missed your mark.’ And another time, we were playing billiards that evening—Mrs. Lorne, or whoever she might be, was deucedly good at the game—turned to her cousin as he was ready to take a shot and she said, ‘Break a leg’. Now, as far as I know, those terms are little known outside the theater.”

“Do you actually think that Rebecca Lorne might have been upstairs with Clover Adams when she . . . when the poison was taken?” asked William Dean Howells, the billiards cue still in his hand. It had been so long since Howells had said anything that all heads turned toward him.

“It’s possible,” said Holmes. “It is more likely that the woman taking the name Rebecca Lorne had been posted outside to make noise should Henry Adams return early . . . which he did.”

James blinked. He’d not heard this part of Holmes’s surmising before and it made a terrible dark sense.

“Make noise . . .” said Clemens, clearly not seeing the implications.

“So that the man she called her cousin Clifton would not be interrupted in whatever he was doing upstairs with Clover,” said Holmes.

“But Adams went straight upstairs,” said Howells, his face white with horror. “He saw only Clover’s body on the floor.”

“Even though the Adamses’ old house was much smaller than Henry Adams’s current home, it also had a rear servants’ staircase,” said Holmes. “I inquired.”

Sam Clemens exhaled blue smoke. “So he could have come quietly down that rear stairs while poor Adams went up the main stairs,” he rasped. “And out the back door, no doubt.” Clemens turned to Holmes. “Do you know the true identity of this ‘cousin Clifton’?”

“I do,” Holmes said softly and with not the least tone of triumph or superiority. “There was no record of Clifton Richards in Washington or Boston save for the six months previous to Clover’s death, when this ‘Clifton’ worked in the photographic supplies department in the Department of State. It was he who provided the new developing solution—with the cyanide—to Clover Adams. He resigned—and disappeared—in January of ’eighty-six, just a few weeks after Mrs. Adams’s death. His true identity—absolutely confirmed by me only yesterday—is that of Lucan Adler, an international anarchist and deadly assassin.”

“My God!” cried Clemens, sending the billiards cue crashing onto the green baize table. “Livy and I hosted a murderess and murderer. We could have been poisoned at our own table. Stabbed in the night. Smothered to death in our own bed!”

Holmes smiled thinly. “Possible, but not probable. It was not you they were after but, rather, Clover Adams. They closed their circle around her for months.”

“But why?” asked Clemens. “Clover offended some members of the Washington establishment, but certainly no one disliked her to the point of wanting to kill her.”

“That is what I am looking into,” said Holmes. “At this moment, I fear that a former actress and adventuress named Irene Adler and her son Lucan Adler arranged Mrs. Adams’s death primarily in order to bring me to the States.”

The other three men could only stare at the detective. Finally James said, “Bring you here to America in December of ’eighty-five or the winter of ’eighty-six, you mean?”

“No,” said Holmes. “To bring me here after Ned Hooper brought me the evidence of the She-was-murdered cards. To bring me here now .”

For a moment no one said anything. Then Clemens took Howells’s cue, set it against the wall with his own, and said, “Come with me please, gentlemen.”

James had assumed that Clemens was going to show them out of the house—the brougham and driver were still waiting in the driveway—but instead their host led them out onto a covered second-story porch. It was a wide porch with a wonderful view, and seven rocking chairs waited there in the shade.

“Please be seated, gentlemen,” said Clemens. “You may choose any rocker save for this one.” He had his hands on the back of a mustard-yellow rocker with well-dented cushions. “And God bless John and Alice Day for keeping everything here where it should be.”

When they were all seated, Howells and James lit cigarettes. Holmes worked to get his pipe drawing properly. Clemens found yet another cigar in a pocket, bit off the end, spit the shred over the railing, and lit the cigar with a satisfied grunt. James had smoked cigars but he did not pretend to be an aficionado of the many brands. He only knew from the smoke that Clemens’s cigar was a cheap cigar.

Clemens caught his gaze. “I used to smoke cigarettes as you do, Mr. James. But Olivia told me that it was a dirty habit and certainly no benefit to my health. So, on the principle that the only way to break one bad habit was by replacing it with an even worse habit, I began smoking cigars.”

Howells guffawed at this, although he must have heard it many times before.

“But I do follow Livy’s admonitions to moderation, Mr. James,” continued Clemens. “I rarely smoke more than one cigar at a time.”

“Have you ever tried to break the habit, Mr. Clemens?” asked Holmes.

James immediately thought of Holmes’s syringe and his addiction to whatever he was daily injecting into himself. Holmes also smoked constantly, varying between cigarettes and his pipes. Was Holmes really curious about whether Twain had found a way to break his addiction to tobacco?

“Oh, of course,” laughed Clemens. “It’s easy to quit smoking. I’ve done it hundreds of times.”

James saw Howells smile and Holmes nod recognition of the tiny clench. They were, James knew, bits and pieces of prepared and rehearsed lines that had flowed from the podium and over footlights many times, but James was not offended by being turned into yet another audience. Clemens seemed to require an audience at all times.

But for several moments Clemens fell silent and no one else spoke. The only sound was the unsynchronized creaking of their four rocking chairs and ambient bird sounds and leaves stirring in the wind. James wondered if the great elms and chestnut trees and maples might be further along in their stately process of leafing out than usual for the end of March. The smaller dogwoods were in their glory. Henry James remembered winter surrendering its sovereignty in Cambridge with frigid and snowy rearguard actions deep into April in some late springs, including the year a decade ago when his parents died and he had stayed behind to sort out insurance and moneys owed and moneys promised. He remembered how he and Alice James—the other Alice James, William’s wife—had begged William by letter not to return home from his sabbatical in England. His presence would have only made the confusion—of money going to Wilkie and others, of Henry forsaking his own share of their father’s modest fortune by signing it over to their sister Alice, of Aunt Kate’s and sister Alice’s part in all this—hopeless. William had stayed in England and Europe, but not without threatening a hundred times that he would board the next ship U.S.-bound.

That had been a sad but deeply satisfying few months for Henry James. For once he was undoubtedly and indisputably in charge of the family—its finances, its security, its future with both parents now gone—and he had liked the feeling. He had liked being free and separate from the shadow of the all-powerful older brother William.

The wind rustled leaves again and James enjoyed the view from this high porch. He could see the white gazebo, needing paint now, where Clemens had spent starry nights talking with Harriet Beecher Stowe. Or so he had said. James had read that the old lady, in her 80’s, was almost an invalid now. And no longer interested in life or ideas since her husband had died.