by Dan Simmons
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 cataract. Clarence King’s instant addition was . . . a tom-cataract.”
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.”
Holmes nodded as if he were taking mental notes on these most elementary of facts about a shy but world-famous man. “And Mr. John Hay?”
“A very old and rather close friend of mine,” said James. “I met Hay through William Howells—a famous editor and also an old friend—years ago and have enjoyed seeing him and his wife Clara many times in England, on the Continent, and in the United States. He is an extraordinary man.”
“So far all of these Five of Hearts sound extraordinary,” said Holmes. “At least by American standards.”
Before James could protest, Holmes went on, “I’ve read of Hay being referred to as Colonel Hay. Has he a military history?”
James chuckled. “When Hay was only twenty-two years old, he became an assistant to John Nicolay, who was personal secretary to President Abraham Lincoln.”
Holmes waited impassively. James waited for some flicker, some sign, of the detective being impressed—or even interested—but none came.
“In truth,” James continued, “Hay served as co-secretary to Lincoln during the darkest years of the Civil War. But, you see, there was no appropriation for a second secretary. Nor even for an assistant to Mr. Nicolay as secretary. So his friend Nicolay arranged it that he, young John Hay, would receive a salary as an employee of the Department of the Interior, assigned to the White House. When that was challenged by some appropriations committee in eighteen sixty-four, the War Department commissioned Hay as a major—‘assistant adjutant general of volunteers’, I believe was his full title. A year later he was promoted to lieutenant colonel and, shortly after that, received the rank of full colonel.”
“Without ever seeing a battlefield,” said Holmes.
“Only the ones he toured with President Lincoln.”
“I assume Mr. Hay has shown certain accomplishments—besides accruing wealth and a wife—since then,” said Holmes.
James did not especially like the detective’s tone. It seemed very . . . common . . . to the writer. But he decided not to make an issue of it at that moment. The waiters were standing by the walls at the opposite end of the dining carriage, hands solemnly folded across their crotches, waiting for Holmes and him to depart.
“Even by the time John Hay married Clara Stone in eighteen seventy-four—when Hay was thirty-five—he’d held important diplomatic posts in three countries.” James didn’t add that Hay had groused and complained of manners, language, culture, and government in all three of those important European countries in which he’d served. “Also by eighteen seventy-four,” added James, “John had become well known as a poet, then as a distinguished journalist. He was famous for his coverage of the Chicago Fire and of the assassination of President Garfield in eighteen eighty-one and of the trial of the anarchist-assassin Charles Guiteau.”
“Interesting,” said Holmes. “I confess that I wasn’t aware that President Garfield had been assassinated, much less by an anarchist.”
James simply did not believe this statement. He chose to say nothing.
“Is Mr. Hay still a journalist?” asked Holmes. The detective had lit his pipe and showed absolutely no concern about the impatient waiters.
“He became editor of Mr. Greeley’s famous paper—the Tribune—but then returned to government service,” said Henry James. “In eighteen eighty, poor President Garfield had asked John to move from the State Department to the White House, to become the president’s personal secretary. But Hay declined. He left public service before Garfield was shot. Amongst his other pastimes—or perhaps I should say amusements—was writing fiction anonymously. At one time, his friend Henry Adams wrote and anonymously published a novel called Democracy. Since then there has been infinite speculation about the author’s identity; Clover Adams and Clarence King were both suspects of the literati’s fevered detecting at one point, but it was John Hay whom most of the experts were sure was the actual author. One rather suspects that the Five of Hearts enjoyed leading the literary world on their round robin chase.”
“Democracy,” muttered Holmes around his pipe. “Did not that book sell rather well in England some years back?”
“Amazingly well,” said James. “In England. In America. In France. In Germany. In Timbuktu, for all I know.” He was dismayed to hear an undertone of bitterness in his remarks.
“And Clara Hay?” said Holmes. He removed his watch from his waistcoat and glanced at it.
“A lady’s lady,” said James. “A delightful hostess. A helpmate to her husband. A generous soul. One of the most important loci in the Washington social whirl.”
“How would you describe her . . . physically?” asked Holmes.
James raised an eyebrow at the impertinent question. “A pretty face. An impeccable dresser. Lovely hair. Exquisite complexion. Physically . . . a bit on the pleasantly solid side.”
“Stout?”
“Solid,” repeated James. “She looked thus when John Hay fell in love with her and married her almost twenty years ago, and time and children have added their solidity.”
And eating, thought James with a slight pang of betrayal. He remembered a letter from Hay only a year ago in which his dear friend said that the couple and their son were visiting Chicago where he, Hay, had been very active indeed but where Clara, according to Hay, had stayed at the hotel and . . . “tucked enthusiastically into every victual the dining room offered.” Privately, Henry
James thought Clara Hay to be matronly, not terribly intelligent—although she was well-read and wise enough to admire James’s novels—sanctimonious in a backwoods American Baptist-minister’s-daughter’s sort of way (although this was not at all her background, although she did come from Ohio), and altogether an unworthy member of the extraordinary Five of Hearts.
He would never tell Sherlock Holmes this.
“Tell me about Clarence King,” said Holmes, “and we shall return to our carriage and let these good people tidy up their dining car for the dinner service.”
“There is no dinner service on the Colonial Express,” said James, inwardly pleased to have caught the famous detective out on an error. “We are scheduled to arrive in Washington before the dinner hour.”
“Ahhh,” said Holmes, blowing a column of smoke from the oversized pipe. “Then you can describe Clarence King at leisure. Oh, I should say that I remember reading about Mr. King’s exposure of that western diamond-mine hoax in the late eighteen seventies. Somewhere in Colorado, was it not?”
“It was supposed to be,” agreed James. “Clarence King—all five foot six of him—is a truly extraordinary man: geologist, mountain climber, explorer, surveyor, government servant, aficionado of fine food and fine wine and fine art. Henry Adams and John Hay always believed—sincerely, one thinks—that of all of the Five of Hearts, Clarence King was the one whose future was least limited . . . most probable for fame, glory, and high position.”
“Did Clover Adams believe that?”
James hesitated for only the briefest of heartbeats. “She thought Clarence something of a rogue. But she loved him more for that, if anything. It was Clarence King who sent the Adamses and the other Hearts both fine Five of Hearts stationery for all of their use and a beautiful Five of Hearts tea set.”
“Describe it, please,” said Holmes, removing the pipe stem from his mouth.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Please describe the tea set.”
Henry James looked out the window at the increasingly summer-like forests and fields flashing by as if he could gain strength from the gaze. It was evening. The last rays of a late-March sunset tinged the trees and telegraph poles.
“The tea set is quite charming, actually,” he said at last. “Five cups and saucers, of course. All heart-shaped and a bit undersized.”
“All five of the Hearts are—were—small people,” said Holmes.
“Why . . . yes,” said James, a bit nonplussed by the observation. Had he supplied that information? He only remembered mentioning Clarence King’s height.
“What else can you tell me about the tea set?” asked Holmes.
The man is mad, thought Henry James. He said, “The tea tray is beautifully enameled and inset with designs that look like small fruit on branches but are actually each a cluster of five hearts. The sugar and cream bowls also follow the hearts theme. On the teapot, and just below the upper appendage of the tray—which, if I remember correctly, is set off by a large and quite fragile capital ‘T’—are painted clocks showing the hour of five o’clock, exactly.”
“The hour the Five of Hearts met each day of the work week,” said Holmes. “Usually in front of the Adamses’ hearth in chairs designed specifically for their diminutive size. Adams and his wife Clover seated opposite one another in tiny—and matching—red-leather chairs.”
“Yes,” said James, having no idea where Holmes had dredged up that last fact, although it was accurate enough.
Holmes nodded as if satisfied. “Let us return to our rather public first-class carriage,” he said.
* * *
Problems with the track somewhere south of Baltimore set the Colonial Express far behind schedule. For hours Holmes and James sat in the relatively uncomfortable so-called “first-class” section with nothing to look at out the windows—night had fallen hours earlier—no dinner, and little relief from the tedium save for their reading and an occasional cup of coffee brought by an apologetic steward. Holmes asked no more questions—a rather pathetic show for a detective, James thought—and they sat in silence for the long, humid hours.
At long last the “Express” got back under way, but they arrived in the nation’s capital many hours late—long after civilized Washingtonians had dined and after many had turned in for the night.
But the Hays’ brougham was waiting for them at the station, along with Hay’s first footman, Severs, and their trunks and valises were soon loaded outside, and covered with a tarpaulin (a light rain had begun to fall), as James and Holmes climbed into the compartment of the gleaming black Kinross Brougham that Hay had sent for them.
Street lamps were surrounded by soft halos that reminded James of the night some eleven days earlier when he and Holmes had met on the bank of the Seine. With those thoughts came a dire sense of something very much like terror. What was he doing introducing this strange and almost certainly deranged man into the inner circle of some of his closest private friends? Holmes’s pathetic disguise of “Mr. Jan Sigerson, Norwegian explorer” would be found out, if not on Sunday evening when the Norwegian ambassador was dining at the Hays’, then even earlier than that. What would his old friends John and Clara Hay—much less Henry Adams, who never spoke to anyone of his late wife or her suicide out of the long resonances of his terrible grief—think of him for deceiving them in this way, for introducing this madman to them?
Henry James was actively sick to his stomach as the brougham rolled through the brick and cobblestoned streets of this least-businesslike of all major American cities. The few shops, restaurants, and public places they passed along the way were closed and dark. Even in the finer neighborhoods here near the Executive Mansion, only a few interior gas or electric lights still burned. The trees in this southern city were fully leafed out and it felt to James as if they were being carried deeper and deeper into a dark tunnel of his own foolish construction.
“I believe the Americans have a saying—‘They roll the sidewalks up after dark’,” Holmes said at one point and the sound of the tall shadow’s voice gave James a start but did not bring him fully back from his broodings. “It certainly seems true of Washington, D.C.,” added the detective.
James said nothing.
Then they were next to Lafayette Square—a darkened Executive Mansion was visible through the trees—and turning at the intersection of Sixteenth Street onto H Street. St. John’s Church rose whitely on one side of the street and the Hay residence loomed in wet red brick on the other. John Hay was standing in the strange Richardsonian arched-tunnel of an entranceway to greet them.
“Harry, Harry, we’re so delighted you came back,” boomed Hay, a compact, thin, elegant man with receding hair parted neatly in the middle, dark brows, and a full but triune-shaped mustache-chin-beard that was going white before the rest of his hair. Hay’s eyes were alight with intelligence and his voice echoed in the tunnel of an entrance with a sincere welcome.
And then they were in the house proper, coats and hats were smoothly removed by servants while other footmen bustled past and then up a staircase beyond the huge foyer with their bags and trunks, and James had made the treacherous introduction of “Sigerson” without faltering, although his heart pounded at his own deception and his mouth was unnaturally dry.
“Ah, Mr. Sigerson,” cried John Hay. “I read about your Tibetan adventures last year in both the English and American papers. It is such a pleasure having you as our guest.”
James could see Holmes looking around at the house . . . the mansion. The foyer was huge and paneled with South American mahogany so perfectly polished that one could almost see one’s reflection in the dark wood. Above the mahogany wainscoting the walls were a rich terra-cotta red that matched the red in so many of the Persian carpets and runners set about on the gleaming floors. High above them—St. John’s Cathedral–high—the spaces above the gleaming chandeliers were crisscrossed with massive mahogany rafters. Ahead of them, the grand stairway was wide enough to accommodate a marchi
ng band walking ten-abreast if the occasion ever arose.
“Clara sends her deepest regrets for not staying up to greet you,” said Hay. “I’m afraid she had to take to her bed early tonight due to one of those rare fierce headaches that have plagued her for so long. She looks forward to meeting both of you at breakfast—unless you prefer to breakfast in your rooms, of course. I know that you enjoy taking your breakfast in your room, Harry.”
“Alas, a bachelor’s old habits,” said James. “Especially on the first morning after a somewhat arduous week and a half of constant travel.”
“Clara and I shall see you later in the morning then,” laughed Hay. “Mr. Sigerson? Would you also like to receive your breakfast in your room?”
“I sincerely look forward to coming down and meeting Mrs. Hay at breakfast,” said Holmes in what James now heard as an exaggerated—an obviously false—Scandinavian accent.
“Wonderful!” cried Hay. “Clara and I will press you on all the current gossip surrounding Harry.” He smiled toward James to show he was jesting.
“But speaking of dining, gentlemen, I know how late the train was in arriving and also know that the accursed Colonial Express offers no dinners during its approach to Washington. You must be starved.”
“We lunched rather late . . .” began Henry James, blushing slightly not at the thought of putting his host out but at the sheer awfulness of what he was doing.
“Nonsense, nonsense,” said Hay. “You must be famished. I’ve had Cook and Benson set out a light repast for you.” He put a well-manicured hand on each of their shoulders and led them through the cavernous—but strangely warm—space and into the dining room.
James saw at once that the dining room was larger, more elegant, and certainly furnished with a finer taste than the one he had seen in photographs of the dining room in Mr. Cleveland’s White House. In every room they had been in or passed by, James had noticed the elaborately and beautifully sculpted stone fireplaces. The walls boasted art masterpieces interspersed with ancient tapestries and the occasional framed light sketch—the signs of high taste combined with a gifted collector’s eclecticism.
