by Dan Simmons
“Everything is fine, Mrs. Stevens. I was just heading up to my room to do some writing. A good day to you, madam.”
“And a good day to you, Mr. James.” She craned her neck to watch him climb the steep steps as if she’d been hired by Holmes . . . or Mycroft . . . or Moriarty . . . or Lucan Adler . . . to spy on him.
* * *
James started to knock at the Hays’ front door—that is, raised his knuckled fist to knock, but decided to push the new-fangled electrical doorbell button instead—promptly at 5:15 p.m.
It had been a hard morning and afternoon. He had tried to write—working with pencil and pad on the new play he’d promised the popular actor-manager George Alexander—but while Mrs. Stevens’s boarding house was a relatively pleasant place, it was still a boarding house. Noises, loud conversations with workmen and the dull-witted daughter, the sounds of two men looking at and loudly appraising Holmes’s now-vacant bed-sitting-room, even Mrs. Stevens humming as she ironed in the little room off the kitchen or, when his window was open, when she was hanging wash on the clothesline below after the rain had stopped, all had conspired to distract the strangely anxious and irritable Henry James. A hundred times that afternoon he had unconsciously touched the hard bulge of the ivory snuffbox in his waistcoat pocket and wondered what he would do next. Go straight back to England? Go to the family burial plots in Cambridge outside of Boston and finally carry out his self-appointed duty of burying the last of his sister’s ashes there? Go to join William and his family in Florence or Geneva or wherever they were off to at the moment? He could talk to William—sometimes. Well, rarely. In truth, almost never.
In the meantime, he was happy to have this invitation from John Hay. James felt like a man who, in leaning over a ship’s railing to get a better view of something below, has fallen overboard. This invitation had felt like a life ring, complete with attached line to pull him in, tossed to him with happy, expert aim.
Benson answered the bell and, after silently directing a footman to take James’s wet coat, top hat, and walking cane, led the writer directly to Hay’s now-familiar study. Upon looking up from a formidable stack of papers to see James standing in his doorway after being announced, John sprang to his feet, was around the desk in a minute, and used one hand to shake James’s while clasping the author firmly on the shoulder with his other hand. It came close to being a hug—which, of course, would have horrified and appalled Henry James—but now it made him feel that glow of good feeling that he’d been certain he had lost.
“I am so happy to see you, Harry,” said Hay as he escorted James to the comfortable chair just opposite Hay’s across the broad desk. Hay had kept in literal contact, holding James by the elbow as he walked the few paces to the chair. When James had taken his seat, Hay perched on the corner of his desk—amazingly spry for a man who would turn 55 in October, was James’s thought (and not his first on that subject about Hay)—and cried, “Well, it’s quarter past the old Five of Hearts’ tea time, always precisely at five y’know, but we can have tea anyway—Clover’s ghost would not object although we may hear a disembodied rap or two from the table there—or perhaps some really good whisky instead.”
James hesitated. It was far too early for such a strong drink for him, he rarely touched whisky anyway, but this rainy afternoon, with the fire crackling and popping in John Hay’s study’s fireplace, he found the idea of a strong drink attractive—almost compelling.
“Is this an honest Scotch whisky, with no ‘e’ in the word?” asked James. “Or one of your American sour-mash whiskeys with the ‘e’ inserted?”
Hay laughed. “Oh, Scotch whisky, I assure you, Harry. I’d never offend your Anglicized sensibilities with either sour mash or a sneaky, unwanted ‘e’.” Hay gestured to Benson who seemed more to dissolve in thin air than step away.
“I have a twelve-year-old single-malt Cardhu from Speyside, matured in oak casks, that I find better than most twenty-one-year-old single-malt whiskeys,” continued Hay, going around the desk to take his place in the high-backed and leather-tufted chair there. “Its only drawback is that one can purchase it only at Speyside, so I must either travel there each time I’m in England or constantly be paying a man to travel to Speyside, purchase it, pack it, and ship it.”
“I look forward to tasting it,” said James, knowing that he’d sipped 12-year-old Cardhu single malts with Paul Joukowsky and even in Lady Wolseley’s salon, the latter thanks to the tastes of her husband, Field Marshal Viscount Wolseley, the inspiration for the “very model of a modern major general” in Gilbert and Sullivan’s operetta The Pirates of Penzance.
Even before Hay began speaking again, Benson was back with a silver tray holding the decanter of Cardhu, crystal whisky glasses, a spritzer of soda water, a pitcher of regular water, and a short stack of leather coasters with John Hay’s crest on them. When Benson turned toward the writer and raised one eyebrow, James said, “Neat please.”
“The usual dash of water for me, Benson,” said Hay.
When they had their whisky glasses and Benson had left, silently closing the study door behind him, each man raised his glass—the desk was too broad for any clinking of crystal—and Hay said, “Amicus absentibus.”
James was surprised by the toast—to which absent friends, exactly, would they be drinking?—but he nodded and drank some of the amber whisky. It was excellent. James knew enough about judging whiskies to know that the palate on this one was smooth and well-balanced, the finish bringing out some lingering, sweet smoke in the aftertaste, but never overpowering. Never “showing off” as so many single malts had the tendency to do.
James nodded again, this time acknowledging the quality of the whisky, all the while thinking—Which absent friend or friends?
“Harry, I won’t beat about the bush,” said Hay leaning forward and cradling his Scotch glass with both hands above the papers on his desk. “Clara and I are hoping that you might consider moving back in with us for as long as you stay in Washington.”
Is this related to last night? James’s heart was pounding painfully—all the men in the James family had bad hearts that would get them someday—so he drank a bit more of the Cardhu to give him time to think. No, he couldn’t believe that Holmes would have told anyone about James’s presence in the cemetery and in Clover’s tomb-sculpture interior. He’d promised that he wouldn’t. What is a promise to a man who is not really a gentleman?
“Why, John?” he said softly. “Surely I spent enough time here as your guest that you must welcome the quiet household after our disruption.”
“You were here with Holmes,” said Hay, “or here when Holmes was impersonating that Norwegian explorer, Jan Sigerson, which was enjoyable in its own way. But Clara and I felt that we never really had a chance to talk to you.”
James set his chin on his chest in a posture that would, half a century later, come to be called “Churchillian”.
“Unless,” continued Hay, leaning far back in his chair now and drinking the whisky almost hurriedly, as if enjoying its fragrance weren’t part of the process of enjoying it, “unless you plan to leave the city soon. To Cambridge? Perhaps then on to England? Paris?”
“No, I have no immediate plans to leave.” James realized that he’d decided that even as he spoke the words. “But my room at Mrs. Stevens’s is quite adequate.”
Hay grinned beneath his carefully trimmed whiskers. “Adequate for a bachelor junior congressman, perhaps, Harry, but certainly not for a writer. You are doing some writing, aren’t you?”
Too little, too little, thought James. But then, the plan had been to commit suicide in Paris and part of the attractiveness of that plan had been to end all the deadlines, to get his agent and stage producers and publishers and everyone else with their baby beaks wide open and waiting to be fed to—how did the Americans put it?—then get off his neck.
“Some very modest attempts at my next play,” said James, his tone as doleful as his countenance. “Little more than note
s.”
Hay grinned again. “I trust that your room was comfortable when you and Holmes were staying here, but we have a much larger suite of guest rooms at the far end of the wing opposite to the one where you stayed before. We didn’t place you there during your last stay because it’s inconveniently far from the main stairway, but if you’d honor us with another visit, that suite will be yours—bedroom and much larger sitting room, both with fireplaces, of course, the sitting room with its own rather pleasant library. The colored tiles around the large bathtub are somewhat brighter than those in your former bathroom, but the wash basins are marble, the taps are silver, and I can promise you that the water will be hot as well as cold.”
James took a breath, trying to frame his refusal in the politest way possible. In truth, it was the proximity to Henry Adams—the man whose secrecy he’d so callously invaded—that was preventing him from saying yes.
“And as nice as Mrs. Stevens’s little place is,” continued Hay, the whisky gone from his glass, “I don’t believe that she can provide you with as excellent a manservant as we can.”
“Manservant,” James repeated, feeling strangely numb all over. Is this the way a character in a novel feels when the author is manipulating him or her in a way contrary to their nature or to common sense? He wished he could ask Holmes that question and actually patted the jacket pocket where his purse held the detective’s card with the name and address of the cigar store where James could get in contact with him.
“Yes, and not just any manservant,” said Hay, leaning further over the desk now, “but Gregory, one of our longest serving and most trusted employees.”
James remembered a tall, white-haired man on Hay’s staff being referred to as Gregory. The servant had emanated dignity and quiet efficiency. “Is Gregory his first or last name?” asked James.
“Last,” said Hay. “I believe his Christian name is Terrance. Gregory is not only the perfect man to stoke up your fires and lay out your clothes in the morning, but he gives the best and closest neck-shaves of any man on the staff.”
“I really have a powerful reluctance to being in your and Clara’s way once again . . .” began James.
Hay held his hands up, palms forward, and then moved them quickly in opposite directions as if opening a door or brushing something aside.
“This shan’t be like your first visit where you were a guest with a guest’s . . . well, one might call them obligations: coming down to dinner with us, making small talk, joining me for luncheon, and so forth. No, the guest suite would be yours—it’s on the northeast corner and there will be some light traffic noise coming through the windows there, but it’s very soft noise—our boy Del lived in those rooms for a while but went back to his own before going back to school. He thought the suite was too quiet. Too large.”
Perhaps the rooms in the suite are haunted, thought James. He smiled as he realized that he wouldn’t be averse to a few ectoplasmic visitations. Perhaps his sister Alice could advise him as to what to do with her ashes that he’d pilfered.
“ . . . and daily service from the maids, of course, but only when you’re out,” Hay was going on. “And you can have all your meals and tea breaks in your room if you like . . . Gregory will be your guard at the gate as well as your valet. And of course you shall have your own key to the front door so you can come and go whenever you want without disturbing anyone.”
“I confess that I have found myself a trifle lonely at Mrs. Stevens’s place,” said James, already surrendering himself to the invitation. He could rest. He could write.
“No wonder you do . . . especially with Mr. Holmes leaving so abruptly,” said Hay. The statesman did not seem to notice the minor levitation of James’s eyebrows. “You agree then, Harry?”
James nodded.
“Wonderful!” cried Hay. “I’ll have some of the lads go over now in the wagon to fetch your steamer trunk and other luggage.”
A minute later, they were standing just inside the open door, watching the spring rain fall and enjoying the scent of the rain on new grass and fresh leaves when Hay’s brougham was brought around for James—the manservant Gregory was up on the box next to the driver and sheltering under a red umbrella—and then came the good-natured stablemen, wool and leather caps beaded with raindrops, driving the flatbed wagon for his luggage.
James said, “John, how did you know that Holmes had moved out? It happened only this morning.”
Hay grinned and clapped the author on his right shoulder, opening an umbrella at the same time to escort James into the brougham. “Harry, Harry . . . one must never underestimate the speed with which even the smallest news travels in Washington City. Especially around Lafayette Park. Your landlady’s daughter, slow as the poor girl is, gave all the details of Holmes to our footman, at the morning outdoor market probably before either of us was up and dressed.”
James settled into the sweet-smelling leather of the covered brougham. Hay folded the umbrella and tapped the box with the wooden handle.
“See you soon, Harry!”
James rode in silence for the few blocks. The daughter telling the footman about Holmes’s early departure, who then mentioned it to other servants who were then overheard by Clara or John, made all the sense in the world.
But Henry James did not believe it.
We Get Lots of Cyclists Buying Lemon Squeezers
All in all, Sherlock Holmes had enjoyed an enjoyably productive birthday morning. At home—or at what he still thought of as home in his former digs on Baker Street in London—he’d often sleep in until eleven a.m. or later during those dull periods between cases. And then he’d often have breakfast and return to bed. Of course, the mixture of cocaine he injected during those dull times added to the lethargy—something this new heroic drug he was injecting himself with in the States didn’t seem to do—but then he was always especially alert when he was on a case.
This particular morning of April 4, he’d wakened at dawn and gone out to find himself a new place to live—the same old Kirkwood House hotel at the corner of 12th Street N.W. and Pennsylvania Avenue that he and James had passed the night before. Rumors still persisted that the old hotel would be torn down almost any month, but the place had a comfortable lived-in quality that Holmes approved of: expensive drapes but faded from sunlight, marvelously well-made chairs showing wear that even antimacassars could not hide, a combination of attentive service mixed with the discretion of knowing when to leave its guests to their own devices. Holmes understood why the more successful traveling salesmen were still loyal to the place.
He hired three reliable men—vouched for by the manager of the Kirkwood House since one of the men was the manager’s son—and their wagon to fetch his packed bags and steamer trunks from Mrs. Stevens’s boarding house without making a fuss.
Then, with the shops just opening, Holmes had bought himself a pistol. He’d noticed the generous number of gun shops around Washington and entered the one closest to the Kirkwood House a minute after the store opened. There was a vast array of pistols under glass, some of them evidently designed for cowboy desperadoes, and more hanging on the wall. The air smelled rather pleasantly of steel and gun oil.
“May I help you, sir?” the mustached clerk asked.
“Do you have any new lemon squeezers for sale?” said Holmes.
“Yes, sir, absolutely, sir. Which barrel length—two inches or three?”
“Three.”
“Yes, better accuracy with the three-inch barrel, sir,” said the clerk as he opened the glass case and removed the weapon.
Yes, with the three-inch barrel I might be able to hit the wall of a barn if I were inside the barn firing from close range, thought Holmes. Maybe.
“Any caliber you prefer, sir?”
“Thirty-eight S and W caliber,” said Holmes.
“It also comes in thirty-two, sir. A bit less expensive and a tad lighter.”
“The thirty-eight, please,” Holmes said firmly.
&nbs
p; The clerk ceremoniously displayed the small pistol—and it was smaller than the vast majority of the revolvers in the store—and snapped the cylinder open to show his client that the weapon was unloaded, then handed it to Holmes.
Holmes noticed that .38 S&W cartridges would be a tight fit in the chambers and then he snapped shut the cylinder and held the weapon at arm’s length, aiming at the brick wall at the back of the store.
“One squeezes the grip as well as the trigger,” said the clerk.
“Yes,” said Holmes. He dry-fired the pistol twice. Not a good practice, overall, but necessary to get used to a new revolver.
“You like the hammerless lemon squeezers then, sir? You a bicyclist by any chance?”
“Exactly,” said Holmes. “Wouldn’t do to snag a hammer and have the pistol go off in my trouser pocket, now would it?”
“No, sir. We get lots of cyclists buying lemon squeezers. Most popular. These pistols are guaranteed not to fire if one takes a fall while cycling.” The clerk paused and cleared his throat. “Are you a bicycle fanatic then, sir?”
“Quite so,” said Holmes. “Absolutely mad about it.”
“Not too many customers from England, though . . . not to be overly personal or anything, sir.” The clerk’s cheeks reddened as he realized he’d overstepped his bounds with a gentleman.
“Not at all,” said Holmes with a smile. “One needs a pistol here to keep up on the target shooting with one’s American friends, what?”
“Of course, sir.”
“The absence of a hammer feels strange,” said Holmes. “Does the weapon jam or misfire very often?”
“No, sir. Not the Smith and Wesson brand. As reliable a double action as they make. Looks strange, I agree, but it’s the best weapon you can carry concealed when you don’t have large pockets. And even then, hammers and the larger sights can snag on cloth in pockets and such, can’t they?”
“Indeed,” said Holmes. “How much for this pistol?”