Authors: Dan Simmons
“Wait,” said Henry James, holding up one well-manicured hand. “You’re saying that Violet Hunter, by any other name, knew from the start that she had no duty except to impersonate the imprisoned daughter of the Rucastles? Mr. Fowler’s fiancée?”
“That’s precisely what I am saying, James.” Holmes stared out the window at leaf-shadows on St. John’s across the street. “ ‘Violet Hunter’ was nothing more than a woman of the streets . . . in company, she could not have impersonated even so lowly a lady as a governess. Mr. ‘Jephro Rucastle’—who, by the by, was no villain as Watson re-created it but who also was soon to die violently—made it clear to the London wench from the first that she would be paid thirty pounds a month—not a quarter as Watson’s re-telling has it—thirty pounds a month just to cut her hair as Alice’s had been cut during her terrible illness, to wear Alice’s blue dress, to sit in the window where Peter Fowler could, from behind her and from a distance, see her laughing and evidently recovered from her madness.”
“Her
madness?
” gasped James.
“Oh, yes. I forgot to put that little fact in sequence, didn’t I? This is why Watson says that I must never write up my own adventures. When Alice’s father—Alice was her real Christian name, by the way—when her father realized that she would never regain her sanity, he wrote to Peter Fowler in a poor imitation of his daughter’s hand to break off their engagement. But Fowler never believed that the letter was from Alice.”
“Alice Rucastle was mad?”
“As a hatter,” said Holmes with absolutely no tone of sympathy in his voice. “It had manifested itself in sly and then secret but serious ways for years, but during the winter of her engagement to Peter Fowler—a marriage which her parents did not know of and would never have allowed since the insanity was hereditary—the worsening illness led first to the fits, then to the seizures, and finally to the violent behavior that the Rucastles reported to Fowler and the world as ‘brain fever’.”
“But surely Mr. Fowler would have understood,” said James. He tried to imagine writing this tale himself, but failed. It was too sensationalist. Too much the fever-dream territory of a contemporary Wilkie Collins.
“Understood that in her violent madness Alice Rucastle had murdered and partially eaten her two-year-old younger brother Edward?” Holmes asked blandly. “I rather doubt it.”
“Good Lord,” gasped James. “But you knew of this . . . abomination?”
“From the beginning,” said Holmes, no longer smiling. “Far from being a villain seeking an inheritance or whatever twaddle Watson added to distort the tale, the so-called Jephro Rucastle—his real name Jethrow Dawkins—was such an indulgent and loving father that he could not abide the thought of his daughter Alice—the murderer of his only son, the heir of the family name and title—being locked away in a bedlam. Thus the locked wing, the barred door.”
“But if Miss Violet Hunter did not discover these things . . . if she already knew about Alice’s madness, the reason for the locked wing and room . . .”
“It was Peter Fowler, not the harlot Violet Hunter, who insisted on luring the Rucastles into town that March night in eighteen eighty-six,” Holmes said grimly. “He sent us a telegram stating his intentions of ‘saving’ his beloved Alice. I sent him an immediate telegram in return, ordering him not to go anywhere near Hodgkyss Hall—he never received the telegram since he had already left his hotel in Wells—and Watson and I rushed out to Wookey Hole as fast as we could . . .”
“Wookey Hole?” chimed James.
“Yes, of course. Close by the famous caves near Wells in Somerset. ‘Fowler’ was staying in the Wookey Hole Hotel in Wells. Watson’s fictionalized ‘Rucastles’ were actually the well-known Dawkins family. Alice’s father was Jethrow Dawkins, Lord Hodgkyss of Hodgkyss Hall, first cousin to the Vicar of Wookey and so-called ‘Hero of the Transvaal’ in the eighteen eighty-one Boer Rebellion.”
“Even I, a mere American, have heard of the Witch of Wookey Hole,” said James. His voice sounded strange to his own ears. He could not quite believe what he had just said. Henry James, Jr.—like his father Henry James, Sr., and his older brother William—had always had a weakness for ghost stories.
“The Witch of Wookey Hole is a limestone stalagmite that’s been scaring tourists since the sixteen hundreds,” Holmes said in the flattest of tones. “Alice Dawkins was the real-life Monster of Wookey Hole. And only seven years ago.”
Henry James squinted at Holmes. “You said that Peter Fowler was murdered. It was written that Mr. Rucastle—and this Dawkins, Lord Hodgkyss, ‘died violently’. There’s a lot of yet-unexplained mayhem there.”
“We arrived only minutes too late, Watson and I,” Holmes said in a barely audible voice. “Fowler had brought a tall ladder, risked the dangerous traverse across ancient slate tiles in the darkness, and let himself down through the small skylight in Alice’s locked room. She must have sat on the bed in silence and let him unlock her manacles, padlocks, and chains while he whispered endearments. Then she used her teeth and uncut nails to slash his throat. She was eating his heart when Dawkins, her father, rushed in. The ‘Violet Hunter’ hired harlot was close on Dawkins’s heels, and, by pure coincidence, wearing Alice’s blue dress that evening.”
James sat, staring and waiting. Despite the fact that all this had to be pure invention, he found that he had trouble breathing.
“Mr. Dawkins, Lord Hodgkyss, had brought a pistol with him,” continued Holmes in the same flat tones. “He had told me in an interview the week before that he was sure he could never use it on his daughter, no matter what new unspeakable actions she might undertake. He was correct. As Watson and I ran down the dusty hallway and shouted at him, Dawkins raised the pistol to his temple and blew his own brains out.”
“And Miss Violet Hunter?” asked James. “The non-governess governess?”
“Mad,” said Sherlock Holmes. “She began screaming at the sight of what was transpiring in Alice Dawkins’s room and continues to scream to this day, although her asylum care is paid for by Lady Hodgkyss.”
James smiled to show that he was not a total rube. “Rube”—the word came from when a traveling circus had come to the outskirts of Newport when he was young. James hadn’t thought of that word for years; he’d never used it in a story.
“And what about Carlo?” he asked softly.
“Carlo?” said Holmes.
“In ‘The Adventure of the Copper Beeches’, Watson writes about Carlo, the giant baying mastiff that prowled the yard at night and that tore out Mr. Rucastle’s throat in the end.”
Holmes smiled thinly. “ ‘Baying mastiff’. Watson never has been able to tell his Hound Group from his Herding Dogs . . . Watson just doesn’t know dogs. There
was
a mastiff at Hodgkyss Hall. His name was Barney, he was fifteen years old, and if he’d encountered a burglar in the night, Barney would have rolled over to have his belly rubbed. The only infamy Barney ever committed, according to Jethrow Dawkins when Watson and I spoke to him three days before he died, was when he playfully chewed up one of Lady Hodgkyss’s stuffed animals.”
“But Watson wrote in ‘The Adventure of the Copper Beeches’ that he had to take his service revolver and—I quote—blow the creature’s brains out after it had killed Mr. Rucastle,” said James in a strained voice.
“It was Mr. Dawkins’s revolver, and I used it,” said Holmes. “Alice Dawkins was preoccupied with devouring her father when I took the fallen revolver and blew her brains out.”
The two men sat in silence for several minutes.
Finally Sherlock Holmes—or the man pretending to be the imaginary Sherlock Holmes—said, “I believe I understand why Watson felt he had to write about the Wookey Hole Affair . . . the so-called ‘Adventure of the Copper Beeches’. It haunted him. Bothered his sleep. It’s in Dr. Watson’s nature to try to rearrange things into simpler stories of right and wrong. But if I were he, I would have left the entire Wookey Hole business alone.”
Henry James looked the other man in the eye and said, “You realize, of course, that everything that you’ve told me here sounds absolutely insane.”
“Absolutely,” said Holmes. The detective checked his watch. “John Hay said that a light lunch would be set out in the conservatory dining area at noon and for us to go ahead even if he were still busy. Would you care to join me, Mr. James?”
“I’ll wait until tea with Clarence King and dinner with the Norwegian emissary, Mr. Holmes,” said James. He said nothing else before going back to his room to lie down on the perfectly white bedspread.
C
larence King arrived promptly upon the chime of 5 p.m. A portly 51-year-old now and long past his once athletic, mountain-climbing physical prime, King appeared at the Hays’ threshold wearing a large beret and a well-worn green velvet corduroy suit complete with knee breeches and high wool socks.
“Your old European traveling suit!” cried John Hay, fervently using both hands to shake King’s. “Are you going abroad again?”
“Not unless one counts Mexico as ‘abroad’,” laughed King in a voice Henry James found as velvety as the absurd traveling suit—and just as well-worn. “I found myself traveling through Washington with no other clothes available and knew that my oldest friends would understand this velveteen invasion. Consider it a tardy celebration of St. Patrick’s Day.”
“You could have worn your old cowboy britches and chaps and been dressed perfectly for this home, Clarence,” said Hay, who had already made the dinner less formal by decreeing it only black tie rather than white tie, even with a Norwegian emissary and his wife and daughter attending.
King whipped off the oversized beret and handed it to the waiting servant. James noticed that Clarence King’s hairline had receded considerably since the writer had seen him last, leaving only the graying hint of what had once been long golden locks. King still wore a beard clipped closely in the U. S. Grant manner that had long since gone out of style for younger men. Combined with the velvet-corduroy suit, thought James, the beard and added weight made the explorer look not a little like paintings of Henry VIII. Then again, realized James, some had almost certainly made the same comment about
him
.
James and Holmes stood and watched Clara Hay hug and kiss their old family friend with an almost girlish enthusiasm that struck both men as very un-Clara-Hayish.
“Clara, my dear!” cried King. “You remain the truest and brightest ray of sunshine in this old man’s too-clouded life. You have, as you know”—and here King shot an almost boyishly mischievous glance at John Hay—“ruined for me all other members of your sex. I must now remain a bachelor for all my few remaining days, looking forward only to cremation since that alone guarantees to be a new experience.”
“Ohhh!” cried Clara Hay and slapped King on his green-velvet-corduroy sleeve.
“Harry, by God!” cried King, shaking Henry James’s hand with great animation. “Adams has so far won the race to baldness amongst our band, but I see that you and I are finally giving old Henry a run for his money. What brings you out of the London fog and back to the States, my friend?”
“First and foremost,” James said softly, retrieving his hand and resisting the urge to rub circulation back into it, “this chance to see old friends. May I introduce a traveling companion and fellow guest . . . Mr. Jan Sigerson? Mr. Sigerson, I present to you the original and inimitable Clarence King. Mr. King, Mr. Sigerson.”
King shook hands but then took a step back in the huge foyer as if needing to give Holmes a second inspection. “Sigerson?
Jan Sigerson?
The Norwegian explorer? The fellow who just a couple of years ago penetrated deeper into the Himalayas than any white man has been known to go?
That
Jan Sigerson?”
Holmes bowed modestly.
“By God, sir,” boomed King, “it is a pleasure and honor to meet you. I have a thousand questions for you regarding the Himalayan Mountains and the Forbidden Land you managed to penetrate. While I misspent my youth clambering up this continent’s molehills, you, sir, have gone to
real
mountains.”
“Only to their most modest passes, Mr. King,” said Holmes in his Norwegian accent. His dark mustache seemed thicker this evening and James actively wondered if he’d touched it up somehow. “And even then on the backs of ponies.”
“Come into the parlor, King,” cried John Hay, obviously delighted to see his friend. But there was something else that James was picking up from their host . . . embarrassment at the way their friend was dressed? Some unfinished and probably unnameable business between the two? Money borrowing, perhaps? As portly and ruddy as King appeared upon first glance, a closer inspection suggested that he had recently passed through an illness . . . perhaps a serious one.
“It is tea time!” exclaimed Clara Hay.
Clarence King smiled almost sadly. “Ah, those were the days, Clara. John leaving the State Department early—choosing to leave the nation to unintended wars and misdirection rather than miss our five o’clock tea. And Adams poking his pale dome out of his study precisely at five—nothing else would have separated him from his lamprey-like attachment to his moldy green books. And Clover . . . Clover laughing and leading us into the fireplace room where the little red-leather chairs awaited.”
King seemed to notice the effect his eulogy was having on the company and immediately lightened his tone and expression. “Actually, John, I was hoping that we might substitute some of your sherry for tea this one afternoon.”
“And so we shall,” said Hay, putting his arm around King and leading the way into the fireplace-dominated parlor. “And so we shall.”
* * *
Sitting sipping his tea—they had poured sherry, but he would have it after the tea—Henry James was reminded of how small all five of the Five of Hearts had been. Clarence King, at five foot six, had been the tallest of all of them.
After some friendly chatter—Hay probing as to whether King was off that week for a diamond mine in the Andes or a gold mine in the Alaskan Rockies (to which Clarence King had replied only, “Neither! A silver mine in Mexico!”)—King asked Holmes a few questions about the Himalayan peaks. Holmes seemed to answer, albeit vaguely, but then the two men began discussing exploration in earnest. James waited for the inevitable revelation that Sherlock Holmes could not tell the difference between a Himalayan peak and a Herefordshire hillside.