“All in twenty-one months,” said James as if reading the author’s mind. “Where then will President Cleveland be doing his opening speech and switch-turning?”
Holmes turned and pointed with his own stick. “Do you see through the pillars or the Peristyle to that dome rising at the far end of the Lagoon—right in line with that canvas-shrouded tall pedestal that will be revealed as Saint-Gaudens’s huge Statue of the Republic? Yes, the one with the four pavilions, one at each corner. That is the Administration Building where the president and other dignitaries will speak. They will be facing this way—east, toward the Lake and the statue—and one assumes that all the concourses will be flooded with excited American humanity, all the way back to the Peristyle gates.”
Holmes handed James a small, folding telescope. The author put the object to his eye, brought the dome into focus, and said, “Are those angels on the upper promenade of that Administration Building . . . right below the dome?”
“Eight groupings of angels, actually,” said Holmes. “All trumpeting the victory of Peace, although I fear they may be a bit overly optimistic about that reality. Besides hundreds of incandescent lights outlining the upper reaches and dome of the Administration Building at night, that upper promenade you’re looking at is ringed with those huge gas torches designed to illuminate the golden dome.”
“Good heavens,” said James, turning his telescopic gaze on the myriad of what looked like huge marble palaces, each festooned with its own multitude of statuary, pinnacles, towers, arches, entablatures, and wildly decorated friezes. “I’m surprised that the denizens of Chicago won’t wish to move into the White City once the Exposition is over,” he said softly.
“They’d be out of a home after a winter or two, or even after a few months of strong Chicago rainstorms,” said Holmes.
James lowered the telescope. “What do you mean?”
“While there’s plenty of steel and iron—more than eighteen thousand tons of those metals in the Great Buildings alone, I’m told—not to mention wood, most of what looks like white marble to you is actually made of staff.”
“Staff?”
“That’s what it’s called,” said Holmes. “Evidently it’s an exotic composition of plaster, cement, and hemp—or some similar fibrous material—that was sort of painted on or sprayed on to look like permanent stone. All of the Great Buildings, most of the State Buildings, and a vast majority of the statuary and bas relief you see is made of staff . . . in its semi-liquid form a very plastic material, I understand. And lighter than wood. Still, they used more than thirty thousand tons of the stuff to create most of the White City’s structures.”
“Not meant to be permanent?” asked James with a strange pang of disappointment. He found himself, against all reason and odds, taking pride in what his fellow Americans had created in so short a time.
“No,” said Holmes, “although if painted regularly, it might last several years. Left to the elements, all those amazing structures you’re admiring are going to melt and rot like Miss Havisham’s wedding cake in a year or less.”
James handed back the telescope, which Holmes folded and set in his large outer pocket. The Columbus made a wide easterly arc and headed back along the shoreline toward the Black City. He was thinking that no nation was better at creating metaphors for itself than America; in this case, the vision of a beautiful, sane, safe, marble future that is all dream and no marble to sustain it.
“Well,” said James, still disappointed that his American Venice turned out to be so much marzipan, “I guess the future of the White City is not our problem.”
“No,” agreed Holmes. “One way or the other, all our problems will be over by the end of May first.”
TWO
Monday, April 10, 11:20 a.m.
Three days before James’s boat tour to the White City and the day after he’d left his friends in Washington, the author stood at the family cemetery plot in Cambridge. He’d last visited this spot a little more than a decade earlier when he’d rushed to America to be by his dying father’s side only to learn when his feet touched the Boston pier that his father had died an hour earlier. On the day of New Year’s Eve 1882, James had walked alone up the snowy hillside to his father’s grave that had been filled in with the frozen earth only ten days earlier. William, unable to return from Europe in time, had sent a most personal letter to his father but the letter, like Henry, had arrived after the awful fact of death. It had been a very cold day—although with a clear Massachusetts winter sky—and James remembered both the ghost-smoke of his breath in the air as he read the long letter and the growing numbness in his freezing toes. William’s long letter had begun “Darling old Father” and had passed through several pages of metaphysical speculation that seemed to Henry much like the continuation of debates and outright arguments William had been having with their father for decades. The letter had ended with “Good-night, my sacred old Father. If I don’t see you again—Farewell!! a blessed farewell!” James was sure he had not wept that day a decade earlier because, if he had, the tears would have frozen to his cheeks.
This April day was the antithesis of the last time he was here. In the winter then he’d been able to see the whiteness of a distant field beyond the Charles River, but now leaves blocked most of that view and as they shifted in the warm April breeze, James caught glimpses of homes and shops that hadn’t been there in 1882.
A year earlier, when William was in Italy, he’d had a marble urn engraved for sister Alice’s ashes. Henry read the words that William had chosen:
ed essa da martiro
e da essilio venne a questa pace
James had recognized the passage at once—from the Tenth Book of the Paradiso in the Divine Comedy—and his translation from the Italian was roughly—“and from martyrdom and banishment it came unto this peace.” It seemed appropriate for Alice’s pain-filled and largely bedridden life. She had indeed embraced death as an escape for the final decades of her life, although James knew—better than anyone else in the family—that the pain and death-welcoming was, until very near the end, leavened by Alice’s mischievous sense of humor and penchant for parody. When William had ordered her diary published, just for the family members, without asking Henry’s opinion, Henry had been shocked by the names named and ridiculed. He would have edited the diary severely to avoid such insults to the living (and some recent dead), but perhaps older brother William was right . . . perhaps Alice defied editing.
In one hand James held the elegant snuffbox containing the small amount of his sister’s ashes he’d pilfered after the cremation in England, while in the other hand he held the small gardening trowel he’d purchased in a hardware store not far from their old home on Bolton Street. But James had been as good as his vow not to go look at the now empty-of-family Bolton Street home, or to walk past the impressive home of William and his Alice—Alice the wife and mother—on the corner at 95 Irving Street here in Cambridge.
James felt like he’d failed his sister. His plan had been honorable enough—to have one of the brothers (himself, as it had to be) rather than Miss Katharine Loring help spread Alice’s ashes, but spread them somewhere Alice had been truly happy. James had simply failed to find such a spot—at least one where the happiness hadn’t been dependent upon his sister’s Boston Marriage to Miss Loring, such as at the two’s Newport home. James knew that he was being foolish and selfish with this after-the-fact jealousy of Katharine Loring. He’d never felt that way while Alice was alive—he’d simply been happy that someone could bring a smile to his sister’s face or coax a laugh out of her—but since sister Alice’s death and Miss Loring’s monopoly in bringing the ashes back here to this sacred spot, the Jameses’ burial ground, the jealousy and sense of stubbornness about finding a spot for these ashes had grown rather than diminished.
But in the end he had surrendered. There had always been a certain unique oneness about his sister Alice James, and her ashes should be together . . . or at least in c
lose proximity. James wasn’t about to try to pry open the sealed marble urn.
Making certain that no one was watching him, James knelt and dug a small grave for the snuffbox. The jade and porcelain box had been given to James as a gift in the late 1870’s by Richard Monckton Milnes, Lord Houghton, a friend of Henry James, Sr. His father had described Houghton as energetic and fun-filled—Henry Adams back then had told young James that Houghton was “the first wit of London and the maker of men . . . a great many men”, but the lord was 68 or 69 when Henry, Jr., finally met him and was given to using elaborate breakfasts and dinners to “capture” famous artists and writers as if they were so many butterflies.
The ivory snuffbox, for which James had no use save to own it as an object of art, was of the finest Delft porcelain interset with tiny and delicately carved androgynous human figures which, in their flowing and blowing robes, seemed to be saints or cherubs descended from some 17th Century painting. There was something spiritual in this little box and it was made infinitely more so now by holding his beloved sister’s ashes.
As James set the little snuffbox into the small but deep little hole and began troweling dirt back into place, he recalled an early dinner he’d had with Lord Houghton where the fellow diners had included Tennyson, Gladstone, and Dr. Heinrich Schliemann, the fellow who had found and excavated Troy.
Finished with his own excavation and filling-in, Henry stood—feeling the sudden pang of pain in his always-aching back—and brushed off his trousers at the knees. He realized that he should say a little prayer, but there was no prayer in his heart or mind at the moment. He’d already said his good-byes to Alice—she was the only member of the family whose deathbed and long, difficult dying he’d actually attended. He took one last glance at the urn to fulfill any ceremony required.
ed essa da martiro
e da essilio venne a questa pace
* * *
In the hansom cab he’d kept waiting for him in the cemetery, James knew that he’d have to decide what he was going to do. There was only one sane and sensible course of action: the train for New York, for which he had a first class ticket, left from Boston’s old central station in one hour. He’d made arrangements with the German steamship company to go aboard the Spree with all his baggage this very evening, as soon as he arrived in New York. He would have an excellent dinner and a good night’s sleep in his first-class cabin aboard the elegant ocean liner and the Spree would depart for Southampton (then London by rail, then home!) in the morning. James would not even have to get dressed to go to the deck to watch the departure since no one was seeing him off; he’d simply sleep late and enjoy breakfasting in his cabin.
But there was the double issue of that damned telegram from Holmes—ordering him to meet the detective on Beacon Hill this afternoon, long after his train had departed, Holmes arrogantly moving him around as if he were a chess piece with no mind of his own—and, more importantly, James’s news for Holmes about Professor Moriarty and the astounding meeting of thugs and anarchists that James had risked his life to witness. That was hardly something that James could put in a letter—even if he knew where in damnation Sherlock Holmes was at any given time—much less in a telegram.
Well, he’d have to decide soon. The hansom driver was showing signs of irritation and so was his horse.
Logically, there was only one choice he could make. He had to get out of this nightmare. He had to get to the train station, get on that train to New York, have his luggage and himself transferred to the ship, and settle into his stateroom on the Spree. Every bit of logic and reason screamed to James that it was time to return to his flat at De Vere Gardens and get back to work on the play that was going to make him a fortune.
“Driver,” he called. “To the central railway station. And quickly.”
THREE
Monday, April 10, 3:38 p.m.
Holmes ostentatiously checked his watch when the hansom—which had been moving almost at a gallop—came to a stop and a red-faced Henry James stepped out.
“You’re almost eight minutes tardy, James,” said Holmes. “I was about to give up on you and go on about my business.”
James had paid the driver and now his face grew even redder. “Don’t you dare chide me for being late for this rendezvous! First of all, you insult me in a public telegram telling me to come if it’s convenient or even if it is not convenient. That may have been a misfired attempt at humor, Mr. Holmes, but it was not something a gentleman would do when communicating via public telegraphy with another gentleman. And as for the time . . . first of all, you very well remember that I lost my valuable watch when you were dragging me through Rock Creek Cemetery and less speakable places at midnight, so I’ve had to depend upon public timepieces, which are notoriously unreliable in America. And finally, I had to rush to the central Boston railway station to get my luggage and accompany it through heavy traffic to this new North Union Station which isn’t really north at all, but far west of the city center. Then I had to store my luggage at the new station, which is deucedly crowded this time of day, and then fight Bostonians, who are only half a step up on the Darwinian scale from South Seas cannibals when it comes to refusing to learn how to queue, for a hansom cab to bring me back here. And I shan’t bother to tell you what important plans of my own that this has ruined for me since . . .”
James stopped because Holmes was openly smiling at him, which made James all the more angry and red-faced.
“Such as missing the sailing of the Spree tomorrow evening?” said Holmes.
“How do you . . . how could you know . . . where did you . . .” spluttered James.
“Alas,” said Holmes, “even our beloved telegraphy, whether sending communications between gentlemen or just to book a ship’s passage, is not as private as it should be. There remain papers and copies of papers, easily accessible to the dedicated voyeur—especially if that dedicated voyeur enters the telegraph office only a moment after the cable-sender has departed. And it is helpful if one can read words upside down, a small trick which I mastered as a child.”
James folded his arms across his chest above the curve of his significant belly while attempting to hold in the angry words and sentences that flowed into his mind.
The cab hadn’t left and Holmes called to the driver, “Wait here another fifteen minutes or so, my dear man.” He handed up some folded currency; the cabbie nodded, touched the brim of his hat, and pulled the hansom to the curb on the opposite side of the street.
“You think this business here will take only fifteen minutes?” hissed James in low tones so the driver would not hear. “I missed my train and ship to England for something that will take only fifteen minutes?”
“Of course not,” said Holmes. “As promised, we leave for Chicago in”—he checked his watch again—“a little under ninety minutes. But our immediate problem, as you can see, is that there is no four hundred twenty-six and a half address here . . . the houses on this side of the street go straight from four-twenty-six to four-twenty-eight.”
James sighed, obviously wondering at the denseness of a man whom too many people had called a “genius”.
“The custom here on this part of Beacon Hill is to have a little room on the upper floor of a carriage house,” said James. “Those are the ‘halves’ that the postal service delivers to.”
“Aha!” said Holmes as if he’d been the one to come up with this widely known fact. “There’s a carriage house or garage down this driveway at four-twenty-six,” he said as he started walking down the paved lane.
James caught the tall detective by the sleeve. “The protocol is to approach the carriage-house apartments by walking down the alley. We’ll need to go down this way and turn left to find the alley entrance.”
“What an absurd protocol,” said Holmes, following reluctantly. “The carriage house is visible right there.” He flung out his left arm although they’d already lost sight of the carriage house at the end of the sloping driveway.
As they turned left on another street—all these streets and many of these homes were familiar to James from both his childhood and his visits home to Bolton Street as an adult—the writer grasped Holmes’s upper arm and said, “I have urgent information for you, Holmes. Seriously urgent. Far more important than checking on this address, which shall almost certainly be a dead end. Let me tell you how two days ago I . . .”
Holmes gently removed the author’s hand from his arm and said softly, “I have no doubt that you do have something important to tell me, James. But one thing at a time, old boy. We shall speak to whomever lives at this address and then be on our way to North Station and you may tell me whatever you have to say more at your . . . let’s say . . . leisure.”
James almost turned around and left then. His face grew as red as it had been when he’d arrived and he glared at the side of Holmes’s head. He promised himself that he wouldn’t say a single word about anything until Holmes asked him for it. So what if he, Henry James, knew the details for Professor Moriarty’s plans for multiple assassinations and an anarchist and mob uprising set for May first? If Holmes was going to continue acting this way, Henry James would be damned if he’d share such vital intelligence with the detective.
“Who lives in these one-half numbered carriage-house apartments?” Holmes asked as if that were the most important thing for him to learn that day. “The servants?”
James considered not answering, but his cultivated nature demanded he answer a simple question. “No. Just as in England, if a family can afford servants, they live in the main house, up on the top floor under the eaves usually. These cottages have a tradition of being rented at very low prices to white people—cultivated people—whose jobs or vocations have steeped them in poverty. Local teachers, for instance, or the occasional college student, although the latter is often considered too volatile for these quiet neighborhoods . . . unless vouched for by multiple letters of reference, of course.”