Authors: Dan Simmons
Sherlock Holmes filled his plate with bits of English, American, and Norwegian breakfasts—although a French croissant and Turkish-strong coffee were his usual breakfast when he was at 221 B Baker Street—and enjoyed his morning conversation with John and Clara Hay.
The 44-year-old Mrs. Hay, Holmes saw at once, had long since passed Henry James’s somewhat unkind description of “solid”, had—probably in her mid- to late-30s—passed through and beyond the category of “matronly” and was now set firmly in a thickset, multiple-chinned sort of upper-class glory that would probably stay with her until her last years. It did not seem to diminish John Hay’s delight in her (Holmes remembered James saying that she was “solid” when Hay fell in love with her and seemed to revel in it) and, in truth, Holmes still saw Clara Hay’s beauty in the perfection of her clothing, the gleam of a perfect but modest jewel on one soft finger of her pudgy hand, the coruscations of her perfectly set hair, her near-flawless complexion, and a lustrous quality to her wide, bright eyes that no amount of “tucking into her victuals” would probably ever erase.
Also, Clara Hay was a pleasant, caring person and a wonderful hostess. Holmes—especially in his strange, wild-haired, fiercely mustached Sigerson persona—could tell that almost at once. Her voice was a pleasant contralto and, when Clara Hay was in a position where listening was called for (such as after asking Mr. Sigerson a question), she actually
listened
. Holmes knew how rare this gift was of being patient enough actually to listen and immediately saw why Mrs. John Hay, “Clara” to so many hundreds of her close friends (in that bold American way where people in society actually used each other’s Christian names without that English fear that they would be mistaken for a servant), would be the indispensable hostess for a capital city such as Washington.
When Holmes complimented Clara Hay on the beautiful blue-and-green gown she was wearing—and it
was
beautiful, in a dignified and understated way—his hostess did not blush or act like a falsely modest maiden but said, “Yes, it is nice, isn’t it, Mr. Sigerson, even if designed only for everyday wear. I appreciate your appreciation of it—a sign of your good taste, I believe. The design is by the Parisian couturier Charles Worth . . . who was referred to me by our late friend Mrs. Clover Adams.” Clara Hay glanced at her husband as if to ask if she could tell more, but if there were some signal sent from the colonel to his lady, Holmes missed it.
“Clover used to say,” continued Clara Hay, “that a Worth gown not only filled her soul with happiness but . . . what was her exact phrase, John.”
“Not only filled her soul with happiness but sealed it hermetically,” said Hay.
“Ah, yes,” said Holmes’s hostess, smiling as he did. “Monsieur Worth won Clover Adams’s undying loyalty one day in Paris in eighteen eighty-one when the couturier continued to stay with Clover and make last-minute alterations to her gown when both Mrs. Vanderbilt and Mrs. Astor were waiting in the outer room. That was enough recommendation for me, you see, and I have never regretted turning to Monsieur Worth first when we are shopping in Paris.”
“It is a truly stunning dress,” said Holmes. “Knowing as little as I do about such things as I am a bachelor, I would still venture to say that Monsieur Worth’s particular genius has more than repaid your allegiance.” He set down his empty coffee cup and shook his head slightly when the under-butler moved to refill it.
“So what would you like to do today, Mr. Sigerson?” asked John Hay. The more Holmes saw of the diplomat’s long, white fingers, the more he was sure that Hay could have been a fine violinist if his musical tastes had turned that way, as Holmes’s had, at a young age.
“We can wait for Harry and take a carriage excursion through the city,” continued Hay. “Show you the historical sites and monuments, drive through Rock Creek Park, perhaps peek in on Congress in session and have some bean soup there for lunch.” Hay laughed easily. “Harry hates sight-seeing of any organized sort, but we shall simply outvote him. That’s what democracies are for, after all . . . the tyranny of the less-cultured majority such as myself!”
“Thank you,” said Holmes. “But if you and Mrs. Hay do not mind, I would like to spend this first day in Washington as I tend to spend all first days in new cities or locales . . . exploring on foot.”
“Very good,” Hay said with real enthusiasm. “Would you like us to give you some directions for the major sights?”
Holmes smiled under his Sigerson mustache. “Getting lost is my preferred first step in each of my explorations.”
Hay laughed at this.
“If you leave before Harry comes down we shall tell him that you will be back by . . . when?” said Clara Hay. “Shall we plan on you for luncheon, tea, or dinner?”
“Tea, I think,” said Holmes. “Do you have it at five p.m.?”
“That is the hour,” said John Hay, dabbing at his lips beneath the billowing white mustache with a pure-white linen napkin. “Although there may be other options than tea for us men if you’ve had an adventurous day exploring.”
Fifteen minutes later, James having still not made an appearance, Holmes left the house in his green tweed suit, a walking stick with a silver head in the shape of a barking dog, and a full briefcase clutched in his left hand. He was striding briskly under low gray clouds. The day was rather muggy, much warmer than either Paris or New York had been, and Holmes’s/Sigerson’s wool suit was too warm for such a spring day, but this did not stop him from walking at a very brisk pace with the effortless, long-legged strides of the indefatigable explorer he was supposed to be.
The briefcase contained a strange change of clothes. In the upper inside pocket of his tweed jacket he carried photographs of three men, one much younger than the other two. In his right trouser pocket, Holmes carried a French-made, spring-opening knife with a 6-inch blade that had a cutting edge so sharp that one could remove all the hairs on one’s arm with it without feeling the slightest touch of contact.
* * *
Holmes had two objectives for his day of “exploring” in Washington: the first was a mere local errand that might end up a tad expensive; the second was a longer voyage by foot into areas that would almost certainly be dangerous. He looked forward to the second task.
Now as he ambled along, seemingly oblivious to the threatening weather or even the city around him, he took in—as was his training and habit—almost everything around him.
Holmes saw that no one was following him.
Holmes noticed that while the homes were rather nice here near Lafayette Square and the Executive Mansion—what Americans would come to call the White House—they were mostly of the flat-fronted, old Federalist design with their modest stoops opening directly onto the sidewalks. The exception to this traditional flavor had been the Hays’ and Adamses’ towering twin piles of red brick in the Richardsonian design. Even as he’d walked away, Holmes had noticed that the bricks of Hay’s mansion facing Sixteenth Street had been architect-unique: longer, wider, and deeper than any standard building brick. He hadn’t yet taken time to study the front of Henry Adams’s house next door on H Street, but he hoped to see that home soon enough.
The trees in bloom along the not-very-wide sidewalks were relatively young and short. Only in the parks had some of the chestnut and elm trees reached their mature height. Washington, D.C., although almost a hundred years old and despite its gleaming-white Roman civic architecture and few great monuments, had the feel of a new and rather sleepy city.
The boulevards were broad but not very busy even in late morning; by London or Paris standards, they were all but empty. On the busier cross-streets, Holmes caught glimpses of small, hooded gigs—what the Americans called “buggies”—as well as fashionable cabriolets and chaises, commercial coaches and canvas-sided “floats” filled with milk churns or stacked marble, the occasional stylish four-in-hand dashing through traffic, some dog carts (usually with young people at the reins), quite a few gleaming black broughams of the quality Hay had sent to the rail station the night before, a plodding assortment of wagons, wagonettes, and vans hauling goods, a few men on horseback, and even a very few gleaming and belching brass and red-leather horseless carriages being guided by men in dusters and goggles at the tillers.
Even though he had to pass the Executive Mansion, Holmes’s glance did not linger on the miniature white palace housing President Cleveland. The detective had last been to the White House in November of 1881—during the trial of President Garfield’s assassin, the pathetic and more-or-less insane Charles Guiteau. Holmes had been pressed into the service by his older brother Mycroft at Whitehall and by Mycroft’s superior in the intelligence services at the time, Sir George Mansfield Smith-Cumming.
In 1881—as now in 1893—the formal British Secret Service had not yet formally come into being (it will be founded in 1909), much less branched into its domestic intelligence service (MI5) and its foreign intelligence service (MI6), but Prime Minister Disraeli had established a “Joint Information and Research Unit” that was actually an oversight and political-liaison committee between the prime minister’s office, Whitehall, and the hodge-podge of intelligence services run by the Army Intelligence Service, Royal Navy Intelligence, and half a dozen other military agencies.
Mycroft Holmes, only 34 years old at the time but already indispensable at Whitehall due to his astounding mathematical ability and reasoning skills, was second-in-command of the Joint Committee (reporting only to the Acting Director at the time of its founding in 1881, Captain Sir George Mansfield Smith-Cumming of the Admiralty’s intelligence service). Mycroft was now co-director of the nascent British Secret Service along with William Melville.
Sherlock’s brother had been given a basement office at 12 Downing Street for his intelligence duties, but Holmes knew that his massive brother had never visited the fully fitted-out Downing Street office. All Joint Committee and Military Directorate of Intelligence operations were soon directed out of Mycroft’s office at Whitehall with his nominal superiors coming
there
for briefings. This was because Mycroft divided his time between Whitehall and his own creation, the Diogenes Club, a private club half a block away from Whitehall and reachable by both formal tunnels and covered walkways. The older Holmes brother had divided his world between these two interior spaces; there was no third. He slept and ate and amused himself at the Diogenes Club. His younger brother had long known that Mycroft was terrified by open spaces. In years yet to come, Mycroft Holmes would be described as “agoraphobic”.
The Diogenes Club itself, begun, as mentioned earlier, by Mycroft and half a dozen other very strange London men of means and power who shared a fear of open spaces and strangers, was by far the strangest of all the scores of men’s clubs in the city. There were the usual newspapers and meals available, the usual staff of capable servants and silent waiters, a rather good dining room and an excellent and extensive library, comfortable sleeping rooms and even more comfortable deep leather reading chairs in the Upstairs Lounge, but the primary rule—and primary source of comfort for the Diogenes Club members—was that members (and the very few and very rare authorized visitors) could not begin a conversation or speak to anyone, even other charter members, in any place except the sealed-off Strangers Room. Mycroft and the other founding members of the Diogenes Club were not only afraid of strangers and of talking to strangers, they were afraid of clubs.
Sherlock Holmes knew that his brother had many other debilitating phobias. Such was the nature of the de facto director of all of Her Majesty’s de facto Secret Service in late March of 1893.
When Sherlock was hastily dispatched to America in 1881 to interview and investigate President Garfield’s assassin Guiteau (an assignment especially inconvenient to Holmes, not the least of which reason being that he’d only recently settled into his new digs at 221 B with Watson and was finally receiving his first trickle of private, paying clients), he assumed that the assignment was to be a waste of time due to what the consulting detective then believed was his brother Mycroft’s phobia related to anarchists and what Sherlock Holmes saw as his brother’s baseless fantasy about an “international conspiracy of anarchists”. Consulting Detective Holmes thought it was about as likely that there would be an annual Anarchists’ Convention as any real conspiratorial connections between the random madmen.
But while Holmes helped prove that Guiteau had been a lone actor, the continued international anarchist threats, bombings, assassinations, and sometimes elaborate plots turned out to be very real indeed. In 1886 Holmes was back in America, investigating the site of the so-called Chicago “Haymarket Square Massacre”. It was Holmes who discovered who had actually killed the seven policemen—papers and legend were suggesting then that the police had shot each other and textbooks today repeat the calumny—and the results of his investigation remain secret to this day. A year later, in 1887 London, it was Sherlock Holmes and two men from a specially formed squad from Scotland Yard who prevented—only in the very nick of time—the assassination of Queen Victoria by the famed big-game hunter and marksman-for-hire Colonel Sebastian Moran and an accomplice. The two had positioned themselves to fire Jebel rifles placed in an advantageous firing position within the closed Royal Aquarium opposite Westminster Abbey just as Her Majesty entered her royal coach on her own Jubilee Day. The accomplice had been captured; the master marksman and ultimate mercenary huntsman Moran had somehow escaped through the maze of tunnels, labyrinths, steam pipes, and workers’ service corridors beneath the Royal Aquarium.
* * *
Holmes’s first stop as Mr. Jan Sigerson was at the Clarkson Scientific Apparatus and Photographic Materials shop only some ten blocks from the Hays’ front door.
As he entered the dimly lit interior, Holmes could not but speculate that this was almost certainly the very shop in which Clover Adams not only had bought her own photographic supplies before her death in 1885, but whoever had supplied her with the poisonous potassium cyanide fixing-solution as a gift might well have also purchased it here.