The Fifth Heart (47 page)

Adams led them around to the side where a granite column about ten feet tall rose on a two-tiered stone base. The leaves from the closely planted trees overlaid part of the column in creeping frondescence.

“This is the important side of the monument,” said Adams, touching a carved emblem of two overlapping rings set into the granite. Each ring was about twelve inches across, both were inscribed with faint leaves like laurel rings, and Holmes saw that they were entwined. There was the faintest of depressions in the granite around each ring.

Without stopping, Adams led them around the side of the leafy square. The trees rose in a solid green wall about twenty feet high, opening to a narrow gap amidst the greenery.

“Watch your step,” said Adams as he entered the break in the trees. It was good advice since, although there was gravel underfoot, that gravel was bisected by a cement ridge that separated the planting areas.

The three men stepped through the leafy doorway, stepped up and onto a higher level of stone edge and gravel base, and stopped in their tracks.

“Good heavens,” said Henry James.

Sherlock Holmes, who had little interest in funerary objects or sculptures from any era, nonetheless felt the breath leave his chest.

They were standing on a raised hexagon twenty-some feet across. On three sides rose a stone bench—the stone not made of the granite of the monument across from it—and the arms at the end of each bench were in the form of griffon’s wings with carved stone talons seizing a ball at the base.

But the focus of the hexagon was the monument and sculpture opposite the three benches.

Upon a raised granite base and set back against the high granite block, capped in classical style, was the larger-than-life bronze figure of a man or woman in a robe. The robe rose over the figure’s head like a cowl and other than the face in shadow, only a bare right arm and hand were visible.

Holmes stepped closer and so did Henry James.

“Henry,” said James, “you sent me photographs, but I had no idea . . .”

“No, photographs do not do it justice,” said Adams. “Lizzie Cameron sent me photos when I was in the South Seas, but it was not until I saw the monument in person a year ago this February that I realized its power. Many is the time in the past two years that I’ve sat and watched and listened, without being watched or listened to, as people encounter this piece for the first time. Their comments run the gamut from interesting to cruelly puerile.”

The visible parts of the human form in the massive bronze sculpture were androgynous. The raised forearm was strong, the fingers folded under the cheek and chin, but the figure might have been either male or female. There was a Pre-Raphaelite perfection to the firm descent of the cheek, the solid chin, and the straight line of the nose, but it was the eyes—almost but not quite closed in contemplation, the eyelids lowered as if in sorrow—that brought the figure out of any era or school of art, classical or otherwise.

“It’s as if his . . . or her . . . face beneath that cowl is lost in a cave of thought,” said James.

“When John La Farge and I returned from Japan in eighteen eighty-six, we all but buried Saint-Gaudens in photographs and images of Buddhas, trying to inspire him,” Adams said softly. “During my long wanderings in the South Seas, I would refer to the sculpture—not yet created by Saint-Gaudens—as ‘my Buddha’, but this is no Buddha.”

It’s true
, thought Holmes. The Buddhas he’d seen in the Far East gave off a sense of calm and repose; this figure conveyed to the viewer the deepest possible sense of loss, absence, thought, pain, and even sorrow—all the emotions that the Buddha and those who followed him to enlightenment had left behind.

Holmes made a mental note that the massive robed figure was seated on an indistinct bench or boulder which lay against the upright granite block. The figure’s feet—invisible beneath the shadows of robe—rested upon a large, flat stone some three feet across, the stone in turn on the horizontal hearthstone of granite coming out from the vertical block.

As one moved to the left or right, the figure’s eyes—as cowled as the sculpture’s head—seemed to follow the viewer. The folds of the robe lay heavy between the bronze sculpture’s covered knees, which were already slightly shiny from the touch of human hands.

“Does the piece have a name?” asked Holmes, still moving to the left and right and sensing the shadowed eyes following him.

Adams sat on the bench opposite the form. He folded one leg over the other. “I want to call it ‘The Peace of God’,” he said. “But that isn’t quite right, is it? There is something beyond peace—or short of it—in this sculpture. My artist friend La Farge calls it ‘Kwannon’ after the counterpart we saw in Japan to the Chinese Kuan Yin. Petrarch would say:
‘Siccome eternal vita è veder Dio.’
I would think that a real artist—or deep soul—would be very careful to give it no name that the public could turn into a limitation of its nature.”

“The benches?” asked James, turning to look in Adams’s direction.

“Oh, Stanford White designed the benches and plantings, and obviously fell even further from my wish for the Oriental than did Saint-Gaudens. White’s workers had the site covered by a tent for more than a month in the winter of ’ninety. But the griffon wings . . . not exactly in the Sakyamuni tradition that La Farge and I had in mind when we returned from Japan. Although this sculpture is, I think, the
ultimate
Saint-Gaudens—the most anyone could ask for or receive from this great artist’s core of being.”

Turning back to look again at the sculpture, James said, “Does Saint-Gaudens have a name for it?”

“Several,” said Adams. “His favorite—the last time I heard anyone ask—is
The Mystery of the Hereafter
—but he knows that is not adequate. Saint-Gaudens’s native language is stone, not words.”

“ ‘I am the doubter and the doubt’,” said James.

“Yes,” said Adams.

“I don’t recognize the reference,” said Holmes.

“The poem ‘Brahma’ by Emerson,” said Henry James and recited:

Holmes nodded.

“When I was in India, trying to meditate beneath the sacred bo tree . . . which was as small as a twig now in modern times,” said Adams, “I wrote my own poem in which I attempted to summarize the truly transcendental moment. I failed even worse than Emerson had.”

“Tell us the poem, please, Henry,” said James.

Adams started to shake his head but spread his arms wide on the back of the bench and said softly:

Then, startling both James and Holmes, Adams laughed quite loudly. “Pardon me,” he said after a moment. “But the Emerson poem reminds me of something that Clover wrote to her father in the winter of . . . eighteen eighty, I think it was. I believe I can quote it correctly—
A high old-fashioned snowstorm here: the attempts at sleighing numerous and humorous. ‘If the red sleigher thinks he sleighs,’ Ralph Waldo Emerson would point him to the Brighton Road for the genuine article
.”

Holmes and James laughed softly at this. James caught Holmes’s eye and said, “I think I’m going to take a stroll out there amongst the headstones. I shall return in a few minutes.”

When James had edged his way out through the small opening in the greenery, Adams stood and said, “Good. Mr. Holmes, you and I must now speak in earnest.”

* * *

“I know why you’re here, Holmes,” said Adams. “Why you came to Washington. Why you dragged poor Harry with you.”

“Hay told you,” said Holmes. He leaned forward, both hands on his stick, as Adams remained seated.

“No. He hasn’t . . . yet. But he will. John could never allow me to look or play the fool for long. We’re more than friends, Holmes. We’re like brothers.”

Holmes nodded, wondering just how much Adams knew or suspected.

“But I knew at once that you’d come to solve the so-called ‘mystery’ of the cards we surviving Hearts receive on the anniversary of Clover’s death,” said Adams. “So . . . have you?”

“Solved it?”

“Yes.” The syllable snapped in the languid afternoon air like the tip of a whip.

“No,” said Holmes. “I do know that the cards were typed on Samuel Clemens’s typewriter. I looked at a list of the Clemenses’ guests from Christmas eighteen eighty-five through December ’eighty-six . . . the time during which the cards were typed.”

“And have you narrowed the list down?”

Holmes opened his hands palms outward even as the heel of one hand kept pressure on his cane. “Rebecca Lorne and her cousin Clifton spent a night there that year. So did Ned Hooper. So did all of the remaining Hearts save for Clarence King. So did
you
, Mr. Adams.”

Adams nodded tersely. “You actually suspect Rebecca Lorne?”

Holmes removed a photograph from his jacket pocket and stepped forward to hand it to Adams. It was part of a program for a Polish opera, and the diva whose photograph was on the front was the British singer and actress Irene Adler.

“It could be the same woman,” said Adams. “It’s hard to tell with the dramatic make-up and hairdo. Miss Lorne always dressed herself plainly.”

“It is the same woman,” said Holmes.

“What if it is?” said Adams. “That solves nothing.”

“How did you know my reason for being here if Hay or James did not tell you?” said Holmes. “Ned Hooper, I presume.”

Adams smiled, handed the photo back, and crossed his arms. “I loved Ned Hooper and was crushed when we learned of his death this past December. Before that, Ned came to me almost every year, in private, begging me to bring the authorities into the so-called mystery of the December-six cards. Two years ago on New Year’s Day he promised . . . threatened . . . to go to London to hire the famous detective Sherlock Holmes if I did nothing.”

“What did you say to him then?”

“I seem to remember saying that I thought the famous detective Sherlock Holmes was fictional,” said Adams.

Holmes nodded. The two men remained silent for a long moment. Somewhere outside their leafed-in space, a distant carriage clopped along one of the cemetery’s long, curving lanes.

“My beloved wife took her own life, Mr. Holmes,” Adams said at last, his voice low. “This is why I have not spoken of her or written about her except to the most intimate of my friends these past seven years.”

“Yet today you were speaking freely,” said Holmes.

“That is because today I am going to ask you to relent in this useless quest, return to England, and leave me and my memories alone, Mr. Holmes,” said Adams. Each word was as sharp as a round fired from a Gatling gun.

“I owe something to my client, sir,” said Holmes.

Adams laughed, but it was a sad sound. “I did love Ned Hooper, Mr. Holmes. But the same strand of madness ran through Ned that ran through Clover, her father, and so many members of the Hooper family. It was no one’s fault. But Ned was as destined as poor Clover to take his own life. Your ‘client’, Mr. Holmes, suffered from multiple strands of insanity. Would you continue in your efforts when you know that any false clue or misplaced fact you might pick up in this ‘mystery’ would hurt me as surely as forcing me to swallow shards of broken glass?”

“My intention is not to hurt you, Mr. Adams. Nor anyone else, save for anyone who might be behind these . . .”

“
Damn
your intentions!” interrupted Adams. “Don’t you understand yet? It was Ned Hooper who typed those cards when he was visiting Clemens in eighteen eighty-six. It was Ned who managed to sneak the cards into all of the Five of Hearts’ mail on December the sixth each year.”

“Did he admit that to you?” asked Holmes, who had long considered that possibility. It was the presence of Irene and Lucan Adler in the last months of Clover Adams’s life that had convinced him otherwise.

“No, not in so many words,” said Adams. “But Ned was unbalanced, fragile, ready to crack or break at any shock . . . and his sister’s suicide was just that shock that caused the break to be final. Clover’s death was
meaningless
, Mr. Holmes—logical only to her and to her own pain and despair—and Ned could never accept that someone so important to him would disappear for no reason.”

“Perhaps,” said Holmes. “But in this instance, Ned’s fears seem founded more on malicious fact than innocent madness. The true identities of Rebecca Lorne and her cousin Clifton argue for . . .”

“I have a proposal for you, Mr. Holmes,” interrupted Adams.

Holmes waited.

“We’ve all heard what a master of deduction you are, Mr. Holmes . . . what a master detective. But none of us, not even Harry, I’m sure, have yet seen the slightest indication that you can solve
anything
with your so-called deductive powers.”

“What must I do to prove myself?” asked Holmes.

“Solve the mystery I’ve set for you,” said Adams.

“The mystery of the December-six cards . . .”

“No!” cried Adams. “The mystery that
I
have set for you. Solve it by five p.m. tomorrow, and you may stay—I will even cooperate with you in your investigation. Fail to solve it, and you must, on your word as a gentleman, agree to leave this town, leave this nation, and leave the so-called ‘mystery’ of my wife’s death alone forever. Agreed?”