nothing of the kind,” returned James with equal softness but much more intensity. “Your wild and inaccurate speculations do not interest me in the least, Mr. Holmes.”
“I had been there in the dark longer than you,” continued Holmes, his eyes on the surrounding ships and fireboats and rowboats and busy mayhem, “and my eyes had much better adapted to the dark than had yours. I saw you remove the small ivory snuffbox several times . . . hold it in a way that almost might be called prayerful—return it to your inner pocket, then retrieve it again. I knew it was an ivory snuffbox—only ivory gleams that way in such low light—and I also knew at once that you did not take snuff.”
“You know nothing of my habits, sir.” James’s voice could not have been colder nor more dismissive of this uninvited conversation. But because of the crowd behind them, he could not simply turn and walk away. He shifted his gaze away from Holmes instead.
“I do, of course,” said Holmes. “A user of snuff, even an occasional user, has telltale nicotine stains on his thumb and second finger. You did not. Also, someone using a snuffbox to retrieve pinches of snuff does not carefully and permanently join the various openings of the box with sealing wax.”
“There is no way you could have seen such things in those seconds, in that darkness,” said James. His heart was pounding against his ribs.
“I could. I did,” said Sherlock Holmes. “And then, as we were leaving, I contrived to light my pipe to confirm my earlier observations. You were not aware of it—holding the snuffbox obviously had become a nervous habit with you, Mr. James, especially in extremis, as it were—but you had removed it briefly several times after we’d walked away from the river. I could see that it was more than a mere talisman for you; it was sacred.”
James turned angrily to stare at the intruder and was shocked to see that Holmes had removed the blue lenses that had altered his true eye color. Now Henry James’s coldly angry gray-eyed stare met the calm gray-eyed gaze of Sherlock Holmes.
“While I was in India, I’d read in
The Times
of your sister’s death in March of eighteen ninety-two and, later, a notice of Miss James’s funeral and cremation at Woking and the mention that your sister’s companion, Miss Katharine Peabody Loring, would be returning the ashes to Cambridge, America, for interment there at the family plot.”
James said nothing. He continued to glare. He was glad he was leaning on a ship’s railing because he thought he might be sick.
“I could tell at once that night along the Seine that—with Miss Loring’s and your family’s knowledge or, more likely, without it—you had appropriated some of your sister’s ashes, made them safe in that absurdly expensive ivory snuffbox, and were transporting them . . . somewhere. But where? Certainly not just to the bottom of the Seine.”
James could not remember ever being insulted in quite this intimate fashion before. If he were his brother William, he knew, he would strike this Holmes in the face as brutally and bruisingly as possible. But Henry James was not William; he had never in his life coiled his fist in real expectation of striking another boy or man. He did not do so now. He continued to glare.
“I think perhaps,” concluded Holmes, “that you were considering a voyage back to America anyway. Before your melancholy overtook you in Paris, I mean. I believe that earlier thought of a voyage to America is why you finally changed your mind last night about joining me on this mission. Perhaps you thought to scatter your sister’s ashes at some spot important . . . sacred to both of you? It is not, of course, any of my business. But I respect your bereavement, sir, and I shall not raise this subject again. I did so now primarily to acquaint you with some of the simpler methods of my powers of observation and ratiocination.”
“I am not impressed, sir,”
“I had been there in the dark longer than you,” continued Holmes, his eyes on the surrounding ships and fireboats and rowboats and busy mayhem, “and my eyes had much better adapted to the dark than had yours. I saw you remove the small ivory snuffbox several times . . . hold it in a way that almost might be called prayerful—return it to your inner pocket, then retrieve it again. I knew it was an ivory snuffbox—only ivory gleams that way in such low light—and I also knew at once that you did not take snuff.”
“You know nothing of my habits, sir.” James’s voice could not have been colder nor more dismissive of this uninvited conversation. But because of the crowd behind them, he could not simply turn and walk away. He shifted his gaze away from Holmes instead.
“I do, of course,” said Holmes. “A user of snuff, even an occasional user, has telltale nicotine stains on his thumb and second finger. You did not. Also, someone using a snuffbox to retrieve pinches of snuff does not carefully and permanently join the various openings of the box with sealing wax.”
“There is no way you could have seen such things in those seconds, in that darkness,” said James. His heart was pounding against his ribs.
“I could. I did,” said Sherlock Holmes. “And then, as we were leaving, I contrived to light my pipe to confirm my earlier observations. You were not aware of it—holding the snuffbox obviously had become a nervous habit with you, Mr. James, especially in extremis, as it were—but you had removed it briefly several times after we’d walked away from the river. I could see that it was more than a mere talisman for you; it was sacred.”
James turned angrily to stare at the intruder and was shocked to see that Holmes had removed the blue lenses that had altered his true eye color. Now Henry James’s coldly angry gray-eyed stare met the calm gray-eyed gaze of Sherlock Holmes.
“While I was in India, I’d read in
The Times
of your sister’s death in March of eighteen ninety-two and, later, a notice of Miss James’s funeral and cremation at Woking and the mention that your sister’s companion, Miss Katharine Peabody Loring, would be returning the ashes to Cambridge, America, for interment there at the family plot.”
James said nothing. He continued to glare. He was glad he was leaning on a ship’s railing because he thought he might be sick.
“I could tell at once that night along the Seine that—with Miss Loring’s and your family’s knowledge or, more likely, without it—you had appropriated some of your sister’s ashes, made them safe in that absurdly expensive ivory snuffbox, and were transporting them . . . somewhere. But where? Certainly not just to the bottom of the Seine.”
James could not remember ever being insulted in quite this intimate fashion before. If he were his brother William, he knew, he would strike this Holmes in the face as brutally and bruisingly as possible. But Henry James was not William; he had never in his life coiled his fist in real expectation of striking another boy or man. He did not do so now. He continued to glare.
“I think perhaps,” concluded Holmes, “that you were considering a voyage back to America anyway. Before your melancholy overtook you in Paris, I mean. I believe that earlier thought of a voyage to America is why you finally changed your mind last night about joining me on this mission. Perhaps you thought to scatter your sister’s ashes at some spot important . . . sacred to both of you? It is not, of course, any of my business. But I respect your bereavement, sir, and I shall not raise this subject again. I did so now primarily to acquaint you with some of the simpler methods of my powers of observation and ratiocination.”
“I am not impressed, sir,”
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