The Titanic Murders (10 page)

Of course, both millionaires had boarded with beautiful young women, and Futrelle was of the opinion that Cuban cigars and snifters of brandy came in a distinct second and third in a contest involving the late-night company of such beauties.

And none of it seemed to be happening on a ship, rather in some landlocked hotel; only those nearest the windows could have suspected that outside, on deck, a gale was blowing.

Now the gale was a memory, the morning clear, as the Irish coastline showed itself, the gray mountains of Cork bobbing above the horizon.

“There it is!” May said, pointing. “The Old Head of Kinsale!”

The rocky promontory, peaked by a lighthouse, was a familiar and comforting sight to well-seasoned transatlantic travelers like the Futrelles.

“Cork Harbor’s just around the bend,” Futrelle said.

And, as if at Futrelle’s bidding, the great ship began its long, easy turn to port.

The married couple had taken a late breakfast—pressing ten-thirty—in the exquisitely continental à la carte restaurant, nicknamed the Ritz after the Ritz-Carlton dining rooms of White Star’s German rival, the Hamburg–Amerika Line. They had spent an at times spirited, at times tranquil morning in their stateroom, doing the sort of things a healthy, loving couple on their second honeymoon tend to do.

Two miles offshore, within the shelter of twin forts guarding the harbor, the
Titanic
dropped anchor, as twin tenders—the
Ireland
and
America
—drew alongside her with passengers and mail. The waterfront of Queenstown—a quaint seafaring village not unlike Scituate, the Massachusetts home of the Futrelles—was lined with sightseers, tiny well-wishers whose waving could barely be made out, whose cheering could scarcely be heard.

“Good morning!”

The voice belonged to J. Bruce Ismay, standing tall and thin, a handsome Ichabod Crane in a dark blue suit with gray pinstripes and matching gray spats, and, brisk breeze or not, no topcoat or hat.

As the blanket-bundled Futrelle and May stirred, Ismay urged them, “Don’t get up, please don’t get up on my account!” Before Futrelle could make introductions, the White Star Line director bowed to May. “J. Bruce Ismay, madam—I presume you’re the lovely Mrs. Futrelle.”

“If I’m not,” she said, “the lovely Mr. Futrelle has some explaining to do.”

Ismay laughed, once—he used laughs as punctuation, having enough of a sense of humor to know where to place them, though no more. “I understand you’re an author yourself.”

“A novice compared to Jack, here, I’m afraid.”

“But published.”

“Oh yes. Several times.”

“An accomplishment I envy. May I sit?”

“Please,” Futrelle said, and Ismay pulled up a deck chair on the husband’s side.

“Would it be bad form, sir, to ask if you’ve had time to consider my proposal?”

“Not at all.” Futrelle nodded toward his wife. “I have discussed it with May. She’s favorably disposed toward doing a mystery set aboard your ship.”

He beamed so widely at her, the ends of his mustache threatened to tickle the corners of his eyes. “I’m grateful, madam. I was not at all convinced your husband would say yes.”

“I haven’t said yes,” Futrelle reminded him.

“I hope that isn’t ‘no,’” Ismay said.

“I haven’t decided, but I am leaning in your direction, sir.”

“Splendid! What can I do to aid you?”

“We’ve had a tour of the ship, thanks to your personable purser, Mr. McElroy.”

“Wonderful chap.”

“Yes he is. But we may wish to take a closer look at the
Titanic,
from the crow’s nest to the boiler room. As a newspaperman turned fiction writer, I find the more truth I can build my tale around, the better.”

Ismay was nodding at the good sense of that. “Well, tonight at the captain’s table, I’ll introduce you to Mr. Andrews. I’m sure he’ll take you anywhere on the ship that you wish, and he has keys to everything.”

“Thomas Andrews? The master shipbuilder responsible for this vessel?”

“Himself,” Ismay said, clearly pleased that Futrelle was this knowledgeable, though Futrelle knew only what a few articles had told him.

A small and colorful flotilla of bumboats laden with local vendors and their wares had followed in the wakes of the two tenders; the bumboats bobbed out there, voices traveling over the water, “Lace and linens!,” “Knick-knacks and fineries!”

With comical urgency, May asked Ismay if they’d be allowed to board.

“It’s White Star’s policy to let the more reputable merchants come aboard,” he said, with a tiny shrug, “as a courtesy to our passengers.”

Her eyes were bright; shopping was one of May’s passions. “Where will they be setting up, and when?”

“On the aft A-deck promenade, madam, and soon.”

May turned to her husband, and said, “Jack, I need to get my handbag in our stateroom. Why don’t you continue your chat with Mr. Ismay, and I’ll meet you down on deck in a few minutes.”

Futrelle said that was fine, stood to help his wife unbundle herself from her blanket, they exchanged pecks on the cheek, and she was gone as if fired from a rocket.

“My wife is the same,” Ismay admitted. “Someday you simply must visit my wing at Harrods.”

Futrelle chuckled; that was a pretty good jest, coming from Ismay. “Actually, Bruce…” They were on first-name terms, after all; Ismay had insisted, yesterday. “I’m pleased we have a moment in private. There’s a subject I need to broach that I’d prefer to keep from my wife.”

Ismay frowned in interest, saying, “Continue, please.”

And Futrelle told Ismay of his meeting with Crafton on the balcony of the Grand Staircase—omitting, of course, his dangling of the man over the railing.

But Ismay didn’t need to be told of the latter.

With a smile and a genuine laugh, Ismay said, “Well, that finally explains it—the rumor I heard that a man of your description had hung a smaller man upside down off the balcony.”

“Weren’t you going to bring that up, sir?”

“Why? No complaint was filed by Mr. Crafton, and my policy, my company’s policy, is to treat our honored guests with… discretion.”

“How discreet was I, hanging that bastard over the railing?”

“Not very. Frankly, if I’m not out of line, Jack, I would discourage such practice in future… though that little snake in the grass is worthy of worse.”

“I know for a fact that he’s approached a number of your other passengers; I’ve happened upon him in the act, several times.”

Ismay’s expression darkened. “That is distressing news.”

Futrelle ticked the names off on his fingers. “Major Butt, Mr. Straus, Mr. Stead, even a Second-Class passenger named Hoffman… They’ve all apparently sent him packing.”

“Good for them.”

“Of course, I have no way of knowing what sort of threat he made, in these individual cases… He clearly represents an international blackmail ring.”

“Clearly.”

“With what did he threaten
you,
Mr. Ismay?”

Ismay blinked; he hadn’t seen that question coming. “Pardon?”

“I saw him knock on your door, shortly after I left your suite yesterday morning… just before noon? And I saw you admit him.”

Half a smile settled in Ismay’s check, raising one end of his mustache. “You do get around, sir.”

“This is a large ship, but a small city. I’m merely more observant than the average person, because of my line of work. That’s what you get when you cross a newspaperman with a mystery writer… You’re not obligated to tell me, Bruce. I’m just curious, as a fellow Crafton-appointed ‘client.’”

Ismay shrugged. “He was simply threatening to widely circulate a certain canard about the building of this ship.”

“What canard would that be?”

“A foolish rumor that this ship was built at such a supposedly ‘frenetic pace’ that a crew of workers were trapped within her hull, and that we simply left them there… to ‘suffocate and die.’”

“
Were
there any deaths in the building of this ship?”

Another dismissive shrug. “From keel laying to launch, only two—quite within acceptable standards—the unwritten rule of British shipyards, you know.”

“What unwritten rule is that, Bruce?”

“ ‘One death for every one hundred pounds spent.’”

It was attitudes like that that bred unions and strikes. But at the moment Futrelle was more concerned with blackmail than politics, and said, “Crafton threatened to spread this ‘trapped crewmen’ tale in the ‘sensationalist’ press, I suppose.”

“Certainly.”

“Please tell me you didn’t pay him off, Bruce.”

“Jack, please do me the courtesy of trusting that I did the right thing.”

That was an evasive answer if ever there was one. But Futrelle didn’t press it.

He said only, “You now have aboard this vessel representatives of two of America’s richest and most powerful families—do you really want this Crafton character working his blackmail racket on Astor and Guggenheim?”

Yet another shrug from Ismay. “What could I do about it?”

Futrelle laughed humorlessly, hollowly. “You could put Crafton off this ship right now—while you still have a chance—here at Queenstown.”

Ismay had begun shaking his head halfway through Futrelle’s little speech. “I can’t do that, sir. Mr. Crafton is, however disreputable a character he may be, a paying customer of the White Star Line.”

So Ismay
had
paid Crafton’s fee.

“Well,” Ismay said, standing suddenly, “I certainly enjoyed meeting Mrs. Futrelle, and I look forward to seeing you at the captain’s table this evening.”

Then he strode off, heading aft in his quick, martinet’s manner. When J. Bruce Ismay decided a conversation was over, it was over.

The aft A-deck promenade had been transformed into an open-air market. This was the same area outside the Verandah Café where yesterday Futrelle and May had seen Crafton bothering Hoffman up on the Second-Class end of the boat deck. Now the relatively cramped area was thronging with First-Class passengers examining the wares of Irish vendors, men in derbies and shabby suits, women in unlikely fine lace like those they were selling from folding-leg tables.

Among the browsing passengers was a particularly striking couple—a slender handsome man in his late forties escorting
a pretty, pretty young woman, who could have been father and daughter, but weren’t. They were Colonel John Jacob Astor IV and his child bride, the former Madeline Force, fresh from a honeymoon tour of Egypt.

Madeline was said to be as shapely as a showgirl, but that wasn’t evident with her navy-blue-and-white pinstriped Norfolk style suit, which even with silk velvet inlay and fancy bone buttons looked a trifle dowdy; even her oversize navy-blue-and-white striped hat was a shapeless thing. Rumors that she was “in an advanced delicate condition,” despite her relatively recent marriage, seemed wholly credible.

The lanky Astor sported a boater and a red-and-blue tie that added color and dash to a conservative dark gray suit, and an oversize, dashing mustache at odds with his somber, detached demeanor. His face long and narrow, his chin cleft and rather small, he leaned on a carved ebony walking stick as he paused at a stall, holding his chin high, looking at prospective purchases down the considerable slope of an aquiline nose, peering through small, sky-blue eyes cursed of a world-weariness known only by the impossibly wealthy and the devastatingly poor.

Between the Astors was an Airedale, dutifully keeping them company, no leash in sight; the dog seemed happier than his master, though his mistress was having the most fun.

“This is
very
nice,” Madeline was saying at the stall next to the one where the Futrelles were examining some miniature porcelain dolls. The young Mrs. Astor was holding up a lovely lace jacket that didn’t look like it would fit her, at least not right now.

“How much in dollars?” Astor asked the vendor, a woman wearing a lovely lace jacket herself, and bad teeth.

“A hundred, fine sir,” she said, not missing a beat.

Astor shrugged. “Eight hundred it is,” he said blandly, and withdrew a wad of bills as thick as one of Futrelle’s novels; the millionaire peeled off eight crisp one-hundreds and handed them to the amazed vendor, who did not correct Astor’s mistake, and who could blame her?

Futrelle, arching an eyebrow, exchanged incredulous glances with his wife, who later bought a similar item for twenty-five dollars, which seemed outrageous to Futrelle but May rightly pointed out the savings compared with what the Astors had paid.

Promptly at 1:30
P.M.,
the
Titanic
’s steam whistles let go three long, mournful blasts announcing departure; the vendors packed up their things and hastened back to their bumboats, and soon gangways were raised, lines cast off, the dripping starboard anchor raised. From the boat deck, the Futrelles could hear and see a passenger on the Third-Class aft promenade, a small mustached man in kilts, playing his bagpipes.

The husband and wife looked at each other, savoring the bittersweet moment: the Irish piper’s mournful “Erin’s Lament” probably represented its emigrating player’s farewell to the beloved homeland he might never see again.

The Futrelles stood at the rail in the cold afternoon, watching the green hills and fields of Ireland slip away, knowing—as the ship made its wide, majestic turn starboard, into the Atlantic’s swells—that the next land they would see would have the Statue of Liberty out in front of it.

“It’s almost two and we haven’t had lunch yet,” Futrelle noted, checking his pocket watch. He had seldom missed a meal in his thirty-seven years.

“Let’s just get something light,” May suggested. “Dinner’s not that far away, and we’ll be bombarded with one course after another.”

The Verandah Café, portside off the aft A-deck promenade, didn’t seem as overrun with children as it had yesterday, and the couple ducked in for a snack. The enclosed space conjured the illusion of an outdoor terrace, with its potted palms, white wicker tables and chairs, archway windows and ivy-flung trellises.

The only children today had also been here yesterday: golden-tressed Lorraine Allison and her baby brother Trevor, overseen by the blunt-nosed almost beauty of their nanny, Alice, again holding court at a wicker table.