The Titanic Murders d-1 Read online

  Pausing there at the door, the captain said, “Mr. Futrelle, this is Dr. O’Loughlin, our chief surgeon. William, this is Jacques Futrelle.”

  O’Loughlin smiled, but his eyes didn’t; he said, “I understand you’re a famous author.”

  It occurred to Futrelle that if he were really famous, the chief surgeon would not have to be told that.

  “I’m a writer,” Futrelle said. “How was the body found, doctor?”

  Ismay, looking furtively about, said, “Let’s not discuss that until we’re within the cabin, if you would, gentlemen?”

  And the White Star director used a key to unlock the door, gesturing for Futrelle to go in, which he did, the other three men following.

  It was a single, whitewashed oak-paneled room with a lavatory, like the Harrises’ cabin, but minus the trunk closet-a brass double bed, green horsehair sofa, marble washstand, wicker cushioned armchair, a green mesh sack on the wall taking the place of a nightstand.

  The figure on the near side of the bed, which was at left upon entering, was sheet-covered; no sign of struggle, or blood.

  “I stripped the bed before making my examination,” the doctor said, indicating the quilted bedspread and blankets which lay in a pile at the foot of the bed; on top of the pile sat the bed’s two fat feathered pillows, both looking used.

  Futrelle prowled the room, briefly, the three men getting out of his way as he did; he found nothing unusual, nothing that seemed out of place. He did not look in drawers, however, and stopped short of an actual search.

  “To answer your earlier question, Jack,” Ismay said, following him about, “Mr. Crafton was discovered this morning, just after nine o’clock, when a staff member came in to make up the room. As is common practice, the stewardess knocked, received no answer, unlocked the door and came in.”

  Futrelle was examining the door. “So the body was found in this locked room?”

  “Yes.”

  “The door doesn’t lock without a key, does it?”

  “No-it can be locked from either side, but only with a key; there’s no automatic locking device, as you do find in some hotels.”

  Futrelle, excusing himself as he brushed past the captain, approached the doctor, who stood near the bedside, poised to pull back the sheet.

  “If you please, Doctor,” he said.

  “I warn you, sir-rigor mortis has set in.”

  “I’m a big-city newspaperman, Doctor. The dead are unfortunately not strangers to me.”

  The doctor nodded and drew the sheet to Crafton’s waist.

  In death, the blackmailer looked no less ferretlike, though easier to pity than despise. The late John Bertram Crafton stared at the ceiling with wide, dead eyes, his mouth drawn back in a grimace.

  Futrelle tossed a smirk over his shoulder. “A peaceful death, did you say, Mr. Ismay?”

  Crafton was a scrawny, even malnourished man with the scars of skin conditions and diseases upon his nearly hairless naked body.

  “Did you strip him as well as the bed, Doctor?”

  “No, sir. He’s just as I found him-on his back, naked in bed…. No nightclothes or underthings.”

  Futrelle leaned in for a closer look. What he saw was hideous: the whites of Crafton’s eyes were so clotted with burst vessels they were almost crimson.

  “Petechial hemorrhaging, Doctor?”

  Dr. O’Loughlin blinked in surprise; the nod that followed was barely perceptible.

  Futrelle examined the corpse’s hands, finding them-palms up-clawlike, a state grotesquely exaggerated by the rigor mortis.

  Standing away from the corpse, Futrelle nodded to the doctor to cover Crafton back up, asking, “How many pillows was he sleeping with?”

  “Just one,” the doctor said.

  “Where was the extra pillow? In its position near the headboard?”

  “No. Halfway down the bed, as if…” The doctor glanced at Ismay, then shrugged.

  “As if discarded,” Futrelle said.

  The captain stepped forward and said to Futrelle, “What was that medical term you used, sir?”

  “Petechial hemorrhaging,” Futrelle said. “A person being suffocated tries so hard to breathe, the blood vessels in the eyes burst. The clawed hands are another clear signal. Doctor, you may wish to examine under the fingernails for skin scratched from-”

  “This is nonsense,” Ismay said. His face was almost as red as Crafton’s eyes had been.

  “You’re saying that this man was suffocated,” the captain stated calmly.

  “I have no doubt,” Futrelle said. He nodded toward the pile of bed things. “With one of those pillows, most likely.”

  “Doctor,” Ismay said, rage barely in check, “are these symptoms also consistent with heart failure or some other kind of natural cause?”

  The doctor said nothing.

  “Well, Doctor?” the captain asked.

  “Perhaps,” he said, with a shrug.

  “Then as far as any of us are concerned,” Ismay said forcefully, “this is death by natural causes. Is that understood?”

  No one replied.

  “Good,” Ismay said.

  Directing the question to all three of them, Futrelle asked, “Doesn’t it concern you that you have a murderer aboard?”

  Ismay’s grimace was worse than Crafton’s. “To have a murderer aboard, Mr. Futrelle, we would first have to have a murder.”

  “I understand your reluctance to involve passengers of prominence like Colonel Astor, Major Butt, Mr. Guggenheim and the rest… but you might be endangering them, if a malevolent presence is aboard this ship.”

  Ismay sighed heavily. “Mr. Futrelle…”

  “What happened to ‘Jack’?”

  “Jack.” And now Ismay spoke with withering sarcasm: “Let us suppose your diagnosis, and not Dr. O’Loughlin’s, is the correct one; let’s assume that years of medical school and years of the practice of medicine are no match for the expertise of a writer of mystery stories. What would be the motivation for Mr. Crafton’s… removal?”

  “Oh, I don’t know-possibly that he was a goddamned blackmailer.”

  “Precisely. This is not the work of Jack the Ripper, sir-if it’s ‘work’ at all. Even if I wanted this matter investigated, I have limited security on the ship-the master-of-arms and his small staff. The ‘suspects,’ if you will, are wealthy individuals, traveling with retinue that could easily include a manservant or two, willing to dispatch an odious task of this nature. Someone like Major Butt, with his military background, would certainly have the stomach for it, himself.”

  Futrelle nodded. “We’re certainly not lacking in possibilities for perpetrators.”

  Ismay threw his hands up. “For now, there is really nothing to be done. I ask everyone in this room-everyone, Mr. Futrelle… Jack-to keep this unpleasant news to themselves. We won’t be having stewards carting a body down the corridor, either. We will keep this room locked and the body will be removed to the cold-storage hold, tonight, when the ship is sleeping.”

  Futrelle regarded the cold-blooded Ismay with the dispassion of a scientist. “Not that anyone will be upset by the lack of his presence… but how will you explain the absence of Mr. Crafton?”

  Ismay was walking in a tiny circle in the tiny cabin. “Should anyone ask, he’s taken ill, he is under Dr. O’Loughlin’s care, staying here in his cabin. Though I hardly think on a ship this size, and with an individual so unloved, that this is likely to even come up.”

  “You may be right,” Futrelle admitted.

  Through all this, the captain had remained strangely silent.

  In the hallway, with the room locked up tight, Ismay leaned in to Futrelle and whispered, “Now, I must ask you not to mention this to anyone, Jack-anyone… including your lovely wife.”

  Futrelle grinned and patted Ismay on the back. “Do I look like the sort of man who tells his wife everything?”

  Ten minutes later, in the sitting room of their stateroom, Futrelle had finishe
d filling May in on all the details, including the more grisly ones.

  They were sitting on the couch together, but May had her legs up under herself, and was turned toward her husband; she looked bright as a new penny in her casual day wear-white shirt with stiff collar and cuffs, blue woolen necktie, cream-color collarless cardigan and flared beige wool skirt.

  She was not frightened or dismayed by the death of Crafton; if anything, she was exhilarated. She had been too long the wife of a newspaperman, too long the companion of a crime writer to be spooked by something so trivial as a locked-room murder.

  “We should investigate,” she said.

  Futrelle smiled half a smile. “I’m sorely tempted.”

  “Do you think the murderer should be allowed to get away with this?”

  “Frankly, considering the victim, I’m not sure the answer to that is obvious.”

  “As a good Christian, and a good citizen, you have a responsibility to put things right.”

  “I know. Besides, this is damned fascinating. Why was Crafton naked, do you suppose?”

  “Perhaps sleeping that way was his normal practice.”

  “Possibly, but you know how cold it’s been at night, even with these electric heaters. And not just anyone could have waltzed in there-whoever-it-was needed a key.”

  “That’s not difficult, Jack-simply bribe someone on staff for the key.”

  “Ah, but that White Star Line staff member would eventually find out a murder had been committed in the room that key belonged to, and suddenly the killer finds himself either turned over to the law or being blackmailed from a new direction…. No, it’s more likely Crafton let his murderer into his room, of his own free will.”

  May frowned and smiled at once. “Naked?”

  The phone rang and made both of them jump; they laughed nervously, Futrelle saying, “Isn’t it ducky we’re taking this murder so lightly,” and picked up the phone receiver.

  “Futrelle here,” he said.

  “Mr. Futrelle… Captain Smith.”

  He straightened, as if he were speaking to an officer-which of course he was. “Yes, Captain.”

  “Could you come to see me on the bridge? I’d like a word with you.”

  “Certainly.” Futrelle decided to test the waters. “Could I bring my wife along? I’m sure she’d consider it a rare honor and treat.”

  “Perhaps another time. This I think should be in private. Straightaway, if you please.”

  “Yes, sir.” Futrelle hung up the phone, turned to his wife, and said, “The captain wants to see me… and not you.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means, as my esteemed competitor’s detective is wont to say, ‘The game’s afoot.’”

  The bridge, on the boat deck, was a white chamber as spartan and well-scrubbed as an operating room, attended by a brace of crisply uniformed officers, youngish men with the weathered faces their profession bestows. The row of windows onto the gray, glistening ocean and the only slightly bluer sky above gave the room an open-air effect; along those windows was a row of the porcelain-based, double-sided clockfaces of gleaming brass-trimmed, double-handle-topped engine telegraphs, and of course the wooden wheel itself, an old-fashioned instrument attached to newly fashioned technology. Looking out over the bow of the ship conveyed a certain majesty, but nowhere near the actual size of the colossal vessel.

  Captain Smith, pacing slowly, eyes on the horizon, suddenly looked less a symbol, more a man. Without Ismay around, Smith seemed considerably bigger-taller, broader, more formidable.

  When Futrelle was announced, the captain smiled slightly and said, “Good of you to come, Mr. Futrelle… walk with me to the bridge wing, would you?”

  On the outdoor platform near the small three-sided booth from which the ship’s position was calculated by sextant, the captain leaned against the waist-high wall, regarding the sea with a stoic gaze. As they spoke, Smith rarely looked at Futrelle.

  “Mr. Ismay wants the best for his company,” the captain said, “and who can blame him? This ship was his dream-he first sketched it on a napkin. But it’s my reality, Mr. Futrelle.”

  “Your concerns and duties aren’t necessarily his,” Futrelle said.

  “Precisely. But he is the director of the line, launching the company’s most important ship, and I am a lame duck of a captain, making his final crossing.”

  “All the more reason to do what you think is right.”

  Smith gave Futrelle a sideways look. “Right, as in proper? Correct?”

  Futrelle shook his head. “There’s no rule book for a situation of this kind. Ismay wants to avoid bad press, but simply ignoring the incident could court disaster.”

  “Elaborate.”

  “Crafton didn’t just fall from the sky-even he had relatives and, presumably, friends. He certainly had business associates, in that extortion ring. Questions will be asked when we come ashore-and one may be why we didn’t ask questions aboard ship.”

  Captain Smith nodded, barely. “I do believe Ismay’s discretion is well-founded.”

  “Actually, so do I. Just too extreme.”

  Without looking at Futrelle, Smith asked, “Would you do me a service, sir? I can repay you only with my gratitude and friendship.”

  “Ask.”

  “Could you-in a circumspect manner, playing upon the lack of knowledge of those aboard as regards Mr. Crafton’s demise-launch a sub-rosa investigation? Ask questions-innocent questions, on their face, but secretly knowing ones-to gather information so that I may make a decision before we reach New York.”

  “Not everyone is ignorant of this murder, you know.”

  “A handful know-ourselves, Ismay, the doctor and a single stewardess.”

  “And there’s the murderer.”

  “So there is.”

  “And what if I should happen to ascertain the murderer’s identity?”

  The captain’s face hardened. “Sir, I don’t care what his social connections are or how many millions he has in the bank. If he’s John Jacob Astor or some Italian beggar in steerage… If Jesus Christ is the murderer, we’ll turn Him over to the master-at-arms and slap Him in irons.”

  “I admire your backbone, Captain. But might I suggest we hear our Lord and Savior’s side of it, first?”

  And at last Smith turned and looked directly at Futrelle, and then he laughed and laughed; for so soft-spoken a man, the captain’s booming laughter echoed across the forward well deck and forecastle deck, startling the smattering of steerage passengers risking the brisk air.

  “We’ll make no decisions until facts are gathered,” Smith said. He slipped his hand onto Futrelle’s shoulder again, and walked him slowly back toward the bridge. “There’ll be no mention of this to Mr. Ismay, of course.”

  “Hell, no.” He wasn’t as deranged as the late Crafton had thought. “After all, we have an overriding reason to keep Ismay in the dark about the investigation, beyond his own White Star-based objections to it.”

  “What would that be, sir?”

  “Why-he’s a suspect himself, Captain.”

  “So he is.”

  And the two men smiled and shook hands.

  SIX

  INFORMAL INQUIRY

  At luncheon, the cafe parisien tended to be lightly frequented, and today was no exception.

  The Titanic’s approximation of a sidewalk cafe on a Paris boulevard was designed more for a between-meal snack or perhaps an after-dinner aperitif; with sumptuous feasts available in the Dining Saloon and the a la carte Ritz, few passengers were willing to settle for the dainty sandwiches of the cafe’s circular buffet.

  The younger set had largely appropriated this sunlight-streaming trellised cafe on the starboard B deck-with its unobstructed ocean view-making it one of the livelier areas aboard ship. But right now the cafe held only a modest scattering of passengers, seated on the cafe’s green wicker chairs at the festive round and square green-topped tables, taking advantage of the casually co
ntinental ambience, as the gently muted strains of the string trio playing in the reception room next door floated in.

  Among this handful of passengers were the Futrelles and the Strauses, seated at a square table by the windows onto the ocean, tiny plates with tiny sandwiches before them all, accompanied by iced tea.

  The Strauses had not selected their sandwiches from the buffet, however; a French waiter saw to it that they received kosher variations (the deviled ham Futrelle was nibbling at being wholly inappropriate). The waiter also made sure that the iced tea was sweetened, in the Southern style, as the two couples had Georgia backgrounds in common.

  “What a good idea, getting away like this,” Ida Straus said. She wore a black-and-white dress (mostly black) with fancy beadwork, typical of her conservative elegance. “They feed us so much on this ship! This makes a nice change…. Don’t you agree, Papa?”

  “Oh yes, Mama,” Isidor Straus said, idly stroking his gray spade beard as he contemplated the minuscule sandwiches on his plate. His suit was dark blue, his shirt a wing collar with a tie of light blue silk; he too had a quiet elegance. “I only hope the Harrises and their friends don’t mind eating alone.”

  “I invited Henry and Rene,” Futrelle said, “but they declined-seems they exercised in the gym this morning, and worked up too much of an appetite.”

  Actually, Futrelle had explained to the Harrises that he needed to speak to the Strauses in private, supposedly to gather information for a story with a department-store setting.

  “If you need an expert on department stores,” Henry had said, “you’re goin’ to the wrong party…. Talk to Rene.”

  And Rene had added, “Henry B. is right-I probably spend more time in Macy’s than Isidor Straus.”

  But nonetheless the Harrises graciously deferred, with no prying questions.

  So far it had all been small talk. For such different couples, the Futrelles and Strauses had much in common, from Georgia to New York (Macy’s was on Herald Square, after all, and Futrelle had worked for the Herald). Both couples agreed that the maiden voyage on the Titanic was proving a perfect way to top off their respective European trips. The Strauses had been taking a winter holiday at Cap Martin on the Riviera; the Futrelles had decided to cut their trip short when Jack, with his birthday looming, had gotten homesick for their two children.