The Titanic Murders d-1 Read online

  May hugged her husband, cherishing the romance of that thought. “I never knew the water was so rough, today.”

  “It isn’t. We’re stirring up that chop. That schooner’ll be fine when we’re out of her hair…. Shall we try out the enclosed promenade, before this wind knocks us off our high perch?”

  May nodded, and they crossed to port and took a steep flight of metal stairs down into the enclosed First-Class promenade, moving aft down the unadorned deck, their feet echoing off the wood. Navy-blue-jacketed, jauntily capped White Star stewards were setting up the varnished folding wooden deck chairs against the gleaming white walls; the smell of fresh paint mingled with fresh sea air. The deck was fairly deserted, most of the passengers taking advantage of after-luncheon ship tours the purser’s office had offered.

  Soon they were at the point where the windows of the enclosed promenade stopped and the open promenade began, though steel-beam window frames and a cable for canvas shades would allow this section to be enclosed as well. Fresh salty breeze streamed in, and golden sunshine, while white-touched rippling blue water stretched to forever; it was one of those moments any couple treasures, when the world seems vast and lovely and theirs alone.

  The promenade emptied onto the aft end of A deck, where massive cargo-loading cranes bookended the main mast. This small portion of open deck, with its benches and railings ideal for open-air lounging, was unusual in that the First-Class passengers were literally looked down upon by Second-Class passengers, from the railing along the end of their promenade portion of the boat deck.

  The Verandah Cafe was directly under that portion of the boat deck, its sliding glass doors open.

  “Is it chilly enough for some coffee?” Futrelle asked his wife, and she nodded.

  But when they peeked into the airy cafe, with its white wicker furniture and ivy-trellised walls, it seemed to have been taken over as an unofficial playroom by nannies and children.

  “Or maybe not,” Futrelle said, and May smiled and agreed.

  Among the tikes scurrying about was the golden-haired Lorraine Allison, while her nanny Alice in black livery sat nearby at a white wicker table, her male infant charge gurgling and capering on his back on a blanket at her feet. Sitting next to the shapely woman with the broken nose was a ship’s steward, a towheaded young man in his early twenties, spiffy in his white jacket with its gold buttons, his black tie matching his trousers.

  Alice and the steward were smiling shyly, talking the same way, accompanied by some batting of female eyelashes and the steward turning his cap in his hands.

  “Shipboard romance?” Futrelle whispered to May.

  “Why not?” May asked. “She has a nice smile.”

  “Almost makes up for the snout.”

  His wife slapped his arm playfully, and they moved to the bench along the railing.

  Futrelle was gazing out at the smooth waters when May nudged him, saying, “I thought your friend was traveling First-Class.”

  “What friend?” Futrelle asked, turning, looking up at the Second-Class passengers lining the boat-deck railing.

  And there he was, the ubiquitous John Bertram Crafton, up at the railing, speaking to a rather handsome, bareheaded black-haired man whose thick though well-trimmed mustache curled up in the continental manner.

  In a gray topcoat and a brown suit that were not inexpensive, the black-haired man stood between two young boys in sailor suits and knickers, his boys apparently, one lad two or three, the other three or four, with full heads of hair with which the wind was playing havoc. He had an arm around either boy, holding them to him, protectively, eyeing Crafton-who leaned forward with the skin-crawling smile of a rake selling French postcards-regarding the ferrety little man with suspicion and even scorn.

  Futrelle heard neither Crafton’s words, nor the black-haired man’s response.

  But the pantomime they acted out indicated a response that was incensed to say the least, and apparently included enough blasphemies to justify the apparent father to draw his boys closer to him and cover their ears with his hands and the press of his body.

  The emotion of the black-haired man was palpable, and so was his disgust for Crafton: his eyes flared, his face reddened, his body trembled, though his head was held high.

  Whirling, his gray topcoat spreading like a cloak, the black-haired man gathered the boys and receded onto the Second-Class boat-deck promenade, out of view.

  Crafton took the rejection in stride; he sighed, shrugged to himself, and then he noticed Futrelle below, looking up.

  Crafton called out: “Beautiful day at sea, Mr. Futrelle, don’t you agree?”

  Futrelle stepped closer, until he was directly below the ferrety little man in the pearl-gray fedora. “Some of us are more at sea than others.”

  He shrugged again. “Mr. Hoffman is emotional-you know how Frenchmen are.”

  Futrelle wasn’t sure he did know how Frenchmen were; but he did know they weren’t often named “Hoffman.”

  “Are those his boys?” Futrelle asked.

  “Oh yes. He does love his Lolo and Momon. He loves them more than anything.”

  “And how is it, Mr. Crafton, that such a First-Class individual as you finds himself in Second Class?”

  The ship was strictly segregated-the First Class was no more allowed in Second or Third than vice versa.

  “Just slumming, Mr. Futrelle. I wonder-could you find some time for me? Just a few short minutes? I have a business proposition.”

  “What sort of business, Mr. Crafton? Are you a publisher?”

  “One of my interests is publishing, yes. Could I have just five minutes? No more, perhaps less.”

  May had come up next to her husband; he glanced at her, and she was frowning, shaking her head, no, almost imperceptibly.

  “All right,” Futrelle said.

  May sighed.

  Crafton called down: “Shall we say the A-deck balcony in… ten minutes? Would that be agreeable?”

  “I’ll be there, Mr. Crafton. Then we’ll see how agreeable it is.”

  Crafton tipped his fedora and withdrew.

  May said, “Why are you giving that awful little man the time of day?”

  “He’s been making people angry all day,” Futrelle said. “Why should I deny myself that pleasure?”

  “You’ve seen how people react to his ‘business propositions,’ whatever they are. He’s obviously an odious creature.”

  “I know. I’m just eager to find out how, exactly.”

  Futrelle and May walked down the portside promenade, and he used the few minutes before his appointment to tell his wife about the offer Ismay had made.

  “Well, I think it’s a wonderful idea,” she said, as they walked arm in arm.

  “You don’t find it the least bit… base? Using the pages of a novel to advertise Mr. Ismay’s ship?”

  “It would make a wonderful setting for an adventure story… maybe something about a jewel thief, perhaps international intrigue….”

  “He’s suggesting I use my fiction to advertise his product!”

  “You sell stories to magazines all the time, and newspapers-and the editors pepper ads all around your tales, don’t they?”

  “But you can tell where the story ends and the ad begins.”

  “Don’t be stuffy, Jack. We could write it together.”

  He and May had collaborated on one “Thinking Machine” short story, and it had been successful enough, appearing in Sunday supplements all across America. And May had published her first novel, A Secretary of Frivolous Affairs, last year, and it had sold well in both England and America.

  “We have been looking for the right idea to do together, as a novel,” he admitted.

  “Well, then,” she said brightly, “let’s at least consider this one. We don’t need to give Mr. Ismay an answer just yet-but as we enjoy ourselves on this wonderful ship, we’ll just keep a keen writer’s eye on the possibilities it presents.”

  They entered the
A-deck reception area, where natural light was filtering down through an immense domed skylight, a marvel of wrought-iron scrollwork and white-enameled glass with a crystal chandelier at its center. This sifted sunlight reflected off the polished oak-wall paneling and the gilt-decorated wrought-iron balustrades of the balcony and Grand Staircase, giving the room a glow at once romantic and ghostly.

  Futrelle walked May to the electric lifts behind the staircase, saying, “I’ll join you in our stateroom in just a few minutes.”

  “Now, Jack, don’t you strike that blackguard,” she said, her expression stern.

  Then just as the lift steward was closing the cage door, she added, “Unless he deserves it.”

  Patting the fanny of the cherub perched at the pedestal at the foot of the middle handrail, Futrelle jogged up the wide marble stairway. He paused on the landing to admire the intricate wood sculpture of the central panel bearing a round Roman-numeral clock, on either side of which leaned a nymph-classical figures carved there by an artisan of unimaginable skill: Honor and Glory crowning Time.

  Not the most fitting sentiment to carry into a meeting with John Bertram Crafton, he would guess; the stairs forked right and left, and he went right, because Crafton was standing up there, leaning against the railing.

  “How good of you to meet with me,” Crafton said as Futrelle joined him on the balcony. A pair of overstuffed chairs and a small table waited by a window that would have looked out onto the boat deck had its glass not been cathedral gray. Swinging his gold-tipped walking stick, Crafton strode there and Futrelle followed, their heels echoing off the fancy cream-colored tile.

  “I wanted to find out what makes you so popular,” Futrelle said, settling into his chair.

  Crafton’s smiled lifted a corner of his waxy mustache. “Your sarcasm is not lost on me, sir.”

  “Why should it be? It’s about as subtle as your approach.”

  Crafton shrugged, began removing his gray gloves, finger at a time; he had set his fedora upside down on the table and filled it with the gloves. “I understand that the service I provide is an… unsavory one… destined to make me less than anyone’s favorite among their acquaintances.”

  “Well, don’t be proud of it.”

  His smile lifted both sides of the mustache. “Why not? I have a job to do, a service to perform shall we say, and I do it well. The patient never likes hearing bad news from the physician… but without knowledge, what are we?”

  “Ignorant.”

  “Precisely. A doctor properly diagnoses a patient, and a favorable prognosis is then possible-treatment of the problem…. Wouldn’t you agree, sir?”

  “Why do I think it unlikely you’re a doctor, Mr. Crafton? Unless you perform certain back-alley operations that polite society frowns upon while still finding necessary.”

  One eyebrow arched. “You mean to insult me-though why you should feel any enmity toward me is a mystery…”

  “That’s my line of work-mysteries.”

  “… I admit there’s some truth in what you say. Without the abortionist-let us not mince words, sir, you and I-how many lives, prominent young lives, might be ruined?”

  “Well,” Futrelle said, patting his stomach, “I may look like I’m in need of an abortion, but I assure you I don’t. I’m merely well fed.”

  Crafton chuckled. “You are a successful man-a noted author….”

  “That’s perhaps too generous, sir. I’m a newspaperman who writes popular fiction. Fortunately for me, there’s an audience for my foolish tales.”

  “And we both want that audience to remain steadfastly in your camp, don’t you agree?”

  “It’s blackmail, isn’t it?”

  The dark eyes flared; the ratlike nostrils, too. “What? Sir-please, I beg you not make rash accusa-”

  “Shut up. It’s a dangerous game, Mr. Crafton, in company like this. There are powerful men, on this boat-the likes of Major Butt can snap his fingers and you would be nothing more than just an oily little memory… a memory no one will care to cling to, either.”

  The ferrety face seemed to lengthen into a sinister blankness. “You leave me no choice, but to be blunt.”

  Futrelle leaned back with a grin, arms casually folded. “What the hell do you think you have on me? I love my wife dearly and would sooner cut off my manhood than philander. My business dealings are aboveboard, and all of my children legitimate.”

  Crafton’s mustache twitched. “I represent a group of investigators.”

  “What, Pinkertons?”

  “Not precisely, Mr. Futrelle. What this group does-both in England and America-is provide a valuable service.”

  “Valuable.”

  “Very. They thoroughly investigate the background of a prominent individual like yourself, and in order to prevent blackmail, do their best to discover whatever might be… worth discovering.”

  “We’re back to doctors again. Preventative medicine.”

  Crafton nodded curtly. “Only by finding out for you, our client, what skeletons in the closet might exist, of a sort that could be discovered by less scrupulous individuals than ourselves, can we protect you-our client.”

  “Only you do that investigating beforehand-before someone like me is officially a ‘client’… just as a time-saving measure?”

  “That’s well said… but then, words are your business.”

  “What happens if a client isn’t interested?”

  Crafton’s expression darkened. “Then we can’t protect you. The… sensitive information might fall into the hands of the sensationalist press, or be placed before business associates, or business rivals, or in some instances law-enforcement authorities…. The consequences could be serious, and unfortunate… even grave.”

  “That would make a bully idea for you, Crafton-a grave.”

  He shrugged. “I’m quite immune to threats, Mr. Futrelle… though I suppose coming from a man like you, I should take them seriously.”

  “A man like me?”

  “A man with your… mental aberrations.”

  Futrelle laughed and it echoed across the balcony and down the marble-and-oak staircase. “Is that what you think you have?”

  Crafton leaned forward, his walking stick between his legs, his hands resting on its gold crown. “Mr. Futrelle, in 1899, you suffered a complete mental breakdown. You were unable to continue in your position at the New York Herald and were hospitalized. Shortly thereafter you sent your children away, to their grandmother, and your wife and various doctors attended to your needs, in private….”

  Very quietly, as if he were speaking to a small child, Futrelle said, “I was the telegraph editor at the Herald during the Spanish-American War… from Manila Bay to San Juan Hill, the news flowed in constantly. I was working twenty-four hours a day, and like many newspapermen, I was a burned-out case, after a time. I spent several months away from the pressures of that job, in a little cottage that belongs to my wife’s sister. When I felt up to it, I took a job offer from Mr. Hearst with his new Boston American, where I started publishing my ‘Thinking Machine’ stories and made lots of money… none of which you and your fellow extortionists will ever see. Not one red cent, sir.”

  Crafton shrugged slowly, his tiny dark eyes widened. “If you don’t feel that your public, your publishers, will be put off by your mental aberrations, sir, your, your… dementia, then-”

  “Listen, you damned little weasel-my public and my publishers care nothing about me except that I keep coming up with good stories. If my screws are loose, well then I’m colorful and more interesting-do you know the slightest thing about Edgar Allan Poe? Please, do me a favor, publicize away… my sales will go up.”

  “We’re not bluffing, sir.”

  “Neither am I. How can I best make my point? I know… Please, just for a moment, sir, come with me.” Futrelle rose. He curled a finger. “Come along, man-I won’t bite. I’m not really a lunatic.”

  Crafton rose, suspiciously, gathering up his gloves and
hat and walking stick.

  Futrelle slipped an arm around the much smaller man’s shoulders and walked slowly with him toward the balustrade of the balcony. “I think you’ve misjudged people like myself, and have attracted more trouble than you know.”

  “Are you threatening me again, sir?”

  “No, no! Just giving you some advice. Are you aware that you’re being followed?”

  “Followed?”

  “And by a very unsavory character, at that.”

  “I’ve seen no one.”

  Futrelle moved closer to the railing of the balcony. “He’s lurking in the shadows of the reception area, below there….”

  Crafton leaned forward, and Futrelle shoved him over, and Crafton’s hat and gloves and cane fell from his grasp, gloves spilling and landing in gray handprints on the marble stairs, hat and cane clattering onto the linoleum floor below, pocket change raining, even as Futrelle grasped onto the man’s ankles, just above his spats, letting him dangle there like a ripe fruit from a branch.

  “Put me down, sir! Put me down!”

  Several startled passengers below noticed this bizarre sight, and scurried away.

  “Are you sure, Mr. Crafton, that that is what you desire of me? To put you down?”

  “I mean, pull me up, at once, at once!”

  Futrelle, however, let the man swing there, over the marble staircase and the floor just to the side of it, like a big pendulum. “Of course, sir, you could be right about me… I could be quite mad indeed.”

  “I won’t say a word about you! Your secret is safe with me!”

  Futrelle dragged the man up and over the finely carved oak railing as if he were hauling a big catch onto the deck of a fishing boat.

  Crafton, on his feet again, began smoothing out his wrinkled attire, shaking as if he had the palsy. “That’s assault, sir-you could be put in irons! There were witnesses!”

  “The witnesses seem to have gone-but we could bring this matter to the attention of the ship’s master-at-arms. Since I have no concern whatsoever, whether the information you hold on me is ever released to the public, I’d be glad to bring extortion charges against you.”