The Titanic Murders Page 6

  “Will it make a good play, Jack?” Henry asked.

  “Don’t change the subject, Henry B.,” his wife said. “I just want to know if Jack here has psychic abilities.”

  Over his soused herring, Mr. Straus was studying Futrelle with keen interest, but then everyone at the table had their eyes on him.

  “I’m probably no more prescient than any writer,” Futrelle said. “I think all of us who write fiction tap into something, if not mystical, certainly akin to the dream state.”

  Young Baumann, so fascinated with this he’d completely forgotten his grilled mutton chops, asked, “Have you ever made up a story and had it come true?”

  Nodding emphatically, May said, “One of the first stories he ever published! Based on the notorious suitcase murder in Boston…”

  “I read about that,” Brandeis said, pointing with a knife. “Grisly affair….”

  “Don’t ask for details over luncheon,” Futrelle said, with a smile, but meaning it.

  “Sound thinking,” Straus said, saluting Futrelle with his wineglass.

  May rattled on: “Jack solved the case, completely, weeks before the police, who were holding an innocent man.”

  “Do tell!” René said. “Jack, how did you do it?”

  “No crystal ball—simply logic. Applied criminology.”

  “Sound thinking indeed,” Mr. Straus said.

  Henry whispered, “Better not let old man Stead hear them callin’ you a psychic, Jack—he’ll recruit you for one of his séances.”

  Two tables over, the white-bearded old boy was hunkered over a huge plate of food, shoveling the fine fare in like so much coal, while his stunned tablemates did their best to avert their offended eyes.

  “They say he’s half-mad, half genius,” Futrelle said.

  “Well, he’s an entire slob,” May said.

  May’s frank comment elicited an outburst of laughter from all at the table, though Mrs. Straus seemed somewhat embarrassed.

  Young Baumann asked, “Would a spiritualist like Stead call a rocky start like this a bad omen? Could we be on an unlucky ship?”

  “No, I’d say the odds are in our favor, John,” Harris told the importer. “We’ve already had our accident—whoever heard of a ship havin’ two in one trip?”

  Sometime during luncheon, the ship’s three giant propellers had begun to churn and the Titanic set out on the channel crossing, bound for Cherbourg, France. But the diners had been unaware that their voyage was finally under way, so subtle was the motion of the ship and the sound of its mighty engines.

  Futrelle and May didn’t realize the boat was moving until they were outside, having taken one of the trio of electric elevators (“lifts,” in the ship’s British terminology)—lavishly paneled in exotic bird’s-eye curly maple—up to A deck. They walked up the stairs and out onto the boat deck, where a brisk breeze ruffled the writer’s hair and the black and white feathers of his wife’s chapeau.

  Off starboard the high chalk cliffs of St. Catherine’s Bay, the last landmark of the Isle of Wight, were receding into memory.

  Futrelle, noting the curving wake of the ship, said, “The captain must be testing his compasses, shaking his ship down after that near collision.”

  “How’s that, dear?”

  “He’s steering quite the irregular course—S-turns and other maneuvers, trying to get the feel of handling this barge, I’d say.”

  “Jack, how can you call this lovely ship a barge?”

  “Because that’s a ship,” Futrelle said, pointing portside, where a gloriously old-fashioned three-masted schooner with its sails and lines was pitching and rolling, water breaking over her bow. “Probably heading for the West Indies…”

  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 Café 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 café, 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 d
o 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….”