The Titanic Murders

The Titanic Murders - By Max Allan Collins




PROLOGUE


A TRIP TO SCITUATE





From the beginning, mystery and controversy have been stow-aways on the Titanic’s crossing into history. The world’s largest, most luxurious steamship—with a First-Class passenger list that was a Who’s Who of its day—the R.M.S. Titanic began her maiden voyage midday April 10, 1912, and ended it prematurely in the midnight hours bridging April 14 and 15, after brushing an iceberg designed by God or fate to challenge the naively arrogant men who had deemed the ship unsinkable.

But no one is certain how many died on that clear starry night in icy Atlantic waters. The American inquiry into the disaster came up with 1,517 dead, the British tallied 1,490, while the British board of trade said 1,503, and various respected authorities today cite figures that range as low as 1,502 and as high as 1,523. What none of these authorities, past or present, cites are the two deaths aboard the Titanic that preceded the sinking.

The two murders.


Before this tale begins proper and I take my proper place next to the Wizard of Oz—behind the curtain—I would like to share with my readers how I came to learn of the Titanic murders, and how this fascinating historical footnote came to elude those far better, and more knowledgeable, Titanic scholars who have preceded me.

It began, as does so much in modern life, with a phone call.

Like most authors, I am frequently contacted by strangers, would-be collaborators who have a wonderful idea, or a fascinating life story, and all that’s left for me to do is write it up. Everyone who has ever been involved in a crime (as a victim or a perpetrator) or who has survived a war (World War II or Vietnam, most frequently) is convinced that theirs was a unique experience, and that New York publishing and Hollywood studios are clamoring for the opportunity to throw money at them for sharing their story with a lucky, waiting world.

This is rarely the case, of course, and these individuals would have a better shot at fame and fortune by telling their timeless tale to the convenience-store clerk while scratching off “instant win” squares on lottery tickets. Besides, authors usually like to cook up their own ideas and, anyway, as a mystery writer, I’m not really suited to ghostwriting someone’s military memoirs or turning Great-Aunt Ida’s fascinating life on the prairie into a manuscript for the Christian bookstore market.

So I was skeptical when I received the phone call, late that Sunday evening, at my Muscatine, Iowa, home, from a would-be collaborator who refused to even identify himself by name.

“You were recommended to me,” the male voice said, a reedy baritone. A hint of an accent was in there, somewhere—French? French-Canadian?

“Recommended how? By who?”

It wasn’t a great connection; obviously long distance, as scratchy as an ancient phonograph record.

“Mutual friend.”

“What mutual friend?”

“I have an idea for you. It’ll make a great book, a great movie.”

I rubbed my eyes. “Really.”

“I read your novel.”

“Which one?”

“The Lindbergh-baby book. Very good. Thorough job.”

Well, now he’d bought himself a little time with me; he had just been about to land in that same limbo where my household dispatches phone solicitors. But compliments, like royalties, are immediately embraced by all writers.

“Thanks,” I said. “I worked hard on that.”

“Interesting case. You think you solved it, the kidnapping?”

“I think my solution holds up as well as anything anybody’s come up with, yeah.”

He paused; while static filled the empty air, I was imagining a face to go with the voice: thirtyish, rugged, smugly smiling….

“You like history. You like to find the mystery in history, don’t you?”

“Yeah, it’s kind of a speciality…. Well, listen, it was nice of you to call. I got one on Amelia Earhart in the works. You might like that, too—you might want to watch for it.”

This is where a fan calling would have asked what the name of the new book was, and when was it coming out. But my vaguely French long-distance caller had an apparent non sequitur for me, instead.

“What about the Titanic?” he asked.

“What about it?”

“Lot of interest. Many books. TV specials. Videos of Ballard’s dives, big sellers.”

I knew, vaguely, what he was talking about. Dr. Robert Ballard’s discovery of the shipwreck on the ocean’s floor had been big news, not long before, and generated big dollars. Even before Ballard, interest in the Titanic never seemed to wane, and I’d known about the famous disaster at sea since childhood. My generation of kids was big on Walter Lord’s book A Night to Remember, and I’d seen the movie version at a matinee in a majestic theater long since torn down.

Also, my anonymous caller had touched a distant nerve. While I did not have an interest in the Titanic in general, I had a specific interest in one of the ship’s notable passengers….

So I said, “The Titanic, right, right… is that your idea? Something about the Titanic? New theory on why and how it sank or something?”

“You know, Ballard, he called us grave robbers.”

“Called who grave robbers?”

“Ballard thinks the wreck, it’s like an undersea cemetery.”

“Well, it is sort of a grave site.”

“More than you know.”

“Look,” I said, interested but irritated, “what’s this about? Were you on one of Ballard’s expeditions?”

“Not Ballard’s.”

“Whose, then?”

I was aware the French Oceanographic Institute—INFREMER—had ignored Dr. Ballard’s wish that the Titanic be left undisturbed, that no salvage or recovery be pursued, no artifacts removed, and had undertaken several expeditions to do just that. The artifacts salvaged, mostly from a debris field between the two sections of the sunken ship, had been hyped on a tacky television production hosted by Telly Savalas, and then treated rather more respectfully and responsibly, in museum exhibitions around the world.

He was saying, “You know, they get away with this, Ballard too, ’cause they found no bodies.”

Though no expert, I remembered from documentaries I’d seen that most scientists and explorers had expected to find the Titanic more or less perfectly preserved, a virtual Edwardian time capsule, due to the coldness at that depth of the ocean, and the lack of oxygen—furniture, clothing, even human bodies, showing little or no decomposition.

This theory, like so many about the Titanic, had proved wrong. Deep-sea organisms had eaten away fabric and wood—and flesh, and for that matter, bone. An empty pair of shoes, the feet eaten right out of them, was as close as anyone had come to finding the remains of a Titanic fatality.

And, as my anonymous caller indicated, the various visits to the Titanic, whether for purposes of shooting documentary footage or salvaging artifacts, were acceptable to society at large only because no human remains had been viewed by the explorers, or their cameras. The ghostly majesty of the rust-encrusted wreckage would have turned ghastly had its decayed decks been littered with human rubble, had bones mingled with the bottles, bedsprings, dishes and dolls of the debris field.

“Listen,” I said, close to hanging up, “you’re going to have to give me your name.”

“I don’t know you, yet. Don’t trust you, yet. This is big money. Dangerous, too.”

“Why’s it dangerous?”

“I signed papers not to tell. I took money.”

“What for? Who from, damnit!”

“… I can’t say.”

I held the phone away from my face and glared at it; then I brought it back to my ear and mouth and said tightly, “Then why are you bothering me?”

Silence on the line, staticky silence.

“… They thought the galley area would be a good place to look. For the kind of things easy to take, still in nice shape… dishes, silverware, pots, pans… you know what a White Star dish from the Titanic would be worth?”

Had my anonymous caller been on a salvage expedition to the Titanic, with modern-day pirates?

“I’m sure a lot,” I said.

“They had huge refrigeration on that ship. Very modern for back then, condenser-coil water system. Separate cold rooms for different perishables, you know, meat, vegetables, wine and champagne… and on the orlop deck, a cold-storage cargo hold, for other things… away from the food.”

I didn’t know what an orlop deck was (it’s the lowest deck of a ship with multidecks, in this case right above the Titanic’s three immense propellers) but I did have a question. It’s the kind of question a mystery writer would ask.

“This cold-storage hold—would that be where they’d put somebody who died?”

There was a nod in his voice. “That ship had everything—swimming pool, squash court, barbershop, Turkish bath, operating room, everything—except a morgue.”

The staticky silence seemed to need filling, before he would go on; so I said, “I see.”

“You’re right—the cold cargo hold, in through number-five hatch… that’s where we found them.”

“… Bodies?”

“We didn’t know that’s what they were at first. They were just big canvas bags, sewn shut… beautifully preserved. The submersible brought the bags up, we hauled them out on deck, and we cut one of them open… the stench was like a sewer….”

“I don’t need details.”

“Have you read Poe?”

“Of course I’ve read Poe.”

“Have you read the story of the sick man who is hypnotized?”

“Yeah, and I saw the movie.” He was referring to “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar.”

“Then you remember the hypnotized man, he finally collapses in an oozing pile of putrescence, melting from the bones—”

“Okay, okay,” I said. “I may want to eat again someday.”

“It’s not what National Geographic wants for a Discovery Channel special, I can tell you that much. We never opened the other bag, but there was a body in it, all right.”

Staticky silence, as if some distant telegraph message were going unanswered.

I asked, “And no one knows of this?”

“Only those on deck that day.”

“On what deck? What ship, what expedition? You sound French.”

“Oh? I thought my English was very good.”

“Berlitz would hire you in a heartbeat. What about the bodies?”

“We buried them at sea. We swore not to talk of it, we were paid handsomely… I’ll tell you one thing about the body in the bag, the bag we opened?”

“Yes?”

“Its skull had been crushed. Caved in.”

“Couldn’t that have happened when the ship went down?”

“I don’t think so. I think this was death by violence, man’s violence, not nature. Murder. Isn’t that what you write about?”

“I do, but I’m not really a nonfiction writer. I mean, I research real, unsolved crimes, but then I write a fictional work around the facts I uncover.”

“That’s why I called you. I can’t risk a true treatment of this, but if you could devise a fiction story around it…”

“I don’t know. You’re not giving me much to go on… I’m afraid a nonfiction treatment would be where the interest, and the money, is. Hey, come on, pal—what is your name?”

“Are you interested in my story?”

“Yeah, I’m interested. Mildly. But interested.”

And he hung up.

Perhaps I hadn’t shown sufficient enthusiasm, and if you’d had as many crank calls, relating to your work, as I’ve had, you’d have been at least as skeptical as I was. Still, the notion of a murder—of two murders—on the Titanic, before she went down… that was intriguing.

And it did tap into my very narrow, specific Titanic interest, an interest I’d carried since childhood….

Among the Titanic’s famous passengers, hobnobbing with John Jacob Astor, Molly Brown, Ben Guggenheim and the rest, was one of the most celebrated and popular American mystery writers of his day, Jacques Futrelle, creator of Professor S.F.X. Van Dusen. Futrelle’s creation, also known as the Thinking Machine, was a cerebral sleuth whose exaggerated cranium housed a formidable brain, a dabbler in detection who refused payment for his crime solving, displaying a cold, imperious attitude (and devotion to pure logic) that made Sherlock Holmes seem warm and fuzzy.

Despite the French ring of his name, Futrelle was an American journalist turned fiction writer. His tales of so-called “Impossible Mystery” were a major influence on Agatha Christie; there is much of Professor Van Dusen in her Hercule Poirot and his celebrated “little gray cells.” The Thinking Machine’s first case remains his most famous: “The Problem of Cell 13,” in which the detective, on a bet, escapes from a death-row cell. This tale remains one of the two or three most reprinted short stories in mystery fiction, and is the first detective story I remember reading.

And the brief biography of Futrelle included in the preface to the Scholastic Books’ collection of “Thinking Machine” stories was where I first heard about the Titanic, and the sad news that Futrelle—and a number of unpublished Professor Van Dusen stories—went down with the ship.

I’d always been interested in Futrelle, and loved his stories, but little of his work was in print and coming by editions of his handful of novels was difficult. Consequently I hadn’t given him much thought in perhaps twenty years when the Robert Ballard–stirred revival of Titanic interest sent journalists scurrying to talk to survivors of the tragedy, and even relatives. A wire-service interview with Futrelle’s daughter Virginia made me recall how, as a boy, I’d enjoyed Jacques Futrelle’s fiction.

Now, ironically, from a single wire-service story, I knew more about his grown daughter than I did about Futrelle himself; and she’d had quite a life of her own.

Born in 1897, Virginia had been an operatic prima donna featured in musical revues, frequently sharing the bill with young Cary Grant’s acrobatic act at the Hippodrome in New York. She toured Europe, consorted with show business royalty (she was Barbara Stanwyck’s bridesmaid) and eventually married Charles F. Raymond, an eminent New York theatrical manager, living with him in London and, after World War II, in Johannesburg, South Africa. Later in life she worked in broadcasting, in production, winding up back in Massachusetts, where she’d grown up.

Virginia Futrelle Raymond, interviewed about her father and his death on the Titanic, passed along to interviewers a number of fascinating stories told to her by her late mother, May, who had survived the disaster. I noted that Mrs. Raymond, now a widow, lived in Scituate, Massachusetts.

And since I had a book tour coming up that would take me through Boston—twenty-five miles from Scituate—I made my own impulsive, out-of-the-blue telephone call to the daughter of Jacques Futrelle.

“I’m a fan of your father’s work,” I told her, “and I’d consider it a great honor if you’d consent to meet with me.”

She was easily ninety years of age, but her voice had the no-nonsense quality of a businesswoman, tempered by the musicality of a former professional singer.

“I’d be delighted,” she said. “I adored my father, and it’s a pity his memory, his work, has been so neglected.”

“I couldn’t agree more.”

Her next remark seemed intended to set the tone for our meeting to come: “It will be nice to talk to someone more interested in my father than the tragedy that took his life.”

I asked where we might meet, wondering to myself if it would be a nursing home of some kind, although the fact that her number had been listed should have told me she was in her own home or anyway an apartment.

“It’s beautiful here this time of year,” she said.

It was April.

“And,” she continued, “you should have the pleasure of enjoying our lovely harbor. So—I believe I’ll let you take me out to lunch, young man.”

It was nice being called “young man,” even if I had to hang out with women in their nineties for that to happen. My wife accompanied me on the drive down Massachusetts State Route 3A, which was mostly inland and not terribly scenic.

But Scituate itself provided all the scenery landlubbing midwesterners like us could drink in, even on a cool overcast afternoon. Nestling on four cliffs, looking down on a gentle curve of coastline, Scituate was a small, quaint community whose antique Cape Cods and Colonial homes had us immediately discussing relocating.

Virginia (on the phone she had made it clear she was “Virginia,” not “Mrs. Raymond”) had suggested the restaurant—Chester’s at the Mill Wharf—which was on Front Street, on the town’s picturesque sheltered harbor, overseen by a nineteenth-century lighthouse. We were early, and sat in the rustic, nautically themed restaurant at a table by the window looking out on the busy harbor—bobbing with pleasure craft and a working fishing fleet—and an ocean so smooth and gunmetal gray it nearly blended with the overcast gunmetal sky.

When the daughter of Jacques Futrelle entered, there was no mistaking her. I had seen Futrelle’s photograph—he had a John Candy–like, round, boyish face, with dark wide-open eyes behind wire-frame glasses, and seemed at once alert and childlike, scholarly and cherubic, and was apparently rather thickset though by no means obese.

Based upon the one known photo of Futrelle aboard the Titanic, a full-figure shot of him on deck in a three-piece suit, his hair ruffled by wind, the author appeared to be fairly stocky, even short.

But Virginia Raymond was tall, close to six foot, with the big-boned frame of her father and a handsome face that echoed his, as well; at ninety, she still cut a commanding figure. She wore a dignified suit—a lavender pattern on top, with a solid lavender skirt (which my wife later described as “very Chanel”)—and she used a cane, though she strode otherwise unaided through the mostly empty restaurant. (We had chosen to dine mid-afternoon, when we would have the place mostly to ourselves.)

We rose, and I introduced my wife and myself, mentioning that both of us were writers.

“Ah, like my parents,” Virginia said, allowing me to help with her chair. “You didn’t know Mother was a writer, too? She and Papa collaborated only once, on a short story that frankly wasn’t very good. Well, of course, they collaborated on my brother and me, too.”

We laughed at that, as I took my seat right across from Virginia. Soon we ordered soft drinks, and chatted about the drive down, and this lovely scenic little city, and explained that we were in Boston making appearances at several bookstores, promoting my latest historical detective novel and an anthology my wife had coedited.

“Look how smooth it is today,” Virginia said, gazing out at the calm gray ocean. “That’s how they say it was, you know. My mother said the ocean was like a millpond, that Sunday night.”

I said nothing, exchanging nervous glances with my wife; we’d agreed to avoid the Titanic in conversation, as on the phone Virginia had made such a point of her willingness to spend time with a Futrelle fan, as opposed to a Titanic buff.

“You know, it’s close to that time of year, isn’t it?” Virginia asked.

Again, I said nothing, just smiled a little—I knew damn well the anniversary of the sinking was days away.

“Each year, on April 14, for as long as she was able, my mother held a private memorial service to my father, and the others who lost their lives that night. She would stand alone on Third Cliff here in Scituate, looking out over the open sea, a fresh bouquet of flowers in her hands… and she would sprinkle the flowers with her tears, and then would toss them, into the water.”

“That’s lovely,” my wife said.

The handsome, deeply grooved features formed an embarrassed smile. “Well, my mother did have a terrible streak of melodrama, I’m afraid. But she loved Papa; I don’t think she ever really fully accepted his death. She and I didn’t really get along very well, you know….”

This private piece of information coming along so early in our conversation was startling; but I managed to say, brilliantly, “Really?”

Virginia sipped her coffee, which she was drinking black, and nodded, saying, “She favored Jack, my brother… she had quite an ego, Mother did. When she lost Papa, she lost the one person in the world she loved more than herself.”

A waiter came over and we ordered lunch; wood-grilled fresh fish of every variety—not exactly midwestern fare. Then when the waiter had gone, Virginia turned toward the gray, gently rippling landscape and spoke again.

“I wasn’t on the ship,” she said. “I was in school—I went to private school, up north—yet memories of the Titanic sinking have been with me most of my life. Mother relived the sheer terror of that experience, from time to time, nightmares mostly, and sudden stabs of memory. She lived to be ninety-one… I intend to outdo her, on that score.”

Thinking of my anonymous phone caller, I said, “You seemed to have a positive opinion of Dr. Ballard’s expedition, uh… when you were interviewed. But what do you think of these later expeditions, recovering—”

She interrupted sharply: “Ghoulish. Simply ghoulish. I’ve always thought of the Titanic as my father’s grave. I hope they’ll let her be—she’s at rest, a memorial in herself.”

“Oh, I agree with you,” my wife said. “This awful talk about trying to ‘raise’ the ship…”

Her brown eyes, which were lovely, pressed shut. “I pray nightly that the ship will be allowed to remain where she lies. Anything else is exploitation. It seems only… honorable, respectful, to leave the ship and its victims in their final resting place as was God’s will.”

I thought of those two canvas bags, sewn shut, in the cold cargo hold.

But then we spoke of her father, and she told anecdotes about him, warm funny stories of his playful practical jokes, such as the time her mother had “gussied herself up” for a party that her father wanted to skip. May Futrelle had approached her husband, who was tarrying with yard work, watering the lawn, and prodded him to come inside and put on his evening wear—he had instead hosed her down, in all her finery, and after her fury turned to laughter, they’d spent a quiet romantic evening together.

“They were a love story, Mama and Papa,” she said rather wistfully. “A real-life love story.”

“You know, I’d really like to see your father’s work get back into print,” I said. “Maybe if I could interview you, in depth, I could put a biographical piece together that would spark some interest.”

I was putting a toe in the water, because my real intention was to seek her cooperation in writing a book-length biography of her father.

“I’m afraid that wouldn’t be possible,” she said, as if reading my mind. “I’m already working with two friends of mine, women I worked with in broadcasting, on creating a book about Papa.”

I tried not to show my disappointment, although such a project—even if not written by me—was good news to this Futrelle fan.

That left me with nothing to say, or to ask, and I awkwardly changed the subject back to the Titanic.

“You know, these people are grave robbers, quite literally,” I said. “Anyway, they are, if this phone call I received recently wasn’t just a crank.”

“How so?” she asked.

And I told Jacques Futrelle’s daughter about the cargo hold, and the pair of bodies that had been stored there, years ago, only to be recently disturbed.

“Is that right?” she said. She was smiling, a strange smile, a young smile in the old face. “And here I thought Mother was spinning one.”

“Pardon?”

“Well, you have to understand, my mother had major writing ambitions herself. She published several novels, both before and after Papa’s death… wrote a sequel to one of his books, in fact. But when times changed, her writing style didn’t, and that was the end of it.”

“I see,” I said, not really seeing, not really following any of this.

Virginia was rattling on: “Not long before her death, in 1967, she told me a story, an elaborate story, a detailed story… and she claimed it was true. But I didn’t know what to think. Why hadn’t she told me before? She had no explanation for that.”

“What sort of story?”

But Virginia didn’t answer, not directly: “Mother was an adult when the Titanic went down. She was in her mid-thirties. Most of the survivors giving their eyewitness accounts these days were children at the time—some of them babes in arms!”

“And she was a writer,” I said, nodding. “So her memories would be vivid, and credible, in a way the average person’s might not.”

“That’s what you’d think, but sometimes I discounted her. She could be self-serving, Mother could, and she had a good imagination, a writer’s imagination, and some of what she recalled about the Titanic didn’t match up with other people’s recollections.”

“Really? What, for instance?”

“Well, for one, she insisted the band didn’t play on deck—she said it was bitter cold and the violin strings would have snapped, and besides, they were playing indoors. All the eyewitness testimony to the contrary wouldn’t sway her. She also said the band was German, and it’s well-known it was a group of English musicians.”

“Perhaps they played German selections and that confused her.”

“Perhaps. She also insisted the iceberg was a ‘growler,’ a small berg, not the towering monster of ice so many others recall seeing. So, all things considered, I didn’t pay much attention to her story, fascinating as it was. But now… what you say seems to confirm it.”

“Virginia, what are you—”

“Here’s our food,” she said, and indeed the waiter was bringing it. “We’ll speak of lighter subjects while we eat… and afterwards, if you like, if you have the time, I’ll tell you about the murders.”

And for three hours that afternoon, never seeming to tire, never missing a beat, she did.

What you are about to read is based upon Virginia Futrelle Raymond’s recollections of the tale her mother told, supplemented by research and imagination.

Bon voyage.