The Titanic Murders

TWO


A CLOSE CALL





INTO THE ENTRYWAY OF B deck, with its gleaming white walls and gleaming white linoleum, trooped the elegant army of First-Class passengers. They were met by a gaggle of ship’s staff—the chief steward and his assorted minions, and the purser’s clerk, who saw to it that tickets were quickly processed, names jotted in a ledger book, keys dispensed, directions to staterooms given, with smiles and courtesy and efficiency that boded well for a pleasant voyage to come.

In the entrance hall beyond, the opulence of the ship first made itself known to the Americans: gold-plated crystal teardrop light fixtures, polished oak paneling, gilt-framed landscapes in oil, Oriental carpet, horsehair sofas, silk lampshades, caneback chairs with red velvet cushions….

The abundance of it all assaulted their senses, stopping them in their tracks. May gasped, René began to laugh, and both women did pirouettes, looking all about with the wide, innocently greedy eyes of children in a lavishly stocked toy store.

To the right rose a magnificent marble staircase enclosed by a grand framework of wood sculpture, its carved walnut flowers running floor to ceiling, with exquisitely sculpted oak balustrades bearing wrought-iron and gilt-bronze scrollwork.

Henry put his hands on his hips and laughed. “And I thought I was a producer! This makes the Lusitania look like a garbage scow.”

Futrelle was admiring a beautiful bronze cherub perched on a pedestal at the center of the foot of the flight of stairs. “Well, I heard White Star planned to leave speed to Cunard, and concentrate on luxury—apparently it wasn’t just the bunkum.”

Only the relative lowness of the ceilings in this reception area provided a hint that this was anything but the finest land-based hotel. Behind them, the next group of First-Class passengers was traipsing in, to be similarly bowled over by this opulence.

The two couples made their way around and down the staircase to C deck, and were soon padding along a wide, blue-carpeted, brass-railed white corridor on the port side of the ship, where other First-Class passengers were following the path to their staterooms, as well. Up ahead was that family from the boat train, the handsome couple with the lovely little golden-haired girl, shapely blunt-nosed nanny with babe in arms and plump maid. They had paused and the young husband was speaking to someone.

John Crafton.

“Is your friend making friends again?” Henry whispered, walking just behind Futrelle and May.

Actually, he seemed to be. Crafton’s pearl-gray fedora was in his hands and he was smiling pleasantly, or at least as pleasantly as possible for him, and both the husband and the wife were returning the smile, with no apparent strain.

Only the nanny was frowning, and seemed nervous, but then again the baby in her arms was squirming and fussing.

As the Futrelles and Harrises approached where the little group clustered, blocking the way, Crafton noticed and said, “We seem to be holding things up… I’m so pleased to have run into you, Mr. Allison, Mrs. Allison. Until later, then.”

Crafton tipped his hat and—the Futrelles and Harrises standing aside for him—swaggered past, cane in hand, nodding and smiling as he did.

René twitched her nose. “Why does a smile from him make me crave a bath?”

This required no answer, and anyway, they were up even with that family, now.

“I’m afraid we always seem to be in the way,” the young husband said, turning toward the two couples with an embarrassed grin. “I’m Hudson Allison, this is my wife Bess, our daughter Lorraine… Alice, there, has little Trevor.”

Introductions were made all around, hands shaken (though of course the maid was not mentioned, and nanny Alice only that once in passing); but more passengers were coming up the corridor and the baby was crying, so further information, getting better acquainted, would have to wait. It was time for everyone to move on.

Heading aft, making a left turn down a hallway (for all its length, the ship wasn’t all that wide—perhaps ninety feet), the Harrises finally found C83, their cabin. Before pushing on to find their own quarters, the Futrelles peeked in at the lovely little room with its graceful, even dainty Louis XVI styling, exemplified by walls of white-and-green-and-gold brocade with whitewashed waist-high walnut trim.

“Oh, René,” May said. “It’s simply beautiful!”

“Step inside, you two,” René said.

A gilt-adorned carved walnut bed with silk-damask-upholstered head- and footboard dominated the room, that same upholstery carried to a plump sofa and a padded walnut armchair. A basket of fresh flowers adorned a rosewood-and-walnut dressing table, and more flowers waited on the marble-topped mahogany nightstand. A small black fan was ceiling-mounted, perching like a big out-of-place bug in all this elegance.

“I guess our baggage will be delivered later,” Harris said, taking in the posh little room with a big grin.

“Wrong again, Henry B.,” René said—she’d been exploring. “Here it all is!”

In a spacious trunk closet, as if they’d materialized magically, were neatly stacked the array of steamer trunks and bags.

“Can all the rooms be this marvelous?” May wondered.

“Let’s find out,” Futrelle said, and to the Harrises added, “We’ll probably head up on deck to take in the departure.”

“We’ll find you up there, or see you at luncheon,” Henry said. René waved, saying, “Toodle-oo, you two!”, and the Futrelles pressed on.

The numbering of the rooms was confusing and inconsistent, and by the time they found theirs—C67/68—the Futrelles were not far from where they’d started, the area near the C-deck entrance hall and the grand stairway.

“We’re going in circles already,” Futrelle said, working the key in the door, not sure if the size of this ship was to his liking.

But May’s eyes glittered with girlish anticipation. “Let’s see if our accommodations measure up to Henry and René’s.”

They did, and then some.

The Futrelles found themselves in a suite that made the Harrises’ quarters seem like a plush closet: awash with the elegance of Louis Quinze stylings, the oak-paneled suite consisted of a sitting room adjoining a bedroom (off of which were both a bathroom and a steamer-trunk closet—their things, too, had been delivered). The carpeting was a deep blue broadloom.

“Oh Jack,” May said, breathlessly. “This is too much….”

“The last time I saw a room like this,” Futrelle said, “a velvet rope was keeping me back, and a tour guide was nudging me on.”

The sitting room was almost cluttered with fine furnishings with their typical Quinze cabriolet legs and ebony wood—replete with rococo carvings, in a shell motif—and upholsteries of delicate shades of blue: a sinuously contoured sofa, a round table with a damask cloth, corner writing desk, assorted formal chairs. A large gilt-framed mirror leaned out over the white-and-gold sham fireplace with an ornate gold clock on the mantel; on either side of the mirror were windows—not portholes—blue-striped satin curtains gathered back for ocean views.

“How can I make myself at home in this showroom?” Futrelle asked May, thinking she was beside him, but she wasn’t.

Glowing, she leaned out from the adjacent room. “Jack, come take a look at this bedroom—”

“Now this is starting to sound like a second honeymoon,” he said, joining her, but she wasn’t paying any attention to his flirtation. She was caught up in the grandeur of their sleeping quarters.

Ebony woods and the rococo shell motif continued, but shades of rose had taken over the fabrics, and the carpeting was a cream-and-rose floral that Futrelle hesitated to set foot on with his lowly shoes. Like a child in a flower garden, May flitted from furnishing to furnishing—mirrored dresser, table with lamp and chairs, pink-and-white striped chaise lounge—touching each as if to test its reality. A four-poster brass bed with plump pillows and pink quilted bedspread nestled to the right of the adjoining room’s door.

“I wonder what we did to deserve this,” Futrelle muttered, mostly to himself.

May was peeking in the bathroom, saying, “Before we go up on deck, I’d like to freshen up.”

He checked his pocket watch. “We’re supposed to shove off at noon—that’s fifteen minutes from now.”

A shrill ringing caught both their attentions.

Futrelle, frowning, turned in a half circle, as the ringing continued. “What the hell… is that some kind of ship’s signal?”

“What do you think it is, silly?” She smirked prettily and pointed to the marbletop nightstand, and the telephone there, from which the ringing emanated. “Some detective you are.”

“Telephones?” Futrelle said, going there, not sure whether he was impressed by the extravagance or offended by it. “The cabins on this ship have telephones? Amazing… Futrelle, here.”

The voice in his ear said, “Mr. Futrelle, J. Bruce Ismay, chairman of the White Star Line.”

Futrelle had to smile; as if Ismay needed to identify himself as such…

“Yes, Mr. Ismay. To what do I owe this pleasure? I refer to both this call, and this sumptuous suite we find ourselves in.”

“The White Star Line believes that celebrities like yourself should travel in style. If you could spare me five minutes, in my suite, I can explain further, and properly welcome you to my ship.”

May was already in the washroom.

“Certainly,” Futrelle said. “Can I get there without a taxicab?”

Ismay laughed, once. “You’ll find all the First-Class cabins and facilities on the Titanic are rather conveniently grouped together. I’m just a deck above you, sir—almost directly above you, in B52, 54 and 56.”

“That’s even one more number than we have.”

Another laugh. “You know what they say about rank and its privileges. Can you come straightaway?”

“Delighted.”

A minute later, more or less, Futrelle knocked once, at the door of Suite B52, and almost instantly, the door opened. Futrelle had expected a butler or valet to answer, but it was J. Bruce Ismay himself, a surprising figure, in several ways.

First, he wore a jaunty gray sporting outfit—Norfolk jacket, knickerbockers and heavy woolen hose—where Futrelle had expected something more pretentious of the man.

Second, Ismay was the rare human who towered over Futrelle, a man who himself had been described by one reporter as a “behemoth.” Ismay topped six feet four, easily, although the narrow-shouldered man lacked Futrelle’s massive build; in fact, he looked slight and soft, for as tall as he was.

But Ismay did cut a fine figure in his sports clothes: a handsome devil, in his late forties or early fifties Futrelle judged, trimly mustached, with bright dark eyes in a heart-shaped face, his healthy head of dark hair touched here and there with gentle gray.

In a tenor voice, confident and cutting, his host announced himself: “J. Bruce Ismay.”

Somehow Ismay had resisted the urge to add: “Chairman of the White Star Line,” and somehow Futrelle had resisted the smart-aleck urge to utter it, himself.

“Mr. Ismay,” Futrelle said, with a little nod.

Ismay was extending his hand; and Futrelle took it, shook it—a firm enough grasp. “Bruce, please, call me Bruce.”

“Jack Futrelle. Call me Jack.”

“Do come in. I had hoped you’d bring your lovely wife along.”

But of course Ismay hadn’t mentioned to Futrelle that he should bring his wife; and Futrelle already had the firm idea that Ismay wasn’t the sort for such an oversight—this was meant to be a private meeting between the two men, as the absence of any servant or secretary augured.

“May’s settling in, in our suite, before we go up on deck for the waves and cheers.”

“Mustn’t miss that.”

Ismay’s sporting attire—apropos for the great ship’s departure as it might be—seemed suddenly absurd in the ostentatious suite with its French Empire decor. If the Harrises’ cabin had paled next to the Futrelles’ stateroom, Ismay’s suite of rooms reduced them both to shanties.

The parlor into which the two men had entered was white-painted oak with a beamed ceiling and built-in fireplace, an oblong gilt-framed mirror over its mantel. The mahogany and rosewood furnishings, sometimes ebony-punctuated, reflected the straight and curved, ponderous and heavy, construction of a style dictated by the Little Corporal himself: the Napoleonic paw and claw feet, the brass and ormolu mounts, carved winged griffins and pineapples. No sissy stripes or floral patterns adorned the rich, heavy upholstery: strictly royal blue, like the carpet and sofa, or deep red, like the gathered curtains on the windows that looked out not onto the ocean, but a private, enclosed promenade deck.

A door stood open onto a similarly grand bedroom, and a door in that room onto another.

“Impressive digs,” Futrelle said. “Remind me to acquire some rank so I can get privileges like these… not that I’m complaining about my own accommodations, mind you.”

“Sit, please,” Ismay said, gesturing to a round, blue-damask-clothed table in the center of the parlor. Futrelle did, and Ismay, not sitting yet, asked, “Too early for a drink? Some lemonade, perhaps?”

“Nothing, thanks.”

Ismay sat across from Futrelle, and smiled shyly, a smile Futrelle didn’t fully believe. “Normally I wouldn’t travel in such a highfalutin fashion… not on my company’s dollar, at any rate.” Ismay gestured about him. “This parlor suite was reserved for Mr. Morgan, but he took ill at the last moment… so why let it sit empty?”

By “Mr. Morgan,” Futrelle took that to mean American financier J. Pierpont Morgan, the Titanic’s titanically wealthy owner, the man who’d acquired the White Star Line from the Ismays a decade before.

“Actually,” Ismay said, a smile lifting his mustache, “you and Mrs. Futrelle are in my suite.”

“So we benefited from Mr. Morgan’s illness as well. But why did you choose us with whom to be so generous, Mr. Ismay?”

“Bruce! Please.”

“Sorry—Bruce. Or should I say Saint Nick?”

He smiled again, shrugged. “As I indicated on the phone, we like our celebrity passengers to travel in style. You’d be wasted in Second Class.”

“Wasted how?”

Ismay folded his hands, shifted in his cushioned chair; his expression shifted, too: serious, businesslike. “This is the Titanic’s maiden voyage…”

This was news on the order of learning that Ismay was chairman of the White Star Line.

“… and it’s important to us that our First-Class passenger list resembles the audience at a gala theater opening… I’m sure your friend Mr. Harris would understand the importance of salting notables among that first-night crowd.”

“Well, obviously, I’m happy to offer whatever small prestige my presence might provide. But I think you rather exaggerate my importance.”

“Not at all. We have a number of authors aboard, but none of your stature, your popularity, on both sides of the Atlantic. My understanding is that your books sell just as well in England as in the United States.”

“Perhaps a little better,” Futrelle admitted.

His eyes tightened. “This is… if I may be frank, knowing that you will be discreet… a somewhat troubled first crossing for us.”

Now Futrelle shifted in his chair. “How so?”

“Oh, oh, it’s nothing to trouble yourself over… from the standpoint of technology, this is the safest ship on the ocean, the finest achievement shipbuilding has yet realized.” He frowned, shook his head. “But this recent coal strike has thrown a veritable wrench in the works… other transatlantic lines have idled their vessels—thousands of crew members, dockworkers, are out of work. We even had to cancel crossings for a number of our other ships.”

“I know,” Futrelle said. “When we decided to come home a trifle early from our European tour, the Titanic was really our only option.”

“Well, we transferred bookings from half a dozen of our other liners onto the Titanic, and without this tactic, frankly, we’d have been embarrassingly underbooked for our maiden voyage. Even so, we’re only 46 percent of capacity in First Class and 40 percent in Second Class… though steerage is 70 percent capacity.” He chucked dryly, adding, “Finding poor people who want to go to America is never much of a problem.”

“This is a stumper.” Futrelle adjusted his glasses on the bridge of his nose. “The maiden voyage of the world’s largest liner—that should have attracted ticket buyers like bees to honey.”

“Oh, we’ve a respectable booking, but the damned strike’s damaged the entire shipping industry… with cancellations and postponements making travel so unpredictable, leaving passengers stranded, bewildered, disenchanted…. People just aren’t traveling at this particular time, a time which is so crucial to us with the launching of this ship.”

“You may have been up against another problem, Mr. Ismay—Bruce.”

“Yes? What would that be?”

“Fear.” Futrelle raised an eyebrow. “Aren’t there those who feel that your ‘monster ship’ is simply too big to float?”

Ismay sighed. “Unfortunately, Jack, you’re right—though that’s such sheer poppycock it barely merits a response. This ship is the last word in modern efficiency, every expert considers it literally unsinkable. It’s utter ignorance, and the pity is, it’s not just coming from the great unwashed, but from intelligent, educated people, as well.”

“And what can be done about that?”

He leaned forward. “Reeducation. This is where you could be of service to the White Star Line, Jack.”

Futrelle sat back. “To repay my luxury suite, you mean?”

“No. There are no strings attached to that, other than the right to inscribe you upon our glittering First-Class passenger list. But I understand you and Mrs. Futrelle make at least one European crossing, annually…”

Futrelle nodded, folded his arms. “It’s the nature of my business. You indicated yourself, I have a following on your side of the pond.”

“Exactly. How would you like to have free annual passage on any White Star liner, a permanent open ticket—First Class?”

“Is that a rhetorical question?”

“Not at all. It’s a business proposition, actually.”

“How so?”

“Mr. Futrelle—Jack… if you could concoct a novel, with the Titanic as its setting… a mystery… an adventurous romance… detailing the lovely surroundings, the fine cuisine…”

“I’m not an advertising writer, sir.”

Ismay held up his hands, palms out, as if Futrelle were a highwayman he was facing. “Please! I don’t mean to offend you. But isn’t a vivid, intriguing setting for his story something any good writer of popular fiction strives to achieve?”

“Yes, of course…”

Ismay shrugged again, risked a small smile. “Well, then. The White Star Line would simply like to see you use our magnificent ship as the backdrop for your next exciting novel.”

“Bruce… Mr. Ismay. Frankly, what you suggest strikes me at first blow as distasteful… and yet I admit I really can’t see a reason not to at least consider your suggestion.”

“Good!” He leaped to his feet, quick as a jack-in-the-box; this response from Futrelle was apparently enough for Ismay to consider this phase of the negotiations closed. “Your consideration is all I ask, at this point.”

Almost reeling from the suddenness of this, Futrelle rose, and Ismay cheerfully took his elbow and led him to the door. “… Now, in the meantime, please enjoy your voyage. I’ve arranged for you and Mrs. Futrelle to sit at the captain’s table, tomorrow evening—that should be a nice way to start off our first evening out at sea.”

“Well, uh… thank you, Bruce. I know my wife will be pleased.”

Ismay opened the door. “Ah, I only wish I could have brought Florence and the children along, this time. They came aboard this morning, for a tour of the ship…. You should have seen my Tom, George and Evelyn, running up and down the private promenade.”

“I have a girl and a boy, both teenagers,” Futrelle said politely.

“I’m always at your service,” Ismay said, and shut the door.

And Futrelle stood staring at the portal to B52 for a few moments, and was bemusedly heading back down to his own stateroom, wondering whether he should tell his wife about Ismay’s slightly unpalatable offer, when he noticed another passenger in the corridor.

Swinging his cane, pearl-gray fedora cocked to one side, John Bertram Crafton was coming Futrelle’s way.

“Mr. Crafton,” Futrelle said. “We meet again.”

Crafton, without pausing, nodded, touching his hat, saying, “We’ll have a chance to get better acquainted soon, Mr. Futrelle, I assure you.”

Futrelle kept walking, but glanced back, and hell and damnation, if Crafton hadn’t stopped at Ismay’s door—where he was knocking!

The little scoundrel did get around.

As departure time approached, Futrelle and his wife were among many other First-Class passengers making their way to the uppermost deck of the ship, the boat deck. There they stood at the rail near a davit-slung lifeboat and looked down at the crowd of citizens, from Southampton mostly, who appeared tiny indeed with the massive White Star sheds looming behind them and gigantic loading cranes towering above them—yet both the sheds and cranes were dwarfed by the Titanic.

At the stroke of noon, a measured, deafening blast from the full-throated, triple-toned Titanic steam whistle announced imminent departure. May pointed down and Futrelle’s eyes followed: like the drawbridge of a castle, the gangway was raising, to the frustration of what appeared to be a clutch of tardy, frustrated crewmen, literally missing the boat.

Another deafening blast from the steam whistle, and the immense mooring ropes that held the ship to the pier went splashing into the water, to be drawn quickly ashore by dockworkers. Rude little snorts from the horns of the tugboats moving into position made an almost comical contrast with the hollow power of the Titanic’s steam whistle.

From elsewhere on deck—Futrelle couldn’t be sure, exactly—a small orchestra was playing selections from the operetta The Chocolate Soldier, only to be momentarily drowned out by the final blast of the steam whistle, announcing that, finally, the great ship was in motion, easing gently, quietly from her berth, not under her own steam as yet, but propelled by those half a dozen tugs.

The unseen orchestra was playing “Britannia Rules the Waves” now, while everyone on the boat deck waved down to the strangers below, who waved back, hankies fluttering; some of the passengers, May among them, cast flowers into the water. As the massive liner began to slide from the dock, the crowd down there ran alongside, keeping pace, shouting farewells, cheering.

“Oh Jack,” May said, her face aglow, eyes glittering with happiness, “it’s all so exciting!”

And it was—there was an epic sweep to it, the mammoth ship, the crowd waving from the dock, the orchestra playing, the pungent smell of burning coal, the billowing of smoke from the stacks of the tugs pulling, pushing, prodding the so-much-bigger ship out of the dock area.

It was a storybook departure, until—expertly maneuvered into the channel in a turn to port by the tugboats, who then cast off—the Titanic gave a faint tremor, telling the more seasoned passengers that the great ship was at last getting way under her own power, however tentatively. Moving at a modest six knots, the liner steamed past two ships—the White Star Line’s Oceanic and a smaller American ship, the New York, moored at the quay, two of the liners put out of commission by Ismay’s coal strike.

The side-by-side mooring of these ships made a narrow channel more narrow; the quayside was lined with spectators, and still more people leaned at the rail on the deck of the New York, where they had boarded to get a good look at the greatest ship in the world as she started her maiden voyage, gawking and waving at the Titanic’s lucky passengers from a mere eighty feet away.

“I don’t like this,” Futrelle said, standing back from the rail.

May, who was returning waves to the spectators on the New York deck, asked, “Why? What’s wrong, dear?”

“The way those liners are bobbing,” he said, nodding toward what he was talking about. “This big ship of ours is displacing too much water… causing too much turbulence….”

“Oh dear, I’m sure the captain knows what he’s doing…”

What might have been a gunshot cracked the air. Then another sharp crack!

And four more reports, as if every chamber of a six-gun had been emptied into the sky.

“Jack!”

The New York’s massive metal mooring ropes had snapped like cheap shoelaces.

Futrelle put his arm around his wife and held her close. “It’ll be fine, darling… don’t worry….”

The metal ropes arced and coiled in the air like lasso tricks gone awry, sending spectators scurrying and shrieking, quayside. On the deck of the New York, the people who’d boarded for a better look were scattering and screaming, quickly abandoning ship, or trying to.

And on the boat deck of the Titanic, the clanging of bells from the bridge providing accompaniment, counterpointed by the sirens of tugboats rushing to attempt rescue, the passengers were frozen in disbelief—no screams, just occasional gasps and outcries, as couples (like the Futrelles) embraced, witnessing the New York, loose now, begin to swing, like an awful gate, stern first, toward the Titanic.

Ismay’s assertion that his ship was unsinkable seemed about to get an early test.

The Titanic picked up speed, slightly, and her wake seemed to push the smaller ship back, but as close as the New York was, this didn’t seem to be enough; the bigger ship moved forward, and the smaller ship swung toward it, stern toward stern….

Agonizing seconds that seemed like minutes dragged by, as the two ships seemed about to touch, and as the passengers braced for the screech of steel, hugging each other desperately…

… the stern of the New York missed the Titanic’s stern by inches.

Around the boat deck, sighs of relief and some laughter and even some applause and cheers floated through the air, aural confetti being tossed; and the orchestra began to play a catchy ditty that Futrelle later learned was “The White Star March.”

In the meantime, the New York was still drifting free; however, the tugboats were steaming into position to take care of that, and the Titanic was coming to a premature stop, till all this could be sorted out.

“You’re right, dear,” Futrelle said.

May looked at him, relieved but dazed. “Pardon?”

“This is exciting.”

She smirked and hugged him, but Futrelle—writer of suspense that he was—could not shake a sense of foreboding. This near miss—actually, it was a near hit, wasn’t it?—was an inauspicious start for such a grand voyage.

On the other hand, if he ever wrote that Titanic mystery for Ismay, he had a hell of a first chapter, didn’t he?