He could see that her safe was open and jewelry was scattered on the floor. But I’d better leave it there, he thought. I don’t need to be accused of stealing. After making the decision, he phoned the ship’s doctor.
Sixty-eight years old, with iron-gray hair, Dr. Edwin Blake had retired from his successful practice as a vascular surgeon three years earlier. He was a longtime widower with grown children, and a friend at Castle Line had suggested he might enjoy traveling as the head of the medical facility on an ocean liner. As it turned out, he thoroughly enjoyed that opportunity and was very pleased when he was invited to switch to the Queen Charlotte.
After receiving the call from Raymond, he rushed up to Lady Em’s suite. At one glance he was able to confirm that she was dead. But then he was immediately concerned by the fact that one arm was dangling off the edge of the bed and the other raised above her head. Bending over closely, he examined her face and observed dried blood at the corner of her mouth.
Suspicious, he looked around and noticed that the other pillow was haphazardly lying on the coverlet. He picked it up and turned it over, then saw a telltale smudge of blood on it. Not wanting to have Raymond even guess his thoughts, he hesitated, then said, “I’m afraid this poor lady suffered a last instant of terrible pain in the heart attack that took her life.”
He took Raymond’s arm and escorted him out of the bedroom, then shut the door behind them. “I will inform Captain Fairfax of Lady Haywood’s passing,” he said. “Please be aware that you must not say one word about this to anyone.”
The authority in his voice ended Raymond’s intention to be on the phone to let all his friends on the staff know what had happened. “Of course, sir,” he said, “but it is a very sad occurrence, isn’t it? Lady Haywood was a very gracious lady. And to think that only yesterday Mr. Pearson’s dreadful accident occurred.”
This was no accident, Dr. Blake thought grimly, as he started to leave to speak to the Captain. Then he stopped. “Raymond, I want you to stand guard outside this door. Absolutely no one is to go into this suite until I return. Is that clear?”
“Absolutely. Lady Haywood’s assistant has a key. It would be dreadful for her to come in before she is informed of what happened, wouldn’t it?”
Or before she tries to destroy any evidence if she’s guilty of murder, Edwin Blake thought.
53
Security Chief Saunders, Dr. Blake and Captain Fairfax arrived together at the suite. Before removing the body to the ship’s morgue, extensive pictures were taken of Lady Em’s face, the position of her right arm and the smear of blood on the pillow.
Their immediate suspicion was that the motive for the murder was robbery. The others watched as Saunders went over to the open safe and looked in it. In addition to the several rings and a bracelet scattered on the floor, he saw that jewelry had been dumped on the shelf. Jewelry pouches were also on the floor, partially hidden by the long evening gowns.
“Is the emerald necklace there?” the Captain asked quietly.
Saunders had seen it on Lady Em’s neck at dinner in the dining room. “No sir, it is not. I am even more certain that we are dealing with a robbery, which led to a murder.”
54
Gregory Morrison was a flamboyant billionaire whose dream it had been to have a cruise line of his own.
He had been wise enough to not follow his tugboat captain father’s advice to skip college and go right to work pulling ocean liners out to sea when he got out of high school. Instead he graduated from college on the dean’s list and went on for his MBA. He then worked in Silicon Valley as an analyst, shrewdly discerning which start-up companies offered the most promising new technologies. Fifteen years after forming his own investment fund, he sold it and ended up a billionaire.
Morrison had immediately returned to his goal in life, to own passenger ships. The first one he bought at an auction, then had it refurbished and scheduled its first cruise. Working with a high-powered public relations agency, he courted A-list celebrities from different professions to be part of the inaugural voyage. In exchange for the complimentary cruise, he secured promises from them that they would share their impressions of the trip with their legions of fans on Facebook and Twitter. It had worked. His new cruise line began generating buzz.
Before a year had passed, the vessel was booked two years in advance. The acquisition of second, third and fourth ships soon followed, until the Gregory Morrison River Cruises became the first choice among passengers who loved that kind of travel.
By then Morrison was sixty-three years old. He had acquired a reputation for demanding perfection and would relentlessly steamroll over anyone or anything that stood in his path. Everything he had accomplished until that point was a buildup to his ultimate dream: to create and operate an ocean liner unlike any other, and that would never be surpassed in luxury and elegance.
He particularly wanted to outperform the Queen Mary, the Queen Elizabeth and the Rotterdam. He did not want to have partners or shareholders. The ship he would build would be his masterpiece alone. And when he studied all the appointments of those other ships, he realized that there was one vessel that was the most luxurious ever built, the Titanic. He instructed his architect to plan an exact replica of the magnificent staircase and first-class dining room. Included would be old-time amenities, including a gentlemen’s smoking room and squash and racquetball courts, as well as an Olympic-sized swimming pool.
Both the suites and the cabins would also be much larger than the ones on rival lines. And the details of the dining rooms would exceed even those on the Titanic. The first-class passengers would have sterling silver tableware, and the others silver plate. Only fine china would be used.
As with the Queen Elizabeth and the Queen Mary, on the walls would be pictures of the British monarchs and members of royalty in European countries. No detail was too small or expensive for Gregory Morrison. And his naming the ship the Queen Charlotte was a choice he had made to honor Princess Charlotte, the great-granddaughter of Queen Elizabeth II.
What Gregory had not realized was exactly how much an undertaking like this would burn through even his financial resources. It was absolutely essential that the maiden voyage be a glorious success.
He could have bitten his tongue a thousand times after allowing the PR firm to mention the name Titanic in its press releases. The press ignored the fact that the reference was to the splendor of the Titanic, not her ill-fated maiden voyage.