The Titanic Murders (18 page)

At the Grand Staircase beyond the Dining Saloon, Andrews disappeared with a nod, probably heading up to his stateroom, while Futrelle made his way into the spacious reception room, where the nightly concert was under way.

Like the two dining saloons, the reception room extended the width of the ship, yet for an area so expansive (over fifty feet in length, Futrelle guessed), the effect was of intimacy—the white-paneled walls so exquisitely carved in low relief, soft glowing lighting, the rich Axminster carpet, the casual cane chairs, the occasional luxurious Chesterfields, the round cane tables for parties of four amidst lazily leaning palms sprouting from an abundance of pots.

Violinist Wallace Hartley’s quintet was clustered about the grand piano (there was no stage), playing a medley of numbers from Offenbach’s
The Tales of Hoffmann,
which seemed ironically fitting to Futrelle, considering the tale he’d just heard from “Hoffman.” The little orchestra was quite good at light classical—Puccini, Dvořák, Bizet—and late in the evening an area might be cleared for some informal dancing to ragtime, primarily by the younger passengers, struggling to perform that latest dance, the fox-trot, to a drummerless orchestra with no fox-trots in their repertoire.

Futrelle joined May and the Harrises at a little table near a window onto the serene ocean under a clear starless sky; faintly, ever so faintly, the thrum of the ship’s motion could be perceived, like a gentle counterpoint under the main melody. The “concert” was informal, and muted conversation was common, as stewards circulated with coffee and tea, and scones (in the unlikely event anyone had saved room).

“She’s a pretty girl,” Henry was saying.

“Don’t get any ideas, Henry B.,” René said, kidding him on the square. She looked pretty herself in a green silk organdy evening gown with a diamond tiara trimmed with bird-of-paradise feathers.

“Who’s a pretty girl?” Futrelle asked, settling into his chair.

“Dorothy Gibson,” May explained. His wife looked especially comely tonight, in her cream silk-satin evening dress, her hair up, no hat. “Young cinema actress Henry and René met on the boat deck, this afternoon.”

“Brazen little thing,” René said, rolling her eyes. “She came up and introduced her
self.
” This seemed to Futrelle an amusing judgment coming from such a modern, self-assertive woman.

“She has your typical obnoxious stage mother,” Henry said, “who normally I couldn’t abide. But this girl, Dorothy, has a, uh… business relationship with Jules Brulatour, the film distributor.”

“Business relationship,” René said. “That’s a new word for it.”

“Anyway,” Henry said, “I’m offering her a part in my next Broadway production.”

“I hope she can talk,” May said.

Henry waved that off. “With her looks she doesn’t have to… and with her connections, I’ll be making my own cinematographs before the year’s out.”

“You’re convinced these moving pictures are the future,” Futrelle said, shaking his head.

“The future is here and now, Jack. And I’m gonna be looking for snappy stories… if you should happen to know of any good writers.”

“Nobody comes to mind,” Futrelle said, and as he nodded to a steward that he would indeed like his coffee cup filled, the
mystery writer noticed Ben Guggenheim seated nearby, sharing a table for four with the lovely blonde Madame Pauline Aubert, stunning and shapely in her pink-beaded purple panne-velvet dinner dress.

Guggenheim’s was an odd shipboard situation; the renegade member of the iron-smelting dynasty, now in his dapper late forties, was not shunned exactly, and due to his station, he was treated respectfully. Futrelle had seen the Astors stop and chat with him just before dinner, and Maggie Brown appeared to be an old friend, possibly dating to Guggenheim’s mining days in Colorado.

But no one sat with Guggenheim and his lovely lady in the reception room. The blue-eyed, fair-skinned, slightly plump, prematurely gray millionaire was, after all, Jewish, and the Jewish tended to sit together, by choice, or in the case of the dining saloons, by White Star’s prearrangement. And could anyone imagine that model of married life, the conservative Strauses—Guggenheim’s nearest social equivalent—sitting with a man and his mistress?

The little orchestra completed their
Tales of Hoffmann
medley, to much applause, and had begun playing the haunting “Songe d’Automne,” when Guggenheim rose, patting his lovely companion on the shoulder and exchanging smiles with her, then heading out of the room.

Futrelle leaned in and whispered to May, “I need to talk to Guggenheim, and he’s ducking out for a smoke or something.”

She gave him a mischievous smile. “Shall I pay my compliments to Madame Aubert?”

“That would be awfully gracious of you, dear…. Let’s both see what we can find out.”

EIGHT

THE MUMMY’S CURSE

F
UTRELLE CAUGHT UP WITH
G
UGGENHEIM
stepping onto the elevator, behind the Grand Staircase; the uniformed attendant waited as the mystery writer stepped aboard.

Guggenheim smiled at him, nodding, saying in a fluid baritone, “The boys play well enough, but I felt the call of a cigar.”

“I heard a similar siren song for a cigarette,” Futrelle said. “Mind if I tag after?”

“I’d enjoy the companionship.” To the elevator attendant, Guggenheim said, “A deck, if you please…. You’re Futrelle, aren’t you, the detective-story writer? Jacques Futrelle?”

It was then that Futrelle realized Guggenheim was mildly intoxicated—not falling-down drunk by any means, but the man had clearly not stinted on the wine during dinner, or perhaps an after-dinner brandy (or three) had done it.

“That’s right. But I prefer Jack.”

“Pleasure, Jack.” The millionaire offered his hand, which bore several jeweled rings, a diamond here, a ruby there. “Ben Guggenheim.”

They shook, and Futrelle said, “Is this elevator one of yours?”

Guggenheim, pleasantly surprised by Futrelle’s question, said, “Why, no—I do business with White Star, but thus far they’ve not done business with me.”

Futrelle had read a newspaper article about Guggenheim’s new company, International Steampump, building the elevators at the Eiffel Tower.

“Sporting of you to give them your business, then,” Futrelle said.

Guggenheim chuckled. “No choice—all the Cunard liners out of Paris were delayed because of the damned stokers’ strike.”

Soon they were poised at the rail of the open portion of the promenade, Guggenheim indulging himself with a Havana, Futrelle lighting up a Fatima. Stars seemed to have been flung like diamonds against the black velvet of the sky; brilliant as they were, the stars cast no reflection on the obsidian waters, far below. The cold was bracing and a pleasant contrast to the intake of tobacco smoke.

“Were you in Paris on business, Mr. Guggenheim?”

“It’s ‘Ben.’” The millionaire’s handsome features had a softness to them, an almost baby-faced quality, his mouth as sensual as a woman’s. “No, my business has its headquarters in Paris, and I have an apartment there…. Do you have children, Jack?”

They were alone on the deck, with only the night and the breeze to keep them company; even the deck chairs were folded up and neatly stacked against the wall.

“I do,” Futrelle said. “A son and a daughter, both in their teens.”

“I’m on my way home for my daughter Hazel’s ninth birthday.”

“There’s a coincidence,” Futrelle said. “I just had a birthday, and celebrating it without having my children around made me so homesick we hopped this boat.”

Guggenheim blew a blue cloud of cigar smoke into the breeze for it to carry out to sea. “I really love my three little girls.”

“It must be difficult, business keeping you away from your family so much.”

“I miss my children; my wife and I…” He turned to look at Futrelle and his eyes were half-lidded; he was tipsy, all right. “As you may be aware… Jack? Jack. As you may be aware, since gossip seems to run rampant on this floating Vanity Fair, the attractive young woman with whom I’m traveling is not my wife.”

“Madame Aubert is quite beautiful.”

He sent another wreath of blue smoke out to sea. “I know I have a reputation as a playboy, and it doesn’t bother me. It bothers my brothers—all except William—but I’m not in the family business anymore, not directly. Do you know that my brothers made an outcast of William because he married a gentile?”

“I wasn’t aware of that.” Futrelle wondered if Guggenheim had made the assumption he was Jewish because he and May regularly sat with the Harrises and Strauses in the Dining Saloon.

Guggenheim was saying, “My wife wanted to divorce me last year and they talked her out of it, my brothers. Said it would be bad for the family name. Family business.”

“Ben, were you by any chance approached by this blackmailer—this fellow Crafton?”

Guggenheim looked at Futrelle as if for the first time; perhaps the millionaire realized he’d been rambling, somewhat drunkenly, and wondered if he’d said too much.

“I only bring this up,” Futrelle said, “because he attempted to extort money out of me.”

Guggenheim’s oval face had turned blank, and still had a puttylike softness; but the eyes were hardening, if still half-lidded. So talkative before, Guggenheim now fell mute.

So, briefly but frankly, Futrelle told Guggenheim what John Crafton had threatened to reveal, and that he had refused to pay.

“I also refused to pay the bastard,” Guggenheim said, won back over to Futrelle by his candor. Then he laughed. “For a blackmailer, he wasn’t very well informed.”

“How so?”

“First, he threatened to go to my family with my ‘philandering.’ To my brothers! Who know I’ve been friendly with ladies of ill repute since my days in the Rocky Mountains. And to my wife! As if she weren’t already well aware of my proclivities…. She has her gossip and tea and bridge and stocks and bonds, and I have my redheads, brunettes and blondes. Jack, do you know why you should never make love to a woman before breakfast?”

“Can’t say I do, Ben.”

“First, it’s tiring. Second, over the course of the day, you may meet somebody you like better.”

“I’ll keep that in mind, Ben.”

He shrugged. “Even my children know of Daddy’s lady friends—I’m sure they all remember the live-in nurse we had around the house for several years. I’ve always been honest about my dishonesty, Jack.”

“Not every man can say that.”

“How well I know.”

“Tell me, Ben—how did Crafton take your rejection of his ‘services’?”

Guggenheim snorted a laugh. “He threatened to reveal my ‘secret’ to the newspapers. I told him to go ahead—the respectable publications won’t touch it, and the yellow press doesn’t matter.”

To a man of Guggenheim’s stature, a minor impropriety like a mistress could be common knowledge as long as he himself did not publicly confirm it. Sexual hypocrisy was a privilege of wealth, and even John Astor and his child bride would eventually be accepted by the nobs.

“Have you talked to Crafton since, Ben? Seen him around the ship?”

“No.” He exhaled more smoke into the night. “Not that I was looking for him. There was a time…”

“Yes?”

“A time I might have shot him.”

“Really?”

A faint smile touched the sensual lips. “Happiest time, best days of my life.”

“When was that?”

“Leadville, Colorado,” he said fondly. “Ten acres of land, three shafts and one hundred men… Sitting with a revolver strapped to my belt, by the shack near number-three mine. Keeping track of income and expenses, making out the payroll myself. Going down to Tiger Alley in the Row, dancing with the fancy girls for fifty cents a dance, three-card monte with the mule skinners and miners at Crazy Jim’s… corn whiskey at the Comique Saloon—twenty cents a glass. You know, I’ve made love to some of the most beautiful women in Manhattan, the loveliest ladies in Europe… and I’d give it all up for one night with any one of those saucy belles at Peppersauce Bottoms.”

Then Guggenheim sighed, pitched his cigar over the side, and said, “Shall we go back down to civilization, Jack?”

“If we must,” Futrelle said, tossing his spent Fatima overboard.

When they returned to the concert (the little orchestra was playing the whimsical idyll “Glow-Worm” from
Lysistrata
) they found May sitting with Madame Aubert; so was Maggie Brown, in the shade of a wide-brimmed hat covered with pleated pink silk, her bosomy body bedecked in a pink silk gown with a silk posy at the white lace bodice.

Guggenheim introduced Futrelle to Madame Aubert and vice versa. In a French accent as thick as hollandaise, the blonde goddess said, “You have a charming wife, monsieur.”

“Sit down, you two,” Maggie said. “You’re blocking the show for the suckers in the cheap seats.”

Guggenheim laughed, following her command. “You haven’t changed a bit since Leadville.”

“You have, Goog,” Maggie said. “I remember when your hair was brown and your belly flat as a washboard… but to tell more would be indiscreet.”

Futrelle borrowed a chair from a nearby abandoned table, and joined the little group. He whispered to Guggenheim, “This is civilization?” and the millionaire chuckled.