The Titanic Murders (4 page)

The gruff voice was a familiar one, rising above the top hats and bowlers; but Futrelle at first did not place it.

Then, cutting a path through the crowd, the man who belonged to the voice revealed himself: in a long black topcoat with an appropriately military cut, and a black garrison cap, came the formidable form of Major Archibald Butt, a tall broad-shouldered figure in his mid-forties, trimly mustached, with dimpled, jutting jaw. Even out of uniform, he was the exemplar of the military man.

Archie’s hand was extended as if he were charging with a saber. The Georgia-born major’s Southern accent was gently intact: “Jack! Jack Futrelle, is it really you, old man?”

“It’s me, all right.” Futrelle shook the major’s hand, and said, “Like you—older, fatter, no wiser. I don’t believe you know my wife….”

Introductions were made and Archie, admiring May, said, “She’s a lovely bride, Jack. How
did
you manage it?”

“No earthly explanation can cover it.”

May was atypically speechless. Major Archibald Butt’s household-name fame had nothing to do with wealth; he was the military aide to President Taft, and had been Roosevelt’s aide-de-camp prior to that. Diplomat, soldier, novelist, Archie Butt moved in the highest circles, politically and socially.

Finally May managed, “Jack, you never mentioned that you knew Major Butt… that you were friends….”

Futrelle, his arm around May, said, “Archie and I were coworkers at the
Atlanta Journal,
years ago, before you and I
met… and before he traded journalism for the army… hell, man, should I be calling you Major Butt?”

“No, no… we’ll not stand on formalities at this late date. I take it you’re boarding this boat train, for the Southampton dock?”

“Yes. You’re taking the
Titanic
as well?”

Archie nodded. “Heading home after a little mission to Rome for the president.”

“Do tell! The Vatican?”

“Delivered a letter to the pontiff thanking him for creating those three American cardinals.”

Futrelle laughed, shook his head; his friend had been pompous and puffed up with himself even before his celebrity. “To think I beat the pants in poker off such a high mucky-muck as you.”

Blustery as he was, Archie could still take a jest. “Perhaps aboard the ship you’ll have another opportunity—but I may have improved in the intervening years.”

“I doubt it,” Futrelle said.

May shot her husband a look for taking such liberties with so important a personage, unaware of the nights he and the major-to-be had closed down any number of Atlanta saloons.

Something about Archie did strike Futrelle as changed, however—of course, no one was impervious to the passage of time, but the weariness, the sadness in the eyes of the seemingly cheerful major did give Futrelle pause.

Through the crowd of swells another figure emerged, a distinguished-looking gentleman in a dark gray Chesterfield and top hat. In his middle sixties, his hair white, his generous mustache salt-and-pepper, he carried himself with an easy grace
in contrast to the martinet movements of Archie Butt, whom he approached with a gentle smile.

“All the baggage is aboard, Major,” he said in the cultured manner of an American who had spent considerable time in England. “Our compartment is ready.”

“Frank,” the major said, “I’d like you to meet Jack Futrelle and his lovely wife, May… Jacques Futrelle, the detective writer, that is.”

The major’s traveling companion turned out to be Francis Millet, the celebrated painter. Futrelle told Millet how much he loved his famous painting
Between Two Fires,
a gently comic slice of life and love among the Puritans, and Millet praised “The Problem of Cell 13.” May oohed and ahhed over the artist; though the Futrelles had traveled in circles of celebrity since their Gramercy Park days, during Jack’s tenure on the
New York Herald,
May remained girlishly impressed by the famous.

“Oh, how we’ve enjoyed your paintings in the Metropolitan, Mr. Millet,” she burbled. “And at the Tate Gallery, here in London!”

His smile was shy, his eyes twinkling with pleasure and embarrassment. “Call me Frank, please, Mrs. Futrelle.”

“Only if you’ll call me May.”

As they stood chatting, a rather bizarre figure rolled through the crowd like a cannon on wheels, a figure so out of place in this posh company he seemed designed to make Futrelle feel more at home here: wearing a gray suit that seemingly had been slept in, a shapeless brown hat whose brim was as crooked as a beggar’s smile, came a potbellied cross between a hobo and Saint Nick, with wild sky-blue eyes in a splotchy visage adorned with a full nest of snow-white beard that all but blotted out his
string tie. He was probably in his mid-sixties, as was the rather ordinary, heavyset woman trailing along after him.

“My word,” May breathed. “Who is that creature?”

“A colleague of mine, madam, unlikely as it may seem,” the major said, “though we’ve never met.”

“That’s William T. Stead, dear,” Futrelle told his wife. “One of the world’s foremost eccentrics.”

“I’m afraid I’ve never heard of him.”

“Well,” the major said, “you’ll undoubtedly
hear
him on the ship—he’s quite vociferous, one of the most notorious of the muckraking journalists of Britain, lately an outspoken pacifist, and a devoted spiritualist.”

“What an outlandish combination of interests,” May said.

Futrelle could see that his wife’s initial unfavorable reaction to Dr. Stead’s appearance had already been overcome by her native curiosity in the complex package that was this strange man, who the mystery writer knew to have been an influential, even pioneering newspaperman in his day.

But Futrelle was puzzled about something, even as he watched the burly bearded figure board the train, the elderly woman seeing him off. “And how is it that Mr. Stead is
your
colleague, Archie?”

“I understand the president has invited him to speak at the international peace conference, later this month in New York.”

“Who else is appearing?” Millet asked dryly. “A trained bear?”

“Don’t underestimate him, Frank,” the major said to his friend. “He has an evangelical background—they say he’s a mesmerizing speaker.”

A diminutive figure, dapper in a single-breasted fine-striped sack suit and pearl-gray fedora, topcoat over one arm,
swaggered up with a gold-topped walking stick and removed his hat, nodding to May. He had gone to some trouble to present a handsome appearance, an effort undercut by his narrow ferret’s face, intense unblinking dark eyes and an oversize, overwaxed handlebar mustache.

“Good morning, Major,” the ferret-faced man said in a voice as oily as his black hair. “Bit of breeze, carrying soot, I’m afraid.”

“One never knows what rubbish a breeze will blow in,” the major said. His eyes were tight.

“I was hoping you’d introduce me to your famous friend”—and the little man nodded to Futrelle—“the great author, Mr. Jacques Futrelle.”

A smile twitched under Archie’s mustache. “If you already know who he is, Mr. Crafton, why bother?”

The awkwardness of the situation—and such seemingly rude behavior coming from the supremely social Archie Butt (who, in a single hour at a reception given for members of the judiciary, had once introduced over a thousand guests to President Taft)—prompted Futrelle to act.

He stepped forward, presented his hand to the ferrety little man. “Jack Futrelle at your service, sir. And you are?”

He cleared his throat, touched his breast with a gray-gloved hand. “John Bertram Crafton, Mr. Futrelle. Traveling to the States on business.” He had a crisply British accent, but just a hint of the lower class was in it, a Cockney in the woodpile. “We’ll be fellow First-Class passengers on the
Titanic.
I hope you’ll allow me to buy you a drink aboard ship.”

“I think I could be tempted. This is my wife, May…”

As introductions were made, Archie glowered on; even the urbane Millet seemed made uneasy by Crafton’s presence.

Finally, Crafton tipped his pearl-gray fedora, and strutted aboard the train, swinging his walking stick.

“Cocky little bastard,” Futrelle said.

“Jack,” May scolded; but her eyes agreed with him.

Archie’s face was frozen in a scowl. “Stay away from him, Jack. He’s a bad egg.”

“Care to be more explicit, Archie?”

“No.”

And it was left at that.

Soon, the major and Millet had boarded and the crowd on the platform was thinning out. The Harrises were late; but, then, they were theatrical people.

“Perhaps we should go ahead and board, dear,” Futrelle was saying, when suddenly the remaining crowd parted like the Red Sea and the Harrises, in all their good-natured show-business vulgarity, made their entrance.

“Okay, okay, so we kept you waitin’!” Henry said, as the couple approached. “But you’d be out of business if there wasn’t a little suspense in life, right, Jack?”

Henry—his red bow tie incongruously peeking out from under an Inverness cape that was an apparent London souvenir—was a big man with a big voice, the hair receding on a bucket head with bright dark beads of eyes barely separated by a prominent nose. His wife, René—that she used the masculine form of her first name betrayed her ignorance of French and a certain lack of breeding, which Futrelle found endearing—was comparatively petite, a dark-haired woman in her mid-thirties with a sunny disposition matching her yellow linen hip-length jacket, with its tan linen ankle-length flared skirt. Her cute features peeked out from under a pale green large-crowned felt hat, its wide brim turned jauntily down.

“You know, Henry,” Futrelle said to his grinning unapologetic friend and his giggling wife, “some people think you’re a loud overbearing Hebrew jackass… but I stick up for you.”

“No kiddin’, Jack?”

“I say I don’t find you all that loud.”

Henry roared with laughter, hugged his friend in that theatrical manner Futrelle had long since come to accept, and René and May huddled together and moved toward the train, chattering about whatever women chattered about.

“How do you like my cape, Jack?” Henry asked, as they followed their wives onto the corridor train.

“You look like the Yiddish theater version of Sherlock Holmes.”

“I might just bring a Sherlock Holmes play to Broadway, Jack, if you don’t write something for me.”

“You really think Victor Herbert wants to write a song for Professor Van Dusen to sing?”

“Stranger things have happened.”

Shortly after boarding, they were caught behind a couple whose considerable retinue required the private compartments on either side of the aisle; the husband and wife were a handsome pair in their late twenties, Futrelle guessed, American or possibly Canadian, judging by their accents. A nanny carried a babe in arms and the mother held the hand of a beautiful little girl of three or four with eyes as blue as the light blue bow in her golden hair. A maid was with them, too, a plump pleasant woman in her twenties, helping them jockey the children and themselves into opposite compartments.

Like the little girl, the nanny had beautiful blue eyes, though a different shade, a dark blue that bordered on cobalt; the nanny would have been a stunning beauty—she had an hourglass figure
wrapped up in her dowdy black livery—but her otherwise lovely features were distorted by a nose that had been rudely broken. She was like a follies girl with a prizefighter’s proboscis.

Henry noticed Futrelle staring at the girl and whispered, “You’ve got better at home, Jack.”

Futrelle glared at his friend, who despite his good nature apparently thought tact was something you put on the teacher’s chair.

“I’m a writer,” Futrelle whispered defensively. “I observe.”

“Just as long as May doesn’t observe you observin’,” Henry said.

René looked back and said, “What are you two whispering about? Henry B.! Be good.”

Then the family had managed to get themselves into their opposing compartments, and the two couples moved down the train corridor toward their own compartment.

They were nearly there when a door opened and a loud male voice from within said: “Out! We’ll hear no more of this, sir! And kindly keep your distance in future!”

Then, shoved unceremoniously into the narrow corridor, there suddenly stood Archie Butt’s acquaintance—the ferret-faced John Bertram Crafton, awkwardly snugging his fedora back on, and attempting to maintain his balance, and his dignity.

“You may wish to reconsider, Mr. Straus,” he huffed. “I suggest you do.”

Into the aisle, and into Crafton’s face, came a bald, spade-bearded compact gentleman in his late sixties; his eyes were slits of fury behind pince-nez glasses not unlike Futrelle’s own. The old gentleman wore a conservative, but expensive, dark suit and had a genteel manner, even under these circumstances.

“If you bother me aboard ship,” the old boy said, “I’ll report your conduct to Captain Smith. On a vessel as completely fitted out as the
Titanic,
I feel certain a brig has been included.”

And the door slammed shut, leaving Crafton with the sudden realization that he was blocking the aisle—and that this exchange, the last part of it anyway, had been overheard.

Crafton smiled stiffly, tipped his hat to the ladies, and said to the men, “In business, emotions can run away. My apologies, ladies… gentlemen. Good day.”

And he disappeared down the aisle and into the next coach.

“Who is
that
character?” Henry wondered aloud.

“A disagreeable acquaintance of my old friend Major Butt,” Futrelle said. “And that’s about all I know of him… except I believe the older gentleman may be Isidor Straus… I noticed his name on the passenger list.”

“Oh!” René said, as if she’d been pleasantly struck. “He owns Macy’s department store! Let’s get to know him, shall we, May? A friendship with Mr. Straus may lead to getting our fall fashions wholesale.”

May laughed, as if René had been joking, though Futrelle was pretty sure she wasn’t.

The compartment was upholstered in a deep blue gold-braided broadcloth, with lush mahogany woodwork, a nice promise of luxury to come. Futrelle and May settled into the comfortable cushioned seats and the Harrises took the opposite seating.