The Titanic Murders (9 page)

“And we both want that audience to remain steadfastly in your camp, don’t you agree?”

“It’s blackmail, isn’t it?”

The dark eyes flared; the ratlike nostrils, too. “What? Sir—please, I beg you not make rash accusa—”

“Shut up. It’s a dangerous game, Mr. Crafton, in company like this. There are powerful men, on this boat—the likes of Major Butt can snap his fingers and you would be nothing more than just an oily little memory… a memory no one will care to cling to, either.”

The ferrety face seemed to lengthen into a sinister blankness. “You leave me no choice, but to be blunt.”

Futrelle leaned back with a grin, arms casually folded. “What the hell do you think you have on me? I love my wife dearly and would sooner cut off my manhood than philander. My business dealings are aboveboard, and all of my children legitimate.”

Crafton’s mustache twitched. “I represent a group of investigators.”

“What, Pinkertons?”

“Not precisely, Mr. Futrelle. What this group does—both in England and America—is provide a valuable service.”

“Valuable.”

“Very. They thoroughly investigate the background of a prominent individual like yourself, and in order to
prevent
blackmail, do their best to discover whatever might be… worth discovering.”

“We’re back to doctors again. Preventative medicine.”

Crafton nodded curtly. “Only by finding out for you, our client, what skeletons in the closet might exist, of a sort that could be discovered by less scrupulous individuals than ourselves, can we protect you—our client.”

“Only you do that investigating beforehand—before someone like me is officially a ‘client’… just as a time-saving measure?”

“That’s well said… but then, words are your business.”

“What happens if a client isn’t interested?”

Crafton’s expression darkened. “Then we can’t protect you. The… sensitive information might fall into the hands of the sensationalist press, or be placed before business associates, or business rivals, or in some instances law-enforcement authorities…. The consequences could be serious, and unfortunate… even grave.”

“That would make a bully idea for you, Crafton—a grave.”

He shrugged. “I’m quite immune to threats, Mr. Futrelle… though I suppose coming from a man like you, I should take them seriously.”

“A man like me?”

“A man with your… mental aberrations.”

Futrelle laughed and it echoed across the balcony and down the marble-and-oak staircase. “Is that what you think you have?”

Crafton leaned forward, his walking stick between his legs, his hands resting on its gold crown. “Mr. Futrelle, in 1899, you suffered a complete mental breakdown. You were unable to continue in your position at the
New York Herald
and were hospitalized. Shortly thereafter you sent your children away, to their grandmother, and your wife and various doctors attended to your needs, in private….”

Very quietly, as if he were speaking to a small child, Futrelle said, “I was the telegraph editor at the
Herald
during the Spanish-American War… from Manila Bay to San Juan Hill, the news flowed in constantly. I was working twenty-four hours a day, and like many newspapermen, I was a burned-out case, after a time. I spent several months away from the pressures of that job, in a little cottage that belongs to my wife’s sister. When I felt up to it, I took a job offer from Mr. Hearst with his new
Boston American,
where I started publishing my ‘Thinking Machine’ stories and made lots of money… none of which you and your fellow extortionists will ever see. Not one red cent, sir.”

Crafton shrugged slowly, his tiny dark eyes widened. “If you don’t feel that your public, your publishers, will be put off by your mental aberrations, sir, your, your…
dementia,
then—”

“Listen, you damned little weasel—my public and my publishers care nothing about me except that I keep coming up with good stories. If my screws are loose, well then I’m colorful and more interesting—do you know the slightest thing about Edgar Allan Poe? Please, do me a favor, publicize away… my sales will go up.”

“We’re not bluffing, sir.”

“Neither am I. How can I best make my point? I know… Please, just for a moment, sir, come with me.” Futrelle rose. He
curled a finger. “Come along, man—I won’t bite. I’m not really a lunatic.”

Crafton rose, suspiciously, gathering up his gloves and hat and walking stick.

Futrelle slipped an arm around the much smaller man’s shoulders and walked slowly with him toward the balustrade of the balcony. “I think you’ve misjudged people like myself, and have attracted more trouble than you know.”

“Are you threatening me again, sir?”

“No, no! Just giving you some advice. Are you aware that you’re being followed?”

“Followed?”

“And by a very unsavory character, at that.”

“I’ve seen no one.”

Futrelle moved closer to the railing of the balcony. “He’s lurking in the shadows of the reception area, below there….”

Crafton leaned forward, and Futrelle shoved him over, and Crafton’s hat and gloves and cane fell from his grasp, gloves spilling and landing in gray handprints on the marble stairs, hat and cane clattering onto the linoleum floor below, pocket change raining, even as Futrelle grasped onto the man’s ankles, just above his spats, letting him dangle there like a ripe fruit from a branch.

“Put me down, sir! Put me down!”

Several startled passengers below noticed this bizarre sight, and scurried away.

“Are you sure, Mr. Crafton, that that is what you desire of me? To put you down?”

“I mean, pull me up, at once, at once!”

Futrelle, however, let the man swing there, over the marble staircase and the floor just to the side of it, like a big pendulum.
“Of course, sir, you could be right about me… I could be quite mad indeed.”

“I won’t say a word about you! Your secret is safe with me!”

Futrelle dragged the man up and over the finely carved oak railing as if he were hauling a big catch onto the deck of a fishing boat.

Crafton, on his feet again, began smoothing out his wrinkled attire, shaking as if he had the palsy. “That’s assault, sir—you could be put in irons! There were witnesses!”

“The witnesses seem to have gone—but we could bring this matter to the attention of the ship’s master-at-arms. Since I have no concern whatsoever, whether the information you hold on me is ever released to the public, I’d be glad to bring extortion charges against you.”

Crafton, still smoothing out his attire, thought about that, and said, “You may hear more from me later.”

“Why don’t you keep digging on me? Maybe you’ll come up with more. There are rumors to the effect that I have a terrible temper.”

Crafton moved down the stairway, at first quickly, then grasping onto the railing, as if afraid of losing his footing, and walking more slowly, if not steadily; he retrieved gloves, fedora, and walking stick, gathered up his change, and disappeared through the reception area, almost running.

Below, several navy-blue-jacketed stewards darted into view. They looked up at Futrelle, who leaned casually against the railing; one of them called: “Is there a problem, sir? We had reports of an altercation.”

“Really? I thought it was some sort of acrobatic display. Part of the ship’s entertainment.” He shrugged, and smiled, nodding
to the confused stewards as he strolled down and around the stairs to use the electric lift.

When he got to their stateroom, May was entertaining the Harrises—who pretended to be outraged by the Futrelles’ superior quarters—and soon the little group decided to take one of the tours of the ship the purser was offering. The tour began with an inspection of the purser’s own office, followed by a look at the spacious kitchens with their modern timesaving devices (including an electric potato peeler), the libraries and other lavish public rooms, peeking in at the squash court, swimming pool and gymnasium. Rumors of a racetrack aboard were entirely unfounded, they were assured.

The purser’s Cook’s tour even included a quick stroll through the normally off-limits Second and Third Classes. Lounges and libraries that would have been First-Class on any other ship were glimpsed in Second, and the mix of English, French, Dutch and Italian immigrants in Third Class had comfortable lounges and smoking rooms, and a dining room with separate tables and swivel chairs, that were anything but typical of steerage.

After the tour, the Futrelles again climbed to the boat deck, where orchestra leader Wallace Hartley and his little group were giving an open-air concert of ragtime and other lively popular tunes. Before long the sun was low in the horizon.

“Is that France?” May asked from a polished wooden railing. It was just May and her husband, the Harrises having already gone in to get dressed for dinner.

The coastal chalk cliffs glowed in the reddish sunset, as if they had somehow caught fire, and yet the effect was strangely soothing. At the end of a long breakwater, a structure was making itself known as a lighthouse.

“That’s France,” he told her.

They stood watching the dying sun’s rays reflecting across the breakwater’s gentle swells. The ship’s speed slackened; the great ship would soon be dropping anchor to take on more passengers.

“I’m tempted to get off, and continue our second honeymoon there,” she said.

The city of Cherbourg lay ahead, spread along the low-lying shore, dwarfed by the Mount Roule, purple in the twilight. The lights on deck winked on.

“Believing the bad omens, darling?”

“No, no, Jack… France is just so romantic.”

The wind was kicking up, waves getting choppier, the sky dark with more than just approaching night.

“I think a squall’s coming,” Futrelle said. “Let’s get inside and change for dinner.”

“Oh yes,” May said, holding on to her feathered chapeau. “Oh, Jack—what about the terrible man you were going to meet? You didn’t strike him, did you?”

“No, dear,” Futrelle said. “I didn’t strike him.”

DAY TWO

APRIL 11, 1912

FOUR

CAPTAIN’S TABLE

L
IKE THEIR PREVIOUS STOP
, C
HERBOURG
, the Irish port of Queenstown ahead was too small to accommodate the
Titanic
; so anchor would be dropped offshore, for the arrival of the final batch of passengers and the taking on of mail sacks (the
R.M.S.
in R.M.S.
Titanic
did, after all, stand for “Royal Mail Ship”).

From the starboard boat deck, where Jack and May Futrelle sat side by side in deck chairs, blankets wrapped about their already coat-clad bodies, the morning seemed an exceptionally lovely one, blue cloud-fleeced sky, wind rather high but the blue-green waters surprisingly calm. They were unaware of the full Atlantic swell crashing against the ship’s port side, deceived by the ship’s uncanny ability—even on the boat deck—to emulate terra firma.

Last night, in the First-Class Dining Saloon, the Futrelles and their tablemates had found themselves paying less attention to their plates of endless, wonderful food (course upon course), and more to the new crop of passengers arriving, courtesy of the Cherbourg boat train. The subtle clatter of silverware on fine china was drowned out by the nearby bustle of stewards porting luggage, table talk trumped by the buzz of conversation of new arrivals.

René and Henry would point out this luminary and that one—here John Jacob Astor, his young bride and their rambunctious friend Maggie Brown; there Benjamin Guggenheim trailing behind his mistress, the glamorous French singer Madame Pauline Aubert, as if fooling anyone that they weren’t together (an effort that would be short-lived).

But these were just glimpses of famous faces and opera-house fashions, and at the orchestral evening that followed in the lounge (selections from
Tales of Hoffmann
and
Cavalleria Rusticana
), the newcomers were nowhere to be seen. Nor did they appear in the smoking room later, where Astor and Guggenheim might be expected to drop by for a Cuban cigar and a snifter of brandy.