Titanic 2012 (inspector alastair ransom)

by Robert W. Walker

  Wyland secretly worried who this might be alongside Walter topside. He gritted his teeth and tightened his grip on his cane. He feared now that his little missing-persons case involved a corpse, he’d exposed himself far too much. The authorities could well focus on him, a thing he had so far avoided here in Belfast. He felt like kicking himself for having gotten involved. He feared the men with Walter were the local police.

  ELEVEN

  They were soon topside, feet planted on terra firma, breathing easier, and Walter was gasping over the body and saying that it looked like Superintendent McAffey, yet not at all like the man. “It just doesn’t look like the man.”

  Private Detective Alastair Wyland slapped Walter on the shoulder, a reassuring gesture without effect. “Quite… quite understandable, my friend.”

  Still, Bartholomew corroborated that it was indeed McAffey just as Alastair pulled his pockets inside out, finding a tobacco tin with the initials TM engraved on it. At about this time, Bartholomew turned to vomit his last meal, and between retching he muttered, “It’s McAffey but like Walter says, it’s not McAffey.”

  “And what in God’s name is this monster you had me haul up?” asked Walter whose eyes had gone wide with anger. “Scared me to prayer, it did, this animal carcass!”

  Alastair apologized. “We need to have the thing examined, Walter.”

  Even though night had fallen, with the body in the better light, both Declan and Alastair felt as if they were seeing the destruction to McAffey for the first time. The horrible impact to their senses was compounded.

  “Can we get a tarp to place over the remains?” asked Wyland.

  “It’s gruesome what happened to this man,” said Declan, “and not even explained by the Black Plague, Mr. Wyland. Think about it; he was seen alive twenty-four hours ago, and now look at him. There’s something unnatural about this whole affair.”

  “We needn’t invoke supernatural means here,” replied Wyland. “Has to be some sort of disease, a parasite perhaps, an organism invisible to us.” Wyland stepped away, lit his pipe, and hoped the tobacco would staunch the awful odor that had set up residence in his nostrils. He weighed up his choices—remain or go now. If he disappeared, the authorities might more readily be curious about him and his past. If he remained, played out his part in this sordid matter and acquitted himself well, the same authorities might leave his past his alone to focus instead on the obvious crime before them.

  “You know,” muttered Walter, “these mines here, they’ve always had a curse on ’em. But I’ve never seen the like of this.”

  Ransom noticed that even in death, McAffey had coal dust raining down on his mummified remains, as it shook loose from Walter’s clothing and shaggy head of hair as Walter worked the tarp over the corpse.

  “Where’s Thomas?” asked Declan, looking around.

  “After he com’up ahead of you,” replied Walter, “said he’s going for the authorities,” replied Walter.

  “I’d thought the coppers already here, Walter. Saw a couple of other men as we were returning.”

  “Not cops. They were miners. Rushed off to spread the word about McAffey. He wasn’t always popular.”

  “Could sure use a stiff drink,” Alastair said to no one in particular while studying the finger-nail moon and the stars; he worried about facing the authorities should they begin to place too much attention on him—should they learn his true identity, that he was in fact the one and only former Chicago Inspector Alastair Ransom.

  Just as stealthily as the onset of night had come on while they were in the mine, a single suspicion about Private Investigator Alastair Wyland could send Inspector Alastair Ransom back to the US and Chicago as a fugitive from a murder indictment in the death of that damned priest. But I’m innocent of the charge, he told himself for the thousandth time, innocent—at least for the most part.

  April 13, 2012, aboard Scorpio, one day out from port:

  Against all reason and his better judgment, once Will Bowman had begun to snore, David Ingles slipped from their shared cabin to make his way to compartment number seven. The enticement had proven too powerful for several reasons, not the least being Kelly’s kiss.

  Once he got to Kelly’s room, he noticed Jacob Mendenhall far back of him down the narrow corridor; he could not make out what Mendenhall was up to, but he feared the other diver was shadowing him.

  Had Swigart already heard rumors about his and Kelly’s rendezvous on deck? Had Swigart put Mendenhall on him to keep him honest?

  He instantly began a mock jogging, pretending to be getting his exercise by running the corridor, doing stretches, and he jogged back to his own room only to find Mendenhall gone, nowhere to be seen. He then jogged back to Kelly’s room, glanced about, saw no one in any shadows, and rapped at the hatchway to her quarters.

  Kelly snatched open the door as if she’d been ready to do so the moment he knocked, and she snatched David by the arm and urged him inside. “We have to be discreet,” she said as she closed the door. They filled the small compartment made for one. “I’ve got something I must share with you.”

  He thought of a snappy reply but thought better of it. “What is so important that we’re risking losing everything we’ve worked for, Doctor?”

  “I need someone I can trust, Dave, when we’re down there tomorrow or day two—whenever we go into the interior.”

  “What do you mean? We’ve trained for months to watch one another’s backs—to trust one another.”

  “But they made that unusual request of us—to train separately and to remain aloof from one another—why? Don’t you want to know why? Don’t you think that’s an odd way to train?”

  “Sounds like someone’s a bit paranoid.”

  “This is not paranoia; this is fear, David—and for all I know, you could be the one who will want to kill me once I reveal why I’m really on board Scorpio.”

  “My God, Kelly, your every sentence is a riddle.”

  She put her hands up in a gesture that asked for patience. Then she reached into the otherwise empty duffel bag and came up with what looked to David at first to be his father’s scrimshaw pipe, but it was in fact no pipe.

  “Is that a piece of ivory tusk?”

  She held it up to his eyes, the smooth, tapered fang. “It’s the tooth of some kind of saber-toothed animal found in a mine shaft where the ore to make the steel plates and bulkheads for Titanic was mined.”

  “I really don’t follow you, Kelly.” Still he wrapped his hand around the large tooth as if drawn to do so.

  “It will become clear,” she said, reaching into the duffle again, this time coming up with an aged, leather-bound book with tattered edges and a metal clasp in the form of a lion’s head holding it together. “The journal I told you about—belonging to my great-great grandfather. A great man who died on Titanic not knowing he had a son, my grandfather.”

  He put the huge tooth aside, stared at the book, and then up at her and shrugged. “You said nothing about any journal.”

  “I didn’t?”

  “No, you did not.”

  “I could’ve sworn… well, at any rate, I meant to; it’s crucial to your understanding of what really happened that night on board Titanic.”

  He took it from her hands as she pushed it toward him. The journal itself was a beautifully bound antique with a clasp and a lace bookmark peeking from the top. “I’ve marked some pages in particular that you must read.”

  “You want me to have this on loan, I presume? To read?”

  “We don’t have time to wait for the movie release,” she joked then glared at him as she undid the clasp even as the book remained in his hands. It opened onto pages brittle and yellowed with time. “You’ve got to read his account of things, David, please.”

  “Tonight? Now?”

  “Here and now, yes. There isn’t much time before we reach Titanic—what, two, two and a half days?”

  “Present rate of speed, should make it Thursday AM.”<
br />
  “Read,” she commanded. “It’s imperative.”

  “It’ll explain the saber tooth and why the Titanic’s captain scuttled his unsinkable monument to man’s greatest nautical achievement up ’til that point in time.”

  “Sit, read… all of it will become clear.”

  Frowning and giving in, David fell into the single chair at the desk protruding from one wall—everything here was shiny metal. “This book is why you think—or rather say that it was Captain Edward Smith who gave orders to—I can’t believe I am even saying this—ram the largest oceangoing vessel on the planet into an iceberg, and that his most trusted officers carried out Titanic’s intentional sinking.” He laughed and shook his head.

  “Read the book, David—it’s proof, evidence of the truth of my story!”

  “I really suggest that you don’t repeat this ahhh… theory to anyone.”

  “Dave, I know you haven’t had time to digest all this—and it’s a helluva lot to digest.” She put a hand on his shoulder. “All I ask is that you keep an open mind and take a look at the journal.”

  “What could possibly prove such a notion?” He remained steadfastly skeptical. It seemed the only logical response to this unusual game she was running on him. He expected at any moment for her to burst out laughing and to admit that he was being set up—punk’d! He prayed she’d suddenly shout ‘Gotcha!’

  “Start here then if it helps.” She turned the pages to a marker. “Start with the fact Captain Smith had seven Marconi messages in his pocket that warned of a huge ice field that was uncharacteristically floating out ahead of Titanic—directly in the shipping lanes. See right here.”

  David read the words at the end of her fingertip: ‘Capt. Smith knowingly chose to remain in on the final solution—to remain firm with the cabal that we had unwittingly become—a cabal whose aim was the sudden end of Titanic and the god awful curse aboard her, like a worm within the folds of a flower.’

  Despite his skepticism, qualms, and reservations, David read on to learn from the author of the journal what he could possibly mean by this marginal notation, this medical internist named Declan Irvin who then wrote: ‘Capt. Smith’s features telegraph his internal battle with the horrible decision fate has placed in his hands. Looks as if he might fall from a stroke, he is that hurt.’

  David swallowed hard, digesting this bit about Smith in the tight, controlled hand of the author. He then read on: ‘I left Detective Ransom and my closest friend, Thomas Coogan with Titanic’s chief operations officers who continued to stare at the evidence of this alien creature aboard. Worried about the aged Captain Smith, I escorted the man to his quarters and gave him an elixir for nerves and a brandy—but this only after the stalwart old gentleman had given orders to all officers in his command to destroy Titanic. Before we parted, he looked into my eyes and handed some seven Marconi messages he snatched from his pocket, pushing these on me. I later read the wireless messages and while from separate sources they all had one warning—“Ice Ahead—your position.” These I’ve folded into the back of this journal.’

  David flipped to the rear of the journal and sure enough the authentic wireless messages sent to Titanic, messages warning of miles-long rivers of icebergs ahead of them—the actual Marconi messages—stared back at David.

  He had to take a deep breath before looking up at Kelly who held out a shot of whiskey. “I know you like it on the rocks.”

  He accepted the drink and took a long dram, sighing heavily, and saying, “Hold on. You know how I take my whiskey down to my brand—” he indicated the bottle of Jack Daniels on the nightstand where she’d left it—“but you acted as if you didn’t know me when you first came on board? What’s up with that?”

  “All right, I wanted you to chase me so I could get you alone, so as to confide in you, David.”

  “So I’d give chase, really?”

  “Read!” she ordered and he dropped his gaze back onto the pages of the yellowed book and read: ‘Smith had worked out a plan; he put First Officer Murdoch and Second Officer Lightoller in charge of scuttling the mammoth vessel—specifically ramming its bow into the first sizeable iceberg they might encounter. You must understand, we had marched the officers deep into the bowels of the ship to where the freezer compartments were, and there displayed the reason why Titanic must go to the bottom of the sea without a single survivor. At least, that was the plan, but of course, as Robbie Burns reminds us—‘best laid plans of mice and men do oft go astray’!”

  Kelly drilled the page with her finger now from where she stood looking over his shoulder. “So you see now, David? Captain Smith goes to bed with some sort of apoplexy or to pray—or whatever he did alone there with God—with seven ominous warnings in his possession all about giant icebergs in Titanic’s path, but he orders no slow down, no change of course—full steam ahead into the ice floes. That was Lightoller’s orders, and like Smith, Lightoller and Murdoch were also well aware of the bergs awaiting Titanic’s arrival—and arrive atop them she did!”

  “I’ve read in history books that Smith was warned repeatedly, but he must’ve had his reasons… must’ve thought he could make it through. This allusion to some plague on board is not in any documents or books, Dr. Irvin.”

  “David, he ordered all but one pair of binoculars confiscated and thrown overboard.”

  “There’s nothing in the record to indicate that!”

  “The record—the inquests records—state they left port without binoculars, that they forgot them! How lame is that? You don’t build a crow’s nest without a peg for the binoculars.” Her voice rose a few octaves. Realizing this, she stopped herself, obviously frustrated. She then added, “You just keep reading, David Ingles, and you will have it on good authority—my ancestor—that Smith ordered every pair of binoculars and spyglasses aboard discarded over the side save his own, which he turned over to Murdoch and Lightoller, arming the two poor devils—officers he’d ordered to carry out the terrible job of spotting an iceberg with the intention of—”

  “Hold on… are you really suggesting a conspiracy to-to—”

  “I’m not suggesting anything; I am stating a fact—a lost fact, lost to history.”

  “History indeed!” his tone made it clear how preposterous he thought this discussion had become.

  “Captain Edward Smith went to his cabin where he remained in sleep or contemplation of the coming collision—on his orders.”

  “No way.”

  “He could not know if Lightoller or Murdoch could carry such an order out, or if junior officers below them might balk at their orders. But make no mistake, Captain Smith put the order in motion. His orders.”

  “According to the account of this single ancestor of yours?”

  “A singular man, he was… yes,” she countered when they heard a noise outside the hatchway. She placed a finger to her lips, and they fell silent. “No one else can know.”

  TWELVE

  After giving David time to digest what she’d already put forth as the truth of Titanic’s end, Kelly slipped her head out into the causeway outside her berth but found no one there. When she closed the hatchway again and turned to David, she saw the disbelief still floating in his eyes.

  “And why for God’s sake would Smith, a seaman with a spotless record save for the Hawke incident—and on his final voyage… on the maiden voyage of the greatest ship ever built to date, intentionally take her to the abyss with so many lives at stake? To engineer a mass murder?”

  “Mass sacrifice, if you will. David, there was a disease aboard, a terrible, terrible disease. By this time, she was a plague ship.”

  “One man’s journal, this Declan Irvin, your great-great grandfather who was aboard the ship—he alone tells the truth?”

  “At the time he was a young intern out of Belfast, Northern Ireland where he’d watched Titanic as she was being built in the shipyards there. He and two other men boarded the ship in Southampton in an effort to convince Titanic’s captai
n to quarantine his vessel and to stop her before she could set off toward her eventual grave.”

  “Quarantine her in Southampton?”

  “To keep her from leaving Great Britain, yes. To understand, you need to read the entire journal, David.”

  “Quarantine against this disease you mentioned, eh?”

  “A dreaded, terrible disease.”

  “A life-threatening disease.”

  “No, no—a life-draining disease.”

  “Smallpox you mean?”

  “Worse than smallpox.”

  “Kelly, no disease known to mankind has killed more people than smallpox through the millennia. So what are we talking about? Some precursor to TB?”

  “It had no name, David, but it was like… like the Black Plague, let’s say.”

  “Black Plague aboard Titanic?”

  “Something akin to it, let’s say; at the time, no one had ever seen anything quite like it. It decimated a healthy person within days… hours.”

  “Decimated how?” David wondered why he continued to humor her in this mad distortion of Titanic history that was so far from reality that it could not be embraced.

  “The disease completely dehydrated its victims—every ounce of fluid in the body consumed… gone, disappeared… as I said, in a matter of hours, and there was no cure, and with this outbreak aboard rampaging, Captain Smith was left with only one horrible solution.”

  “The murder of more than a thousand six-hundred souls that we know about? That’s an answer?—whoa, what am I saying— a cure all? This is just plain old nuts. Hey, maybe your ancestor was insane. Ever think of that?”

  “Excellent penmanship for a madman.” She tapped the ink-splotched words before him with a rapid-fire index finger banging out a thumping rhythm, a requiem for his discomfort at hearing this story of hers.

  “Yeah, well Edgar Allan Poe’s handwriting looked like that of a normal person, too.”

  She frowned and threw up her hands, walked about in a tight circle, obviously upset, but she wound up after him again, replying, “This thing, it was and still is incurable, and eventually Titanic was—or would have been—a ghost ship filled with plague on its arrival in New York. My ancestor was an intelligent physician, and he was not an asylum escapee, David. Please, just read the journal. Read page one.”