The Titanic Murders

by Max Allan Collins

  “Actually,” Ismay said, a smile lifting his mustache, “you and Mrs. Futrelle are in my suite.”

  “So we benefited from Mr. Morgan’s illness as well. But why did you choose us with whom to be so generous, Mr. Ismay?”

  “Bruce! Please.”

  “Sorry—Bruce. Or should I say Saint Nick?”

  He smiled again, shrugged. “As I indicated on the phone, we like our celebrity passengers to travel in style. You’d be wasted in Second Class.”

  “Wasted how?”

  Ismay folded his hands, shifted in his cushioned chair; his expression shifted, too: serious, businesslike. “This is the Titanic’s maiden voyage…”

  This was news on the order of learning that Ismay was chairman of the White Star Line.

  “… and it’s important to us that our First-Class passenger list resembles the audience at a gala theater opening… I’m sure your friend Mr. Harris would understand the importance of salting notables among that first-night crowd.”

  “Well, obviously, I’m happy to offer whatever small prestige my presence might provide. But I think you rather exaggerate my importance.”

  “Not at all. We have a number of authors aboard, but none of your stature, your popularity, on both sides of the Atlantic. My understanding is that your books sell just as well in England as in the United States.”

  “Perhaps a little better,” Futrelle admitted.

  His eyes tightened. “This is… if I may be frank, knowing that you will be discreet… a somewhat troubled first crossing for us.”

  Now Futrelle shifted in his chair. “How so?”

  “Oh, oh, it’s nothing to trouble yourself over… from the standpoint of technology, this is the safest ship on the ocean, the finest achievement shipbuilding has yet realized.” He frowned, shook his head. “But this recent coal strike has thrown a veritable wrench in the works… other transatlantic lines have idled their vessels—thousands of crew members, dockworkers, are out of work. We even had to cancel crossings for a number of our other ships.”

  “I know,” Futrelle said. “When we decided to come home a trifle early from our European tour, the Titanic was really our only option.”

  “Well, we transferred bookings from half a dozen of our other liners onto the Titanic, and without this tactic, frankly, we’d have been embarrassingly underbooked for our maiden voyage. Even so, we’re only 46 percent of capacity in First Class and 40 percent in Second Class… though steerage is 70 percent capacity.” He chucked dryly, adding, “Finding poor people who want to go to America is never much of a problem.”

  “This is a stumper.” Futrelle adjusted his glasses on the bridge of his nose. “The maiden voyage of the world’s largest liner—that should have attracted ticket buyers like bees to honey.”

  “Oh, we’ve a respectable booking, but the damned strike’s damaged the entire shipping industry… with cancellations and postponements making travel so unpredictable, leaving passengers stranded, bewildered, disenchanted…. People just aren’t traveling at this particular time, a time which is so crucial to us with the launching of this ship.”

  “You may have been up against another problem, Mr. Ismay—Bruce.”

  “Yes? What would that be?”

  “Fear.” Futrelle raised an eyebrow. “Aren’t there those who feel that your ‘monster ship’ is simply too big to float?”

  Ismay sighed. “Unfortunately, Jack, you’re right—though that’s such sheer poppycock it barely merits a response. This ship is the last word in modern efficiency, every expert considers it literally unsinkable. It’s utter ignorance, and the pity is, it’s not just coming from the great unwashed, but from intelligent, educated people, as well.”

  “And what can be done about that?”

  He leaned forward. “Reeducation. This is where you could be of service to the White Star Line, Jack.”

  Futrelle sat back. “To repay my luxury suite, you mean?”

  “No. There are no strings attached to that, other than the right to inscribe you upon our glittering First-Class passenger list. But I understand you and Mrs. Futrelle make at least one European crossing, annually…”

  Futrelle nodded, folded his arms. “It’s the nature of my business. You indicated yourself, I have a following on your side of the pond.”

  “Exactly. How would you like to have free annual passage on any White Star liner, a permanent open ticket—First Class?”

  “Is that a rhetorical question?”

  “Not at all. It’s a business proposition, actually.”

  “How so?”

  “Mr. Futrelle—Jack… if you could concoct a novel, with the Titanic as its setting… a mystery… an adventurous romance… detailing the lovely surroundings, the fine cuisine…”

  “I’m not an advertising writer, sir.”

  Ismay held up his hands, palms out, as if Futrelle were a highwayman he was facing. “Please! I don’t mean to offend you. But isn’t a vivid, intriguing setting for his story something any good writer of popular fiction strives to achieve?”

  “Yes, of course…”

  Ismay shrugged again, risked a small smile. “Well, then. The White Star Line would simply like to see you use our magnificent ship as the backdrop for your next exciting novel.”

  “Bruce… Mr. Ismay. Frankly, what you suggest strikes me at first blow as distasteful… and yet I admit I really can’t see a reason not to at least consider your suggestion.”

  “Good!” He leaped to his feet, quick as a jack-in-the-box; this response from Futrelle was apparently enough for Ismay to consider this phase of the negotiations closed. “Your consideration is all I ask, at this point.”

  Almost reeling from the suddenness of this, Futrelle rose, and Ismay cheerfully took his elbow and led him to the door. “… Now, in the meantime, please enjoy your voyage. I’ve arranged for you and Mrs. Futrelle to sit at the captain’s table, tomorrow evening—that should be a nice way to start off our first evening out at sea.”

  “Well, uh… thank you, Bruce. I know my wife will be pleased.”

  Ismay opened the door. “Ah, I only wish I could have brought Florence and the children along, this time. They came aboard this morning, for a tour of the ship…. You should have seen my Tom, George and Evelyn, running up and down the private promenade.”

  “I have a girl and a boy, both teenagers,” Futrelle said politely.

  “I’m always at your service,” Ismay said, and shut the door.

  And Futrelle stood staring at the portal to B52 for a few moments, and was bemusedly heading back down to his own stateroom, wondering whether he should tell his wife about Ismay’s slightly unpalatable offer, when he noticed another passenger in the corridor.

  Swinging his cane, pearl-gray fedora cocked to one side, John Bertram Crafton was coming Futrelle’s way.

  “Mr. Crafton,” Futrelle said. “We meet again.”

  Crafton, without pausing, nodded, touching his hat, saying, “We’ll have a chance to get better acquainted soon, Mr. Futrelle, I assure you.”

  Futrelle kept walking, but glanced back, and hell and damnation, if Crafton hadn’t stopped at Ismay’s door—where he was knocking!

  The little scoundrel did get around.

  As departure time approached, Futrelle and his wife were among many other First-Class passengers making their way to the uppermost deck of the ship, the boat deck. There they stood at the rail near a davit-slung lifeboat and looked down at the crowd of citizens, from Southampton mostly, who appeared tiny indeed with the massive White Star sheds looming behind them and gigantic loading cranes towering above them—yet both the sheds and cranes were dwarfed by the Titanic.

  At the stroke of noon, a measured, deafening blast from the full-throated, triple-toned Titanic steam whistle announced imminent departure. May pointed down and Futrelle’s eyes followed: like the drawbridge of a castle, the gangway was raising, to the frustration of what appeared to be a clutch of tardy, frustrated crewmen, literally missin
g the boat.

  Another deafening blast from the steam whistle, and the immense mooring ropes that held the ship to the pier went splashing into the water, to be drawn quickly ashore by dockworkers. Rude little snorts from the horns of the tugboats moving into position made an almost comical contrast with the hollow power of the Titanic’s steam whistle.

  From elsewhere on deck—Futrelle couldn’t be sure, exactly—a small orchestra was playing selections from the operetta The Chocolate Soldier, only to be momentarily drowned out by the final blast of the steam whistle, announcing that, finally, the great ship was in motion, easing gently, quietly from her berth, not under her own steam as yet, but propelled by those half a dozen tugs.

  The unseen orchestra was playing “Britannia Rules the Waves” now, while everyone on the boat deck waved down to the strangers below, who waved back, hankies fluttering; some of the passengers, May among them, cast flowers into the water. As the massive liner began to slide from the dock, the crowd down there ran alongside, keeping pace, shouting farewells, cheering.

  “Oh Jack,” May said, her face aglow, eyes glittering with happiness, “it’s all so exciting!”

  And it was—there was an epic sweep to it, the mammoth ship, the crowd waving from the dock, the orchestra playing, the pungent smell of burning coal, the billowing of smoke from the stacks of the tugs pulling, pushing, prodding the so-much-bigger ship out of the dock area.

  It was a storybook departure, until—expertly maneuvered into the channel in a turn to port by the tugboats, who then cast off—the Titanic gave a faint tremor, telling the more seasoned passengers that the great ship was at last getting way under her own power, however tentatively. Moving at a modest six knots, the liner steamed past two ships—the White Star Line’s Oceanic and a smaller American ship, the New York, moored at the quay, two of the liners put out of commission by Ismay’s coal strike.

  The side-by-side mooring of these ships made a narrow channel more narrow; the quayside was lined with spectators, and still more people leaned at the rail on the deck of the New York, where they had boarded to get a good look at the greatest ship in the world as she started her maiden voyage, gawking and waving at the Titanic’s lucky passengers from a mere eighty feet away.

  “I don’t like this,” Futrelle said, standing back from the rail.

  May, who was returning waves to the spectators on the New York deck, asked, “Why? What’s wrong, dear?”

  “The way those liners are bobbing,” he said, nodding toward what he was talking about. “This big ship of ours is displacing too much water… causing too much turbulence….”

  “Oh dear, I’m sure the captain knows what he’s doing…”

  What might have been a gunshot cracked the air. Then another sharp crack!

  And four more reports, as if every chamber of a six-gun had been emptied into the sky.

  “Jack!”

  The New York’s massive metal mooring ropes had snapped like cheap shoelaces.

  Futrelle put his arm around his wife and held her close. “It’ll be fine, darling… don’t worry….”

  The metal ropes arced and coiled in the air like lasso tricks gone awry, sending spectators scurrying and shrieking, quayside. On the deck of the New York, the people who’d boarded for a better look were scattering and screaming, quickly abandoning ship, or trying to.

  And on the boat deck of the Titanic, the clanging of bells from the bridge providing accompaniment, counterpointed by the sirens of tugboats rushing to attempt rescue, the passengers were frozen in disbelief—no screams, just occasional gasps and outcries, as couples (like the Futrelles) embraced, witnessing the New York, loose now, begin to swing, like an awful gate, stern first, toward the Titanic.

  Ismay’s assertion that his ship was unsinkable seemed about to get an early test.

  The Titanic picked up speed, slightly, and her wake seemed to push the smaller ship back, but as close as the New York was, this didn’t seem to be enough; the bigger ship moved forward, and the smaller ship swung toward it, stern toward stern….

  Agonizing seconds that seemed like minutes dragged by, as the two ships seemed about to touch, and as the passengers braced for the screech of steel, hugging each other desperately…

  … the stern of the New York missed the Titanic’s stern by inches.

  Around the boat deck, sighs of relief and some laughter and even some applause and cheers floated through the air, aural confetti being tossed; and the orchestra began to play a catchy ditty that Futrelle later learned was “The White Star March.”

  In the meantime, the New York was still drifting free; however, the tugboats were steaming into position to take care of that, and the Titanic was coming to a premature stop, till all this could be sorted out.

  “You’re right, dear,” Futrelle said.

  May looked at him, relieved but dazed. “Pardon?”

  “This is exciting.”

  She smirked and hugged him, but Futrelle—writer of suspense that he was—could not shake a sense of foreboding. This near miss—actually, it was a near hit, wasn’t it?—was an inauspicious start for such a grand voyage.

  On the other hand, if he ever wrote that Titanic mystery for Ismay, he had a hell of a first chapter, didn’t he?

  THREE

  SUNSET OVER CHERBOURG

  SUN SPILLED LIKE MELTED BUTTER onto the boat deck, but topcoats were needed. The nip in the air came as a shock, though Futrelle—typically bareheaded—found it bracing, and May, swaddled in her black beaver coat, wanted to take advantage of the nice spring day, since the weather would only grow colder as they crossed the North Atlantic.

  During the hour’s delay caused by the incident with the New York, the First-Class passengers had been summoned to luncheon by the ship’s bugler, who passed from deck to deck playing the White Star’s traditional call to luncheon, “The Roast Beef of Old England.” To American ears, it was like a cavalry charge.

  Shortly after, D deck’s elegant First-Class Dining Saloon—its patrons looking decidedly underdressed in their departure attire in the massive white wedding cake of a room—had served up orchestra selections from The Merry Widow and a sumptuous buffet. May warned her husband not to overdo—the evening meal was reserved for that purpose—and Futrelle had passed up the exotic likes of corned ox tongue and galantine of chicken for some rare roast beef of old England (not wanting to disappoint the ship’s bugler).

  Conversation in the Dining Saloon ran largely to talk of the New York incident, and of course introductions—the Futrelles sat with the Harrises and two of the latter’s Broadway investors, Emil Brandeis from Omaha, department-store magnate, and John Baumann from New York, a rubber importer. Rounding out the table for eight was the dignified old couple, Isidor and Ida Straus.

  These were the assigned tablemates for all meals in the First-Class dining room (though the Futrelles would be guests at the captain’s table tomorrow evening), and it was no accident that these passengers—but for the Harrises’ traveling companions, the Futrelles—were all Jewish (though only the Strauses ordered the special kosher meals made available).

  “That was a close call,” Brandeis had said, referring to the New York. He was a pleasant heavyset fifty with a walrus mustache and healthy appetite.

  “I was impressed by how skillfully Captain Smith averted disaster,” Baumann said, touching a napkin to tender lips. He was a lean, bright-eyed, clean-shaven thirty.

  “I agree with you,” Futrelle said, “but I’d be more impressed if they’d anticipated the problem.”

  “How so?” Baumann asked.

  “I fear it’s a sobering indication that no one’s quite sure what a ship this size can do.”

  “It wasn’t so long ago,” Mr. Straus said in his softly resonant voice, raising a glass of red wine near his lips, “that Ida and I took passage on the New York’s maiden voyage.”

  “The last word in shipbuilding, it was, they said,” Mrs. Straus added. She had lovely dark blue eyes in a smo
oth kindly face whose matronly beauty was accentuated by the backward sweep of her still mostly dark hair into a bun. Both the Strauses were conservatively dressed, but—witness Mr. Straus’s golden-brown silk tie and Mrs. Straus’s dark blue silk and lace shirtwaist—expensively.

  “Did I tell you about that mysterious stranger who accosted me?” René asked suddenly.

  “Did some man bother you?” Henry said, looking up sharply from his veal-and-ham pie.

  Henry’s concern might have been a bothersome insect, the way René waved him off, continuing her tale in wide-eyed animated fashion: “Shortly after the incident, when we were coming down off the boat deck, still in a state of shock, a stranger… tall, with a trim mustache, and piercing dark eyes… you’d have hired him at once as a leading man, Henry B…. asked me, ‘Do you love life?’”

  “My goodness!” Ida Straus said, cutting her corned beef.

  May’s laugh was a tiny squeal. “And what did you say?”

  Henry was frowning.

  René giggled. “Well, of course I said, ‘Yes, I love life.’ And do you know what he said then?”

  “Go ahead and tell us,” Futrelle said. “I can’t stand suspense unless I’m dispensing it.”

  “He said, ‘That was a bad omen. There’s death on this ship. Get off at Cherbourg—if we get that far. That’s what I’m going to do!’”

  Everyone laughed at this melodramatic story, if uneasily.

  “Superstition is the enemy of any thinking man,” Mr. Straus reminded them.

  “Well, I’d feel better about this trip,” May said, daintily cutting her fillet of brill, “if Jack hadn’t just finished a tale with a great ship sinking in it!”

  “Is that right, Jack?” Henry asked.

  “I write about a lot of things,” Futrelle said with a shrug, and sipped his iced tea.

  “It’s his new novel,” May said. “My Lady’s Garter—The Saturday Evening Post has taken serial rights, already.”

  “Let’s not boast, May,” Futrelle said, spearing a piece of rare roast beef.