The Titanic Murders

by Max Allan Collins

  “Do you see who you’re looking for?” Andrews asked Futrelle, who was casting his gaze all about the room.

  “No… we’d better take a walk.”

  They moved down the central aisle, attracting a few glances.

  Then Futrelle spotted him, up near the piano at the aft end of the room: Louis Hoffman, seated between his two adorable tousled-haired boys.

  “I need to approach him alone,” Futrelle said.

  Andrews nodded, and settled himself next to a pillar.

  Hoffman and his boys were almost finished eating, the father helping the youngest boy scoop out the last tasty tidbits of tapioca from a cup. Again, their attire was not inexpensive: the boys were dressed identically, in blue serge jackets and bloomers and stockings; Hoffman a lighter blue suit with a dark blue silk tie and wing collar. He was a doting father, and watching him interact with his boys made clear the love this little family shared.

  Futrelle almost hated to interrupt, particularly with the unpleasant subject he must broach; but he had no choice.

  The chair across from Hoffman was empty and the mystery writer came around the long table and took it. The black-haired, dimple-chinned Hoffman glanced up with a smile under the waxed curled-tip mustache; but the smile faded and a frown crossed his rather high forehead.

  “Mr. Hoffman, my name is Futrelle.”

  “Can I help you?” His accent wasn’t English or German, but it wasn’t French, either, which based upon the continental manner of the man’s grooming had been Futrelle’s guess, and after all Crafton had referred to Hoffman as a “Frenchman.” Now Futrelle revised his opinion to something more like middle European—Czech perhaps, or Slovak…

  “Papa!” the older boy said, and then the child spoke to his father in rapid French (apparently asking for more tapioca), and the father replied the same way (apparently gently refusing him).

  Now Futrelle was thoroughly confused—“Hoffman” with his Slovak accent spoke French and so did his children.

  “There’s a matter of common concern to both of us,” Futrelle said.

  “How is that possible?” Hoffman asked curtly; his dark eyes were hard and glittering. “We have never met.”

  “But we have both met John Crafton.”

  Now the eyes narrowed. “The name is not familiar.”

  “Please, Mr. Hoffman. I saw you speaking with him on the boat deck, Wednesday afternoon… and Crafton mentioned you to me himself.”

  And now the eyes widened—but they were still hard, glittering. Gentle as he was with his boys, this was a dangerous man. “Are you calling me a liar?”

  “Believe me, as another of Mr. Crafton’s ‘clients,’ I understand the need for discretion… Could we speak in private?”

  Hoffman glanced from one boy to the other; even the youngest one, who couldn’t be more than two years of age, was perfectly well behaved. As a fellow father, Futrelle found this remarkable.

  “I do not leave my boys,” Hoffman said. “They are with me always.”

  “Do they speak English?”

  “No.”

  “Well, bring them along, then. Perhaps we could go to your cabin.”

  Hoffman considered that, then said, “No. We will speak in private. A moment please.”

  He rose and moved two seats down, to an attractive young blonde woman in her twenties, to whom he spoke in French. She smiled at him, nodding, speaking in Swedish-accented French! The only word Futrelle recognized in her response was “Oui,” for despite his Huguenot heritage, he knew barely enough of the language to order in a French restaurant.

  As the blonde woman took the father’s seat between the boys, Hoffman smiled shyly at her and thanked her, then kissed each boy on the forehead, a gesture neither seemed to notice, so common was it from this doting father. Then Hoffman’s benign expression dissolved into a glower, as his gaze fixed upon Futrelle; Hoffman nodded toward the exit and bid Futrelle follow him.

  Futrelle glanced behind him, seeing Andrews frowning and stepping forward; but Futrelle gestured to him to stay put. Andrews nodded and fell back.

  The cabin was farther aft on D deck, and neither party said a word as they made their way there, Futrelle trailing dutifully after the smaller man. Hoffman unlocked the door and gestured for Futrelle to go in, which he did.

  The Second-Class cabin was cozy but not cramped, and Futrelle had been in First-Class quarters on other ships that did not equal these pleasant accommodations: bunk berths at left, a sofa bed at right, a mahogany dresser against the wall between the beds, equipped with a mirror and foldout washbasin. The walls were white, the floors linoleum-tiled.

  “May I sit?” Futrelle asked, gesturing to the sofa.

  Hoffman nodded, his eyes tight with suspicion.

  Futrelle sat and then Hoffman sat, too, opposite, on the lower berth.

  “First of all, Mr. Hoffman, I want to assure you I don’t represent any police agency in any way.”

  Alarm leaped into the dark eyes, but Hoffman tried to keep his voice calm and casual as he replied, “Why should that bother me if you did?”

  “Because you’re traveling under an assumed name.”

  “Nonsense.”

  “You’re a Slovak with two French-speaking boys named Lolo and Momon. But you boarded as an Englishman named ‘Hoffman.’”

  Eyes wild now, he sprang to his feet. “How much has he told you?”

  Futrelle patted the air, as if trying to calm a child. “Nothing…”

  Hoffman’s hand dropped into his suit coat pocket. “Are you with him?”

  “What?”

  “Are you part of this… ring?”

  “No!”

  And Hoffman’s hand withdrew from the pocket: in it was a small, but no less deadly-looking, blue-steel revolver.

  The revolver’s single eye was staring at Futrelle.

  Hoffman’s voice trembled with rage and something else, something worse: fear. He said, “You tell him, you tell your Crafton, the only price I’ll pay him is bullets. Tell him that.”

  Futrelle rose, slowly, holding his hands, palms out. “I’m not with Crafton.”

  Now Hoffman jammed the gun into Futrelle’s belly and said, “What, you think you can cut in on his game? Maybe you want to go over the side, yes?”

  “No. Mr. Hoffman, I’m not a blackmailer. I’m in the same position you’re in—damnit, I’m Crafton’s prey, too!”

  Hoffman thought about that, withdrawing the snout of the gun from Futrelle’s belly, stepping back one step.

  In a move so fast it surprised even himself, Futrelle slapped the gun from Hoffman’s hand and it clattered onto the linoleum, thankfully not firing as it landed. Hoffman, startled but furious, threw a punch at Futrelle, but the larger man leaned back and the fist swished by harmlessly.

  Then Futrelle—so much bigger than Hoffman—threw a punch into the man’s midsection that doubled him over, sending him stumbling backward, into the berths.

  Futrelle retrieved the little revolver. He checked the cylinder: it was fully loaded. Sweating, nervous, Futrelle said, “You’ve gotten on my bad side now, Hoffman. Sit down. Now.”

  Hoffman, clutching his stomach, desperately seeking to retain his fine Second-Class meal, sat back down on the lower berth.

  “I’m not a blackmailer,” Futrelle said, and he emptied the revolver’s shells onto the linoleum floor, then tossed the empty gun at Hoffman, who he stood looming over. “I’m no friend of John Crafton’s, either. Let me tell you how he threatened me….”

  And Futrelle sat down again, on the sofa, and quietly told Hoffman about Crafton’s threat to expose his mental breakdown. Slowly, Hoffman regained his composure and his manner softened.

  “I’m sorry,” Hoffman said, and then he began to weep.

  More startled by this than when the man had drawn the gun on him, Futrelle found himself rising and settling next to the little man on the lower berth, easing an arm around his shoulder.

  Gently, like an understanding
parent, Futrelle said, “Tell me, Mr. Hoffman. What is this about? Crafton holds some threat over you and your boys, doesn’t he?”

  Hoffman, tears streaming, snuffling, nodded. “Do you have… ?”

  “Certainly.” Futrelle withdrew a handkerchief and gave it to the man.

  “My… my name isn’t Hoffman. I’m a tailor and yes, I was born in Slovakia, though for the last ten years I’ve lived in France. I married a beautiful young girl from Italy…”

  Yet another country heard from.

  “… and we had our two beautiful sons. No man ever had a happier life.”

  Hearing those words from a man whose face was streaked with tears, his nose running, his lips trembling, could only mean a tragedy was about to be recounted.

  It was, and a familiar one: “My business began to fail, my wife had an affair… we separated. The boys went with their mother. Lolo and Momon, they came to stay with me over Easter, and I… I stole them.”

  “You kidnapped your own children?”

  He wasn’t crying now; he had himself under control. “Yes. I have made arrangements for a new life in America. A former partner awaits me to go in business with him—and I am a good tailor, I will give my boys a good life.”

  “What about their mother?”

  He lowered his head. “I still love her. If she comes to her senses and leaves this man, perhaps she’ll come and find us one day, her little family.”

  And the weeping began again.

  “How did Crafton find out?”

  Bitterness edged Hoffman’s voice. “It’s his business to know the grief of others. My wife has posted a reward, there are circulars… Crafton says if I don’t make him a partner in the new business, he’ll turn me over to the police. I’ll go to jail for kidnapping my own flesh and blood.”

  Futrelle patted the man on the back, in a “there there” manner, and then he said, “When did you see Crafton last?”

  Hoffman shrugged. “On the deck that day. He’s like you—in First Class. He does not come bother me again—but he will in America. He will in America.”

  “No he won’t.”

  Hoffman looked up at Futrelle with red eyes. “What do you mean?”

  “If I tell you something, Mr. Hoffman…”

  “It’s Navatril. Michel Navatril.”

  The little man offered his hand and Futrelle shook it.

  “Mr. Navatril, I need your word that if I share a confidence with you, it will go no further than these walls and our ears.”

  “You have my word.”

  “John Crafton is dead.”

  “… How?”

  “Someone murdered him.”

  “It wasn’t me!”

  “No. I’m fairly certain you’d have shot him and tossed him overboard. No, he was smothered with a pillow. Those in charge of the Titanic are keeping this news concealed, for the moment, for their own purposes. But you must be careful—you are known to be one of his blackmail victims.”

  “How could anyone know?”

  “A list of ‘clients’ was in his room. You need to get off the ship, when it docks, and quickly disappear with your boys.”

  “You… you’re not going to…”

  “Turn you in? No. I don’t know that what you did was right, Mr. Navatril, but I do know you love your boys… and I’m convinced you didn’t kill John Crafton.”

  “I would have liked to.”

  “An understandable sentiment… Good luck to you.”

  And the two men again shook hands.

  His manner considerably warmer, Navatril walked Futrelle back to the Second-Class Dining Saloon, where father rejoined sons and Futrelle rejoined Andrews.

  “Did you do what you needed to?” Andrews asked as they headed out.

  “Yes.”

  “No difficulties?”

  “Nothing much.”

  By the time the two formally attired men wound their way through the galley, on the return trip, the hectic pace of the expansive kitchen had slowed into the cleanup phase, the execution of culinary arts replaced with the mundane reality of dishwashing, storage and garbage disposal. And in the now cavernously empty First-Class Dining Saloon, tables were being set anew with linen and china and silverware.

  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 herself.” 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, possib
ly 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

  FUTRELLE CAUGHT UP WITH GUGGENHEIM 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.