Murder on the Titanic

by Evelyn Weiss

but I still hear noises. I open my eyes, and I can still see.”

  “What can you see, Mr Freshing?”

  There’s no reply. The sound of birdsong drifts up to our balcony, a strange counterpoint to the harsh, fearful breathing of our patient. After a few minutes he speaks, with effort.

  “I can see a hand. Quivering in front of my eyes. Paper.”

  “Paper?”

  “Paper. A piece of folded paper, grasped in the dying man’s hand. He’s trying to look at me, and I understand what he wants from me. Keep it safe, that’s what he wants me to do. He can’t speak, his throat is closed up in the agony of death, but he signals to me with his eyes. Pleading eyes, at the very limits of pain. He’s telling me: please, please, keep this paper safe.”

  “Be sure what you are saying, Mr Freshing. The dying man is giving you a piece of paper?”

  “Yes. Paper – to keep safe. He needs me to look after the paper for him.”

  “Mr Freshing, where is it now? Where’s the paper now?”

  “Safe.”

  “Yes – you’ve done as he asked, you’ve kept it safe, but where?...”

  “Safe.”

  I touch Axelson’s hand to gain his attention. “Safe. Maybe Mr Freshing means: a safe?” Axelson looks round at me, and his eyes acknowledge his thanks to me. Then, the professor resumes his hypnotic voice.

  “Mr Freshing. I need you to tell me about your room, here at Glen Springs. Do you have a safe in your room? And, what is its combination?”

  The answer comes without hesitation. “Four – seven – two – eight.”

  I whisper to them: “I’ll go”. I take Freshing’s room key from the table. As I leave the balcony, I hear, again accompanied by the birds singing in the trees, a panting, racked voice, as Freshing speaks again, telling them horrible details of Spence’s last moments. I think: his breathing, his voice, is mimicking the sounds in the throat of the dying man. I close the door behind me: I don’t want to hear any more.

  A minute later, I’m opening the door of one of the best long-stay suites at Glen Springs. But despite the high-quality furnishings, I’m struck by the utter plainness of Mr Freshing’s room: the lack of any personal possessions, any sense of his personality in the room. The cast-iron safe sits there in the corner. I turn the dial: four –seven – two – eight. A pull on the brass handle. I look in, and I’m surprised.

  I had thought to see some evidence, here at least, of Mr Freshing’s identity, of his life. But it’s just a hollow space: there is nothing inside the safe except a couple of sheets of paper, folded up together. The moment I read the first line of the first page, I close the safe, and take the papers straight back to the balcony.

  All is quiet as I open the door out onto the balcony. I see the professor and Chisholm; I see Freshing’s head, turning towards me. His eyes are open: the whites of his eyes are a sickly yellow in that death’s-head face.

  The eyes open wider: he’s staring in utter dismay. He sprawls back in his chair, as if he’s been punched in the face. His arms move helplessly under the quilt: he seems to have lost all control of his body. A horrible choking sound comes from his throat. The professor speaks. “Chisholm, get the staff quickly. He’s stopped breathing.”

  I yell for a nurse. Chisholm stands in the balcony doorway and shouts: his deeper, stronger voice echoes through the corridors of the Sanitarium, calling desperately for help. I look back onto the balcony, and I see, wrapped in the biscuit quilt, Freshing’s face. It’s now turning purple.

  But the fixed stare in those yellow-white eyeballs remains. It’s as if his doom has come upon him, and he is looking Death in the face. What is he staring at, that has brought such horror upon him?

  He’s staring at me.

  19.Into the woods

  Two nurses and a doctor are with Mr Freshing. Their faces are worried, but angry too: we have done this to one of their patients. Then another doctor arrives and starts questioning Axelson. The professor seems stubbornly defiant that we have done nothing wrong. The doctor’s voice is accusing and shrill. The voices rise: they are both shouting now, and neither of them is listening to the other. Then I hear a deeper voice.

  “Come on, Agnes. Who is to blame isn’t important. What is important is that Mr Freshing gets the medical attention he needs. We can’t help here: we must leave that to the Sanitarium staff. You and I have other things that we need to do.”

  “What do we need to do, Chisholm?”

  “I need to telephone Inspector Trench. I need an update from the Inspector, on what he and the New York Police Department know about the Gophers. Most of all, I need to know whether the shipment of the explosives is still going ahead. In the meantime, Agnes, why don’t you start looking at those papers that you brought to the balcony. Because it was seeing those papers, in your hand, that brought on Mr Freshing’s fit.”

  “But if he was so horrified to see those papers – it makes no sense. It was him who told us about those papers, and said to us that they were in his safe. He even told us the safe’s combination numbers.”

  “Who knows what makes sense to a man under hypnosis? We have no idea what happens in someone’s brain when they are under the Fluence, as the professor calls it. Perhaps Mr Freshing’s conscious, un-hypnotized mind hid those papers away, because he never wanted to look at them again. But then, under hypnosis, he co-operated with us and told us about them. We have no idea what passed through his brain. But one thing is certain: seeing those papers in your hand, it terrified him.”

  Chisholm and I descend the stairs into the lobby of the Sanitarium. Chisholm leaves me, and I sit in one of the easy chairs, next to a low mahogany table. I unfold the papers, and begin to read.

  “Pay me the ten thousand that I need, or the secret you have kept for so long will become public knowledge. I will break the news immediately after the Lake Ontario flight, unless I have the money. Rufus du Pavey.”

  So. It is the very blackmail that the professor spoke of. As I read the note, I think of Spence reading it. What suffering a little piece of paper can cause.

  Folded inside the letter is a second, very different sheet of paper. It’s a large Imperial-size sheet of heavy paper, folded several times. I realize, as I open its stiff folds, that it is some kind of legal document, signed at the bottom. But I can also tell that it’s not a whole document. There must be other pages preceding it, that are now missing, because the first line opens in the middle of a sentence. I try to read it, but I can make no sense of it. The language is the obscurest lawyer-speak, and there are continuing references to ‘3-inch M1902’. I’ll have to show it to Chisholm, see if he can make anything of it. I ask at the reception desk for pen and paper, and, while I wait, I copy out the words of both papers. Time passes by: through the windows, I can see that afternoon is turning towards evening. I finish writing. I’m just about to fold the papers up again, when something occurs to me. I look at the signatures at the bottom of the legal document. There are three of them.

  One signature is clearly legible ‘John Stephen Cowans, Quartermaster-General to the British Forces’. So this is a contract with someone – a ‘Quartermaster-General’ I suppose, must be responsible for British military supplies. Therefore, the other party to the contract will be supplying something, I guess, to the British Army. That makes sense, I think, in the light of the note about the London lawyers that Chisholm passed to the professor during Freshing’s hypnosis.

  Below it, I see two other signatures, side-by-side, and I can read one of them easily: a strong, clear hand. Calvin Gilmour. But what is the other signature? I realize: it’s probably Gwyneth’s. Calvin Gilmour is known not only a philanthropist, but as a truly forward-thinking man. He’s a believer in the equality of the sexes and he publically supports women’s suffrage. Axelson told me that Gilmour employs many female workers in his administrative offices, and that he pays them the same rates as the men. I wonder: has Calvin made Gwyneth the co-owner of Gilmour Holdings?

  The
late afternoon sun slants through the windows of the lobby, casting a golden light across my hands as I hold the document. As I stare at it, trying to make out ‘Gwyneth Gilmour’ in the loops of ink, something nags me. Like I’ve done a thousand times, I think: Black Velvet. Not the name though, this time. Rather, just the signature ‘Black Velvet’ on that letter I found in Kitty’s window. It’s funny, that signature was legible even though the letter wasn’t.

  This time, what’s troubling me is a different sort of puzzle. I carry on looking closely at the second signature on this contract. I can see that it’s a typical signature: it’s illegible, like most signatures are. But something’s odd. I hold the paper in my hands, peer again at the writing. It’s all curls and swirls, but I can make out that two of the letters are bigger. They must be the initial capitals of the Christian name and surname. I look and look, and I’m sure of one thing. Those two letters are different from each other.

  Gwyneth Gilmour. G – G. People scrawl the letters of their names when writing their signatures, but the scrawls for each letter do tend to be the same. Here, the second capital letter, the first letter of the surname, might well be a G, although it could be C or even some other letter. But there is one thing it definitely isn’t. It is not the same letter as the first capital. These capitals are