The Lusitania Murders

by Max Allan Collins

  The faintest smile flickered over Miss Vance’s lips.

  “Of course,” I said, “the other fellow was knifed from behind.”

  McDermott nodded, approaching us. “Yes, on the left, between his ribs, piercing his heart.”

  “Wouldn’t death have been instantaneous, in such an event?” I asked.

  Miss Vance frowned at me—which was disconcerting, since she still had that gun at her side.

  The young doctor said, “Normally I might say so—but since your stowaway managed to walk out of here and reach the next floor, before he collapsed. . . obviously not. The history of medicine is filled with such strange anomalies.”

  What a pleasure to learn of the history of medicine from so experienced a source.

  “Dr. McDermott,” Miss Vance said, “when you’ve stripped the clothing from the deceased next door, I wish to have a look at the body, and at the effects.”

  “Certainly.” He turned to Anderson. “We’re lucky we didn’t have any more deaths tonight—we only have three beds in the male hospital. . . . Could you have them transported for me, Captain?”

  Anderson nodded, and the boyish doctor said polite good-byes and that it was pleasure to meet us, “even under such circumstances,” and returned to a patient his inexperience could not harm.

  “Mr. Van Dine . . . Miss Vance . . .” Anderson’s expression was grave. “Even more than before, I must urge your cooperation.”

  “Why, of course,” I said.

  Miss Vance merely nodded.

  Anderson went on. “These murders must remain confidential—I wish neither to alarm the passengers, nor impede any investigation you might deem necessary, Miss Vance.”

  “I believe this is a wise course of action,” she said.

  A voice from the doorway interrupted the conversation. “Begging your pardon.”

  It was McDermott; his expression was perplexed.

  “Captain Anderson, there’s something you should see . . . Miss Vance, as ship’s detective, I believe you’ll find this of particular interest.”

  Though I had not been invited, I joined the little group as they followed the young doctor to the infirmary next door, where the next surprise in this extraordinary affair awaited us.

  EIGHT

  Cold Storage

  At first Dr. McDermott’s discovery seemed anticlimactic, following as it did the discovery of German stowaways and a parade of foul play that extended from the brig to first class. (Later Miss Vance shared with me her fear that the inexperienced doctor had finally noticed the blue pigmentation and almond odor, and had belatedly put two and two together . . . a morsel of math she could well do without.)

  The ship’s infirmary, male apportionment,* was a blindingly white room—neither chamber nor cubicle—where the naked corpse of Klaus the ringleader lay facedown (apparently so that the knife wound could be examined) on a hospital bed along the left wall. On a counter opposite the doorway, beneath various cabinets, in front of rows of lidded glass containers of an innocuous variety—cotton balls, throat depressors and gauze—was the pile of the late stowaway’s clothing . . . which is to say, his commandeered clothing, the stewards’ uniform.

  But next to the pants and shirt and undergarments were a pair of heavy brown shoes and darker brown woolen socks. These would have seemed as undramatic as the other apparel were not for young Dr. McDermott’s presentation of a slip of paper, about four inches by four inches, which had been folded up, until the doctor examined it.

  “This,” the baby-faced physician said, “was in the deceased’s left shoe . . . under a loose flap at the heel.”

  Protocol might have deemed Anderson the first party to examine this discovery; but Philomina Vance stepped forward and snatched it from the young man’s fingers, startling him.

  “It’s a list of names,” she said, scanning quickly through narrowed eyes. “A very interesting list of names, at that. . . .”

  The doctor was nodding. “That’s why I came running—I may be new in this job, but I certainly recognize our foremost passengers when I see them.”

  She handed the list to Anderson, at whose side I stood; he made no effort to withhold its contents from me, in fact openly shared the scrap of paper with me.

  The names, in no apparent order, were Charles Williamson, Marie DePage, Charles Frohman, Elbert Hubbard, George Kessler, and Alfred Vanderbilt. Next to each name was a number.

  I looked at Anderson curiously, and he anticipated my question: “Cabin numbers.”

  Miss Vance asked, “And those are, in fact, the correct designations?”

  Anderson nodded. “This isn’t just a list of our most famous, prestigious passengers. . .but a inventory of where to find them.”

  “What can it mean?” the doctor asked.

  Anderson glared at the young man. “That is not your concern, Doctor.”

  “Well, I didn’t mean to—”

  “Your job is to deal with the dead, and to keep mum about it. Understood?”

  The young doctor nodded, his cheeks crimson.

  I had a feeling an irritation had been building in Anderson due to Miss Vance’s take-charge demeanor, and the poor wet-behind-the-ears doc had taken the brunt . . . the staff captain being too much of a gentleman to dress down a woman, who was after all the ship’s official detective.

  Anderson turned to Miss Vance, but as he spoke, his eyes flicked to me occasionally. “I have alerted the captain, and he has requested an update, and audience with both of you.”

  “When, pray tell?” Miss Vance asked pleasantly.

  “He should be ready for us, now . . . Doctor. Carry on.”

  The doctor swallowed, said, “Yes, sir,” rather meekly, and attended his dead patient.

  Soon we were moving through the deserted, cavernous first-class dining saloon, three abreast. Miss Vance, perhaps sensing a growing aggravation in Anderson, said nothing. I, of course, threw caution to the wind.

  “What do you make of the list?” I asked. “Why room numbers?”

  Anderson’s expression was blank. “I would hesitate to speculate. . . . Miss Vance, have you a thought?”

  Seizing the opening, she said, “It could be a list of targets . . . assassination targets.”

  That, frankly, had not occurred to me, and it stopped me momentarily in my tracks; but I quickly caught up with them—Anderson hadn’t missed a beat, this dire possibility apparently having dawned on him, as well.

  “It would certainly be demoralizing to the British government,” Anderson said, “should such important parties be lost while under our protection.”

  “You can’t be serious,” I said. “The Germans don’t want the United States in your damned war! Why, killing the likes of Vanderbilt and Hubbard and the rest, that would incite Americans to the point of hysteria.”

  We were in the Grand Entrance area now, that bulwark of wicker and ferns, the elevators and staircase opposite us.

  Anderson had flinched at the phrase “damned war,” but his response did not indicate any offense had been taken. “Politics is Greek to me,” he said. “Still, I doubt your country would go to war over such killings; but the embarrassment to Great Britain, I should say, would be most devastating.”

  On the elevator, Miss Vance said to Anderson, who stood between us, “Assassination isn’t the only purpose that list might hold.”

  Anderson looked sideways at her, brow knit. “Can you tell me another?”

  “These are rich people—don’t forget, I’m here in part to guard Madame DePage’s charity chest, which is itself a small fortune. Perhaps that list is meant to direct these stowaways . . . posing as stewards . . . to those cabins—for plunder.”

  The elevator deposited us at the Grand Entrance of the Boat Deck, where more wicker and ferns awaited. Anderson paused there, his patience obviously wearing thin.

  “Miss Vance,” he said, “these are spies—German spies.”

  Her smile was cheerfully professional. “And may I remind y
ou that the darkroom found nothing at all on their camera plates?”

  This was the first I’d heard of that; but I didn’t see it as significant: We’d merely captured the espionage agents too early for them to indulge in their information gathering.

  Anderson said something of a similar nature to Miss Vance, who replied, “Why do you assume theft and sabotage are mutually exclusive concerns?”

  The staff captain’s eyes tightened and his head titled to one side—this was an interesting question.

  She continued: “Why not commit espionage and/or sabotage, with a side dish of thievery. . . . If they were planning to wait until near the end of the voyage, off Ireland, our three ‘tourists’ may well have been picked up by members of the IRA, who are in collusion with Germany, after all.”

  Miss Vance never ceased to amaze me. I said, “You mean they could be funding IRA efforts to aid the German cause?”

  “They could. Or they could be saboteurs taking advantage of their proximity to so much wealth, to do their country’s foul bidding even while feathering their own nests.”

  I nodded. “Perhaps it had been offered as an incentive, in undertaking a perilous task?”

  “Perhaps.”

  Anderson seemed weary. He was really not up to this level of deliberative assessment, and I felt anything further Miss Vance offered would fall on deaf ears. What the staff captain said next confirmed my suspicion.

  “With all due respect,” Anderson said to her, “I must request that you refrain from sharing with the captain any of these far-fetched theories.”

  “I thought he’d requested my presence,” she said, “for me to make a full report.”

  Anderson twitched a humorless smile and shrugged. “Use your own judgment, then.”

  The captain’s suite of rooms took up the forward end of the Boat Deck, adjacent to the raised officer’s house on the navigating bridge. Anderson knocked on the middle of three unlabelled doors and a deep voice from within bellowed, “Come!”

  We entered.

  This was a day room—even if it was three in the morning—with white walls relieved by oak wainscotting and the occasional framed nautical print and a ship’s wheel clock; the furniture was Colonial and the effect spartan. A round maple table with four chairs was central, and on the table was a tray with tea service.

  The old boy—though in his late fifties, he seemed nearer seventy—was smoking a pipe and pacing; he was wrapped up in a dark blue dressing gown, which somehow conveyed a military bearing, an effect undercut by his white pajama trousers and brown leather slippers. His thinning white hair was mussed from sleep—he had not bothered to brush it, apparently—and his jutting jaw, flat nose and slitted eyes combined to convey distinct grumpiness.

  “Thank you for coming,” he said to us, his tone at odds with his words. There were no introductions, no ceremonial handshakes. He simply gestured to chairs at the round table, and offered everyone tea—“Coffee would defeat sleep,” he said, “and we do hope to have some yet, tonight, don’t we?”

  No one pointed out to him that night was long since gone; but everyone accepted his generous offer and Miss Vance volunteered to do the serving, which Captain Turner took her up on, with a gruff, “Thanks.”

  Turner’s big blunt-fingered hands lay on the table like fists waiting to happen, the pipe in one of them; the smoke smelled no worse than burning refuse. His grizzled countenance seemed to accuse, even as his words claimed otherwise: “I want you people to know I appreciate your efforts.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Anderson said.

  Miss Vance and I thanked him, as well, and sipped our tea.

  “These are dangerous times,” the captain said, “and I don’t take them lightly.”

  Had anyone suggested he had?

  “I have a boy serving in France,” he said. “Artillery officer. And my other boy is in the Merchant Marine . . . also an officer.”

  There was an implied “of course.”

  “Seems to me I’ve spent my life racing Cunard ships against these . . . Germans,” he was saying, pausing for a few puffs of his pipe, as if stoking his personal boiler. “Their Deutschland . . . Kronpriz Wilhelm, Kaiser Wilhelm II, even this new one, Kronprizessin Cecile . . . hah! My girl Lusitania has shown them all her stern.”

  Miss Vance and I smiled politely; Anderson, too.

  “Now here we are racing their goddamned U-boats,” he growled, shaking his head. To Miss Vance he said, “Pardon a sailor’s salt, ma’am.”

  “Don’t think of me as a woman,” Miss Vance said, making an impossible suggestion. “I’m a Pinkerton agent, Captain—and your ship’s detective.”

  The weathered face smiled, but the cold eyes indicated his true opinion of Cunard having hired a female detective.

  I risked a question. “How much danger are we in from U-boats, Captain?”

  “None.” He puffed the pipe. “Even at our reduced speed, we’ll have no trouble outrunning them.”

  “Reduced speed?”

  One shoulder shrugged, and contempt curled his upper lip, a bit. “The powers that be have ordered me to get by on three of my four boilers—to save coal, and to suit our reduced crew. That takes our top speed down from twenty-six knots to twenty-one . . . cruising speed from twenty-four to eighteen.”

  “Still, no steamer cruising at even that speed has been torpedoed yet,” Anderson said, with an unconvincing offhandedness, shifting in his chair.

  “That’s reassuring,” I said, but it would been more so without the “yet.”

  Anderson locked eyes with me and said, “Mr. Van Dine, you do understand we’ve taken you into our confidence. Normally we wouldn’t share such information quite so casually . . .” And here the staff captain shot a look at his superior officer. “. . . in front of a newspaper man.”

  But this point seemed lost on the old boy, who rattled on, “Anyway, even if we were struck by a torpedo, we’d never sink . . . not with our watertight bulkheads.”

  “That’s reassuring, as well,” I said.

  Anderson had a dazed expression.

  “And if we should sink,” Captain Turner said, with a fatalistic shrug, “the sinking would be so slow, we’d have plenty of time to get the passengers away in the lifeboats.”

  “This is all encouraging information,” Miss Vance said, “but might I be so bold as to inquire how it relates to the murders of these stowaways?”

  Turner sighed smoke, then gestured with the pipe in hand. “My understanding is that they aren’t ‘murders’ at all—it’s a falling-out among spies, and they’ve killed each other, and we’re all the better off for it.”

  Her eyes wide, Miss Vance said, “I suppose that’s one way to look at it.”

  “Young lady,” the captain said, “it’s the only way. The passengers on this ship, God bless them, came aboard despite alarmist talk of U-boats and sabotage and war. I do not want them unnecessarily burdened with further trepidation.”

  “Captain,” she said, setting her tea cupdown with a clatter, “these men may have an accomplice on your crew—it’s no secret the Lusitania had to settle for second best, and worse, in assembling—”

  “That’s a gross exaggeration,” Anderson said, bristling.

  I was surprised she had broached this—but I noticed she continued to guard her hole card carefully: the cyanide poisoning of the two stabbed cell mates.

  Turner patted the air with his pipe in hand. “Let her talk. Let her talk.”

  Crisply she said, “Someone had to help smuggle those men aboard. And when the stowaways were captured, perhaps that same someone butchered all three, to cover his tracks.”

  “Suppose he had,” Turner said. “Suppose we have a greedy boy who invited those Krauts aboard. . . . If so, he’s no spy, he’s no German, just . . . a greedy boy. He’s killed our spies for us—our passengers are hardly in any danger now.”

  Miss Vance seemed stunned by this response, as well she should have been: Its absurdity was worthy of Lewi
s Carroll, and the captain did after all vaguely resemble Alice’s walrus.

  “Captain,” I said, trying to do my part, “a new piece of troubling evidence has come to light—Mr. Anderson? The list?”

  Anderson showed Turner the list from Klaus’s shoe, and the captain frowned and asked us what significance we gave it.

  Miss Vance presented the two theories—an assassination agenda, or a blueprint for shipboard robbery. Turner listened, entertaining himself with sips of tea and puffs from his pipe.

  Then he made an expansive gesture with one hand, saying, “How does this change anything? Don’t we still have three dead Germans, who can neither kill nor steal? Don’t we still have passengers who deserve to make this crossing without undue trepidation?”

  No one had answers to any of that.

  So Turner went on: “And here is what we’ll do. Those bodies will be moved from the hospital to a refrigeration compartment on the lower deck. . . . See to it, Anderson, that these cadavers are kept quite separate from the beef, mutton, vegetables and so on.”

  News of that might upset the passengers more than German spies!

  “Yes, sir,” Anderson said. “We’ll store them in ice, sir.”

  “They have to make the full journey, after all,” Turner said, “before we turn them and this entire situation over to the British Secret Service.”

  Anderson nodded toward Miss Vance. “Our detective has taken the knife in question into her personal custody.”

  “Well, that’s fine,” Turner said.

  “She has with her fingerprinting equipment, sir.”

  Turner frowned, pipe in his teeth. “How does that help the situation?”

  Miss Vance said, “If I find fingerprints on the knife, I can compare them to our three dead stowaways. If prints belonging to a fourth party are present, we probably have a murderer aboard . . . possibly a crew member.”

  “What are you suggesting?”

  “Well,” she said, and she was keeping her tone strictly business-like, “we would fingerprint the crew, to make comparisons.”