“Jack, please do me the courtesy of trusting that I did the right thing.”
That was an evasive answer if ever there was one. But Futrelle didn’t press it.
He said only, “You now have aboard this vessel representatives of two of America’s richest and most powerful families—do you really want this Crafton character working his blackmail racket on Astor and Guggenheim?”
Yet another shrug from Ismay. “What could I do about it?”
Futrelle laughed humorlessly, hollowly. “You could put Crafton off this ship right now—while you still have a chance—here at Queenstown.”
Ismay had begun shaking his head halfway through Futrelle’s little speech. “I can’t do that, sir. Mr. Crafton is, however disreputable a character he may be, a paying customer of the White Star Line.”
So Ismay had paid Crafton’s fee.
“Well,” Ismay said, standing suddenly, “I certainly enjoyed meeting Mrs. Futrelle, and I look forward to seeing you at the captain’s table this evening.”
Then he strode off, heading aft in his quick, martinet’s manner. When J. Bruce Ismay decided a conversation was over, it was over.
The aft A-deck promenade had been transformed into an open-air market. This was the same area outside the Verandah Café where yesterday Futrelle and May had seen Crafton bothering Hoffman up on the Second-Class end of the boat deck. Now the relatively cramped area was thronging with First-Class passengers examining the wares of Irish vendors, men in derbies and shabby suits, women in unlikely fine lace like those they were selling from folding-leg tables.
Among the browsing passengers was a particularly striking couple—a slender handsome man in his late forties escorting a pretty, pretty young woman, who could have been father and daughter, but weren’t. They were Colonel John Jacob Astor IV and his child bride, the former Madeline Force, fresh from a honeymoon tour of Egypt.
Madeline was said to be as shapely as a showgirl, but that wasn’t evident with her navy-blue-and-white pinstriped Norfolk style suit, which even with silk velvet inlay and fancy bone buttons looked a trifle dowdy; even her oversize navy-blue-and-white striped hat was a shapeless thing. Rumors that she was “in an advanced delicate condition,” despite her relatively recent marriage, seemed wholly credible.
The lanky Astor sported a boater and a red-and-blue tie that added color and dash to a conservative dark gray suit, and an oversize, dashing mustache at odds with his somber, detached demeanor. His face long and narrow, his chin cleft and rather small, he leaned on a carved ebony walking stick as he paused at a stall, holding his chin high, looking at prospective purchases down the considerable slope of an aquiline nose, peering through small, sky-blue eyes cursed of a world-weariness known only by the impossibly wealthy and the devastatingly poor.
Between the Astors was an Airedale, dutifully keeping them company, no leash in sight; the dog seemed happier than his master, though his mistress was having the most fun.
“This is very nice,” Madeline was saying at the stall next to the one where the Futrelles were examining some miniature porcelain dolls. The young Mrs. Astor was holding up a lovely lace jacket that didn’t look like it would fit her, at least not right now.
“How much in dollars?” Astor asked the vendor, a woman wearing a lovely lace jacket herself, and bad teeth.
“A hundred, fine sir,” she said, not missing a beat.
Astor shrugged. “Eight hundred it is,” he said blandly, and withdrew a wad of bills as thick as one of Futrelle’s novels; the millionaire peeled off eight crisp one-hundreds and handed them to the amazed vendor, who did not correct Astor’s mistake, and who could blame her?
Futrelle, arching an eyebrow, exchanged incredulous glances with his wife, who later bought a similar item for twenty-five dollars, which seemed outrageous to Futrelle but May rightly pointed out the savings compared with what the Astors had paid.
Promptly at 1:30 P.M., the Titanic’s steam whistles let go three long, mournful blasts announcing departure; the vendors packed up their things and hastened back to their bumboats, and soon gangways were raised, lines cast off, the dripping starboard anchor raised. From the boat deck, the Futrelles could hear and see a passenger on the Third-Class aft promenade, a small mustached man in kilts, playing his bagpipes.
The husband and wife looked at each other, savoring the bittersweet moment: the Irish piper’s mournful “Erin’s Lament” probably represented its emigrating player’s farewell to the beloved homeland he might never see again.
The Futrelles stood at the rail in the cold afternoon, watching the green hills and fields of Ireland slip away, knowing—as the ship made its wide, majestic turn starboard, into the Atlantic’s swells—that the next land they would see would have the Statue of Liberty out in front of it.
“It’s almost two and we haven’t had lunch yet,” Futrelle noted, checking his pocket watch. He had seldom missed a meal in his thirty-seven years.
“Let’s just get something light,” May suggested. “Dinner’s not that far away, and we’ll be bombarded with one course after another.”
The Verandah Café, portside off the aft A-deck promenade, didn’t seem as overrun with children as it had yesterday, and the couple ducked in for a snack. The enclosed space conjured the illusion of an outdoor terrace, with its potted palms, white wicker tables and chairs, archway windows and ivy-flung trellises.
The only children today had also been here yesterday: golden-tressed Lorraine Allison and her baby brother Trevor, overseen by the blunt-nosed almost beauty of their nanny, Alice, again holding court at a wicker table.
But this time the parents were here, as well, seated at the adjacent table having petits fours and tea, and in the company of none other than Futrelle’s acrobatic partner, John Bertram Crafton.
They were a happy little group, smiling, even laughing, Crafton in a natty brown suit but the same gray fedora, the boyish bespectacled Hudson in conservative gray enlivened by a red tie, the sweetly pretty Bess in a lilac-and-white striped cotton day dress.
The Futrelles sat a few tables away in the sparsely populated café; the same young steward who yesterday had been so attentive to nanny Alice stopped by to take their order.
“A couple of cups of hot bouillon, please,” Futrelle said, and the handsome lad nodded and disappeared.
It wasn’t until Futrelle had spoken that Crafton noticed the couple’s presence. Seeing Futrelle, the blackmailer’s face turned as white as the wicker chairs and he swallowed thickly. His smile grew nervous and, rising, he made a hurried goodbye and scurried away, gold-tipped cane in hand, through the revolving door into the smoking room.
As Crafton left, the Allisons noticed the Futrelles, and Hudson called out, “Nice to see you again—other than that crowded corridor! Won’t you join us?”
“Thank you, yes,” Futrelle said, and he and May did.
Introductions in the hallway yesterday had been exceedingly brief and lacking in detail: the Futrelles soon learned that Hudson was an investment broker from Montreal (a partner in the firm), and the Allisons learned Jack Futrelle was the famous mystery author, Jacques. Hudson admitted he wasn’t much of a fiction reader, but Bess was an unrepentant bookworm and had read (and loved) both Jack’s The Diamond Master and May’s Secretary of Frivolous Affairs.
The latter made them instant friends: the Hudsons impressed by being in such famous company, the Futrelles flattered by Bess’s praise for their work.
At the suitable moment, Futrelle asked casually, “Your friend Mr. Crafton—how did you come to meet him?”
Hudson smiled and shrugged. “Well, sir, we met him just before we met you—in the C-deck corridor.”
“He’s very charming,” Bess said.
The Futrelles exchanged glances; they had been hoping a fan of their books would have better judgment and taste.
“He’s an investment broker himself,” Hudson said.
“Is that so?” Futrelle said.
“But that’s not why we hit it o
ff so well. You see, we have horses in common.”
“Horses?”
“Yes.” Hudson smiled at Bess, patted her hand. “We’ve been very fortunate, of late, in business, and recently acquired a farm… the Allison Stock Farm, we’re calling it.”
“It’s always been our dream,” Bess said.
To Futrelle the young couple didn’t look old enough to “always” have had any dream.
“We built a farmhouse to our specifications,” Hudson said. “We’ll be moving in, as soon as we get back. Bess decorated it herself. She has a real eye.”
But the thread of the conversation had been lost, and Futrelle had to say, “Where do Mr. Crafton and horses come into play?”
“Oh! That’s why we were in England. On a horse-buying trip. Mr. Crafton is very interested in horses, and seems quite knowledgeable on the subject.”
Probably from the track, Futrelle thought, but only smiled politely.
The steward arrived with the cups of bouillon for the Futrelles. The nanny glanced over and the secret little look she and the steward exchanged was neither as secret nor as little as they thought.
Later, as Futrelle escorted May down a C-deck corridor, back to their stateroom, she said, “You were right about that shipboard romance.”
“I hope the lad doesn’t get into trouble for fraternizing.”
“I should think not. Alice isn’t a passenger, exactly. Did you notice the evil eye she was giving Crafton?”
“No,” Futrelle said. “Are you sure it wasn’t just her natural expression?”
“Now, Jack, she’d be quite an attractive young woman if she hadn’t…”
“Run into a door?”
“You’re terrible. What time is your appointment?”
Futrelle was signed up for the full treatment at the Turkish Bath, which was for women mornings, men afternoons.
“In about fifteen minutes. What do you have on for this afternoon?”
“I intend to take a good old-fashioned American bath, in the tub we’ve been provided thanks to the generous auspices of J. Bruce Ismay. We’re sitting at the captain’s table this evening, and surely you don’t expect me to be ready in a flash.”
“No. But I do think that with the several hours at your disposal, you’ll be able to make yourself presentable.”
She slapped his arm, and kissed his mouth, and—as they had now arrived at their stateroom—allowed her husband to unlock the door for her, before he went off to partake of the Titanic’s most arcane ritual.
The Turkish Bath—with its willingly hot steam room followed by male attendants providing full-body massage, exfoliation and shampoo—was an outlandish excess even for this ship. The cooling room was a Moorish fantasy of carved Cairo curtains (disguising portholes), blue-and-green tiled walls, gilded beams, crimson ceiling, hanging bronze lamps, blue-and-white mosaic floor, inlaid Damascus coffee tables, and low-slung couches and chairs with Moroccan-motif upholstery.
It was in this bizarrely exotic chamber that Futrelle again came upon the omnipresent Crafton, this time towel-draped, reclining on a couch next to a similarly lounging and towel-wrapped John Jacob Astor. Whether Crafton was attempting blackmail—as he had with Futrelle—or simply cozying up to the millionaire—as he had with the Allisons—was not clear.
The reason for the uncertainty was Astor himself: his expression remained lifeless, his sky-blue eyes joyless, even bored, blinking only when steam room sweat found its way into them. And as the fast-talking Crafton continued his spiel—telling Astor about the benefits of becoming a Crafton “client,” perhaps—Astor remained as mute as the Sphinx he had so recently visited.
Once again, Crafton noticed Futrelle, turned white as his towel, and fled into the adjacent room, where the saltwater swimming bath represented the final step of the Turkish treatment.
Futrelle, pleasantly exhausted from his massage, skin flecked with beads of perspiration, reclining in his own towel on his own Moroccan couch, considered striking up a conversation with Astor. But never having met this man, whose station was so above his own, Futrelle felt uncomfortable doing so, and didn’t.
And by the time Futrelle entered the room Crafton had fled into, where the swimming bath—thirty feet long and half again as wide—took up almost the entire space, the little blackmailer had vanished.
At dinner in the First-Class Dining Saloon, the distance between Astor and Futrelle lessened in a number of ways.
First of all, they were seated across from each other at the captain’s table, which was at the forward end of the center section of the vast dining room with its white walls and warm oak furnishings.
Second, Astor proved to be a devotee of Futrelle’s fiction, and twinkling life found its way into the millionaire’s somber eyes when he learned the creator of the Thinking Machine was sitting next to him.
“You combine mystery and scientific thinking in a unique manner, sir,” Astor said, in a clipped, oddly metallic voice.
“Thank you, Mr. Astor.”
“Please, Jacques,” he said, and something like warmth came over the cold features. “Call me Colonel.”
Futrelle almost laughed, then realized the man wasn’t joking.
“Thank you, Colonel. And I’m not Jacques, to my friends, but Jack.”
“Mother-of-pearl, Astor,” a raucous female voice asked, “are you tellin’ me you’re so far around the bend you think ‘Colonel’ is your first name?”
Eyes turned toward a slightly heavyset, pleasant-looking woman in her mid-forties with beautiful sky-blue eyes almost identical in color to Astor’s. She wore a burgundy silk-satin ball dress with glass beading and a feathered hat about the size and shape of a garbage-can lid a milk wagon rolled over. Her name was Maggie Brown, more formally Margaret, more formally still Mrs. James Joseph Brown of Denver, in honor of the gold-mining tycoon husband who cheerfully funded her travels in absentia.
Astor looked momentarily taken aback, then roared with laughter. “Where would I be without you to put me in my place, Maggie?”
And this seemed to be Maggie Brown’s function in Astor’s life; Futrelle would soon learn that the social-climbing matron who’d traded Denver for Newport had been rejected by much of society, but Astor had adopted her as a sort of mascot, perhaps because the Four Hundred had turned up their noses at him and his young bride.
“Where would you be without me as your guide, Astor? Tryin’ to figure out a way to walk with both feet in your mouth, I’d reckon.”
Astor laughed heartily, and the attractive young Mrs. Astor, seated beside him, laughed, too—politely. Madeline wore a black silk-net beaded overdress designed not to draw attention to that “delicate condition” of hers.
The others seated at the captain’s table included May, on Futrelle’s other side, decked out in a pink silk-satin evening gown, white pearls nestling at the hollow of her slender neck. Next to May was Maggie Brown, and across the table, next to the Astors, was the shipbuilder Thomas Andrews, a soft-spoken gentleman with the rugged build of an athlete and the sensitive features of an artist.
At the far end of the table sat Ismay, playing host, while at the head of the table, of course, in a formal blue uniform bedecked with medals, sat the captain—Edward J. Smith, the beloved E. J., the so-called millionaire’s captain, a favorite of wealthy, socially prominent frequent transatlantic passengers, many of whom wouldn’t think of crossing the ocean with anyone else at the helm.
Smith was like a fiction writer’s notion of a steamship captain—an unimaginative fiction writer at that, Futrelle thought, who would himself never dream of painting so clichéd a portrait: clear-eyed, stern-visaged, square jaw dusted with a perfectly trimmed snow-white beard, Smith was taller than most of his crew and as solidly built as a boiler-room stoker.
Where Captain Smith varied from the cliché of his own somewhat forbidding appearance was an avuncular manner that included a ready smile, rather urbane manners and a soothingly pleasant, softly modulated voice.
> “Colonel Astor has every right to his rank, Mrs. Brown,” the captain pointed out to her gently. “How many men in the Colonel’s position would have traded the comfort and safety of their homes for the battlefield?”
“Oh, I know Astor’s a patriot,” Maggie said. “And believe me, I’m relieved he’s a colonel, and not a captain…. Imagine where we’d be if he were in your shoes, Captain Smith.”
“I’m not sure I follow, Mrs. Brown,” the captain said with his easy smile.
“You got any idea how many times Astor here rammed his yacht into somebody else’s canoe? Of course, he won his share of races, once the real captains started giving the Colonel a wide berth.”
Astor was enjoying this immensely, and it did seem good-humored, but to Futrelle, Maggie Brown bordered on the overbearing. Still, in her way, she was a breath of fresh air in these stuffy quarters.
The dinner progressed through eleven amazing courses: oysters à la russe, cream of barley soup, poached salmon with mousseline sauce and sliced cucumbers, chicken lyonnaise, filet mignon with truffle on buttery potatoes, rice-stuffed vegetable marrow, lamb with mint sauce with creamed carrots, champagne sorbet, roasted squab, asparagus-salad vinaigrette, foie gras with celery, Waldorf pudding, cheese and fruit….
Conversation was pleasant and polite, though the food took center stage, and Maggie Brown said almost nothing, busying herself with eating everything in sight except the cut flowers in vases, stopping a waiter to ask for the occasional French translation.
Between courses, Futrelle mentioned to Astor that he had read the millionaire’s science-fiction novel, A Journey in Other Worlds, and that he had enjoyed it, which was not a lie—such futuristic concepts as television, energy conservation and subway systems had been imaginative and fascinating, and it would have been bad form to mention to Astor how abysmal the prose itself was.
Maggie Brown, overhearing this, chimed in to inform any who didn’t know (and this included the Futrelles) that “Astor here is quite the crackpot inventor—he holds all sorts of patents… cooked up a bicycle brake, a pneumatic road-flattenin’ contraption, turbines and batteries….”
The Titanic Murders Page 8
