“No,” Amy said, and she knew from the panicked sound of her heart that this conversation was not about sinking ships at all. “They weren’t too late for the lifeboats.”
“A few first-class passengers,” Ismay said, as if the survivors did not matter. “Did you know that all the children in steerage drowned?”
Amy did not hear him. She had turned away from him and was looking at the parlor. “What?” she said blankly.
“I said, the Californian was only ten miles away. She thought their flares were fireworks.”
“What?” she said again, and tried to get past him, but he was behind her, between her and the door, and she could not get out. “What is this place?” she said, and could not hear her voice above the sound of her heart.
* * * *
Amy stood in the doorway, looking back to the parlor. “I must go back there,” she thought clearly. “Something terrible has happened in the parlor.”
“Mama!” Caroline said, and Amy turned and looked in through the open door.
The women stood motionless around the little girl, their hands reaching out awkwardly to comfort her, Debra kneeling at her feet. “They should be getting her lifebelt on,” Amy thought. “They must get her up to the boat deck.” Caroline held out her arms in joy toward Amy.
Amy said, “We’re going home now, Caroline.” But before she finished saying it, one of the women said, not interrupting but instead superimposing her words over Amy’s so that Amy could not hear her own voice, “Your mother’s gone, darling. She can’t hurt you now.”
“She is not gone,” Caroline said. The three women looked up at the little girl and then anxiously at one another.
“You miss her, of course, but she’s happy now. You must forget all the bad things and think of that,” Debra said, patting Caroline’s hand. Caroline yanked her hand away impatiently.
“Do you think we should give her a sedative?” said the woman who had spoken first. “Ismay said she might be difficult at first.”
“Caroline,” Amy said loudly. “Come here.”
“No,” said Debra, and at first Amy thought she was answering her, but she didn’t reach out to restrain Caroline, and her voice sounded as it had when she was playing ghost at the seance, “perhaps she does see her mother.”
A shudder, like the sudden settling of a ship, went through the women.
“Caroline?” Debra asked carefully. “Where is your mother?”
“Right there,” Caroline said, and pointed at Amy.
The women turned and looked at the doorway. “Perhaps she does see something,” Debra said. “I think we should tell Ismay,” and she went out the door past Amy and down the hall to the parlor.
“Oh, something terrible has happened in the parlor,” Amy thought, “and Ismay has done it.”
* * * *
The parlor was the room she had seen from the park. Handing Caroline her glass of milk, she had looked at the heavy gray drapes in the windows and wondered what the gaudy Victorian house was like inside. She had imagined it like this room, rich woods and faded carpet, but the room they had hurried Caroline into upstairs was barren, a folding cot, gray walls, and she had thought again, “The house has been taken over by some kind of cult.”
Near the windows was a large round table with chairs around it and candles burning in a candelabra in the center. One of the chairs was more massive than the others and heavily carved. “The captain’s table,” she thought, thinking of the Titanic, “and the captain sits in that chair.”
She had turned away from Ismay, and in turning, seen what was behind her, dimly white in the darkness of the room. An iceberg. A catafalque. A bier. “I have seen it too late,” Amy thought, and tried to get past Ismay, but he was at the door.
“The Titanic went down very fast,” he said. “A little under two-and-a-half hours. People usually take longer. Ghosts have been seen for years afterwards, although it is my experience that they go down in a matter of hours.”
“What is this place?” Amy said. “Who are you?”
“I am a man who sees ghosts, a spiritualist,” Ismay said, and Amy nearly fainted with relief.
“You hold your seances in here,” she said, relieved out of all proportion to his words. “You sit in this chair and call the ghosts,” she said giddily, sitting down in the carved chair. “Come to us from the other side and all that. Have you ever had a ghost from the Titanic?”
“No,” he said, coming around to face her. “Every ghost is his own Titanic.”
He made her uneasy. She stood up and looked out the window. Across the park she could see the police station, and she was overcome by the same wild relief. The police within signaling distance and the doctor upstairs, and all the ghostly ladies only harmless tableturners who wanted to talk to their dead husbands. In this room Ismay would make the windows blow open and the candles go out, he would cause ghosts to hover above the catafalque, their hands folded peacefully across their breasts, and what, what had she been afraid of?
“I had a progenitor on the Titanic,” he said. “Rather a cad actually. He made it off in one of the first boats. Did you know that the Titanic was the first ship to use the international distress signal? And the Californian, only ten miles away, would have been the first to receive it, an historic occasion, but the wireless operator had already gone to bed when the first messages went out.”
“The Carpathia heard,” Amy said, and walked past him and out the door, to go to where Caroline was already getting better. “Captain Rostron came.”
“There were ice reports all day,” Ismay said, “but the Titanic ignored them.”
* * * *
Amy leaned against the wall after Debra passed, pressing her hands to her breast as though she had been wounded. “I must find Jim,” she thought. “He will see she gets in one of the boats.”
She had a very hard time with the stairs. They seemed to slant forward, and it took all her concentrated thought to climb them and she could not think how she would make Jim hear her, how she would convince him to save Caroline. Even the hall listed toward her, so that she struggled toward Debra’s room as up a steep hill. When she came to the closed door, she had to stand a minute before she had the strength to put her hand on the doorknob. When she did, she thought the door must be locked. Then she looked down at her hand. She dropped it to her side, as if it had been injured.
Debra opened the door, leaning her graceful body against it. “Don’t worry,” she said.
“You can’t just leave her in there,” Jim said. “What about the police?”
“Why would the police come unless someone went to get them? We don’t have any phones. The outside doors are locked. Who would go get them?”
“Caroline.”
Amy came into the room.
Debra shook her head. “She’s only six years old, and it isn’t as if she saw anything. We told her her mother died in her sleep.”
“No,” Amy said. “That isn’t true. I was murdered.”
“I’d feel safer if Ismay had taken care of her, too. She might have seen something afterwards.”
“She did,” Debra said, and watched the color drain from Jim’s face. “She thought she saw her mother this morning.” She hesitated cruelly again. “Ismay has decided to have a seance,” she said. She waited to see the effect on him and then said, “What are you afraid of? She’s dead. She can’t do anything to you.” She went out the door.
“You poisoned her,” Amy said to Jim. “She wasn’t sick. She was poisoned. You planned the picnic. It was a trick to bring us here, to Debra, whose name you knew before. To bring us here so Ismay could murder me.”
Jim was watching the door, the color slowly coming back into his face. He took a plastic prescription bottle out of his shirt pocket and rolled it in his hand. Amy thought of him standing in the park, looking first at the police station and then at the house with the gray curtains, measuring the distances and whistling, waiting for Caroline to drink her milk.
> “I will not let you kill her,” Amy said. “I am going to save Caroline.” She tried to take the poison out of his hand.
Jim put the bottle back in his shirt pocket and opened the door.
* * * *
She had gone to the seance because Caroline was better and she could not be frightened by anything, even Jim’s unwillingness to leave. The windows had banged open and the curtains had drifted in, flickering the candles. Amy thought, “He is doing something under the table.” She looked steadily through the candles’ flame at him.
“Come to us, oh spirit,” Ismay said. He was sitting next to the big carved chair, but not in it. “We call you. Come to us.”
It was Debra, projected somehow above the bier though she had not let go of Amy’s hand. Debra made up with greasepaint and dressed in flowing white. She hovered there, her hands crossed on her breast, and then drifted toward the table.
“Welcome, spirit,” Ismay said. “What message do you bring us from beyond?”
“It is very peaceful,” the ghost of Debra said.
Ismay slid his hand under the table. The stars were very bright, glittering off the ice. The ship hung like a jewel against the dark sky, its lights too low in the water. “He is doing something,” Amy thought. “Something to frighten me.” She tried to fight it, watching the phony ghost of Debra drift to the table. The candles guttered and went out as she passed. She drifted down into the carved chair. “I bring you word from your loved ones,” she said, her hands resting on the carved arms. “They are at peace.”
The stern of the ship began to rise into the air. There was a terrible sound as everything began to fall: the breaking glass of the chandeliers, the tinny vibrations of the piano as it slid down the boat deck, the people screaming as they struggled to hang onto the railings. The lights went out, flickered like candles, and went out again. The stern rose higher.
“No!” Amy blurted, standing up, still holding Jim’s and Debra’s hands.
Ismay did something under the table and the lights came on. The ghost of Debra disappeared. They were all looking at her.
“I heard . . . everything started to fall . . . the ship . . . we have to save them.” She was very frightened.
“Some see the dead,” Ismay said. “Some hear them. You should have been on the Californian. They didn’t hear anything until the next morning.” He waved the others out of the room. He was still seated at the table. The candles had relit themselves.
“Did you know that when the Titanic went down, she created a great whirlpool, so that all the people who were too close to her were pulled down, too?” he said, and she had bolted past him out the door, running to find Caroline, who had sobbed and run from her.
* * * *
Jim left the door open and she hurried after him, but at the head of the stairs she stopped, too frightened to go down, afraid that the parlor would already be underwater. “I must hurry. I must save Caroline,” she thought. “Before all the boats are away,” and she went down the slanting stairs.
They were at the table in the parlor. “Come to us, Amy,” Ismay said. “We call you. Can you hear us?”
“I hear you,” Amy said clearly. “You murdered me.”
Ismay was not looking at her. He was watching the carved chair, and there was someone in it. “I am happy here,” the ghost of Amy said. Debra made up with greasepaint, sitting with her hands easily on the carved arms. “I wish you were here with me, darling Caroline.”
“No!” Amy screamed, and tried to get across the table to the image of herself, but the floor was tilting so that she could hardly stand. “Don’t listen to her,” Amy sobbed, “Run! Run!”
Ismay turned to Caroline. “Would you like to see your mother, dear?” he said, and Amy flung herself upon him, beating against his chest. “Murderer! Murderer!”
“We’ll go see her now,” he said, and he moved from the table, holding Caroline’s hand.
“Nuh-oh!” Amy shouted in a hiccup of despair and swung her arm against him with a force that should have knocked him against the table, spilling the candles into pools of wax. The candles burned steadily in the still air.
“Help, police! Murder!” she screamed, scrabbling at the window latches that would not open, hammering her hands against the windows that would not break. They could not hear her. They could not see her. Not even Ismay. She dropped her hands to her sides as if they were injured.
Ismay said, “The shipbuilder knew immediately, but the captain had to be told, and even then he didn’t believe it.”
She turned from the window. He was not looking at her, but the words had been intended for her. “You can see me,” she said.
“Oh, yes, I can see you,” he said, and stepped back from the bier. They had washed off the blood. They had pulled a sheet up to her breast and crossed her hands over it to hide the wound. Of course they could not see her, wandering the halls, shouting over their voices to be heard. Of course they could not hear her. She was here, had been here all along, with her useless hands crossed over her silent breast. Of course she could not open the door.
“I cannot save Caroline,” she thought, and looked for her among the women, but they were all gone. “They have put her in the boats after all,” she thought.
Ismay stood by the seance table, watching her. “We are on the ice,” he said, smiling a little.
“Murderer,” Amy said.
“I can’t hear you, you know,” Ismay said. “I can tell what you are saying sometimes by watching you. The word ‘murderer’ comes through quite clearly. But my dear, you do not make a sound.”
She looked down at her body, at her still face that would not make any sound again.
“The dead do make a sound,” Ismay said. “Like a ship going down. S.O.S. S.O.S.”
Amy looked up.
“Oh, my dear, I see you hope even yet. Isn’t the human soul a stubborn thing? S.O.S. Save our ship. Imagine tapping out such a message when the ship cannot be saved. The Titanic was dead the moment she struck the iceberg, as you were the moment after I discovered you at your prayers. But it takes some time to go down. And till the very last the wireless operator stays at his post, tapping out messages no one will hear.”
There was something there, hidden in what he had said, something about Caroline.
“It is apparently a real sound, dying cells releasing their stored energy, although I prefer to think of it as dying cells letting go of their last hope. It’s down in the subsonic range, so its uses are limited. The lovely Debra and a few hidden speakers are far more practical in the long run. But it’s useful at seances, although its effect is not usually as theatrical as it was on you.”
He had reached under the table. The forward funnel toppled into the water, spraying sparks. There was a deafening crash as it fell, and then the sound of screams. The ship hung against the sky, nearly on end, for a long minute, then settled back at the stern and began to slide, slowly at first, then gaining speed, into the water.
She must not let him do this to her. There was something before, about her being at her prayers when he killed her. He thought she was kneeling under the table to pray, but she wasn’t. She was looking for Caroline.
He turned the sound off. “The range is, as I said, very limited, and the wireless operator on theCalifornian shuts down at midnight, fifteen minutes before the first call.”
“The Carpathia,” Amy said.
“Ah, yes,” Ismay said. “The Carpathia. It’s true I’ve had the police at my door several times, but they stumbled about in the front hall among the icebergs of apology and foolish explanation for an hour or so and then went away, thinking they were in the wrong place. By then, there was not even any wreckage for them to find.”
“Caroline,” Amy said.
“You think I would be so foolish as to let her lead the police in here? No, she will be in no position to lead them anywhere,” Ismay said, misunderstanding.
Amy thought, “I must not let him distract me.” There was so
mething about Caroline. Something important. He had killed her at her prayers. At her prayers. “Why did you kill me?” she said, making an effort to form her words clearly so he could read them.
“For the most prosaic of reasons,” he said. “Your husband paid me to. It seems he wants the lovely Debra. Did you think I was vain enough to murder you for trying to find out my tricks? Snooping about under my seance table like a child looking for clues?”
“He did not see Caroline under the table,” she thought. “He does not know she saw me murdered.” But that meant something, and she did not know what.
“He has paid me for Caroline, too,” he said, and waited for her face.
“I won’t let you,” Amy said.
“You won’t?” he said. “My dear, you still will not give up hope, will you? I could use your body as an altar on which to murder your beloved Caroline, and you could not lift a finger to stop me.”
He had been standing by the seance table. Now she saw that he was leaning casually against the door. “The end is very near. I would like to stay and watch, but I must go find Caroline. Don’t worry,” he said. “I will find her. All the lifeboats are away.” He shut the door.
“He did not see her hiding under the table when he murdered me,” Amy thought, and now the other thought followed easily, mercilessly, “She is hiding there now.”
“I must lock the door,” she thought, and she waded toward it across the listing room. The lock was already under water, and she had to reach down to get to it, but when her hand closed on it, she saw that it was not the lock at all. It was her own stiff hand she touched. She had not moved at all.
“The end must be very near,” she thought, “because I have no hope left at all. S.O.S.,” she cried out pitifully, “S.O.S.”
She stood very straight by her body, not touching it, and at first the slight list was not apparent, but after a long time, she put her hands out as if to brace herself, and her hands passed through and into her body’s hands, and she foundered.
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