The Lusitania Murders

by Max Allan Collins

  “Why would a man so determinedly sanguine,” I asked Miss Vance, speaking of Hubbard, “be prone to such simple-minded sentimental slop?”

  Miss Vance just looked at me. “Perhaps I was wrong.”

  “About what?”

  “Your ability to control that tongue of yours.”

  I smiled. “You seem to have an abnormal interest in my tongue, Vance.”

  Another woman might have blushed; Miss Vance merely smiled wickedly and said, “That remains to be seen. . . . Have you noticed that Captain Turner is at the head of the captain’s table?”

  “Why, is that a surprise?”

  “It’s well-known that Bowler Bill rarely makes such an appearance—he delegates the social duties to Staff Captain Anderson.”

  I nodded. “And Staff Captain Anderson is conspicuous in his absence.”

  She nodded back. “Supervising the search of the ship, no doubt.”

  “Shouldn’t the ship’s detective be accompanying him?”

  She frowned, shook her head, letting me know that—even in a hushed conversation like ours—mentioning her function as the Lusitania’s dick was undesirable.

  Still, she answered my question. “I’m travelling with Madame DePage—and I dine with Madame DePage.”

  Glancing at the centrally placed captain’s table, I noted that—of the celebrities aboard, specifically those who’d received warning telegrams—only Vanderbilt and his friend Williamson were sharing Turner’s company. I asked Miss Vance if she recognized any of the other diners at the coveted central table, and three of them proved to be shipbuilders; a tall, dignified woman in a dark gown was (Miss Vance said) Lady Marguerite Allan, wife of Sir Montagu Allan, heir to a Canadian shipping concern, whom Lady Allan and her precociously lovely teenaged daughters were sailing to meet in England.

  Vanderbilt and Williamson were listening to Captain Turner’s every word as if seated at Socrates’ knee; everyone at the table was fawningly attentive to the captain, who was taking a game stab at playing the genial host.

  “Amusing, isn’t it?” I said to Miss Vance. “If old Bowler Bill weren’t in that gold-braided uniform, say a plain blue serge suit, those people wouldn’t look twice at him—he’d just be another provincial with a queer north-country twang.”

  Miss Vance glanced over and she laughed a little. “Cruel but true . . . and the wealthier they are, the more attentively they listen.”

  “Look at Vanderbilt hang on every word, as if Bowler Bill were Admiral Nelson himself.”

  “On the other hand,” she said with a shrug, “the Lucy is possibly the most famous ship in the world. . . and Turner is her master.”

  I granted her that. “He’s the highest authority we have. Our very lives are in the hands of that old salt.”

  That seemed to trouble Miss Vance, who—after a pause—asked, “Do you know how the captain reacted when he heard of the stowaways?”

  “Outrage?”

  “Hardly. He showed no surprise at all—merely said in his forty-five years at sea he regarded stowaways as just another shipboard nuisance.”

  “Like Elbert Hubbard,” I said, “or an orchestra prone to playing Carrie Jacobs Bond.”

  That also made her laugh a little, and then we were examining the embossed card that was this evening’s menu. Under a gilt wreath encircling the Cunard flag, a superb bill of fare included oysters on the half shell or hors d’oeuvres followed by soup, and a choice of fish ranging from deviled whitebait to Supreme de Barbue Florentine, with entrees including braised gosling, sauteed chicken, and haunches of mutton. For a man who’d been reduced to living on coffee and sandwiches (that Bronx rooming house was still a too vivid memory), such fine cuisine would make a welcome change.

  Between courses, Madame DePage announced she’d be attending a concert in the music room, after dinner, and would be pleased if anyone at the table would care to join her. The Royal Welsh Male Chorus was aboard, it seemed, returning home after touring the U.S. and Canada.

  “The Welsh, you know,” she said, that charming accent almost making the offer palatable, “are a race of singers marvelous.”

  Everyone nodded and said they would love to join her . . . with the exception of myself, who stayed mute, and Miss Vance, who said, “It’s been rather a long day, and I’m afraid I’m quite fatigued—would you mind terribly if I retired to the stateroom?”

  Madame DePage didn’t mind at all.

  So I walked Miss Vance to the Regal Suite, which was so near my regal cubbyhole, when she presented me with a pleasant surprise. “I was hoping,” she said, “you might join me for an after-dinner drink.”

  “I would love to. If madame won’t mind . . .”

  Her smile was wide and her eyes were narrowed. “Madame will be consumed with the concert for an hour, at least. And my bedroom is quite private, even has a door of its own, opening onto the hallway . . . should Madame DePage cut her musical evening short.”

  This was all quite agreeable to me and I said as much. This lovely Pinkerton agent was making a splendid case for the independent, modern woman.

  We did not enter through the suite, rather going directly into her bedroom, which was larger than my cabin, and included a sitting area with a rose-color sofa. That’s where we sat and chatted and sipped snifters of brandy (she disappeared into the outer suite only long enough to fetch our drinks).

  She wanted to know about me, and I told her that I’d been the editor of a prestigious magazine, but my reign had been truncated, because the publisher had lacked courage and foresight. I could not tell if she recognized the names of the authors whose work I’d bought—James Joyce, Joseph Conrad, D.H. Lawrence, Ezra Pound, a sampling—but she seemed impressed with my intensity if nothing else.

  I made it clear that journalism was a means to an end—not just for money, rather to gain passage to join my brother in London, and convince him to come home.

  “Your brother is one of these modern artists,” she said, clearly fascinated.

  “Yes, and an important one—a leading Synchromist. As for myself, I’m working on a book on modern art, which’ll present an entirely new aesthetic. Listen, am I boring you?”

  She was half-turned and gazing at me steadily, an arm resting along the top of the sofa. “Not at all—I’m interested. I love the impressionists, but I must admit I’ve not warmed yet to the modernists.”

  I was bowled over by this! She not only had wonderful blue eyes and a remarkable figure, but a mind. . . .

  Exhilarated, I said, “Do you understand what I mean when I say that one can stand in front of a great painting, and feel the same incredible emotional effect as hearing a fine symphony, brilliantly performed?”

  Her eyes flared. “Oh, yes! That is exactly how I feel, standing before a Mattise, or Cézanne.”

  “You see, art is judged by the wrong criteria—with too much concern for literary content and moral values . . . not an emotional, visceral response. Don’t be afraid of modern art, Vance! It’s not so much revolutionary as it is evolutionary. . . .”

  And we talked for perhaps half an hour on this subject, or rather I talked, before I realized I had to know who this fascinating woman was.

  “How is it,” I asked, “that a female Pinkerton agent has such refined tastes, and a mind keen for discussion of aesthetics?”

  She granted me one of those half-smiles. “I wasn’t born a detective, Van. . . . I’m afraid I had an even more disreputable profession prior to joining the Pinkertons.”

  Her father had been an upper-middle-class businessman in Chicago who worked with Potter Palmer, making “a killing” rebuilding the city after the 1871 fire. The family frequently attended plays, and Philomina grew up fascinated by the theater. She had appeared in school plays, and participated in local amateur theatrics, before pursuing dramatics at private schools.

  Still, acting seemed inappropriate for a young woman of her station . . . until her father lost everything in the depression of the early 1890s, d
ying of a heart attack, leaving the family destitute. A theatrical agent who had scouted the budding actress in local amateur and school productions had taken Philomina on, and she quickly achieved some success in the Chicago theatrical scene.

  “When I met my husband,” she said, “I was just starting to play leading roles.”

  Husband?

  “You see,” she said, “Phillip was a Pinkerton agent himself, investigating a group of swindlers called the Adam Worth gang. Have you heard of them?”

  I had.

  “At any rate,” she continued, “Pinkerton was looking for female agents, particularly ones that could intermingle with upper-class society . . . and not just as a maid or servant. My theatrical background was perfect—disguises are part and parcel of the Pinkerton approach.”

  “Did you leave the stage?”

  “Yes, I was achieving some notoriety in the Chicago theatrical scene, but the financial rewards were frankly slender . . . and I had a mother and two sisters to support.”

  “And the Pinks paid well.”

  “They did and they do . . . and I worked for a year before I married Phillip, though I think I fell in love with him the day we met. You see, he loved me, really truly did, in an unconditional way that is rare . . . he didn’t care that we couldn’t have children . . . an illness in my childhood . . . anyway. Phillip was killed two years ago, in the line of duty. Shot by a damned thief.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, and I was: as much as part of me was relieved to hear her husband was no longer on the scene, the pain in her eyes seemed all too palpable. “Did they find the bastard?”

  She didn’t blink at my language. “I found him. And killed him.”

  That called for another round of brandies, which she kindly fetched.

  Leaning back on the sofa, snifter in one hand, her other hand on my arm, she said, “Since then I’ve worked part-time for Pinkerton . . . on a case by case basis. You see, I’ve begun acting again . . . meeting Mr. Frohman is a hidden agenda of mine, taking this assignment, I must admit.”

  Lost in her eyes, I said, “I would love to see you perform.”

  “I thought you might,” she said, and kissed me.

  Soon the lights had been dimmed, and we kissed and petted on the sofa, like teenaged spooners.

  “Are you married, Van?” she asked.

  “Does it matter?”

  “Yes it does . . .”

  “I’m divorced.”*

  “So you’re a man of the world.”

  “As you’re a woman of the world.”

  “And we need partake of no pretense.”

  “Not by my way of thinking.”

  It took a while to get out of all those clothes, but we managed, and the wrought-iron bed for one accommodated two, nicely, particularly since sleep was not what we had in mind.

  Nonetheless, afterward she did fall asleep in my arms, clinging close, and I dropped off, as well, into a contented slumber. Madame DePage must have returned at some point, but I did not hear her come in, out in that adjacent suite. Something else, later, did wake me—I was not sure what, I merely sensed noise, perhaps a commotion in the hall—and I slipped from the bed and gathered my clothing.

  I held my pocket watch near the sliver of light from the hallway door and saw that it was five minutes after two a.m. After getting back into the monkey suit in a rather half-hearted, half-buttoned fashion, I bent over the bed and kissed the slumbering goddess.

  She smiled and murmured something, and fell back into a deep sleep.

  I left her bedroom feeling giddy as a schoolboy with a new crush. Miss Vance was a lively, sophisticated woman, and I could hardly have hoped for a better partner in a shipboard romance . . . let alone for said romance to have blossomed so quickly, so fully.

  So distracted was I that I almost tripped over the corpse that lay on its side in the hallway.

  SEVEN

  First-Class Murder

  When she replied to my knock, Miss Vance peered through the cracked door and at first seemed as confused as she did sleepy; then, seeing it was me, she smiled in a lazy, half-lidded manner that normally would have struck me as quite endearing.

  “Miss me already?” she almost drawled, opening the door a bit, her curvaceous form barely concealed in her camisole.

  “Put something on,” I told her. “There’s a dead body in the hallway—and I suspect foul play.”

  She said nothing, her lethargy replaced at once by alertness. Leaning out into the hall, she saw—a few paces down, toward my cabin—the slumped figure of what appeared to be a ship’s steward.

  Frowning, she asked, “Is that—?”

  “It’s not a steward I killed, coming out of your room, to save your virtue. . . . No indeed.”

  “The ringleader,” she said breathlessly.

  Klaus, the burly blonde stowaway—still in his stolen stewards’ whites—lay on his side on the shining linoleum, his blue eyes staring at nothing, his expression one of disappointment and surprise . . . a common enough one, at the point of death, I should think. Who among us won’t be naively disappointed, and bitterly surprised, when the inevitable arrives?

  She sealed herself within her quarters, and I returned to the body. At this time of the morning, the corridor was otherwise deserted. Kneeling over the man, I noticed a wound in his back, a blossom of crimson, still dripping.

  I remembered the vague sense that there’d been a commotion outside the stateroom—that had been, after all, what stirred me from my slumber. I’d quickly dressed and exited, so if that commotion indeed had resulted in the violent death of the blonde stowaway, this was a freshly created corpse . . . born within the past ten minutes or less.

  Proving that a woman could indeed dress as quickly as a man (should the situation call for it), Miss Vance emerged in a simple blue-gray gingham morning dress—well, this was morning, after all—with collar and cuffs of dotted lawn and a rather loose skirt. She looked nothing like any detective I ever heard about.

  Or such was the case until she knelt next to me, eyes narrowed, unhesitant to achieve a close proximity to the corpse.

  “Have you touched anything?” she asked.

  “Somehow I managed to resist. Is that a bullet wound?”

  She leaned in, her pretty nose damn near touching the blossom of blood. Then she drew back, her eyes meeting mine and holding them. “No—that’s a knife wound. Possibly a hunting knife—judging by the width of the tear in the fabric . . . nearly two inches.”

  “Couldn’t the cloth have been torn in the struggle?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t believe there was a struggle—this is the classic example of a man stabbed in the back.”

  I disagreed—telling her I had heard a to-do in the hall. Surely this was the result of a scuffle escalating into tragedy.

  She shrugged. “Perhaps there were two other men . . . two assailants, let us say. One is arguing with our late friend here, facing him, and the other is behind him.”

  “I see—one keeps him busy, the other stabs him in the back.”

  “Or one is arguing with the victim, and as the argument seems about to get out of hand, the accomplice ends the discussion with a two-inch blade of steel.”

  She stood and so did I.

  “Of course,” she said, “what immediately comes to mind is his two friends—the other stowaways.”

  “Yes! If Klaus escaped the cell, so must have the others—and there was tension between them . . . I witnessed it.”

  Nodding, she said, “The other two seemed more likely to cooperate, to talk—wasn’t that your opinion, after interrogating them?”

  “It most certainly was. . . . Shouldn’t we alert Staff Captain Anderson, or perhaps Captain Turner himself?”

  “We should. But I’d like a few moments, here, at the scene of the crime. . . before too many well-meaning fools come tromping through.”

  I was doubtful this was wise. “We may have two stowaways at large, remember—one of whom is a
rmed with a hunting knife.”

  “Van, I scarcely think they’ll be trying to take over the ship with it—they are probably seeking a new hiding place, not looking for another victim.”

  Miss Vance requested that I stand near her doorway, and she returned to her quarters and emerged moments later with a magnifying glass.

  I had to laugh. “How Sherlock Holmes of you!”

  “What may seem a cliche in Conan Doyle,” she said, “is a valuable tool in real detection. . . . Physical evidence has put many a guilty neck in the hangman’s noose.”

  The detective in gingham knelt to examine the linoleum in the area of the corpse, an activity that took several seemingly endless minutes.

  Finally she turned toward me, her eyes glittering in a predatory fashion. “Droplets of blood,” she said.

  Walking along, half-bent over, gazing through the magnifying glass, she followed a trail of tiny scarlet globules. She stopped at the mouth of the short corridor next to my cabin.

  “Come,” she said, motioning to me. “Hug the wall, as you do.”

  I joined her—and there on the floor, halfway down the short corridor so near where I slept, was a black-handled hunting knife, smeared crimson. Blobs of blood trailed toward where it lay. Miss Vance said this indicated the knife had been flung there—by the murderer.

  Gesturing back down the hall, toward the corpse, she said, “The murderer walked along with the bloody knife at his side—probably held out, a ways, to prevent getting any blood on his clothing. Then, seeing this corridor, impulsively pitched the murder weapon away.”

  “Then this was not a carefully calculated affair—rather a killing by impulse?”

  “Yes—but by a person carrying a deadly blade. That indicates some forethought of foul play. . . . Now it’s time to contact the good staff captain.”