The Mammoth Book of Historical Whodunnits Volume 3 (The Mammoth Book Series)

by Mike Ashley

  “I found the plans and photographed them,” Wick said, and dug into a deep pocket and produced a small and tightly wrapped roll of film.

  Braithwaite accepted the film and held it tightly. “This can’t be delivered in the manner anticipated. I’ll see that a contact in New York receives it and gets it to Berlin.”

  “If you survive.”

  Braithwaite smiled. “That’s been arranged. There’s nothing more for you to do, Herr Kolb. You’ve performed your duty admirably, and I’ll see to it that you receive proper recognition and a medal.”

  “Posthumously,” Wick pointed out.

  Braithwaite shrugged. “Perhaps, but I hope not.” He turned away from Wick.

  Wick immediately began searching for Lorna. She wasn’t in her bunk, and none of the third-class passengers knew her whereabouts. And she hadn’t gone to Wick’s stateroom looking for him.

  While he was in the stateroom, he spent a few minutes there, then put on his short grey wool coat and grabbed a life jacket, noticing with a pang of alarm that there were several inches of water in the passageway as he went back up on deck.

  Finally he found her, near an entrance to the Verandah Cafe, just aft of the Smoking Lounge. Some of the other passengers, a few of them still in their evening clothes, were seated at the white wicker tables as if confused and awaiting service.

  When Wick approached, he was shocked to see her turn her back on him.

  “Lorna –”

  “I don’t want to see or talk to you again, Erik Kolb.”

  Now he understood, but he didn’t know how she’d found out. And now it hardly mattered. “The ship is going to sink, Lorna.”

  “When the lifeboats are picked up or reach shore –”

  “There aren’t enough lifeboats. Don’t you understand? I want you to go to one of the boats now and –”

  But she was hurrying along the sloping deck away from him, wearing slippers already soaked, her long blue robe fluttering about her ankles. When he followed, she broke into a run.

  Wick ran after her, around people wearing stunned expressions, through clusters of passengers helping each other into life jackets. Sidestepping an old man trying to comfort his sobbing wife, Wick followed Lorna below deck.

  He’d lost sight of her until he turned a corner of a dim passageway, the leather soles of his shoes sloshing on saturated carpet.

  Braithwaite had Lorna by an arm and was trying to get his free hand around her throat.

  Wick charged and knocked both of them to the floor. When Braithwaite tried to scramble to his feet, Wick slammed him across the back of the neck with the heavy canvas life jacket he was still carrying. The next time Braithwaite attempted to get up, he was met by a solid right cross to the chin and fell back unconsious.

  Lorna was leaning against a wall, swaying. Wick supported her. “Whatever my name is, wherever my loyalties lie, I do love you,” he told her. She didn’t resist as he put his woollen coat on her and led her back up on deck and to the nearest of the lifeboats that were being hurriedly loaded.

  As she was about to claim one of the last available places in the boat, she turned and kissed him on the lips, hard. “Come with me, please!”

  “I can’t. I’ll put on my life jacket and wait to be picked up. It shouldn’t be long.”

  She looked out at the calm black sea, then back at Wick.

  “Trust me. There’s nothing to worry about, Lorna.”

  “Promise you’ll come to me when this is over.”

  Wick nodded, then urged her into the boat, not telling her that he and the other passengers who stayed on board were doomed.

  He knew his duty now, and it wasn’t what Braithwaite thought. Wick hurried back to the passageway below deck where he hoped Braithwaite still lay unconscious.

  Things had changed. Water was now over a foot deep in the passageway and rising. Braithwaite was floating face down, and London Times journalist Rob Coyle was standing over him, clutching the roll of film.

  “There were several German agents on board when Titanic sailed,” Coyle said with a smile. “It doesn’t matter anymore to Braithwaite that with Titanic’s passengers abandoning ship, the planned recovery is impossible, and I’ll get credit for delivering the photographs to our superiors in Berlin.” With the hand not gripping the film, he produced a small revolver.

  “I don’t know about any planned recovery and I don’t care,” Wick said. “And what you say might work only if Berlin were at the bottom of the sea. The ship’s sinking fast, and the water’s too cold for anyone to survive long enough to be picked up. You and I are already as dead as Braithwaite.”

  “Don’t forget to include Colonel Brookes among the dead,” Coyle said. “I saw that he went overboard with a fractured skull less than ten minutes ago. And don’t concern yourself about me. I’ve arranged for a guaranteed place in a lifeboat. The only reason you have a little longer to live and I don’t shoot you now is that I don’t want them to find a bullet hole if your body is recovered. You would have succeeded in your task for the British were it not for the woman. You are working for the British, are you not?”

  Instead of answering, Wick charged Coyle. But the water slowed his rush, giving Coyle time to react. He sidestepped and raked the revolver across Wick’s face, then shoved him into the stateroom where Braithwaite’s body had drifted. After closing the door, he grabbed one of the pieces of furniture, a mahogany Chippendale chair, floating in the passageway. Quickly he used it to wedge the door closed from the outside.

  From a lifeboat, Lorna watched Titanic’s stern rise high into the night sky. Then the great ship slid beneath the surface in majestic surrender. It left a vast blank space in the world, as if a city block had suddenly disappeared. The shrill, distant screams of passengers floating in the water reached them for a while over the calm sea, then there was silence but for the lapping of the waves against the drifting boat.

  Lorna knew by now that it didn’t matter if Wick was in the water in his life jacket or still on board. It wasn’t until later that she found in a buttoned pocket of the coat he’d put on her an oil-skin pouch containing what looked like complicated plans, and brief instructions to turn them over to American authorities as soon as she reached land.

  The instructions were signed, “Love eternal, Erik.”

  As soon as possible after Rob Coyle reached New York with the other survivors, he went directly to his contact on the Lower East Side and had the roll of film developed.

  It contained only photographs of a posing, smiling Lorna on board the Titanic, the sun and the moment caught forever in her hair and eyes.

  She looked young in the photos, and in love, the rest of her life stretched before her like bright possibility.