The Lusitania Murders (7 page)

If the Second Cabin staircase may not have been as grand as the one in Saloon, the structure could only be deemed impressively handsome, on its own terms.

Third Class was no dark, cramped hold stuffed with human bilge, rather a functional if austere succession of bare-bones public rooms—the dining room was like a gymnasium with tables—that made no attempt to fool passengers into thinking they were in a fine hotel or country home. Massive painted expanses of steel bared the ship’s every rivet, every bolt; but the spartan cabins were both spotless and spacious, and on the bunks were bedspreads bearing the distinctive Cunard crest—a lion rampant with a globe.

“That’s a handsome touch,” I said.

Anderson grinned and shook his head. “I’m afraid that’s not intended to dress up the cabin, Mr. Van Dine. . . . We mean to discourage passengers from helping themselves to the bedding, when they head to shore.”

The passengers I saw in Third Class, however, were not of the stereotypical sort one might expect in steerage—no tired, poor, huddling masses. No, these travellers seemed to be an Anglo-Saxon lot, Britons mostly, but a good share of Germans, too, skilled or semiskilled workmen. These were practical men, with limited funds, interested not in Grand Staircases and electric elevators and smoking rooms, but clean quarters and edible food and cheap passage.

The degree to which all of this had been thought through by the ship’s designers could be seen in the very columns throughout the ship—in Saloon, they were (as has been noted) Corinthian; in Second Cabin, an elegant Doric; and in Third Class, the cleanly simple Ionian.

Though I could hardly be shown every nook and cranny, Anderson’s tour of the Big
Lucy
was surprisingly complete.
*
On the lowest deck, from the periphery, I witnessed the care and feeding of the liner’s huge furnaces, courtesy of men in dungarees and boots and blackened faces, using rags knotted round their necks to occasionally wipe their faces, somehow thriving in a cavern of blistering heat and blinding coal dust.

Anderson pointed out the engineers and firemen and stokers and trimmers—the “dirty gang,” he dubbed them—and over the satanic roar he explained the jobs of each; but I couldn’t make sense of it, just as I couldn’t understand how any man could consign himself to such a hell, in trade for mere existence. It took only moments for the scorching heat and the sticky coal dust to compel me to request that we end this portion of the tour.

Part of me knew I should have pressed for a view of the cargo holds down here—this was where, my employer Rumely had speculated, any contraband would be kept—but I preferred to allow Anderson to escort me out of this hades, with the goal of eventually returning to the heaven that was Saloon Class.

Before completing our tour, Staff Captain Anderson—having shown me around the various classes of the ship—suggested we conclude on Deck C, the Shelter Deck, where many of the services and facilities of the ship were located.

“A liner is like a city,” Anderson said, “and we have the same sort of needs as any modern metropolis.”

I was rather tired of this process by now, but not wanting to be rude—and cognizant of the need to stay in the captain’s good graces—I put up with a mundane survey of various offices, the seldom-used brig, the hospitals (male and female) and of course the dreaded nursery.

The latter included a children’s dining saloon, and we had moved thankfully through that madness of magpies and were heading down a short corridor that opened onto the Grand Entrance and the elevators, when voices behind a door marked STEWARD’S PANTRY caught my attention.

The voices were speaking in German (one of my several languages), and—though the closed door muffled it, somewhat—I distinctly heard: “We should hide the camera.”

As I paused, touching his sleeve, Anderson turned to me quizzically, and I whispered, “Do you employ Germans on your staff?”

Several voices behind that door were audible now, speaking in German, but too soft to make out the words.

Anderson gave me a sharp look, and motioned for me to stand to one side, which I did.

Then the staff captain opened the door on three men in stewards’ whites, huddled within the small pantry, surrounded by shelved canned goods and other foodstuffs. They were young men—a skinny tallish brown-haired one, a shorter broad-shouldered very blonde fellow and a rather average one, whose hair shade was somewhere between that of his companions—and two of them froze,
chatter ceasing. The shorter one had his back to Anderson, and as he turned, he began, in German, “About time—”

But Anderson was clearly not who these fellows were expecting.

And the wide-eyed fellow who had just swivelled indeed held in his hands a camera.

Before Anderson could pose a question, the man with the camera barrelled at him, thrusting him out of the doorway and against the corridor wall, staggering the staff captain with both surprise and power.

The brawny blonde fellow, clutching his camera, moved right past me—or tried to: I stuck my foot out, and he tripped, diving gracelessly into the linoleum, his precious cargo flying. I fell upon him, inserting a knee in his back and looping an arm around his neck, incapacitating him.

From the corner of my eye I witnessed Anderson deliver a fist to the chin of the skinny one, who’d come scrambling out after his compatriot’s break for it, knocking him back into the pantry, presumably into the other fellow (this I adjudged from sounds, as I could not see that action from my vantage point).

Reinforcements seemed to appear immediately, including the master-at-arms, whose name was Williams, and a steward named Leach—the pantry was his province, and the young man was shocked to find it crawling with German stowaways.

For that, apparently, was what the trio was—and spies to boot, if the camera meant what it seemed to.

The master-at-arms took my prisoner off my hands, and hauled him back to the pantry, where soon all three were locked inside, awaiting further decisions.

The first one came from Anderson, who said to Williams, “Fetch the ship’s detective.”

Breathing hard, I said, “I wasn’t aware the ship had a detective.”

Anderson explained that no detective was on staff; Cunard hired Pinkertons and sometimes made arrangements with travelling Scotland Yard or New York Police Department men. On this trip, however, it was a Pink.

“You’ve already met her,” Anderson said, eyes atwinkle.

And I didn’t need the deductive powers of Philomina Vance to figure out whom he meant.

FIVE
Tourist Trade

Within five minutes, Miss Vance had arrived, still fetchingly hatless and attired in tan cotton pongee. Her first request was to gain access to the pantry, behind the closed door of which the three stowaways were at the moment stowed.

“Did you search the pantry,” she asked Anderson rather sternly, “before confining them?”

“No,” he said, taken aback by the query. “Should I have?”

“There is no telling,” she said, her manner as coolly professional as a doctor examining a patient whose symptoms were troubling, “how long this trio had been left to their own devices in there.”

She meant the pantry.

“That’s true,” Anderson admitted.

“They had plenty of time to secrete a weapon or even an explosive device. You may have just thrown Brer Rabbit into the briar patch, Captain.”

I have to give Anderson credit: Some men wouldn’t have taken such criticism, coming from a woman; but the staff captain was a bigger man than that.

“You’re correct,” he said, shaking his head. “I was a fool. . . . Williams!”

The master-at-arms, short but sturdy with dark eyes and dark thick eyebrows, snapped to; he had the confiscated camera in hand. “Yes, sir.”

“Get your revolver.”

The dark eyes flared, but the man said, “Yes, sir.”

“Handcuffs, too.”

“Yes, sir.”

Miss Vance was nodding approvingly.

We were clustered in the compact hallway, a group of men providing a court for this commanding woman. In addition to myself and the staff captain (and the now absent Williams), steward Neil Leach—a brown-haired, blue-eyed, pasty-white fellow in his middle twenties with crooked front teeth and an eager manner—stood on the periphery.

“Who is allocated to this pantry?” Miss Vance asked.

Leach spoke up. “I am, ma’am. . . . Actually, I’m in charge of the children’s dining saloon—this is their pantry.”

She nodded. “And do you keep a supply of stewards’ uniforms in there, along with foodstuffs?”

The hint of sarcasm-laced accusation in her tone was not lost on Leach, who blushed and began to fluster. “Why, no, ma’am, of course not . . .”

Anderson stood up for the lad. “A supply closet is a few steps from here, Miss Vance. And various stewards’ offices are all in this area of the ship.”

“That’s right, ma’am,” Leach said, still flushed. “And
our sleeping quarters, all of us stewards, are only one floor down . . . just forward of where we stand.”

“Mr. Leach,” Anderson said to the shaken steward, “perhaps you should get back to your duties.”

“Yes, sir.”

The sound of children making their usual squall indicated Anderson’s decision was a wise one.

When Leach had gone, Anderson said to Miss Vance, “I can vouch for Mr. Leach. His uncle is a good friend of mine.”

Miss Vance seemed unimpressed.

Anderson went on: “The boy’s a law student—he got stranded on vacation in New York, and I’m helping his uncle, or rather young Neil, to get to England to take his final examinations.”

“That’s all well and good,” she said. “But these stowaways were waiting in your trusted steward’s pantry, wearing stewards’ uniforms themselves.”

“For pity’s sake, Miss Vance,” Anderson said, clearly exasperated. “His father’s an English judge.”

Anderson could not understand that Americans like Miss Vance (and myself) were not as impressed with pedigrees as the English.

“Is Mr. Leach an experienced hand?” she asked.

“No—this is his first voyage.” Anderson explained to her what he had to me: that he was short-staffed, that many able-bodied seamen had been shanghaied, in effect, by the Royal Navy.

“Then we’ll keep an eye on young Leach,” she said. “After all, these three got aboard somehow. . . . Where’s your brig?”

“On this deck, aft,” Anderson said. “Down near the hospital rooms.”

“How many cells?”

“One large cell, four bunks.”

She nodded her approval.

“What did you mean,” I asked, coming in off the sidelines, “they may have explosives?”

“It’s entirely possible,” she said, “that spies such as these, in addition to using their camera to take pictures, say, of the rumored guns aboard—”

“There are none,” Anderson interrupted, obviously peeved.

“They wouldn’t know that, Captain,” she said. “In any case, spies who had taken their incriminating pictures, with the aid of greedy crew members, might well plant a bomb aboard a ship like this one, and then—stowaways and crew conspirators, alike—jump ship.”

“What, in the middle of the Atlantic?” Anderson asked, as if all of this seemed patently preposterous.

“No,” she said calmly. “Just off the shore of Ireland . . . close enough to be picked up by rowboat, or even to swim for it.”

Anderson had nothing to say to this all too plausible theory.

“They could have already placed their explosive,” I pointed out.

She brushed a blonde tendril from her face, as if she were impatient with it—or was that with me? “Yes—but I doubt they’ve engaged any timing device, as yet. Too many uncertainties about exactly when we might arrive.”

It was obvious Anderson was taking all of this seriously now. He said, “You omit one rather dire possibility, Miss Vance.”

“And what would that be?”

“Perhaps they aren’t planning to wait until they near
shore. Perhaps they have already planted their device, and set their timer . . . because they intend to go over the side in a lifeboat, and be plucked from the seas by a U-boat.”

I frowned. “That’s a bit romantic, isn’t it?”

But both Anderson and Miss Vance gave me sharply sober looks that said otherwise.

“With all due respect,” I said, “surely you’re leaping to unfounded conclusions.”

“These are not conclusions, Mr. Van Dine,” the female private detective said. “They are possibilities . . . all too credible, I’m afraid.”

“But this is a passenger ship,” I insisted. “I’ve seen for myself that there are no guns aboard.” I looked imploringly at Anderson. “Please tell me the
Lusitania
is not transporting munitions!”

“We are not,” he said. But then he added, “We do have limited materials that might be considered contraband, by some . . .”

That was a fascinating admission; under other circumstances, I would have been grateful for it.

“. . . but the point is, the Germans are desperate to halt the export of munitions and other war supplies to Britain and her allies. Just because this ship is not at this moment doing so, that doesn’t remove the threat of such in the future . . . or of the
Lusitania
’s ability to be easily converted into a battle cruiser.”

“Disabling a British steamer of this size,” Miss Vance said, shaking her head somberly, “would be most desirable for the Germans . . . making this ship an obvious target for saboteurs.”

I was pondering that disturbing fact—and it seemed a fact to me now, not just an opinion—when
Master-at-Arms Williams returned with his revolver. He seemed nervous, his forehead beaded with sweat.

Miss Vance held out her hand, and smiled sweetly at him, as if accepting a dance at a ball. “May I?”

Williams looked curiously at the staff captain, who said, “Go ahead—she’s the ship’s official detective, after all.”

She took the revolver into her graceful, ungloved hand, and the bulky weapon seemed shockingly at home there. She even smiled down at it, as if welcoming an old friend.

“When I have the drop on them,” she said to Anderson softly, almost a whisper, “I’ll stay in the doorway. You and Mr. Williams and Mr. Van Dine rush in and quickly search the men, head to foot—pat them down for weapons.”