The Titanic Murders (22 page)

He gave Futrelle half a smile. “Perhaps this is my idea of a good time.”

“Glutton for punishment, are you?”

The oak and marble of the stairway was all around him. “I’ve seen this vessel grow, from a design on a cocktail napkin to construction in the shipyard, frame by frame, plate after plate, day upon day, for two long years.”

“And you’re a proud father.”

“Oh yes—but a typically fussy one. Have you noticed that the pebble dashing on the promenade decks is simply too damned dark?”

“No.”

“I have.” Andrews grinned as the staircase emptied them into the aft reception area on C deck. “It’s my curse, and blessing. An argument between stewardesses, a defective electric fan… no concern too trivial, no job too small.”

“Including ushering me into Third Class.”

“Are you free yet to tell me what this is about, Jack?”

“You’ll have to get that from the captain, Tom. You may be this baby’s parent, but Captain Smith is her headmaster.”

Andrews used one of his many keys to unlock a door between the First-Class C-deck corridor, leading into the
Second-Class enclosed promenade, where protected from the wind and cold, a number of passengers were seated on benches, enjoying the glassy gray view. A few were on deck chairs, bundled only lightly in a blanket, reading books or writing letters.

“I’ve called ahead and Davies should be waiting for us,” Andrews said, as they stepped outside, onto the deck and into the chill air. They moved down the metal stairs, into and through the open well that was the Third-Class promenade, where the benches were empty, and only a few children of ten or eleven were braving the brisk weather, chasing each other, squealing with delight. Futrelle had a flash of his own son and daughter at that age, and felt a bittersweet pang of loss.

Under the poop-deck roof and through a door to the left of the wide, five-banistered flight of metal stairs down into the Third-Class aft cabins, Andrews led Futrelle into the General Room, the steerage equivalent of a lounge.

About forty by forty, the sterile white-enameled walls were dressed up with framed White Star Line posters promising pleasure cruises these passengers were unlikely ever to take; the sturdy yellowish-brown teakwood double-sided benches, built around pillars, were brimming with a shipboard melting pot, though not much melting was going on. Various languages being spoken by isolated groups within the room floated like clouds of words, English and German mostly, but Finnish, Italian and Swedish too, and Far Eastern languages that Futrelle could not identity.

But these were not pitiful huddling masses. They were men and women, from their late teens to old age, many gathered in family groupings, not even shabbily dressed, simply working people heading to a new land for new work. The undeniable smell—not quite a stench—of body odor had to do with steerage’s
limited bathing facilities, not the emigrants’ lack of grooming. A piano seemed to be the only possible source of entertainment, though it stood silent at the moment.

A steward in a gold-buttoned white uniform approached Andrews and said something to him that Futrelle could not hear, over the babble.

Andrews turned to Futrelle. “We’ve found Davies. They have him waiting next door, in the Smoking Room.”

As Futrelle followed Andrews across the room, it was as if he were crossing border upon border, so rapidly and frequently did the language shift. Then through a doorway into the Third-Class Smoking Room, the atmosphere changed.

It was quiet in here—men were smoking, playing cards, in an agreeably masculine room with dark-stained oak-paneled walls and long, room-spanning back-to-back teak benches, and, scattered about, tables-for-four with chairs. If the inlaid-pearl mahogany world of the First-Class Smoking Room was an exclusive men’s club, this was a lodge hall.

The room was only sparsely attended, but that was natural: the small adjacent bar hadn’t opened yet; too early in the day. The only languages Futrelle caught were English and German.

A strapping young man in a well-worn but not threadbare black sack coat over a green woolen sweater sat alone at one of the tables, turning his black cap in his hands like a wheel. Clean-shaven, with a round, almost babyish countenance, his brown hair was already thinning, though he couldn’t be more than twenty-four or -five years of age.

“I believe that’s your man,” Andrews said, nodding toward the lad. “I suppose I should keep my distance while you talk to him.”

“It embarrasses me to ask that of you,” Futrelle admitted, “but yes.”

“I’ll take a seat in the General Room.”

Andrews headed out as Futrelle approached the table and the burly young man rose.

The mystery writer asked, “Son, are you Alfred Davies?”

“Yes, sir,” he said. His voice was a pleasant tenor. He smiled shyly, displaying the crooked yellowed teeth so common to his class and country. “Did the captain send you, sir?”

“Yes, he did.”

“About the nurse them people is usin’?”

“That’s right.”

Davies let out an enormous sigh, shaking his head. “ ’Tis a relief, sir. I was afraid me message didn’t get to ’im… or that them above thought I was some lyin’ or some such.”

“My name is Jack Futrelle.” He extended his hand and the boy took and shook it; though Davies didn’t make a show of it, power lay in those hands and the arms and shoulders that went with them. “Let’s sit, shall we, son, and talk?”

“Yes, sir,” the boy said, and sat. “If you don’t mind my askin’, sir, what’s your job with the ship?”

“I’m working for Captain Smith on a matter of ship’s security.”

He nodded; the soft, childlike features seemed incongruous next to that massive frame. “I see, sir. Well, then, you’d be the man to talk to, then, sir.”

“You have information about the Allisons’ nanny—Alice Cleaver?”

“I don’t know the family’s name, sir, but if it’s the hatchet-faced wench I saw up on the boat deck, yes, sir, Alice Cleaver, sir.”

“You were up on the boat deck?”

“No! We stay on our side of the chain, sir. But from the well deck y’kin see up top. And it’s hard to mistake her, with that puss of hers, sir. Stop a clock, it would.”

Futrelle grinned. “Maybe so. But the rest of her could start a dead man’s heart beating again.”

Davies returned the grin. “I guess that’s why God made the dark, sir.”

From his inside suit coat pocket, Futrelle removed his gold-plated cigarette case, offered a Fatima to the boy, who refused, then lighted one up for himself. “Where do you hail from, son?”

“West Bromwich, sir—Harwood Street.”

“You boarded at Southampton, I take it.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And are you bound for New York, or points west?”

“Points west, sir. Place called Michigan—Pontiac, Michigan.”

“What takes you there?”

“Me two brothers are working there, in the motorcar works. They say we can get jobs, too, good ones. Y’see, sir, we lost our jobs at the smelting works.”

Smelting again—Guggenheim’s business in First Class, Davies’s business in Third.

Davies went on: “Me old dad’s been a galvanizer since the Lord was in the manger. All us Davieses are ironworks men—puddlers, copula workers, the like. But times at home is gettin’ hard, sir—you’re American, sir?”

“Born and raised.”

“
Is
it the promised land, sir?”

Futrelle blew out a stream of smoke, laughing gently. “As close as anything on this earth might come, son.”

“I’m travelin’ with my other two brothers—John and Joseph—and we’ll send for our families, soon as we get settled.”

They were hitting it off well—young Davies treating Futrelle respectfully, but feeling comfortable enough to say whatever was on his mind. So Futrelle stepped forward gingerly into the next topic…

“Alfred—may I call you Alfred?”

“Me mates call me Fred.”

“All right, Fred.” But Futrelle didn’t give the boy leave to call him “Jack”: the writer liked the deference he was being paid; it gave him the upper hand.

“Fred, this information you have about Alice Cleaver.”

“Yes, sir?”

“The captain took your note to mean you expected to be paid for sharing what you know.”

“No, sir! This isn’t about money a’tall, sir. It’s about babbies.”

Futrelle suppressed a smile at the pronunciation, but the sincerity in the lad’s eyes was unmistakable.

“Well, then, tell me, son. What is it you know?”

He leaned forward, the cap on the table, his hands folded almost as if he were praying. “Dad and Mum raised me to read and write, sir. I may work with me hands, but I like to read a book now and again, and of course the newspaper.”

Encouraging words to the ears of a journalist like Futrelle, but he wasn’t sure what it had to do with anything.

“’Twas in January, must’ve been 1910, no—aught nine—such a terrible thing.” He was shaking his head; his eyes were wide and staring into bad memories. “Plate layers, workin’ the North London Railway, they found something terrible sad.”

“What did they find, son?”

“A babby. A dead babby… a poor pitiful dead boy, who they say was tossed from a movin’ train, the night afore. They arrested a Tottenham woman for the crime—it was her babby boy, y’see, her own son—and she wailed to the sky she was innocent, said she gived up the child weeks afore to a orphanage run by a ‘Mrs. Gray,’ I think the papers said… you’d have to check that… but there was no orphanage and there was no ‘Mrs. Gray.’ They convicted her, and only then she copped, ’cause it come out that her boyfriend, who’d put her in the family way, had run off and left her and the little one to fend for themselves.”

The lad sighed, slowly shaking his head at the horror of it.

Sitting forward, chilled, Futrelle said, “And this woman, this mother who murdered her infant son… is
Alice Cleaver
? The nanny entrusted with the Allisons’ children?”

He nodded. “It was in the papers day upon day. ’Twas a story you followed. They put her picture in, and it’s not a face a man would likely forget, is it, sir?”

“No it’s not. Why in God’s name isn’t she in prison?”

“The jury asked for leniency, the judge took pity on her. She was a wronged woman, His Honor said, and hers was a desperate act. Her livin’ with the memory of what she done was punishment enough, he said. She was set free.”

Futrelle was flabbergasted; he stabbed out his cigarette in a glass White Star ashtray. “How could she have ended up the Allisons’ nanny with that in her past?”

The lad threw his hands in the air, his eyes wide with the conundrum. “I don’t know, sir. If you lived in England, you’d likely know about the case.”

“That may explain it—the Allisons were just visiting London; they’re Canadian.”

“Sir, has anyone else said anything of this sad business to you? Your British passengers?”

“It’s mostly Americans, in First Class, son… and the few British among us are not likely to read the same papers as you. And even so, the only stories they’d be inclined to ‘follow’ would focus on themselves.”

Davies hung his head. “P’rhaps ’twas wrong to point this out, a’tall. P’rhaps the poor pitiful woman only wants what we all want, down here in the hindquarters of this great ship: a new life, another chance.”

Futrelle nodded gravely. “The promised land.”

Then Davies looked up and his dark eyes were burning in his baby face. “But the little babby she’s carryin’ in her arms, it deserves a
first
chance, don’t it? And with a crazy woman, a child killer, lookin’ after the wee one… well, it just don’t seem right, sir.”

“No it doesn’t… You’re a good man, Fred.”

“Sir, I hope to have children of my own, someday, and soon.” The crooked smile turned shy; it was strangely ingratiating. “Monday last, day afore we left, I was married at Oldbury parish church—April eighth—to the prettiest girl in West Bromwich.”

“Well, congratulations. Is your bride aboard this ship, son?”

“No, she’s moved in with her mum till I can send for her.” He laughed. “Y’know, we almost missed the boat! Got the wrong train out of West Bromwich, barely made it aboard, me brothers and uncle and me. But I’ve always been a lucky sod… sir.”

Futrelle stood. “I hope you do find the promised land, son.”

Davies stood, too. “Thank you, sir. I hope I done the right thing, tellin’. Couldn’t stand the thought of her hurtin’ another babby.”

Futrelle nodded; they shook hands again, and the mystery writer joined Andrews in the General Room, where someone was playing the piano—some lively English music-hall number—while many of the emigrants clapped along.

“Success?” Andrews said.

“Of a sort,” Futrelle said.

The clapping around him was almost like applause.

Almost.

TEN

SHIPBOARD SÉANCE

E
VEN FOR THE
TITANIC,
THE
Reading and Writing Room spoke of uncommon elegance. Situated on A deck, just forward of the ornate First-Class Lounge (of which it was a virtual extension), the high-ceilinged Georgian-styled chamber, with its plush armchairs and sofas upholstered in pink-and-red floral design, its wall-to-wall deep red carpet, its sheltering potted palms, made an ideal retreat for the ladies.