Max Collins - The Titanic Murders

The Verandah Cafe was directly under that portion of the boat deck, its sliding glass doors open.

“Is it chilly enough for some coffee?” Futrelle asked his wife, and she nodded.

But when they peeked into the airy cafe, with its white wicker furniture and ivy-trellised walls, it seemed to have been taken over as an unofficial playroom by nannies and children.

“Or maybe not,” Futrelle said, and May smiled and agreed.

Among the tikes scurrying about was the golden-haired Lorraine Allison, while her nanny Alice in black livery sat nearby at a white wicker table, her male infant charge gurgling and capering on his back on a blanket at her feet. Sitting next to the shapely woman with the broken nose was a ship’s steward, a towheaded young man in his early twenties, spiffy in his white jacket with its gold buttons, his black tie matching his trousers.

Alice and the steward were smiling shyly, talking the same way, accompanied by some batting of female eyelashes and the steward turning his cap in his hands.

“Shipboard romance?” Futrelle whispered to May.

“Why not?” May asked. “She has a nice smile.”

“Almost makes up for the snout.”

His wife slapped his arm playfully, and they moved to the bench along the railing.

Futrelle was gazing out at the smooth waters when May nudged him, saying, “I thought your friend was traveling First-Class.”

“What friend?” Futrelle asked, turning, looking up at the Second-Class passengers lining the boat-deck railing.

And there he was, the ubiquitous John Bertram Crafton, up at the railing, speaking to a rather handsome, bareheaded black-haired man whose thick though well-trimmed mustache curled up in the continental manner.

In a gray topcoat and a brown suit that were not inexpensive, the black-haired man stood between two young boys in sailor suits and knickers, his boys apparently, one lad two or three, the other three or four, with full heads of hair with which the wind was playing havoc. He had an arm around either boy, holding them to him, protectively, eyeing Crafton-who leaned forward with the skin-crawling smile of a rake selling French postcards-regarding the ferrety little man with suspicion and even scorn.

Futrelle heard neither Crafton’s words, nor the black-haired man’s response.

But the pantomime they acted out indicated a response that was incensed to say the least, and apparently included enough blasphemies to justify the apparent father to draw his boys closer to him and cover their ears with his hands and the press of his body.

The emotion of the black-haired man was palpable, and so was his disgust for Crafton: his eyes flared, his face reddened, his body trembled, though his head was held high.

Whirling, his gray topcoat spreading like a cloak, the black-haired man gathered the boys and receded onto the Second-Class boat-deck promenade, out of view.

Crafton took the rejection in stride; he sighed, shrugged to himself, and then he noticed Futrelle below, looking up.

Crafton called out: “Beautiful day at sea, Mr. Futrelle, don’t you agree?”

Futrelle stepped closer, until he was directly below the ferrety little man in the pearl-gray fedora. “Some of us are more at sea than others.”

He shrugged again. “Mr. Hoffman is emotional-you know how Frenchmen are.”

Futrelle wasn’t sure he did know how Frenchmen were; but he did know they weren’t often named “Hoffman.”

“Are those his boys?” Futrelle asked.

“Oh yes. He does love his Lolo and Momon. He loves them more than anything.”

“And how is it, Mr. Crafton, that such a First-Class individual as you finds himself in Second Class?”

The ship was strictly segregated-the First Class was no more allowed in Second or Third than vice versa.

“Just slumming, Mr. Futrelle. I wonder-could you find some time for me? Just a few short minutes? I have a business proposition.”

“What sort of business, Mr. Crafton? Are you a publisher?”

“One of my interests is publishing, yes. Could I have just five minutes? No more, perhaps less.”

May had come up next to her husband; he glanced at her, and she was frowning, shaking her head, no, almost imperceptibly.

“All right,” Futrelle said.

May sighed.

Crafton called down: “Shall we say the A-deck balcony in… ten minutes? Would that be agreeable?”

“I’ll be there, Mr. Crafton. Then we’ll see how agreeable it is.”

Crafton tipped his fedora and withdrew.

May said, “Why are you giving that awful little man the time of day?”

“He’s been making people angry all day,” Futrelle said. “Why should I deny myself that pleasure?”

“You’ve seen how people react to his ‘business propositions,’ whatever they are. He’s obviously an odious creature.”

“I know. I’m just eager to find out how, exactly.”

Futrelle and May walked down the portside promenade, and he used the few minutes before his appointment to tell his wife about the offer Ismay had made.

“Well, I think it’s a wonderful idea,” she said, as they walked arm in arm.

“You don’t find it the least bit… base? Using the pages of a novel to advertise Mr. Ismay’s ship?”

“It would make a wonderful setting for an adventure story… maybe something about a jewel thief, perhaps international intrigue….”

“He’s suggesting I use my fiction to advertise his product!”

“You sell stories to magazines all the time, and newspapers-and the editors pepper ads all around your tales, don’t they?”

“But you can tell where the story ends and the ad begins.”

“Don’t be stuffy, Jack. We could write it together.”

He and May had collaborated on one “Thinking Machine” short story, and it had been successful enough, appearing in Sunday supplements all across America. And May had published her first novel, A Secretary of Frivolous Affairs, last year, and it had sold well in both England and America.

“We have been looking for the right idea to do together, as a novel,” he admitted.

“Well, then,” she said brightly, “let’s at least consider this one. We don’t need to give Mr. Ismay an answer just yet-but as we enjoy ourselves on this wonderful ship, we’ll just keep a keen writer’s eye on the possibilities it presents.”

They entered the A-deck reception area, where natural light was filtering down through an immense domed skylight, a marvel of wrought-iron scrollwork and white-enameled glass with a crystal chandelier at its center. This sifted sunlight reflected off the polished oak-wall paneling and the gilt-decorated wrought-iron balustrades of the balcony and Grand Staircase, giving the room a glow at once romantic and ghostly.

Futrelle walked May to the electric lifts behind the staircase, saying, “I’ll join you in our stateroom in just a few minutes.”

“Now, Jack, don’t you strike that blackguard,” she said, her expression stern.

Then just as the lift steward was closing the cage door, she added, “Unless he deserves it.”

Patting the fanny of the cherub perched at the pedestal at the foot of the middle handrail, Futrelle jogged up the wide marble stairway. He paused on the landing to admire the intricate wood sculpture of the central panel bearing a round Roman-numeral clock, on either side of which leaned a nymph-classical figures carved there by an artisan of unimaginable skill: Honor and Glory crowning Time.

Not the most fitting sentiment to carry into a meeting with John Bertram Crafton, he would guess; the stairs forked right and left, and he went right, because Crafton was standing up there, leaning against the railing.

“How good of you to meet with me,” Crafton said as Futrelle joined him on the balcony. A pair of overstuffed chairs and a small table waited by a window that would have looked out onto the boat deck had its glass not been cathedral gray. Swinging his gold-tipped walking stick, Crafton strode there and Futrelle followed, their heels echoing off the fancy cream-colored tile.