Max Collins - The Titanic Murders

“We built a farmhouse to our specifications,” Hudson said. “We’ll be moving in, as soon as we get back. Bess decorated it herself. She has a real eye.”

But the thread of the conversation had been lost, and Futrelle had to say, “Where do Mr. Crafton and horses come into play?”

“Oh! That’s why we were in England. On a horse-buying trip. Mr. Crafton is very interested in horses, and seems quite knowledgeable on the subject.”

Probably from the track, Futrelle thought, but only smiled politely.

The steward arrived with the cups of bouillon for the Futrelles. The nanny glanced over and the secret little look she and the steward exchanged was neither as secret nor as little as they thought.

Later, as Futrelle escorted May down a C-deck corridor, back to their stateroom, she said, “You were right about that shipboard romance.”

“I hope the lad doesn’t get into trouble for fraternizing.”

“I should think not. Alice isn’t a passenger, exactly. Did you notice the evil eye she was giving Crafton?”

“No,” Futrelle said. “Are you sure it wasn’t just her natural expression?”

“Now, Jack, she’d be quite an attractive young woman if she hadn’t…”

“Run into a door?”

“You’re terrible. What time is your appointment?”

Futrelle was signed up for the full treatment at the Turkish Bath, which was for women mornings, men afternoons.

“In about fifteen minutes. What do you have on for this afternoon?”

“I intend to take a good old-fashioned American bath, in the tub we’ve been provided thanks to the generous auspices of J. Bruce Ismay. We’re sitting at the captain’s table this evening, and surely you don’t expect me to be ready in a flash.”

“No. But I do think that with the several hours at your disposal, you’ll be able to make yourself presentable.”

She slapped his arm, and kissed his mouth, and-as they had now arrived at their stateroom-allowed her husband to unlock the door for her, before he went off to partake of the Titanic ’s most arcane ritual.

The Turkish Bath-with its willingly hot steam room followed by male attendants providing full-body massage, exfoliation and shampoo-was an outlandish excess even for this ship. The cooling room was a Moorish fantasy of carved Cairo curtains (disguising portholes), blue-and-green tiled walls, gilded beams, crimson ceiling, hanging bronze lamps, blue-and-white mosaic floor, inlaid Damascus coffee tables, and low-slung couches and chairs with Moroccan-motif upholstery.

It was in this bizarrely exotic chamber that Futrelle again came upon the omnipresent Crafton, this time towel-draped, reclining on a couch next to a similarly lounging and towel-wrapped John Jacob Astor. Whether Crafton was attempting blackmail-as he had with Futrelle-or simply cozying up to the millionaire-as he had with the Allisons-was not clear.

The reason for the uncertainty was Astor himself: his expression remained lifeless, his sky-blue eyes joyless, even bored, blinking only when steam room sweat found its way into them. And as the fast-talking Crafton continued his spiel-telling Astor about the benefits of becoming a Crafton “client,” perhaps-Astor remained as mute as the Sphinx he had so recently visited.

Once again, Crafton noticed Futrelle, turned white as his towel, and fled into the adjacent room, where the saltwater swimming bath represented the final step of the Turkish treatment.

Futrelle, pleasantly exhausted from his massage, skin flecked with beads of perspiration, reclining in his own towel on his own Moroccan couch, considered striking up a conversation with Astor. But never having met this man, whose station was so above his own, Futrelle felt uncomfortable doing so, and didn’t.

And by the time Futrelle entered the room Crafton had fled into, where the swimming bath-thirty feet long and half again as wide-took up almost the entire space, the little blackmailer had vanished.

At dinner in the First-Class Dining Saloon, the distance between Astor and Futrelle lessened in a number of ways.

First of all, they were seated across from each other at the captain’s table, which was at the forward end of the center section of the vast dining room with its white walls and warm oak furnishings.

Second, Astor proved to be a devotee of Futrelle’s fiction, and twinkling life found its way into the millionaire’s somber eyes when he learned the creator of the Thinking Machine was sitting next to him.

“You combine mystery and scientific thinking in a unique manner, sir,” Astor said, in a clipped, oddly metallic voice.

“Thank you, Mr. Astor.”

“Please, Jacques,” he said, and something like warmth came over the cold features. “Call me Colonel.”

Futrelle almost laughed, then realized the man wasn’t joking.

“Thank you, Colonel. And I’m not Jacques, to my friends, but Jack.”

“Mother-of-pearl, Astor,” a raucous female voice asked, “are you tellin’ me you’re so far around the bend you think ‘Colonel’ is your first name?”

Eyes turned toward a slightly heavyset, pleasant-looking woman in her mid-forties with beautiful sky-blue eyes almost identical in color to Astor’s. She wore a burgundy silk-satin ball dress with glass beading and a feathered hat about the size and shape of a garbage-can lid a milk wagon rolled over. Her name was Maggie Brown, more formally Margaret, more formally still Mrs. James Joseph Brown of Denver, in honor of the gold-mining tycoon husband who cheerfully funded her travels in absentia.

Astor looked momentarily taken aback, then roared with laughter. “Where would I be without you to put me in my place, Maggie?”

And this seemed to be Maggie Brown’s function in Astor’s life; Futrelle would soon learn that the social-climbing matron who’d traded Denver for Newport had been rejected by much of society, but Astor had adopted her as a sort of mascot, perhaps because the Four Hundred had turned up their noses at him and his young bride.

“Where would you be without me as your guide, Astor? Tryin’ to figure out a way to walk with both feet in your mouth, I’d reckon.”

Astor laughed heartily, and the attractive young Mrs. Astor, seated beside him, laughed, too-politely. Madeline wore a black silk-net beaded overdress designed not to draw attention to that “delicate condition” of hers.

The others seated at the captain’s table included May, on Futrelle’s other side, decked out in a pink silk-satin evening gown, white pearls nestling at the hollow of her slender neck. Next to May was Maggie Brown, and across the table, next to the Astors, was the shipbuilder Thomas Andrews, a soft-spoken gentleman with the rugged build of an athlete and the sensitive features of an artist.

At the far end of the table sat Ismay, playing host, while at the head of the table, of course, in a formal blue uniform bedecked with medals, sat the captain-Edward J. Smith, the beloved E. J., the so-called millionaire’s captain, a favorite of wealthy, socially prominent frequent transatlantic passengers, many of whom wouldn’t think of crossing the ocean with anyone else at the helm.

Smith was like a fiction writer’s notion of a steamship captain-an unimaginative fiction writer at that, Futrelle thought, who would himself never dream of painting so cliched a portrait: clear-eyed, stern-visaged, square jaw dusted with a perfectly trimmed snow-white beard, Smith was taller than most of his crew and as solidly built as a boiler-room stoker.

Where Captain Smith varied from the cliche of his own somewhat forbidding appearance was an avuncular manner that included a ready smile, rather urbane manners and a soothingly pleasant, softly modulated voice.

“Colonel Astor has every right to his rank, Mrs. Brown,” the captain pointed out to her gently. “How many men in the Colonel’s position would have traded the comfort and safety of their homes for the battlefield?”