Max Collins - The Titanic Murders

Which was the song Wallace Hartley’s band began to play.

“That’s my request!” Maggie squealed with delight. “I sent that up there on a napkin!”

Up front, tables were being moved aside to make room for dancing. The room was starting to clear out, leaving only the younger and/or more daring passengers.

Maggie clutched the millionaire’s hand, like she was falling off a cliff, reaching for a branch. “Hey, cowboy-how’s about dancin’ with an old Rocky Mountain belle?”

He glanced at his blonde companion, who granted permission with a regal nod and smile, and Guggenheim walked Maggie Brown up to the impromptu dance floor.

As they cut a rug together, fairly stylish at that, Madame Aubert said, “You don’t think it’s possible? Could Ben and that woman, ever have…?”

“No,” Futrelle said flatly.

But in their stateroom, Futrelle said to May, “Oh, they were an item all right.”

“Maggie Brown and Ben Guggenheim,” she said, shaking her head, pleasantly amazed. “Who’d have thought it?”

“Well, I don’t think Madame Aubert has much to worry about her meal ticket, tonight. That was too many years, and too many pounds ago.”

May was sitting on the edge of their brass bed. “Pauline Aubert is quite the beauty. She was very nice, but not too revealing about herself and Mr. Guggenheim.”

Futrelle sat next to her. “So you didn’t find anything out about Ben and Crafton.”

“Not from her, but when Maggie sat down, the facts began to fly. Or anyway, they did when Pauline excused herself to use the ladies’ room, and Maggie began rattling off a litany of Ben Guggenheim’s mistresses-there was a Marquise de Cerruti, this showgirl, that secretary, even a slender red-haired nurse who lived in their mansion with them! Just in case his ‘chronically neuralgic’ head needed a massage….”

“A man never knows when he’s going to need a massage.”

“Husbands had best get their massages at home.”

“Sounds like Ben was at home.”

“Keep that up, and you’ll need a nurse… Maggie says before he married his wife-Florette-he had his way with the most beautiful Jewish girls in Manhattan, and his share of gentiles, too.”

“I gather it’s a marriage of family fortunes.”

“Of convenience, yes. I didn’t bring Crafton up, but I doubt a man so openly living his double life can be victimized by any blackmailer.”

“I agree,” Futrelle said, and he told her of his conversation on the A-deck promenade with Guggenheim.

May rose to the dresser and took out her nightgown. She began undressing, asking, “Coming to bed, Jack?”

“Possibly. I’m suddenly getting the urge for a massage….”

“Maybe tomorrow morning… ‘cowboy.’”

He decided not to share with her Guggenheim’s opinion of morning lovemaking.

“I still haven’t spoken to that fellow Stead,” Futrelle said, and went to the door. “Archie Butt told me the old boy’s been keeping to his stateroom. But I understand he’s been down to the Smoking Room, this time of night, once or twice.”

“Go on and see if he’s there.” She was in her nightgown, a vision. “I’ll read till you get back.”

“You don’t have to wait up.”

She drew back the bedspread, the sheets. “I’ll want a detailed report-if nothing else, just to make sure you aren’t out with one of your many mistresses… I’ll be under the covers with The Virginian. ”

He let her have the last word-with two writers in the family, such surrenders were occasionally necessary-and wondered if the Ben Guggenheims of the world would still stray, if they had married for love instead of finance. The only answer he came up with, as he walked down the corridor, was that he couldn’t imagine being with any woman but May; then he was at the aft staircase and walked up the two flights to A deck.

The private men’s club that was the Titantic ’s Smoking Room was filled with blue smoke and drinking men and a dull din of conversation. The frequenters of this mahogany-walled male preserve were still in evening dress, for the most part, having come directly from either dinner or the concert. The marble-topped tables were home to bridge and poker games and, though gambling was not legal, paper money littered the tables like confetti. A few tables were given over strictly to conversation, and at one of these-two actually, which had been butted together-William T. Stead was holding court.

The absurdity brought a smile to Futrelle’s lips. Not just listening but enraptured were these men of finance and politics and wealth in their white ties and tails, supplicating at the figurative feet of a bushily white-bearded, Buddha-bellied old fellow in a shabby sealskin cap and a yellowish-brown tweed suit as rumpled as an unmade bed.

Among Stead’s admiring audience were Major Archie Butt and his artist friend Francis Millet. Futrelle also recognized Frederick Seward, a New York lawyer, young Harry Widener, the book collector, and Charles Hays of the Grand Trunk railways.

“Jack!” Archie called out. “Come join us! Mr. Stead is regaling us with his supernatural lore.”

Futrelle found a spare chair and pulled it up next to Archie, which was also right beside the great man himself, who immediately scolded Archie in a resonant, cheerful voice: “ ‘Supernatural’ is your term, Major Butt-mine is spiritualism, where science and religion meet.”

“Well, sir,” Archie said good-naturedly, “could you take time, first, for Stead to meet Futrelle?”

“This is Jacques Futrelle?” A spark came to Stead’s piercing sky-blue eyes, and a broad smile-wearing evidence of a course or two from dinner-formed in the thicket of white beard. “Jacques Futrelle-why, it’s an honor, sir!”

“The honor is mine,” Futrelle said, meaning it. He offered his hand and the two men shook.

Futrelle joined the unlikely acolytes of this untidy, ruddy, squat man who, in his early sixties now but looking older, was nonetheless a major figure in British journalism. Stead-for all his muckraking, in his Pall Mall Gazette, and with books that in explicitly exposing sin were often themselves decried as obscene-was the father of the New Journalism in England, the man who created the interview format for newspaper and magazine articles.

“I’m a great admirer of this fellow you work for,” Stead said, eyes narrowed, nodding at Futrelle.

“Mr. Hearst?”

“Yes. William Randolph Hearst. The man understands newspapers! He’s fearless.”

Futrelle had to smile. “Not everyone shares your admiration of Mr. Hearst, sir.”

“Not everyone understands the newspaper business, as do you and I, sir.”

“That’s kind of you.”

“I must say, however, that you at times disappoint me, Mr. Futrelle.”

“It’s Jack-and why have I disappointed you, sir?”

Stead rocked back in his chair; his voice was teasing. “Well, Jack, I’ve read some of these ‘Thinking Machine’ stories of yours, and this detective you’ve conjured up, he’s a debunker. You contrive tales that are… if I must use your word, Major Butt… ‘supernatural,’ and then your man explains the mystical occurrences away with mundane realities.”

Futrelle shrugged. “That’s just the pattern of the tales. Some of my stories don’t resolve their otherworldly aspects.”

“Then you must give me the names of those stories before this voyage ends-I would like to read them.” He tented his fingers and stared over their structure at Futrelle, eyes nothing but glittering slits. “That dim, obscure world of the spirit is very real, Jack. Have you met Conan Doyle?”

“I have.”

“Do you respect him, sir?”

“Of course. He was the inspiration for me to write.”