Max Collins - The Titanic Murders

Futrelle folded the note and dropped it in his pocket, then knocked on the door of A36. He was just ready to knock again when Andrews appeared, wearing coveralls, a distracted expression and the baggy-eyed look of a man who wasn’t getting enough sleep.

“Good morning, Tom,” Futrelle said. “Are those the required togs for Third Class?”

“Pardon?” Then he looked at himself. “Oh, this boiler suit… no, after I’ve put you and your Mr. Davies together, I have to go down to the stokehold, to speak to the chief engineer.”

Beyond the gentle-faced man with the rugged build in the doorway, a glimpse of the sitting room of A36 showed it had been given over to an office: blueprints were pinned to a drafting table near a desk arrayed with charts rolled up like treasure maps, piles of paper bearing calculations and sketches, and a half-eaten breakfast roll.

As they went down the stairway to C deck, Futrelle said, “You must be the only man in First Class not having a good time, Tom.”

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.”