Max Collins - The Titanic Murders

“Oh Jack,” May said, breathlessly. “This is too much….”

“The last time I saw a room like this,” Futrelle said, “a velvet rope was keeping me back, and a tour guide was nudging me on.”

The sitting room was almost cluttered with fine furnishings with their typical Quinze cabriolet legs and ebony wood-replete with rococo carvings, in a shell motif-and upholsteries of delicate shades of blue: a sinuously contoured sofa, a round table with a damask cloth, corner writing desk, assorted formal chairs. A large gilt-framed mirror leaned out over the white-and-gold sham fireplace with an ornate gold clock on the mantel; on either side of the mirror were windows-not portholes-blue-striped satin curtains gathered back for ocean views.

“How can I make myself at home in this showroom?” Futrelle asked May, thinking she was beside him, but she wasn’t.

Glowing, she leaned out from the adjacent room. “Jack, come take a look at this bedroom-”

“Now this is starting to sound like a second honeymoon,” he said, joining her, but she wasn’t paying any attention to his flirtation. She was caught up in the grandeur of their sleeping quarters.

Ebony woods and the rococo shell motif continued, but shades of rose had taken over the fabrics, and the carpeting was a cream-and-rose floral that Futrelle hesitated to set foot on with his lowly shoes. Like a child in a flower garden, May flitted from furnishing to furnishing-mirrored dresser, table with lamp and chairs, pink-and-white striped chaise lounge-touching each as if to test its reality. A four-poster brass bed with plump pillows and pink quilted bedspread nestled to the right of the adjoining room’s door.

“I wonder what we did to deserve this,” Futrelle muttered, mostly to himself.

May was peeking in the bathroom, saying, “Before we go up on deck, I’d like to freshen up.”

He checked his pocket watch. “We’re supposed to shove off at noon-that’s fifteen minutes from now.”

A shrill ringing caught both their attentions.

Futrelle, frowning, turned in a half circle, as the ringing continued. “What the hell… is that some kind of ship’s signal?”

“What do you think it is, silly?” She smirked prettily and pointed to the marbletop nightstand, and the telephone there, from which the ringing emanated. “Some detective you are.”

“Telephones?” Futrelle said, going there, not sure whether he was impressed by the extravagance or offended by it. “The cabins on this ship have telephones ? Amazing… Futrelle, here.”

The voice in his ear said, “Mr. Futrelle, J. Bruce Ismay, chairman of the White Star Line.”

Futrelle had to smile; as if Ismay needed to identify himself as such…

“Yes, Mr. Ismay. To what do I owe this pleasure? I refer to both this call, and this sumptuous suite we find ourselves in.”

“The White Star Line believes that celebrities like yourself should travel in style. If you could spare me five minutes, in my suite, I can explain further, and properly welcome you to my ship.”

May was already in the washroom.

“Certainly,” Futrelle said. “Can I get there without a taxicab?”

Ismay laughed, once. “You’ll find all the First-Class cabins and facilities on the Titanic are rather conveniently grouped together. I’m just a deck above you, sir-almost directly above you, in B52, 54 and 56.”

“That’s even one more number than we have.”

Another laugh. “You know what they say about rank and its privileges. Can you come straightaway?”

“Delighted.”

A minute later, more or less, Futrelle knocked once, at the door of Suite B52, and almost instantly, the door opened. Futrelle had expected a butler or valet to answer, but it was J. Bruce Ismay himself, a surprising figure, in several ways.

First, he wore a jaunty gray sporting outfit-Norfolk jacket, knickerbockers and heavy woolen hose-where Futrelle had expected something more pretentious of the man.

Second, Ismay was the rare human who towered over Futrelle, a man who himself had been described by one reporter as a “behemoth.” Ismay topped six feet four, easily, although the narrow-shouldered man lacked Futrelle’s massive build; in fact, he looked slight and soft, for as tall as he was.

But Ismay did cut a fine figure in his sports clothes: a handsome devil, in his late forties or early fifties Futrelle judged, trimly mustached, with bright dark eyes in a heart-shaped face, his healthy head of dark hair touched here and there with gentle gray.

In a tenor voice, confident and cutting, his host announced himself: “J. Bruce Ismay.”

Somehow Ismay had resisted the urge to add: “Chairman of the White Star Line,” and somehow Futrelle had resisted the smart-aleck urge to utter it, himself.

“Mr. Ismay,” Futrelle said, with a little nod.

Ismay was extending his hand; and Futrelle took it, shook it-a firm enough grasp. “Bruce, please, call me Bruce.”

“Jack Futrelle. Call me Jack.”

“Do come in. I had hoped you’d bring your lovely wife along.”

But of course Ismay hadn’t mentioned to Futrelle that he should bring his wife; and Futrelle already had the firm idea that Ismay wasn’t the sort for such an oversight-this was meant to be a private meeting between the two men, as the absence of any servant or secretary augured.

“May’s settling in, in our suite, before we go up on deck for the waves and cheers.”

“Mustn’t miss that.”

Ismay’s sporting attire-apropos for the great ship’s departure as it might be-seemed suddenly absurd in the ostentatious suite with its French Empire decor. If the Harrises’ cabin had paled next to the Futrelles’ stateroom, Ismay’s suite of rooms reduced them both to shanties.

The parlor into which the two men had entered was white-painted oak with a beamed ceiling and built-in fireplace, an oblong gilt-framed mirror over its mantel. The mahogany and rosewood furnishings, sometimes ebony-punctuated, reflected the straight and curved, ponderous and heavy, construction of a style dictated by the Little Corporal himself: the Napoleonic paw and claw feet, the brass and ormolu mounts, carved winged griffins and pineapples. No sissy stripes or floral patterns adorned the rich, heavy upholstery: strictly royal blue, like the carpet and sofa, or deep red, like the gathered curtains on the windows that looked out not onto the ocean, but a private, enclosed promenade deck.

A door stood open onto a similarly grand bedroom, and a door in that room onto another.

“Impressive digs,” Futrelle said. “Remind me to acquire some rank so I can get privileges like these… not that I’m complaining about my own accommodations, mind you.”

“Sit, please,” Ismay said, gesturing to a round, blue-damask-clothed table in the center of the parlor. Futrelle did, and Ismay, not sitting yet, asked, “Too early for a drink? Some lemonade, perhaps?”

“Nothing, thanks.”

Ismay sat across from Futrelle, and smiled shyly, a smile Futrelle didn’t fully believe. “Normally I wouldn’t travel in such a highfalutin fashion… not on my company’s dollar, at any rate.” Ismay gestured about him. “This parlor suite was reserved for Mr. Morgan, but he took ill at the last moment… so why let it sit empty?”

By “Mr. Morgan,” Futrelle took that to mean American financier J. Pierpont Morgan, the Titanic ’s titanically wealthy owner, the man who’d acquired the White Star Line from the Ismays a decade before.

“Actually,” Ismay said, a smile lifting his mustache, “you and Mrs. Futrelle are in my suite.”

“So we benefited from Mr. Morgan’s illness as well. But why did you choose us with whom to be so generous, Mr. Ismay?”