The Titanic Murders - By Max Allan Collins Page 0,14

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?”

“Bruce! Please.”

“Sorry—Bruce. Or should I say Saint Nick?”

He smiled again, shrugged. “As I indicated on the phone, we like our celebrity passengers to travel in style. You’d be wasted in Second Class.”

“Wasted how?”

Ismay folded his hands, shifted in his cushioned chair; his expression shifted, too: serious, businesslike. “This is the Titanic’s maiden voyage…”

This was news on the order of learning that Ismay was chairman of the White Star Line.

“… and it’s important to us that our First-Class passenger list resembles the audience at a gala theater opening… I’m sure your friend Mr. Harris would understand the importance of salting notables among that first-night crowd.”

“Well, obviously, I’m happy to offer whatever small prestige my presence might provide. But I think you rather exaggerate my importance.”

“Not at all. We have a number of authors aboard, but none of your stature, your popularity, on both sides of the Atlantic. My understanding is that your books sell just as well in England as in the United States.”

“Perhaps a little better,” Futrelle admitted.

His eyes tightened. “This is… if I may be frank, knowing that you will be discreet… a somewhat troubled first crossing for us.”

Now Futrelle shifted in his chair. “How so?”

“Oh, oh, it’s nothing to trouble yourself over… from the standpoint of technology, this is the safest ship on the ocean, the finest achievement shipbuilding has yet realized.” He frowned, shook his head. “But this recent coal strike has thrown a veritable wrench in the works… other transatlantic lines have idled their vessels—thousands of crew members, dockworkers, are out of work. We even had to cancel crossings for a number of our other ships.”

“I know,” Futrelle said. “When we decided to come home a trifle early from our European tour, the Titanic was really our only option.”

“Well, we transferred bookings from half a dozen of our other liners onto the Titanic, and without this tactic, frankly, we’d have been embarrassingly underbooked for our maiden voyage. Even so, we’re only 46 percent of capacity in First Class and 40 percent in Second Class… though steerage is 70 percent capacity.” He chucked dryly, adding, “Finding poor people who want to go to America is never much of a problem.”

“This is a stumper.” Futrelle adjusted his glasses on the bridge of his nose. “The maiden voyage of the world’s largest liner—that should have attracted ticket buyers like bees to honey.”

“Oh, we’ve a respectable booking, but the damned strike’s damaged the entire shipping industry… with cancellations and postponements making travel so unpredictable, leaving passengers stranded, bewildered, disenchanted…. People just aren’t traveling at this particular time, a time which is so crucial to