The Titanic Murders - By Max Allan Collins Page 0,19
up the varnished folding wooden deck chairs against the gleaming white walls; the smell of fresh paint mingled with fresh sea air. The deck was fairly deserted, most of the passengers taking advantage of after-luncheon ship tours the purser’s office had offered.
Soon they were at the point where the windows of the enclosed promenade stopped and the open promenade began, though steel-beam window frames and a cable for canvas shades would allow this section to be enclosed as well. Fresh salty breeze streamed in, and golden sunshine, while white-touched rippling blue water stretched to forever; it was one of those moments any couple treasures, when the world seems vast and lovely and theirs alone.
The promenade emptied onto the aft end of A deck, where massive cargo-loading cranes bookended the main mast. This small portion of open deck, with its benches and railings ideal for open-air lounging, was unusual in that the First-Class passengers were literally looked down upon by Second-Class passengers, from the railing along the end of their promenade portion of the boat deck.
The Verandah Café was directly under that portion of the boat deck, its sliding glass doors open.
“Is it chilly enough for some coffee?” Futrelle asked his wife, and she nodded.
But when they peeked into the airy café, with its white wicker furniture and ivy-trellised walls, it seemed to have been taken over as an unofficial playroom by nannies and children.
“Or maybe not,” Futrelle said, and May smiled and agreed.
Among the tikes scurrying about was the golden-haired Lorraine Allison, while her nanny Alice in black livery sat nearby at a white wicker table, her male infant charge gurgling and capering on his back on a blanket at her feet. Sitting next to the shapely woman with the broken nose was a ship’s steward, a towheaded young man in his early twenties, spiffy in his white jacket with its gold buttons, his black tie matching his trousers.
Alice and the steward were smiling shyly, talking the same way, accompanied by some batting of female eyelashes and the steward turning his cap in his hands.
“Shipboard romance?” Futrelle whispered to May.
“Why not?” May asked. “She has a nice smile.”
“Almost makes up for the snout.”
His wife slapped his arm playfully, and they moved to the bench along the railing.
Futrelle was gazing out at the smooth waters when May nudged him, saying, “I thought your friend was traveling First-Class.”
“What friend?” Futrelle asked, turning, looking up at the Second-Class passengers lining the boat-deck railing.
And there he was, the ubiquitous John Bertram Crafton, up at the railing, speaking to a rather handsome, bareheaded black-haired man whose thick though well-trimmed mustache curled up in the continental manner.
In a gray topcoat and a brown suit that were not inexpensive, the black-haired man stood between two young boys in sailor suits and knickers, his boys apparently, one lad two or three, the other three or four, with full heads of hair with which the wind was playing havoc. He had an arm around either boy, holding them to him, protectively, eyeing Crafton—who leaned forward with the skin-crawling smile of a rake selling French postcards—regarding the ferrety little man with suspicion and even scorn.
Futrelle heard neither Crafton’s words, nor the black-haired man’s response.
But the pantomime they acted out indicated a response that was incensed to say the least, and apparently included enough blasphemies to justify the apparent father to draw his boys closer to him and cover their ears with his hands and the press of his body.
The emotion of the black-haired man was palpable, and so was his disgust for Crafton: his eyes flared, his face reddened, his body trembled, though his head was held high.
Whirling, his gray topcoat spreading like a cloak, the black-haired man gathered the boys and receded onto the Second-Class boat-deck promenade, out of view.
Crafton took the rejection in stride; he sighed, shrugged to himself, and then he noticed Futrelle below, looking up.
Crafton called out: “Beautiful day at sea, Mr. Futrelle, don’t you agree?”
Futrelle stepped closer, until he was directly below the ferrety little man in the pearl-gray fedora. “Some of us are more at sea than others.”
He shrugged again. “Mr. Hoffman is emotional—you know how Frenchmen are.”
Futrelle wasn’t sure he did know how Frenchmen were; but he did know they weren’t often named “Hoffman.”
“Are those his boys?” Futrelle asked.
“Oh yes. He does love his Lolo and Momon. He loves them more than anything.”
“And how is it, Mr. Crafton, that such a First-Class individual as you finds himself in Second Class?”
The ship was strictly