The Titanic Murders - By Max Allan Collins Page 0,5

and the pair of bodies that had been stored there, years ago, only to be recently disturbed.

“Is that right?” she said. She was smiling, a strange smile, a young smile in the old face. “And here I thought Mother was spinning one.”

“Pardon?”

“Well, you have to understand, my mother had major writing ambitions herself. She published several novels, both before and after Papa’s death… wrote a sequel to one of his books, in fact. But when times changed, her writing style didn’t, and that was the end of it.”

“I see,” I said, not really seeing, not really following any of this.

Virginia was rattling on: “Not long before her death, in 1967, she told me a story, an elaborate story, a detailed story… and she claimed it was true. But I didn’t know what to think. Why hadn’t she told me before? She had no explanation for that.”

“What sort of story?”

But Virginia didn’t answer, not directly: “Mother was an adult when the Titanic went down. She was in her mid-thirties. Most of the survivors giving their eyewitness accounts these days were children at the time—some of them babes in arms!”

“And she was a writer,” I said, nodding. “So her memories would be vivid, and credible, in a way the average person’s might not.”

“That’s what you’d think, but sometimes I discounted her. She could be self-serving, Mother could, and she had a good imagination, a writer’s imagination, and some of what she recalled about the Titanic didn’t match up with other people’s recollections.”

“Really? What, for instance?”

“Well, for one, she insisted the band didn’t play on deck—she said it was bitter cold and the violin strings would have snapped, and besides, they were playing indoors. All the eyewitness testimony to the contrary wouldn’t sway her. She also said the band was German, and it’s well-known it was a group of English musicians.”

“Perhaps they played German selections and that confused her.”

“Perhaps. She also insisted the iceberg was a ‘growler,’ a small berg, not the towering monster of ice so many others recall seeing. So, all things considered, I didn’t pay much attention to her story, fascinating as it was. But now… what you say seems to confirm it.”

“Virginia, what are you—”

“Here’s our food,” she said, and indeed the waiter was bringing it. “We’ll speak of lighter subjects while we eat… and afterwards, if you like, if you have the time, I’ll tell you about the murders.”

And for three hours that afternoon, never seeming to tire, never missing a beat, she did.

What you are about to read is based upon Virginia Futrelle Raymond’s recollections of the tale her mother told, supplemented by research and imagination.

Bon voyage.

DAY ONE

APRIL 10, 1912

ONE

A BIRTHDAY PRESENT

IN A SEA OF TOP hats, bowlers and Chesterfield topcoats, Jack Futrelle, bareheaded, felt damned near dowdy in his three-piece tweed, the soot-flecked breeze mussing his brown hair. His wife of nearly seventeen years, May, standing beside him on Platform 12 at Waterloo Station, was a Gibson girl come to life in her tailored shirtwaist, leg-of-mutton sleeves and long black skirt, made stylish by her elaborate black-and-white feathered chapeau.

Futrelle had the towering, burly build of a waterfront plug-ugly, but the kind, regular features of his round face, and the pince-nez eyeglasses his brown eyes nestled behind, gave him a professorial demeanor. Though a successful author, even a celebrity (the London press insisted on referring to him as “the American Conan Doyle”), Futrelle knew he was out of his league, financially speaking.

The boat train he and May were about to board would be carrying First-Class passengers to the brand-new dock built by and for the White Star Line at Southampton. He had booked Second-Class passage on the Titanic—it had been widely publicized that Second Class on this new luxury liner was designed to surpass First Class on the rival Cunard Line—but, somewhat mysteriously, had received First-Class tickets.

A note from J. Bruce Ismay himself—the son of the White Star Line’s founder, and currently its managing director—had enigmatically stated only: Please see me at your convenience, after boarding, signed with Regards—Bruce. Regards from a man Futrelle had never met….

May, of course, had been delighted.

They had found the tickets waiting in their mail slot at the Savoy yesterday morning, and over a magnificent luncheon, May had sipped champagne and said, in a Georgia lilt that years of living in Massachusetts had done nothing to allay, “Perhaps Mr. Ismay knows it’s your birthday.”

And it had been Futrelle’s birthday: his thirty-seventh. But Ismay was a stranger, and Futrelle, mystery writer that he