The Titanic Murders - By Max Allan Collins Page 0,82

been in the water for more than a few minutes when the Titanic made its final plunge. Over the years she came to question whether or not it was only her imagination…

… but she always swore that she’d seen Jack, standing, clinging to the rail with one hand.

And waving good-bye to her with the other.

A TIP OF THE CAPTAIN’S HAT

The basic idea for this novel, as my prologue indicates, extends back to my childhood enthusiasm for Jacques Futrelle’s “Thinking Machine” tales, and my fascination with the notion that he—and a number of his stories—went down with the Titanic.

In response to the new interest in the tragedy, spurred of course by James Cameron’s successful film, I began to tinker with the notion of a mystery aboard the ship, with Futrelle as the detective, and offhandedly mentioned all this to Elizabeth Beier, the wonderful editor at Boulevard Books with whom I’ve worked on a number of movie tie-in novels. She at once saw the possibilities in my idea, and The Titanic Murders became my only novel to date sold on the basis of a single, casual phone call.

The writing of the book, however, has not been a casual affair. The idea evolved from a drawing-room mystery involving the real-life Futrelle and a typical Agatha Christie–style fictional cast into using only real passengers as my players (and suspects). This of course took the book into the more demanding arena of historical fiction (as opposed to simply a “period” mystery).

I have accordingly attempted to stay consistent with known facts about the Titanic and her maiden voyage, though the many books on this subject are often inconsistent, particularly on smaller points, and the various experts disagree on all sorts of matters, both trivial and profound. When research was contradictory, I made the choice most beneficial to the telling of this tale. Any blame for historical inaccuracies is my own, reflecting, I hope, the limitations of this conflicting source material.

The characters in this novel are real and appear with their true names; the blackmail threats made to the various players are grounded in reality. The epilogue’s litany of whatever-happened-to these real people is strictly factual. Nothing is known of either John Bertram Crafton and Hugh Rood, however, beyond their presence on the ship and their deaths in the disaster; they could just as likely have been clerics as crooks, saints as sinners, and were chosen from among the anonymous deceased because of the melodramatic felicity of their names. I would say that I intend no offense to their memories, but unfortunately no memories of them appear to endure.

My fact-based novels about fictional 1930s/1940s-era Chicago private detective Nathan Heller have required extensive research not unlike what was required of this project. I called upon my Heller research assistants, Lynn Myers and George Hagenauer, to help me in my attempt to re-create the maiden voyage of the great ill-fated ship. Throughout the writing of this novel, they were in touch with me on an almost daily basis, and without them this journey would not have been possible.

Lynn, a longtime Titanic buff (which I am not—or at least was not, until this project came along), focused on the ship itself, discussing various minute details and digging out the answers to innumerable nitpicking concerns of mine. He also shared his library of Titanic reference works, including numerous rare, period items, and provided videotapes of several documentaries and one of the Titanic films (S.O.S. Titanic). A police booking detective, Lynn also provided details about death by smothering.

George focused more on the people, and worked with me to gather background on the famous passengers (and, in the case of this story, suspects). In particular he was helpful in gathering, and interpreting, materials on John Jacob Astor, Isidor Straus, Benjamin Guggenheim and especially W. T. Stead.

Jacques Futrelle, while a major figure in the history of mystery fiction, is unfortunately little known (or read) today. I was blessed by the existence of a fascinating, well-done book on Futrelle’s life, the unique The Thinking Machine: Jacques Futrelle (1995) by Freddie Seymour and Bettina Kyper, a biography supplemented by five “Thinking Machine” stories—including “The Problem of Cell 13” and “The Grinning God,” a collaboration between Jack and May. In addition, coauthor Bettina Kyper—who knew both May and Virginia Futrelle intimately—generously shared further information with me over the phone. Other information on Futrelle was culled from E. R. Bleiler’s introduction to Best “Thinking Machine” Stories (1973) and the introduction to the Futrelle story collected in Detection by