“No! We stay on our side of the chain, sir. But from the well deck y’kin see up top. And it’s hard to mistake her, with that puss of hers, sir. Stop a clock, it would.”
Futrelle grinned. “Maybe so. But the rest of her could start a dead man’s heart beating again.”
Davies returned the grin. “I guess that’s why God made the dark, sir.”
From his inside suit coat pocket, Futrelle removed his gold-plated cigarette case, offered a Fatima to the boy, who refused, then lighted one up for himself. “Where do you hail from, son?”
“West Bromwich, sir-Harwood Street.”
“You boarded at Southampton, I take it.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And are you bound for New York, or points west?”
“Points west, sir. Place called Michigan-Pontiac, Michigan.”
“What takes you there?”
“Me two brothers are working there, in the motorcar works. They say we can get jobs, too, good ones. Y’see, sir, we lost our jobs at the smelting works.”
Smelting again-Guggenheim’s business in First Class, Davies’s business in Third.
Davies went on: “Me old dad’s been a galvanizer since the Lord was in the manger. All us Davieses are ironworks men-puddlers, copula workers, the like. But times at home is gettin’ hard, sir-you’re American, sir?”
“Born and raised.”
“Is it the promised land, sir?”
Futrelle blew out a stream of smoke, laughing gently. “As close as anything on this earth might come, son.”
“I’m travelin’ with my other two brothers-John and Joseph-and we’ll send for our families, soon as we get settled.”
They were hitting it off well-young Davies treating Futrelle respectfully, but feeling comfortable enough to say whatever was on his mind. So Futrelle stepped forward gingerly into the next topic…
“Alfred-may I call you Alfred?”
“Me mates call me Fred.”
“All right, Fred.” But Futrelle didn’t give the boy leave to call him “Jack”: the writer liked the deference he was being paid; it gave him the upper hand.
“Fred, this information you have about Alice Cleaver.”
“Yes, sir?”
“The captain took your note to mean you expected to be paid for sharing what you know.”
“No, sir! This isn’t about money a’tall, sir. It’s about babbies.”
Futrelle suppressed a smile at the pronunciation, but the sincerity in the lad’s eyes was unmistakable.
“Well, then, tell me, son. What is it you know?”
He leaned forward, the cap on the table, his hands folded almost as if he were praying. “Dad and Mum raised me to read and write, sir. I may work with me hands, but I like to read a book now and again, and of course the newspaper.”
Encouraging words to the ears of a journalist like Futrelle, but he wasn’t sure what it had to do with anything.
“’Twas in January, must’ve been 1910, no-aught nine-such a terrible thing.” He was shaking his head; his eyes were wide and staring into bad memories. “Plate layers, workin’ the North London Railway, they found something terrible sad.”
“What did they find, son?”
“A babby. A dead babby… a poor pitiful dead boy, who they say was tossed from a movin’ train, the night afore. They arrested a Tottenham woman for the crime-it was her babby boy, y’see, her own son-and she wailed to the sky she was innocent, said she gived up the child weeks afore to a orphanage run by a ‘Mrs. Gray,’ I think the papers said… you’d have to check that… but there was no orphanage and there was no ‘Mrs. Gray.’ They convicted her, and only then she copped, ’cause it come out that her boyfriend, who’d put her in the family way, had run off and left her and the little one to fend for themselves.”
The lad sighed, slowly shaking his head at the horror of it.
Sitting forward, chilled, Futrelle said, “And this woman, this mother who murdered her infant son… is Alice Cleaver? The nanny entrusted with the Allisons’ children?”
He nodded. “It was in the papers day upon day. ’Twas a story you followed. They put her picture in, and it’s not a face a man would likely forget, is it, sir?”
“No it’s not. Why in God’s name isn’t she in prison?”
“The jury asked for leniency, the judge took pity on her. She was a wronged woman, His Honor said, and hers was a desperate act. Her livin’ with the memory of what she done was punishment enough, he said. She was set free.”
Futrelle was flabbergasted; he stabbed out his cigarette in a glass White Star ashtray. “How could she have ended up the Allisons’ nanny with that in her past?”
The lad threw his hands in the air, his eyes wide with the conundrum. “I don’t know, sir. If you lived in England, you’d likely know about the case.”
“That may explain it-the Allisons were just visiting London; they’re Canadian.”
“Sir, has anyone else said anything of this sad business to you? Your British passengers?”
“It’s mostly Americans, in First Class, son… and the few British among us are not likely to read the same papers as you. And even so, the only stories they’d be inclined to ‘follow’ would focus on themselves.”
Davies hung his head. “P’rhaps ’twas wrong to point this out, a’tall. P’rhaps the poor pitiful woman only wants what we all want, down here in the hindquarters of this great ship: a new life, another chance.”
Futrelle nodded gravely. “The promised land.”
Then Davies looked up and his dark eyes were burning in his baby face. “But the little babby she’s carryin’ in her arms, it deserves a first chance, don’t it? And with a crazy woman, a child killer, lookin’ after the wee one… well, it just don’t seem right, sir.”
“No it doesn’t… You’re a good man, Fred.”
“Sir, I hope to have children of my own, someday, and soon.” The crooked smile turned shy; it was strangely ingratiating. “Monday last, day afore we left, I was married at Oldbury parish church-April eighth-to the prettiest girl in West Bromwich.”
“Well, congratulations. Is your bride aboard this ship, son?”
“No, she’s moved in with her mum till I can send for her.” He laughed. “Y’know, we almost missed the boat! Got the wrong train out of West Bromwich, barely made it aboard, me brothers and uncle and me. But I’ve always been a lucky sod… sir.”
Futrelle stood. “I hope you do find the promised land, son.”
Davies stood, too. “Thank you, sir. I hope I done the right thing, tellin’. Couldn’t stand the thought of her hurtin’ another babby.”
Futrelle nodded; they shook hands again, and the mystery writer joined Andrews in the General Room, where someone was playing the piano-some lively English music-hall number-while many of the emigrants clapped along.
“Success?” Andrews said.
“Of a sort,” Futrelle said.
The clapping around him was almost like applause.
Almost.
TEN
Even for the TITANIC, the Reading and Writing Room spoke of uncommon elegance. Situated on A deck, just forward of the ornate First-Class Lounge (of which it was a virtual extension), the high-ceilinged Georgian-styled chamber, with its plush armchairs and sofas upholstered in pink-and-red floral design, its wall-to-wall deep red carpet, its sheltering potted palms, made an ideal retreat for the ladies.
During the day, however, the white walls combined with the many-paned high windows, including a bay window onto the sea, so blindingly suffused the room with light, its designated purpose-reading and writing-was made moot. Thus the chamber was little used, and after dark, when the First-Class passengers were dining or attending the nightly concert, the room lay as abandoned as a mining-camp ghost town.
So it was with little difficulty that Futrelle-with Captain Smith’s sanction-secured the room for a private affair, a unique event, for a very select and honored list of guests: a seance.
Just before nine P.M., Futrelle, still dressed in his formal clothes from dinner, his stomach rather nervously trying to digest the latest parade of delicacies bestowed by the First-Class Dining Saloon, wandered about the room, setting the stage. He had been, in his professional life, only three things, and two of them were different branches of the same tree: reporter and fiction writer.