Tip of the Iceberg Page 14

  Leaving his delicately scented Earl Grey tea only half drunk, Bernard left the saloon, setting off at a brisk pace towards the ship’s hospital. He wanted to satisfy his curiosity regarding Patrick’s health and devise a story intriguing enough for the waiting New York press, yet plausible enough to convince White Star to make them a generous offer in exchange for their selective amnesia.

  He arrived at the hospital to find the same nurse sitting behind the desk. She looked, to Bernard at least, far less intimidating than she did the previous day. Her eyes were dull and withdrawn and her skin pallid, while her movements were languid to the point of lethargic. She looked up with barely disguised indifference as he entered the room, then returned her attention to the papers on her desk leaving Bernard to stand awkwardly midway between her desk and the few chairs laid out as a makeshift waiting room.

  Bernard cleared his throat politely, but the nurse’s only response was to wave a hand in the general direction of the chairs. She didn’t even look up. He bristled at the woman’s rudeness, taking a mental note to make a formal complaint, but headed for the waiting area anyway. Secretly, he was glad she had not already ushered him out of the room, and her unnecessarily surly attitude would only serve to add gravitas to their bogus complaint. He took a seat and busied himself by removing imaginary pieces of fluff from his suit trousers with his thumb and forefinger while he waited. After a short while, he tired of that and began tapping his foot impatiently, an action which was obviously proving to be an irritation to the nurse as she looked up several times, a dark scowl shadowing her features. Despite this, he didn’t relent until the doctor, looking harassed and as pallid as the nurse, appeared from his office.

  “I shall be in engineering if anyone has need of me,” the doctor spoke softly to the nurse. Bernard rose from his seat to intercept him before he could leave.

  “Excuse me, Doctor? I am Sir Bernard Astor, and I wish to enquire in to the health of a companion of mine.” He physically blocked the doctor’s path to the door. The medical man looked flustered for a moment but quickly regained his composure.

  “I’m sorry, Sir Bernard, but I’m extremely busy at present.” The doctor tried to sidestep Bernard’s ample frame, but the older man was too quick and surprisingly light on his feet, dancing slightly to his left, preventing his quick escape. With a frustrated look of resignation, the doctor glanced at his pocket watch adding with a sigh, “But I could spare you a few moments.”

  “I appreciate it, Doctor, and will endeavour to keep my enquiry brief. Yesterday, I myself delivered my companion to this very room. He was stricken with I know not what, following a nasty incident with a savage beast which inflicted on him a nasty bite just below his eye.” Bernard was about to continue his lavishly embellished tale, but the doctor raised his hand signalling he had heard enough.

  “I know whom you speak of,” the doctor said quietly, his head bowed. “It pains me to be the one having to pass on this news, but he died within a few minutes of you leaving.”

  Bernard stared at him, his mouth gaping.

  “It is too early to draw any definite conclusions, but it appears he bled to death.” The doctor said the right words, but his delivery was cold to the point of dispassionate. Bernard understood the man was used to matters of death, yet still felt him to be unemotional, even blasé about his friend’s passing.

  “I don’t understand. He wasn’t bleeding, apart from the one wound to his cheek, and that was definitely not bleeding enough to kill him,” Bernard said, struggling to grasp how Patrick may have bled to death in so short a time.

  “I believed him to have bled internally. Possibly as a result of some infection, although it is not something I have seen before.” The doctor moved towards the door, “Now, if you will excuse me it is imperative I investigate further.” With that he slipped past Bernard and out of the surgery, leaving Bernard alone with the nurse, who appeared too preoccupied with her work to notice.

  Bernard wrestled with his conscience. He wasn’t satisfied by the doctor’s explanation, believing him to be privy to certain facts he wasn’t yet ready to divulge. Yet he was unsure whether to pry too deeply lest his own fraudulent representations draw the unwanted attentions of the ship’s crew, particularly those of the master-at-arms. After a moment of indecision, he mumbled a “Good day,” to the nurse, who made no effort to acknowledge him, and followed the doctor out of the door. He hurried in the direction the doctor had taken moments before, eager to discover what further investigations the doctor needed to conduct with such urgency.

  Doctor Sampson walked casually through the passenger decks, smiling politely at the few passengers he passed on their way to a late breakfast. He had not eaten since the night before, but unusually for him, he didn’t feel hungry; although, his body did crave something. He felt the itch in his blood, but he had no idea what. He even tried lighting his pipe, taking a few enjoyable, but unfulfilling puffs while changing. His investigations into the connected deaths of two seemingly unconnected people, one a second class passenger, the other a crew member working in the strict confines of engineering, had kept him up most of the night. He’d concluded the two deaths were very much linked. They both displayed evidence of bite marks, definitely not human; they were too small for that and the incisors too pronounced, but significantly not something small like a rat. But he had no doubt they caught an infection from these bites. The passenger, McGowan, died of the infection, while the stoker died of the attack, specifically having his throat torn out, but even after his death, the same infection had taken hold of his corpse. The death of the host had not inhibited the disease. If anything, it spread throughout the deceased body far quicker than it had in the live host.

  Sampson did not mind admitting to himself, he was stumped. He had consulted his limited supply of medical texts and couldn’t find anything that fit the disease’s pathology, although a few tropical fevers did display some similarities. But how could these two men have contracted a disease only found on the Dark Continent? He felt the answer to that lay in the bite marks, not that proving this as fact helped him understand the infection any better, but at least it would give him something to tell the Captain. If there was something, some wild tropical animal, loose on the ship, it was someone else’s job to find it. He chuckled aloud at his own ludicrous suggestion, a wild animal roaming undetected through the passageways of the world’s largest ship indeed. How absurd will that sound when face-to-face with Captain Smith?

  He turned down a short corridor set apart from the main passenger area, and after a few seconds, came to the plain doorway which opened on to the spiral staircase descending through the ship to engineering. Sampson allowed the door to swing shut then began his descent towards the cold store area where the bodies had laid overnight. He wanted to confirm his theory on the bite marks and inspect the bodies, and specifically the spread of the infection, one more time before facing the Captain.

  Stepping out on to Lower Deck G, Doctor Sampson turned aft following the rat run designed to allow engineering crew access to and from their cabins without the need to venture into passenger areas. Although he was in a hurry to complete his task, the muscles in his legs ached with a deep pain causing him to stumble several times. He also had to exercise caution to prevent tripping on one of the raised bulkheads dividing the ships lower sections. Added to the general muscular malaise, he also felt a prickling, burning sensation in his lungs and a vague feeling of breathlessness and light-headedness. He made a note to himself to make use of the ship’s gymnasium. As the ship’s medical officer he should be setting an example, not stumbling into walls and puffing like an old steam engine after descending a few stairs.

  He paused a moment to regain his breath and, placing two fingers on his wrist, took a quick measurement of his radial pulse expecting it to be galloping along in response to his breathlessness. He was surprised to find the strong rhythmic pulses beating at a rate far below normal. He moved his fingers and repeated the process, his ey
es fixed on the minute hand of his pocket watch.

  Fifteen seconds passed with nine beats of his heart. Doctor Sampson didn’t need to do the calculation, his heart rate was half what he would expect in an athletic person twenty years his junior, and that shouldn’t be the case. Perplexed, he stepped through the last bulkhead door into the large vaulted aft section housing the engineering workshops and the two refrigerated storerooms.

  The sight that greeted him stunned him and made the concerns he had over his own health pale into insignificance. The storeroom’s heavy door stood wide open and Sampson detected a chill in the air he hadn’t noticed before, his warm breath forming little clouds of condensation with each slow, laboured exhalation. He took a few tentative steps forward, not sure why he was afraid, but aware of the gnawing, hollow sensation in the pit of his stomach.

  “Hello?” The word escaped his tight throat with a creaking groan that was barely audible above the constant drone of the ship’s massive engines. He cleared his throat, swallowed hard, and repeated his greeting with more conviction.

  “Hello?”

  He waited. His eyes searching the vessel’s lower deck gloom trying to spot the guard Chief Engineer Bell posted the evening before. But Sampson saw no one and received no reply.

  He inched closer to the open door, the temperature dropping with each shuffling step, until he could peer around its edge into the unlit, murky depths of the cold store. At first, he saw only darkness. Then shadowy shapes emerged as his eyesight grew accustomed to his new surroundings. In the corner, slumped against the far wall, was a body. From this distance, Sampson could not identify the person or discern whether they were dead or alive.

  He slipped inside, his senses heightened. There was danger close by, he could almost smell it in the icy air as he stumbled past the empty shelves towards the darker recesses at the back of the room. He looked around nervously as he approached the crumpled form, but saw no evidence of another body or the guard. The air had a metallic odour he assumed, at first, came from the refrigerated air blasting into the room, but now he recognized it as the sickly-sweet tang of blood. He stepped next to the lifeless form, his foot making a soft splashing sound, and crouched down to stare into the face of the engineer assigned to guard the storeroom, or rather, what remained of his face.

  The detail Doctor Sampson could see in the darkness surprised him. He had always had keen eyesight. As a child he used to watch the birds in the garden then draw them with colourful accuracy, but that was in daylight not in the badly lit depths of an ocean liner. And yet, he could make out every shocking detail of the engineer’s chewed and ripped face. The missing nose, the empty eye socket, the exposed teeth and bone of the bottom jaw jutting through the torn flesh in a grotesque smile, and the neck, eaten away until the spine was visible. He also noticed the now familiar dark rash spreading threadlike, outward from the wound, like it was putting down roots.

  He looked down at the dead man’s body and noted the traumatic amputation of the left leg just below the groin, the leg itself was missing. The tattered remains of the man’s trousers stuck to the shredded muscles and torn sinews of his bloody stump. It was the blood pooled around this stump Doctor Sampson had stepped in, causing the soft splash. It also suggested the engineer was alive, his heart beating, when his attacker severed his leg.

  Sampson stood up, now convinced a wild animal, possibly more than one and definitely bigger than a rat, judging by its ability to rip a man’s leg off, was loose on the ship. He had seen similar rashes before, but those resulted from snakebites and were never on the same scale as the ones he had witnessed in the last few hours. He took a final look at the mangled corpse, aware he felt only one thing and it was not disgust or revulsion or even shock. He wasn’t even concerned over the whereabouts of the two corpses he had inspected the day before. What he felt was hunger.

  Thirty

  Bernard ducked back into the shadows as Doctor Sampson staggered back along the Fireman’s tunnel. He had followed him down from the hospital suite in his search for Patrick, holding back and peeking around the giant piston housing while the doctor spent almost five minutes within the dark confines of the cold store. Once he was sure the doctor was on his way back up the stairs, Bernard hurried over to the cold store door, aware his short digression into the restricted areas of the ship may soon be discovered. He stepped into the darkness and fumbled for the light switch. He was curious as to the doctor’s reason for coming here and at a loss to understand how he could have seen anything? Everything beyond the first few feet of the cold store, which was illuminated by the outside lights, was in total darkness.

  Finding a switch, Bernard flicked it down. The lights fizzed then flickered slowly into life like one of those new motion pictures, which were all the rage in America. The smell was acidic and unpleasant, and it caught in the back of his throat. Covering his mouth with a handkerchief, he resisted the urge to gag.

  Bernard looked at the man lying propped up against the back wall, a trail of bloody footprints leading away from the body faded to nothing when they reached the door. Even from a distance, he immediately knew the person was dead. But not just dead; something had mutilated the body almost beyond recognition. The corpse looked like a wild animal had savaged it. The features were unrecognizable, but Bernard doubted Pandora was responsible. She was too small to rip a man’s leg off like she was tearing a chicken carcass.

  Bernard didn’t feel the need, and certainly lacked the desire, to get closer. He saw more than enough to know it wasn’t Patrick just by the corpse’s physical size and the one remaining boot. Rushing from the room, he bent double and vomited his generous breakfast over his own shoes.

  It took several minutes for Bernard to be sure his retching had stopped and he felt composed enough to head back down the Fireman’s tunnel and up the spiral staircase to the passenger areas. He felt sure the doctor knew more than he was prepared to share, or possibly allowed by White Star to say, and he was concerned things could get dangerous. The reason the doctor put forward for Patrick’s wound being responsible for his death didn’t sound likely. It was too small and on such an innocuous part of his body; however, Patrick, and at least one other man were already dead, a testament to the danger involved. Could there be something else loose on the ship, another larger animal perhaps, or maybe something less tangible, like a plague? At the very least, it could prove costly to his plans for a better life in America.

  Bernard decided his search for Patrick’s body would have to wait. He did not feel safe in the hot murky engineering levels of the ship and knew if he were discovered snooping about, he would have some uncomfortable questions to answer.

  Esme rummaged about in her valise to find the dress she had worn the day she joined the ship. It was dark blue, subdued, and although it wasn’t old, it didn’t look new and was, therefore, absolutely perfect for the purpose she had in mind. She pulled it from the depths of her bag and held it up to the light. It had creases and no top button; she had meant to sew it on before this, but a little exposed neck had worked wonders on the generosity of the patrons in the Belvedere Arms, and that added to its perfection. She folded the dress as small as she could and placed it in a pile of dirty towels she had extracted from an unattended laundry cart on her way to her cabin before turning her attention to the choice of headwear. It was a simple choice to make. Esme, like most women her age and social standing, only owned two hats: one for the week and one for Sunday best. She had worn her Sunday best hat to board the Titanic so it was that one which joined the pile on her bunk. Making sure the towels covered the dress and hat, Esme scooped the pile up in her arms and headed towards the first class staterooms. She didn’t want anyone to spot her carrying clothes into Bridget’s cabin as that could put her whole plan at risk.

  The walk up through the ship from her cramped bunk room in the bow section of E Deck to Bridget’s palatial suite on A Deck was a nerve-wracking experience for Esme, and she felt relieved to arrive unchallenged.
Although she was aware this was only the first, and by far the easiest, part of her plan, she still had much work to do if she were to remove the burden of suspicion, and therefore, the threat of hanging, from around her friend’s slender, well-to-do neck.

  Esme knocked on the door to Bridget’s cabin, and not waiting for an answer, swiftly stepped inside. Bridget was waiting for her, pacing to and fro and wringing her hands together so tightly her knuckles had turned bone white. Bridget’s face also betrayed her apprehension. Her brow bore three distinct furrows, her eyebrows arched, and her eyes were downcast. The smile that fluttered across Bridget’s face upon seeing Esme was shallow and false, and her eyes continued to look dull and distant.

  “I do not like this one bit,” Bridget said without formality.

  “Neither do I, Mistress. But I fear we have no other course open to us.” The use of the formal address earned Esme a disapproving look of reproof from her friend, and she added, “Sorry, Bridget.”

  Despite believing simply having wealth did not give you social standing, it was hard for the woman from Southampton docklands to break the subservient habit she had acquired hustling rich passengers for loose change while still only a girl. When Esme got a little older and her body developed, she found the gentlemen traveller to be rich pickings and a little subservience always helped raise the gift.

  “What if I threw myself at the mercy of the court, claiming I acted out of self-preservation? His repeated beatings and constant derogation of my spirit caused me to become temporarily unhinged, and fearing for my life, I suffocated him!”

  Esme saw the false hope in Bridget’s eyes even as she spoke. She knew no jury in the land would allow the murderer of such a rich and, sadly for his new widow, influential man to go unpunished. Both women were starkly aware of the punishment for murder.