Tip of the Iceberg Page 17

  “Thank you, Thomas. Gentlemen, you have your assignments.” With that, Captain Smith marched from the bridge to prepare for dinner and an awkward meeting with the vessel’s owner.

  Thirty-seven

  Esme left Bridget to try on the clothes she had given her and went to the pantry in search of something to eat. Her rendezvous with the odious Doctor Sampson was looming, and while she was dreading every minute she would have to spend in his lecherous company, she knew she had to do it. Not just in the hope he would put in a good word for her and prevent Miss Wilson putting her ashore in New York, but because Bridget needed her too. It was a vital part of her plan to remove the suspicion of murder from around the American socialite’s neck, a part she was fortuitously placed to carry out with only a slight risk of discovery.

  Carefully avoiding going too close to Miss Wilson’s office, she entered the pantry servicing the second class saloon where she found a tray of cold meats left over from the buffet style luncheon. Hastily stuffing some white chicken meat into her mouth, she eased open the door into the saloon itself. Miss Wilson was inspecting the cutlery on the far side of the room so, not wishing to be caught by the Old Dragon, Esme eased the door closed again and slipped out through the busy galley. She picked up a silver salver laid out for one of the first class passengers to dine in their room and walked confidently out behind two other chambermaids. She couldn’t risk one of the stewards questioning her about why, at such a busy time, she was leaving the kitchen empty-handed.

  The two chambermaids, who were some years older than Esme and had obviously worked the liners for several years, were whispering conspiratorially about a discovery of a third dead body. One of them, a plain looking woman who spoke with a Welsh lilt to her words, said the victim’s face looked like chewed meat and his body had a strange black rash as if it were rotting from the inside. She also said two bodies, quite dead the night before, were missing and they carried the same strange rash.

  Esme strained to listen as she followed them from the ship’s galley out into the first class corridor. Her thoughts were of the strange body she had seen on the waste ground the night before they left Southampton. That man, a foreign sailor she believed, also had a strange rash, and she thought him dead, decomposing even, and yet inexplicably, his body disappeared in just a few minutes. The memories sent a shiver down her spine and a swirling pit of uneasiness gripped her stomach. Whatever this rash was, whatever caused it was, if you believed the gossip, involved in the death of four people.

  Esme’s mind raced. The dark, twisted images of what she’d seen on that muddy patch of waste ground, mixed with snippets of the chambermaids’ conversation and a cold fear gripped her heart. Her thoughts turned to Charlotte. Was there something horrifyingly loose in the shadowy alleys and passageways of the docks? Was there someone, or something, spreading its foul disease or, worse still, if that were possible, chewing the flesh from the faces of its victims?

  Esme felt helpless. The despair rolled over her like the powerful Atlantic waves that crashed against the Titanic’s giant hull, each one dragging her deeper. Her chest tightened, her breath coming in short gasps as tears of hopeless frustration ran down her face, soaking the starched collar of her uniform. Stumbling into a service stairwell, she left the two women to continue their mindless gossiping while she wiped her face with her sleeve and took several large, deep breaths.

  In through the nose, out through the mouth.

  She kept repeating the words like a mantra until her breathing returned to normal. This was not the time to panic; she could do nothing to help Charlotte anyway. She needed to focus on ensuring Bridget escaped punishment for killing her husband, seemingly in cold blood. No jury in the land would understand her reasons while sitting in the emotive atmosphere of a courtroom.

  The pressure was beginning to get to Esme, a pressure that had been slowly, but steadily, building since her stupid decision to fuck with the Old Dragon on her first day. She remembered that brief moment of power when she became aware of how much Miss Wilson despised her for her youth and looks; it seemed a distant memory now. Only Bridget had shown her any genuine kindness. Even Doc Sampson’s offer of help came with a terrible price most women would never consider. But then, most women weren’t in her predicament. Leaving the silver salver on a table pushed against the wallpapered wall, she headed down to C Deck and her inauspicious fraternization with the detestable Doctor Sampson.

  Wilbur Jenkins was, since his earliest memory, a keen swimmer. He excelled at college, just failing by a fingernail, and no doubt an Ivy League education, to represent the U.S. at the 1908 Olympics. He was travelling home after spending the spring as a guest of the American ambassador in Rome. He had gone to college with the ambassador’s son, also a member of the college swim team, with whom he had shared a room, and during their last year a bed. The decision to return to America was hard. Europe seemed so much more liberal in its attitude, but his parents insisted, even lining up a job on Wall Street at his father’s firm. His mother even had a suitable young woman in mind for him to meet. By this, he knew she really meant to marry, despite her knowing about his sexuality since literally catching him and their gardener with their trousers down. She had, to her credit, promptly left the room and never spoken of the matter either to him or, he had to assume, his father, but he always noticed a distant sadness in her eyes after that. The gardener left their employ the next day to take up a position in Baltimore, and Wilbur never saw him again.

  The decision to swim so close to dinner looked to have proved a good one. The changing rooms were empty. Wilbur quickly changed into his woollen swimming costume and walked through to the poolside where he left his towel on the peg provided. At the far end of the darkened pool, he noticed a man in rough looking work clothes kneeling over the pale, bloated body of a half-naked man who lay on his back beside the water’s edge. The fully clothed man, to Wilbur’s well-practiced eye, looked muscular and athletic. Wilbur, who had always had a soft spot for the rougher, menial type, watched with growing excitement as the man, his head bent low over the other man’s crotch, continued bobbing up and down. There was a soft, gentle moan and the other man’s head rolled over to look straight at Wilbur who gasped, aware his incidental voyeuristic act had been discovered.

  The athletic man’s frantic movement stopped, and he quickly began to stand. The fat, bloated man didn’t move, just stared, almost invitingly, in Wilbur’s direction, as his companion strode confidently along the poolside towards the intruder.

  Wilbur smiled, his college lover all but forgotten. This was more than he could have hoped for. The stranger rounded the corner of the pool, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, his long stride swiftly closing the distance between them.

  Excitedly, Wilbur glanced round contemplating a retreat into the safer surroundings of the changing room’s darkened cubicles, aware discovery would lead to a devastating scandal. He knew many gentlemen in both New York and Boston society who preferred the forbidden intimacy offered by another man. Indeed, some were quite open about their preferences, at least within their close circle of friends. But to be caught in flagrante delicto with a man of such obvious working class origins would be unforgivable.

  The heavyset man was nearly on him. Wilbur abandoned the idea of the safe, dark changing rooms in exchange for spontaneous, raw passion. He also felt he owed the half-naked gentleman a chance to watch him enjoy the delights of the muscular labourer. It was only fair and maybe a prelude to them getting together later. Besides, if events heated up they could always move to a cubicle for the more intimate moment of their union. He felt his arousal pushing urgently against his bathing suit as his new lover reached out, drawing him urgently into his strong arms. The light fleetingly caught the handsome stranger’s face. The tattooed lines on his neck and face caused Wilbur’s heart to skip a beat. This was a fantasy come true, not since the gardener of his inexperienced youth had he experienced the illicit pleasure of a lover from the wrong side
of town.

  Following that single skipped beat, Wilbur’s heart only beat twice more before Hoggie’s mighty hands ripped his head from his shoulders in one violent twist. He would feed from Wilbur’s severed neck later, but now he returned to his already disembowelled meal with a soft, satisfied groan, dipping his face into the open cavity to pull at the delicious intestines within.

  Thirty-eight

  Violet sprawled on the soft eiderdown, her needlepoint carelessly discarded on the floor beside her bed. She sighed, puffing her cheeks out in an exaggerated fashion before taking her book from the bedside table and opening it with a resigned shrug. William had missed their afternoon tryst, and she had grown bored with her luxurious prison cell. He had been most explicit about her never leaving the room for fear of her coming face-to-face with Mrs. Grafton, an instruction she was more than happy to acquiesce to. Provided, of course, William made regular visits to relieve her tedious existence.

  The book failed to hold her attention, and she soon tossed it back on the table. Violet lay on her back staring at the ceiling, her thoughts once again turning to William. It was he who had taught her to read; not that she had been completely illiterate, but he helped her develop, helped her understand the meaning of the words and in so doing, taught her to enjoy reading. She would often lay naked next to him, reading passages from the books he bought for her while he helped her with pronunciation, or explained the meaning of a word she had not encountered before. Violet often thought, back then, he would ask her to marry him. To make a lady of her, why else would he bother to teach her to read, if not to make her pass for a young lady of repute? He never spent his time, or money, with any of the other girls, only her.

  Then he met that bitch Bridget, the fucking pretty American whore with all the right connections. It was really obvious he didn’t love Bridget. It was his idea for Violet to leave the security of Madame Beauchamp’s Belgravia house and become his wife’s servant. It would allow them to be close, allow him to continue his peccadillo, his penchant for the abnormal. William had told her the marriage was just business; Bridget was useful to him.

  But she heard them ... fornicating! And what about the baby, surely that would change things if she wasn’t careful? What if, faced with the prospect of fatherhood, William mellowed, embracing the respectability that came with having a family?

  Violet jumped from the bed and began to pace. Her dress rustled with each forceful stride. Her blood thumped loudly in her ears as a hot flush rose through her body and tiny beads of perspiration formed on her furrowed brow. She curled her fingers into fists. The skin, stretched tight across her knuckles, shone pale as the blood drained from her hands.

  Was that why he hadn’t come to visit that afternoon? Was he busy playing the happy father-to-be, the newlywed husband who couldn’t keep his hands of his beautiful young bride? Society was so fickle.

  As a single man of means, he could do as he pleased. It was no secret gentlemen longed to be him and the ladies, many of them already married, desired him, and all would turn a blind eye to his philandering. But now he had taken a wife, and she was at risk of becoming a scandalous dalliance, a cheap indiscretion at the heart of the Grafton household. An indiscretion, she knew, he could easily dispense with, especially if the young Mrs. Grafton were to be receptive to the more unusual aspects of his advances in the boudoir.

  Violet’s rage consumed her from within. It burned from her heart and radiated throughout her body. She loved William, not for his money or his power, but because they were kindred spirits born into absurdly different worlds. She saw a side to him few others even knew he possessed and in return, he respected her, not just for her body and youthful exuberance, but for her mind. She was clever, astute and deviously cunning and he’d nurtured that. When he ran into difficulty over rights to expand a mine under a neighbouring estate, it was her idea that she should meet the landowner, a local member of Parliament. William still had the letter of entitlement, allowing him to expand his companies’ mining operations, secured in his safe, with the two photographic plates showing the esteemed politician asleep in Violet’s arms.

  Violet was a fighter, and she wasn’t ready to give up on her future just yet. She may be only a lowly chambermaid now, but one day she would be Mrs. Grafton, even Lady Grafton. She would find a way of removing the threat posed by that Yankee bitch, and she would start tonight by giving William an evening he wouldn’t forget, even if that meant leaving the cabin and going in search of him. She would start by taking some time to free her mind, then she would find something suitable to wear, and with it, something to disguise her features, should she encounter his loathsome bride. Then, if he still had not visited her, or at least sent word giving details of their next rendezvous, she would dine in the first class saloon as her ticket entitled her to, ensuring she sat close to the Grafton’s table. The thrill of the event, expecting discovery at any moment, and the expression on William’s face, when she revealed herself to him, would all make for an intoxicating, if not arousing, evening.

  Drawing a warm bath, Violet took an ornately carved bamboo pipe and a small china pot, brightly decorated with a hand-painted Chinese dragon, from the top drawer of the dresser. She carefully lifted the lid and took out a small tablet of opium, which she burned on a metal plate balanced above the electric lamp. After a few minutes, she reclined on the bed and began inhaling the relaxing, psychotropic vapours through the pipe.

  Once she had slipped into a comfortable groove, where the walls rippled and twisted, contorting into strange shapes and spinning spirals, and the portraits spoke to her in strange tongues, she stumbled through to the suite’s compact bathroom. She quickly shed the silk stockings and nightgown she had worn all day in expectation of William’s visit, leaving them forgotten on the floor. Slipping into the water’s welcoming warmth she sank into a tranquil, if bizarre, daydream as the opium eased her troubled mind, while the effects of the bathwater soothed the tension in her muscles.

  Thirty-nine

  Sixth Officer Moody led the second search party and had been assigned the task of searching the first class areas of Upper Deck E. The main corridor, dubbed Park Lane by the crew, housed forty-five staterooms, and as the captain made clear, the passengers should not be disturbed. They only searched the corridor itself before moving on to the main second class reception area and the central stairwell. They had just descended to Middle Deck F and were entering the swimming pool and Turkish baths on the starboard side of the ship.

  Moody walked into the swimming pool’s outer room expecting to find one of the two stewards usually on duty but it was empty, the counter deserted. “Officer on deck!” His voice was loud enough to carry into the tiny back office but, he hoped, not loud enough to disturb any passengers who may still be dressing following a few quick lengths before dinner.

  There was no reply. Moody nodded towards one of the two able seamen accompanying him. “Mr. Davis, if you would be so good to check the office.”

  “Yes, sir!” Davis lifted the hinged section of the counter and disappeared into the room beyond only to reappear a few seconds later. “There’s no one here, sir.”

  “Probably nipped off for a crafty smoke when everyone left for dinner,” said his shipmate, a jovial Liverpudlian who’d joined the ship in Southampton from her sister the Olympic.

  “I do hope not, Mr. Baines,” Moody replied with a frown. As an officer, Moody was aware of the practice of slipping away for a quick smoke and would often turn a blind eye, provided the relevant stations were properly manned.

  The three men moved through into the changing room area. The lights were off, the room dark and uninviting, the dark oak lockers only serving to deepen the shadows along the far wall. Davis flicked a switch just inside the doorway, and a weak light filled the unoccupied room.

  “Maybe everyone’s gone to dinner, sir,” said Davis, hoping his superior would get the hint. Moody inspected the lockers, opening each in turn until he reached the second from la
st in the row. This one would not open.

  “Perhaps so, Mr. Davis, but someone has left their property in the locker, and I doubt they would leave their clothes here and return to their cabin in just their swimming costume.” He needed to inspect the pool beyond the inner door as there were two stewards yet unaccounted for and possibly a passenger. “We’ll conduct a brief sweep of the pool area, and if we find nothing, Mr. Davis, you can check the duty logs to find out who should be here. Then find them.”

  “Aye, aye, sir,” Davis said respectfully. Dinner was going to have to wait. He wasn’t even sure what, or who, they were searching for, but it was obviously important. He knew from the general gossip among the ship’s crew at least two people, one a passenger, died, and according to rumour, someone had stolen the bodies, so he guessed this search had something to do with that. But the ship’s officers were, as one would expect, keeping things close to their chest. If news of this got out, it would damage the reputation of the White Star, the ship, and all aboard her, from Captain Smith down to the lowest trimmer. It wasn’t uncommon for people to die at sea, no one would disagree over that; even three deaths, although unfortunate, was not unheard of. With more than three thousand people on a weeklong voyage, one could argue it was almost unavoidable. But the seeming theft of the bodies was totally unacceptable.