Murder on the Mauretania Read online

  PRAISE FOR EDWARD MARSTON

  ‘A master storyteller’

  Daily Mail

  ‘Packed with characters Dickens would have been proud of. Wonderful [and] well-written’

  Time Out

  ‘Once again Marston has created a credible atmosphere within an intriguing story’

  Sunday Telegraph

  ‘Filled with period detail, the pace is steady and the plot is thick with suspects, solutions and clues. Marston has a real knack for blending detail, character and story with great skill’

  Historical Novels Review

  ‘The past is brought to life with brilliant colours, combined with a perfect whodunnit. Who needs more?’

  The Guardian

  MURDER ON THE MAURETANIA

  EDWARD MARSTON

  In loving memory of my grandfather, Frederick Allen, who first introduced me to the joys of sailing

  An exceptionally smooth passage to Queenstown, which we reached at 9.00 this morning, augurs well for the prospects of what must prove a notable voyage in the history of shipping …

  From Our Special Correspondent, The Times

  Monday, November 18, 1907

  CONTENTS

  TITLE PAGE

  DEDICATON

  EPIGRAPH

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  COPYRIGHT

  CHAPTER ONE

  Saturday, November 16, 1907

  The largest ship in the world chose the worst day of the year on which to begin her maiden voyage. Omens were bad from the start. The boat train was an hour late leaving Euston Station, it was hopelessly crowded, and the journey was far too noisy and unpleasant to put anyone in the right mood for participation in an historic event. Trying to make up for lost time, the motorman increased speed at the expense of comfort, sending violent shudders and deafening rattles the whole length of the train. Polite irritation rose until it gave way to muted anger. Open resentment eventually broke out. No relief awaited them in Liverpool. When they finally steamed into the dockside station, they found the port shrouded in mist, drenched by rain, and sieved by a sharp wind. By the time the marine superintendent began to hurry the first-class passengers and their luggage on board, it was almost dark.

  Gloom had also descended on many of those still trudging along the platform with their wives, husbands, children, relations, mistresses, lovers, friends, acquaintances, and assorted baggage in tow. Collars of overcoats were turned up, scarves tightened, gloves pulled on, and hats pulled down. People were tired, tense, cold, and depressed by the murky conditions. The station was a huge echo chamber of complaint. Some of the travellers looked less like eager passengers on a unique voyage than condemned prisoners about to be transported in chains to an unknown destination.

  George Porter Dillman did not share the general pessimism. The tall, elegant, well-dressed American had learned to accept the shortcomings of rail travel and the vagaries of British weather. Nothing could dim his spirits. He was happy, relaxed, and urbane. While others moaned and criticised, Dillman had spent the train journey trying to cheer up his companions by listing all the virtues of the ocean liner on which they were about to sail and by telling them what a warm reception would await them in New York Harbour. His accent aroused mixed reactions among his exclusively English listeners in the second-class compartment, but all were impressed by his intricate knowledge of the Mauretania and grateful for the way in which he distracted them from the rigours of the hectic race northward. The polite stranger defeated time for them in the most easy and unforced manner. Dillman had made his first friends of the voyage.

  When they alighted from the train, the most important of these friends fell in beside him. One hand enclosed in her mother’s palm, eight-year-old Alexandra Jarvis, a cheerful, chubby little girl with an enquiring mind, positively skipped along the platform firing questions at Dillman.

  ‘How do you know so much about ships?’ she asked.

  ‘Because they fascinate me,’ he admitted.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s in my blood, I guess. I was born and brought up near the sea. My father builds yachts for a living. When I was your age, Alexandra, I probably spent more time afloat than on dry land.’

  ‘Were you ever seasick?’

  ‘Don’t pester Mr Dillman, dear,’ scolded her mother gently.

  ‘But I want to know.’

  ‘Everybody is seasick at first,’ he said.

  ‘What does it feel like?’ pressed the girl.

  ‘Alexandra!’ The rebuke was reinforced by a maternal tug on the hand. Vanessa Jarvis turned apologetically to Dillman. ‘You’ll have to excuse her. When she gets too excited, Alexandra sometimes forgets her manners.’

  ‘No apology is needed, Mrs Jarvis,’ he assured her.

  ‘There!’ said Alexandra triumphantly. ‘Will I be seasick, Mr Dillman?’

  ‘I think it’s highly unlikely on a vessel of that size, Alexandra.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘I bet you’ll turn out to be a natural sailor.’

  ‘That’s what I think. It’ll be Noel who’s seasick all over the place.’

  ‘No I won’t!’ countered her brother, walking close enough behind to jab her in the small of the back. ‘Don’t tell lies about me, Ally.’

  ‘They’re not lies.’

  ‘Yes they are.’

  ‘You’ve got a weak stomach.’

  ‘Who has?’ demanded Noel with righteous indignation.

  ‘Stop bickering!’ ordered their father. ‘What will Mr Dillman think?’

  ‘He likes us,’ said the girl confidently. ‘Don’t you, Mr Dillman?’

  Dillman replied with a grin and followed the crowd into the customs shed. He had already made his judgment about the Jarvis family. They were nice, friendly, civilised people who seemed, in his opinion, like typical members of the lower middle class. The father, Oliver Jarvis, a dapper man in his forties with a neat moustache, was, it transpired, manager of a branch bank in Camden, and he was taking his wife, a plump but still handsome matron, and their two children on their first trip abroad. Included in the party was his mother-in-law, Lily Pomeroy, a big, bosomy old woman with a fur-trimmed coat and a monstrous hat on which a whole flock of swallows had apparently elected to die. Dillman took time to break through the father’s natural reserve and distant suspicion of a foreigner, but Mrs Pomeroy was much more forthcoming, chatting amiably about the purpose of their visit to New York and yielding up details about her private life with a readiness that prompted an occasional wince from her daughter and put an expression of pained resignation on the face of her son-in-law.

  Noel Jarvis was a silent, dark-eyed, sulking boy of thirteen bedevilled by shyness, a capacity for instant boredom, and a bad facial rash. His sister, Alexandra, had no such handicaps. She was alert, affable, and buoyant. When formalities had been completed in the customs shed, she glanced down at Dillman’s small valise.

  ‘Why have you got so little luggage?’ she wondered.

  ‘I sent most of it on ahead,’ he explained,

  ‘Shall we see you on the ship?’

  ‘I hope so.’

  ‘Are we going to break the record?’

  ‘That’s something I can’t promise, Alexandra.’

&nbs
p; ‘Didn’t you tell us that the Mauretania was the fastest liner of them all?’

  ‘Potentially, she is,’ he said, ‘but she may not be able to prove it on her maiden voyage. November isn’t the ideal time to cross the Atlantic. Adverse weather conditions may slow us down, and there are all kinds of other hazards.’

  ‘Such as?’

  The question went unheard and unanswered because Alexandra’s voice, though raised above the mild tumult around them, was drowned out by the clamour that greeted them as they came out onto Prince’s Landing Stage. In spite of inclement weather, fifty thousand people had gathered to wave Goodbye to the new liner, only a quarter of the number who had watched her sister ship, the Lusitania, set off on her maiden voyage a couple of months earlier, but enough to produce a continuous barrage of noise and to remind the newcomers that they were about to embark on a maritime adventure. Jaded passengers were suddenly exhilarated, shaking off their fatigue and striding forward with a spring in their step. History beckoned. The discomfort of the train journey was forgotten.

  What really inspired them was the sight of the Mauretania, berthed at the landing stage, a massive vessel with lights ablaze from stern to stern, looming above them like a vast hotel floating on the water. While her dimensions had been well publicised, the statistics had not prepared anyone for the reality that rose up so majestically in the darkness, her size and shape defined by thousands of glowing lightbulbs as well as the four gigantic funnels picked out by the harbour illumination.

  Dillman had already been given a tour of the ship to familiarise him with her labyrinthine interior, but he was moved anew by her sheer magnificence.

  Even in the rain-swept gloom, the Mauretania was an irrefutable statement of the supremacy of British shipbuilding. It would be a joy to work on her.

  The long column of those from the boat train made its way through a sea of umbrellas and smiling faces, everyone now caught up in a mood of celebration that defied the elements. Police and port officials were on hand to control the crowd, but it was too disciplined and good-humoured to need much attention. Liverpool inhabitants knew better than anybody the significance of a maiden voyage. An amalgam of pride, curiosity, and excitement brought them to the docks. They had dispatched countless vessels down the River Mersey, but the Mauretania and her sister ship were special cases, two self-styled greyhounds of the Atlantic Ocean that would wrest the Blue Riband – the unofficial prize for the fastest crossing – from German hands and keep it where they believed it belonged, writing the name of their port into the record books once more. Like the Lusitania before her, the new vessel was another large feather in the already well-decorated cap of Liverpool.

  When everyone was finally aboard, the ship would hold the population of a small town, with well over two thousand passengers – more than half of them in third class – and a crew of over nine hundred. Such a daunting number of people would only make Dillman’s job more complex and difficult, but he dismissed such thoughts as he joined the queue at the gangway. He wanted to savour the communal delight. The Jarvis family was directly in front of him, and Alexandra kept turning around to send him a smile, her blue eyes dancing and her face shining with glee. Her brother, too, was overawed by the experience, and their effervescent grandmother, the chuckling Mrs Pomeroy, nodded her head so vigorously in approval that the swallows on her hat almost migrated out of fear.

  When their tickets had been inspected, they stepped aboard and felt the ship under their feet for the first time. It was thrilling. A different omen then appeared. Before a steward could escort the Jarvis family to their cabin, a black cat suddenly materialised out of nowhere and curled up near the top of a companionway with an almost proprietary air. Alexandra clapped her hands in surprise, then turned to Dillman.

  ‘Isn’t that a sign of good luck?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, Alexandra,’ he confirmed.

  ‘I knew this voyage was going to be wonderful.’

  ‘It will be.’

  ‘The girls at school will be so jealous of me!’ she said with a giggle.

  ‘Come along, dear,’ urged her mother, still holding the girl’s hand. ‘Goodbye, Mr Dillman. It was so nice to meet you.’

  ‘Goodbye,’ he said.

  Dillman waved them off, but Alexandra had not finished the conversation yet. ‘Oh, by the way, Mr Dillman,’ she called over her shoulder.

  ‘Yes, Alexandra?’

  ‘You can call me “Ally”, if you like.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  It was an important concession in her world, and he was touched that she should bestow the favour on him after so brief an acquaintance. As he made his way to his cabin, he was superstitious enough to take some reassurance from the sight of the black cat. Had it dashed across their path, it might have been an evil portent, and he knew sailors who would not even put out to sea if they saw a black cat walking away from them. In this case, however, the animal’s easy familiarity and purring contentment could only be construed as a sign of good fortune. It was an unexpected bonus.

  Dillman also reflected on the pleasure of making new friends and suspected that he and Alexandra Jarvis – ‘Ally’ to selected intimates – would bump into each other quite often in the course of the voyage. It never occurred to him that a ship’s mascot and an eight-year-old girl might help him solve a murder.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Genevieve Masefield was glad to be aboard at last. Unlike most of her fellow travellers on the boat train, she’d had a very enjoyable journey from London, sharing a first-class compartment with a congenial group of people who welcomed her into their circle without reservation. She had passed her first test with flying colours. Her confidence soared. In the light-hearted atmosphere, time had flown. There had been so much laughter and harmless fun that none of them had even noticed the jolting lurches of the train or the rhythmical clicking of its wheels. It was almost like being at a party. Long before they reached Liverpool, they were intoxicated with each other’s company and further inebriated by the very idea of sailing on the Mauretania.

  Notwithstanding all that, Genevieve was grateful to be alone again, if only to catch her breath. When she was conducted to her quarters, she was pleased to see that her luggage was already there, neatly stacked against a wall. The single-berth cabin in which she would spend the next five and a half days was luxurious to the point of excess. It was superbly appointed. Gilt-framed mirrors were artfully placed to give an impression of spaciousness and to reflect to their best advantage the intricate decorations on the panelled walls, the ornate lighting fixtures and the beautifully upholstered furniture. Beneath her feet was a delicately woven patterned carpet. All around her were expensive attempts to convince her that she was not in a ship at all, but in a luxury suite in some palatial hotel. The sense of newness was almost tangible.

  Genevieve was thrilled. When she had sailed on the maiden voyage of the Lusitania, she had been highly impressed by the quality of the first-class accommodation, but she was overwhelmed by what now confronted her. Enormous care and artistic talent had gone into the design of the interior of her sister ship. In the first-class cabins, comfort was paramount. It made Genevieve realise how truly fortunate she was. Her first voyage to America had theoretically also been her last because she had planned to settle on the other side of the Atlantic and make a fresh start there. Yet here she was, barely two months later, boarding another ocean liner in Liverpool for its maiden voyage and doing so in a far happier state of mind. So much had changed in the intervening weeks. She had a different outlook, increased zest, and a whole new purpose in life.

  She removed her gloves, took off her hat, then slipped out of her coat and tossed it over the back of a chair. Genevieve felt at home. Appraising herself in a mirror, she gave a quiet smile of approval. Now in her mid-twenties, she had lost none of her youthful charms. Her face had a classical beauty that was enhanced by the silken sheen of her skin and her generous lips; her large blue eyes were surmounted by eyebrows that
arched expressively; the high cheekbones and slight upturn of nose gave her a pleasing individuality. She brushed a strand of fair hair neatly back into place, then studied herself once more. Striking enough to turn men’s heads, her face also suggested a wealth and social position that she did not, in fact, have but that enabled her to move easily in high society and gained her acceptance by the leisured class as one of its own. It would be a vital asset during the week that lay ahead.

  A respectful tap on the door curtailed her scrutiny. Expecting it to be her cabin steward, she was surprised to open the door and find herself looking instead at two of her erstwhile companions from the train. Harvey Denning was a suave, smiling, dark-haired man of thirty with the kind of dazzling good looks that seemed faintly unreal. His smile broadened into a complimentary grin as he ran a polite eye over Genevieve’s slender body. Susan Faulconbridge was a beaming, bright-eyed, vivacious young woman with dimples in her cheeks and auburn hair peeping out from beneath her hat. Both visitors were still wearing their overcoats and scarves.

  ‘We’ve come to collect you,’ announced Denning courteously.

  ‘Collect me?’ said Genevieve.

  ‘Aren’t you coming out on deck? We’re about to set sail.’

  ‘Oh, do join us,’ urged Susan Faulconbridge effusively. ‘We had such a lovely time together on the train that I wanted to share this experience as well. You’re one of us now. Please say you’ll come.’

  ‘I will, I will,’ agreed Genevieve.

  ‘Good,’ said Denning. ‘After all, you’re the expert.’

  ‘Am I?’

  ‘Yes, Genevieve. You hold the whip hand over us. You sailed on the Lusitania. We’re the innocents here. You can teach us the ropes. The moment when we actually set sail must be so uplifting.’