Murder on the Celtic Read online

  MURDER ON THE CELTIC

  EDWARD MARSTON

  CONTENTS

  TITLE PAGE

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  BY EDWARD MARSTON

  COPYRIGHT

  ONE

  New York City, 1910

  ‘It’s not fair,’ said Genevieve with a hint of petulance.

  ‘Not fair?’ he echoed.

  ‘No, George. Other couples cross the Atlantic as a means of celebrating their marriage, but the moment we step aboard a ship we always have to conceal the fact that we’re man and wife.’

  ‘It’s all in a good cause,’ said Dillman.

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘Of course. It helps us to do our job properly.’

  ‘I still don’t like it.’

  ‘Neither do I, Genevieve, but work must come first. If we operate as a married couple, then there’s a limit to the number of people we can get to know during a voyage. Since we have to be seen together all the time, our movement is restricted. And as private detectives,’ he argued, ‘we need the maximum amount of freedom on board.’

  ‘I don’t want freedom – I want my husband.’

  Dillman grinned. ‘I’ll come and tuck you in every night.’

  ‘It’s not enough.’

  ‘Then I’ll have to add a few refinements.’

  ‘I want to travel as Mrs George Dillman,’ she said wistfully, ‘not get divorced every time I walk up a gangway.’

  They were in their room at a New York hotel, ready to embark on their latest assignment as shipboard detectives. It was a moment that she always hated. Having enjoyed the delights of marriage for over a week, she now had to revert to being Miss Genevieve Masefield once more, a change of name that signalled her altered status. It was quite true that as a single woman she would have more room for manoeuvre aboard the ship, but she would also be exposed to the inevitable, irksome, unsought male attention with which she always had to contend when sailing, ostensibly alone, across the Atlantic.

  ‘Don’t you get jealous?’ she asked.

  ‘Jealous?’

  ‘At the way that your wife arouses romantic interest on board.’

  ‘Not at all,’ he said airily. ‘I rather like it. Whenever I see you hotly pursued by some lovesick passenger, I have the consolation of knowing that you would never succumb to his advances. Besides,’ he went on, allowing himself a rare moment of vanity, ‘I, too, have been known to make hearts flutter.’

  ‘That’s what worries me, George.’

  ‘I’m all yours, darling. No other woman could tempt me.’

  ‘It won’t stop them trying.’

  ‘Their efforts will be in vain.’

  George Porter Dillman was a tall, slim, elegant Bostonian with handsome features and an air of urbanity. He had first glimpsed Genevieve on a crowded railway platform as she was about to catch the boat train to Liverpool. During the maiden voyage of the Lusitania, they had been drawn together, and because she had helped him to solve a murder, Dillman had persuaded her to join him as a detective with the Cunard Line. Genevieve was a tall, slender Englishwoman with a natural grace and a remarkable self-possession.

  ‘It’s only for a short time,’ he said, taking her in his arms to give her a warm hug. ‘Then we have ten whole days together.’

  ‘Until we set sail again.’

  ‘I thought you liked the work.’

  ‘I do,’ admitted Genevieve. ‘I love it. I enjoy life at sea and I get to meet the most extraordinary range of people. In a perverse way, I even relish the element of danger. I’ve had a loaded gun pointed at me so many times now that I no longer feel weak at the knees.’

  ‘Then what are you complaining about?’

  ‘You, George.’

  ‘Gadding about as a bachelor?’

  ‘And having to pretend that we’re complete strangers.’

  ‘Only in public,’ he argued. ‘I make up for it in private.’

  ‘I know,’ she said, kissing him gently on the mouth, ‘and those moments are very precious to me. But they’re usually few and far between. We always seem to have far too much on our plate during a voyage – murder, theft, blackmail, drug smuggling and so on. We never have time for each other.’

  ‘We’ll find some time.’

  ‘If only passengers were more law-abiding.’

  ‘The vast majority of them are, Genevieve. We only ever get a small handful of crooks. Who knows?’ he said with an optimistic smile. ‘We may get none at all on the Celtic.’

  ‘We’ve never had a trouble-free crossing yet.’

  ‘There’s a first time for everything.’

  ‘You really think we’ll have no villains on the ship?’

  ‘Apart from the odd cheat at the card table.’

  ‘I can cope with that,’ she said happily. ‘What I resent is an endless stream of crimes that form a barrier between us.’

  ‘That won’t happen on the Celtic.’

  ‘Do I have your word on that?’

  ‘You can have more than my word,’ he volunteered.

  And he sealed his promise with a long, loving, husbandly kiss.

  When the Celtic had made her maiden voyage in 1901, she was the largest ship in the world, supplanting another vessel in the White Star fleet, the Oceanic. That claim to pre-eminence was surrendered two years later, and when the Lusitania and Mauretania were brought into service in 1907, the two Cunard monsters dwarfed the Celtic. Yet she remained a fine vessel, sleek, spacious and opulent. She also retained her popularity with passengers who crossed the Atlantic on a regular basis. She was always the first choice for Frank Spurrier and Joshua Cleves, and they were among the earliest people to go aboard. They did so with an enthusiasm that was not shared by every passenger.

  As they stood at the rail they watched a sorry procession making its way to steerage accommodation. Clutching their meagre possessions and with their heads bowed in defeat, shabbily clad people were trudging along the pier like so many dogs with their tails between their legs. Joshua Cleves, a big, broad-shouldered American in his early forties, identified the reason at once. After pulling on his cigar, he exhaled a cloud of smoke.

  ‘Turned back at Ellis Island,’ he decided.

  ‘Why?’ asked Spurrier.

  ‘All sorts of reasons, Frank. They could be too old, too ill, too stupid or unable to offer any skills on the labour market. Their papers might have been incorrectly validated or they might not have the required amount of cash on them. We don’t just let anyone breeze right in, you know.’

  ‘But the United States encourages immigration.’

  ‘Sure – as long as we get the right sort of immigrants. New York is handling thousands a day but many of them are undesirables. They have to be sent back home.’

  ‘It must be soul-destroying for them.’

  ‘They’ve sold everything they had simply to get here.’

  ‘What have they got to go back to, then?’ Cleves gave an expressive shrug. ‘It’s so cruel,’ Spurrier went on, watching the grim parade below. ‘They’re lured by the mirage of a wonderful new life in a country full of promise and the door is slammed shut in their faces.’

  ‘We have to maintain certain standards.’

  ‘Look at them – they’re like beaten animals.’

  ‘Then they’ll never make true Americans.’

  Spurrier did not reply. He was thinking of the westward voyage he had made on the Celtic. When they left Southampton, there were well over two thousand steerage passengers aboard,
crammed into the lower decks, enduring spartan conditions and unappetising food, sustained by a vision of a better existence for them and their families. It had been a wasted journey that left them in despair.

  Frank Spurrier was touched by their plight. He was an arresting figure in his late thirties, tall, lean and with an exotic ugliness that women somehow found appealing. He ran a hand across his clean-shaven chin.

  ‘Poor souls! I feel sorry for them.’

  ‘You’re too soft-hearted.’

  ‘Nobody could ever accuse you of that, Josh.’

  Cleves laughed. ‘I hope not.’

  ‘‘Don’t you have any sympathy for them?’

  ‘I save my sympathy for the guys who work on Ellis Island. They’re little more than cattle drovers. Just think about it – endless shiploads of miserable wretches from all over the world trekking through that reception hall.’

  ‘It must be terrifying for them,’ observed Spurrier. ‘Especially if they don’t speak any English.’

  ‘I’d hate to be in the middle of that chaos,’ said Cleves, removing his cigar to speak. ‘Think of the smell – many of them stink to high heaven. And the noise – it must be pandemonium in there. No wonder the officials resort to shortcuts.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Some people can be rejected at a glance, and there are lots more who fail a simple medical examination. If the doctors suspect them of illness, they mark the lapels of their coats with different-coloured chalk, coded to indicate a particular disease.’

  ‘What happens then?’

  ‘If they’re rejected, they’re kept on the island in conditions that are even worse than the ones they suffered in steerage. Then they live on a diet of prunes and rye bread until they can be shipped back to wherever they came from.’

  ‘You seem to know a lot about it, Josh.’

  ‘I had a friend who worked as a medical superintendent there,’ said Cleves. ‘He reckoned that he was more like a missionary. In the course of a normal day he might hear twenty different languages being spoken without understanding a word of any of them.’

  Spurrier gazed across the water. ‘It must be hell for them,’ he said, pointing at the distant Statue of Liberty. ‘Their spirits are raised by the sight of that wonderful statue, then brutally dashed by some anonymous official on Ellis Island.’

  ‘We have to be practical, Frank. We can’t let infectious disease into the country. It might cause an epidemic. And what use are lunatics, fanatics, epileptics, blind people or cripples?’

  ‘You’re too harsh.’

  ‘Survival of the fittest. Law of nature.’

  ‘Your own family emigrated from Europe, didn’t they?’

  ‘That’s beside the point,’ said Cleves irritably, not wishing to be reminded that his parents had left their native Poland almost half a century earlier. ‘I was born and brought up here. I consider myself to be one hundred percent American and I’m proud of the fact.’

  ‘What was your surname before it was changed?’

  ‘I’ve forgotten.’

  ‘Nobody forgets something like that.’

  ‘I have.’

  Joshua Cleves gave him a challenging stare before flicking cigar ash over the rail. His eye then fell on some passengers heading for the first-class gangway. One group in particular caught his attention. A stout elderly man in a top hat and a coat with an astrakhan collar was arm in arm with a dignified old lady in a full-length fur coat and a matching hat. It was the young woman beside them who interested Cleves. Tall, stately and immaculately dressed, she glanced up at the ship and enabled both men to get a clear view of her face under the brim of her hat.

  ‘Now there’s a far better subject for study,’ said Cleves with an admiring chuckle. ‘A gorgeous English rose.’

  ‘She could be American.’

  ‘With parents like those? Not a chance, Frank. They’re as English as cheddar cheese.’

  ‘But they’re not her parents,’ said Spurrier, noting the way that the old man stood aside and doffed his hat slightly so that the women could go up the gangway before him. ‘What man would lift his hat like that to his own daughter? Besides, they’re too ancient. My guess is that they met in the customs shed. The lady may be travelling alone.’

  Cleves smirked. ‘Not for long, if I have anything to do with it.’

  ‘She’s too young for you, Josh.’

  ‘Not in my book.’

  ‘In any case, I’m sure that she’d prefer a sophisticated English gentleman like me.’ Spurrier straightened his tie. ‘I look forward to getting acquainted with her.’

  ‘I saw her first,’ protested Cleves.

  ‘All’s fair in love and war.’

  ‘She’s mine, Frank. Let’s face it – I have more money.’

  ‘But I have more charm.’

  ‘I’ve got greater experience with women.’

  ‘You’d be out of your depth with a real lady.’

  ‘I could have her eating out of my hand in a couple of days.’

  ‘It would only take me twenty-four hours,’ boasted Spurrier.

  ‘Are you willing to bet on that?’

  There was no hesitation. ‘Of course.’

  ‘Even though you’re bound to lose?’ taunted Cleves.

  ‘Name the stake.’

  ‘A hundred dollars.’

  ‘Make it guineas,’ decided Spurrier, warming to the notion of a contest. ‘We’re dealing with an English thoroughbred, after all. A hundred guineas to the first man who makes real headway with her.’

  Cleves smirked again. ‘I intend to make much more than headway,’ he said with overweening confidence, ‘so you’d better have the money ready and waiting. When you tap on her cabin door at midnight, the chances are that I’ll be the person who opens it from the inside.’ He offered his hand. ‘You accept the wager?’

  Frank Spurrier nodded firmly and shook his hand. The two of them inspected their quarry once more. Far below them, unaware of their intense scrutiny, Genevieve Masefield went up the last part of the gangway and onto the ship.

  Nelson Rutherford was a stocky man of middle height, with a black beard adding strength and definition to an already eye-catching face. Standing behind his office desk in his smart uniform, the purser had the look of a ship’s captain with a piratical past. George Dillman liked the man at once.

  ‘With a name like yours,’ he commented, ‘I suppose that you simply had to go to sea.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Rutherford with a pleasant drawl, ‘though I wasn’t named after Admiral Nelson. It was a family name, handed down from one generation to another. I loathed it at first.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Kids at school called me Nelly.’

  ‘Where are you from?’

  ‘The Florida Keys. I learnt to sail before I could even walk properly. The sea is in my blood.’

  ‘Then we’re two of a kind. My father runs a business in Boston making ocean-going yachts. I spent most of my childhood afloat.’

  ‘The Celtic is much more than a yacht, Mr Dillman.’

  ‘So I noticed.’

  They shared a laugh. Dillman had left the hotel before Genevieve so that they could arrive at the harbour separately. Having come aboard early, he had first introduced himself to the purser, whom he found a friendly, capable and helpful character. Rutherford clearly knew about Dillman’s excellent record as a shipboard detective and he was curious to meet him.

  ‘I gather that you sailed here on the Oceanic,’ said Rutherford.

  ‘That’s true. We had the doubtful pleasure of travelling in the company of the man who owns the line.’

  Rutherford was impressed. ‘J. P. Morgan?’

  ‘Far be it from me to criticise our employer, but I rather hope that his name is not on the passenger list this time.’

  ‘It isn’t, Mr Dillman. You’re quite safe.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘The Celtic is a fine ship – bigger and better than the Oceanic, with ro
om for an additional nine hundred people or more.’

  ‘I’ve seen the specifications – almost three hundred and fifty in first class and a hundred and sixty in second. Over four times that combined number in steerage.’

  ‘You’ve done your homework.’

  ‘I like to know what we’re up against,’ said Dillman with a smile, ‘and so does my partner.’

  ‘I thought the two of you would turn up together.’

  ‘We make a point of staying apart, Mr Rutherford. If we’re seen together, people might start to connect us and that could hamper the pursuit of any villains aboard. We do our best to look like ordinary passengers so that we can mix easily with everyone else. That way, we have a chance to catch any criminals off guard.’

  ‘We don’t get too many crooks on the Celtic.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Because so few crimes ever come to our notice.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean they’re not committed,’ Dillman argued. ‘Certain crimes are not always reported – blackmail, for instance – and others are not discovered until passengers have disembarked. It’s a rare ship that has no villainy on it at all. I just hope that we have no real problems this time,’ he went on, remembering his promise to Genevieve. ‘On the Oceanic we had a murder to solve.’

  ‘Nothing like that has ever happened on the Celtic,’ Rutherford told him. ‘Her problem is that she’s been dogged by bad luck.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘Less than two years after her maiden voyage she collided with a steamer in the River Mersey Six months later there was a fire in hold number five while she was docked at Liverpool. A cargo of cotton, leather and other merchandise was destroyed. A more worrying incident came on Christmas Day 1905.’ The purser grimaced at the memory. ‘It was my first voyage on the vessel.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘We were hit by a massive wave that sent water into all of the second-class areas. Windows were smashed, doors taken off their hinges and carpets ruined. It was a nightmare.’

  ‘I can imagine,’ said Dillman, knowing how treacherous the North Atlantic could be. ‘It’s difficult to be full of Christmas spirit when you’re soaked to the skin.’

  ‘The awful thing is that the same thing happened again three years later. I was deputy purser at the time. Huge waves buffeted us on the westward crossing,’ recalled Rutherford, ‘and scoured the decks. The wooden railing was torn from the bridge and there was a lot of other damage.’