Echoes of Titanic (19 page)

Walter wasn't telling Kelsey anything she didn't already know, but it was still helpful to hear things laid out so systematically. He went on to describe Sean's progress as a businessman in the States, how with help from a few affluent members of the Irish community he had landed a low-level job at a Manhattan bank. He had an affinity for numbers and money and quickly worked
his way up to management. In 1904, he left the bank to open his own investment firm, Brennan & Company. With the strategy of primarily investing in forward-thinking businessmen such as Edison and Marconi, he made good fairly quickly. Once Marconi won the Nobel Prize in 1909, Sean wisely began channeling more and more funds toward wireless technologies, and most of his investments began paying off nicely.

Of particular interest was a new start-up in England called Transatlantic Wireless, Ltd., which manufactured an integral component of the Marconi system. Transatlantic Wireless was looking to drum up substantial funds for the expansion of their factory, and Sean learned that one of the founders of the company, a man named Neville Williams, was planning a trip to the United States in April 1912 to meet with potential investors. He had chosen to cross over on the maiden voyage of a brand-new ship,
Titanic
, because it would actually be using the newest Marconi wireless system on board.

The more Sean learned about Transatlantic Wireless, the more he wanted to get in on the ground floor. Eager to beat out other investors, he made the decision to preempt Neville's trip to the States by sending a representative to London to meet with the man there first, before he even left London.

Around that same time, Sean had been communicating with Oona and Rowan about Adele. She was nineteen by then, smart and pretty but with few satisfactory prospects in Ireland either for marriage or work. It seemed the right time to get her out, especially because of the rumblings of trouble throughout the British Isles and the flaring up of issues and conflicts throughout Europe that would eventually lead to the first world war. Sean urged all of them to come, but Oona had no interest in leaving her homeland. She did, however, agree that Jocelyn might do well to make the move along with her cousin. In the end, the plan was for Rowan, Adele, and Jocelyn to come to America. Adele would stay, Rowan would visit for a few weeks, and then he would head back home, and Jocelyn would make the decision as to whether to stay in America with her cousin and uncle or go back to Ireland with her father.

Neville Williams encouraged Sean to book passage for his family on the maiden voyage of
Titanic
too. He said he would get together with them on the voyage to show them the new wireless technology in action. Thus, Sean timed his representative's trip to England just prior to the dates for that voyage. The man was to meet with Rowan and Neville at the Transatlantic Wireless office on April 9, 1912, in London regarding investing in the company,
and then he and Rowan and the girls would sail back to America together on
Titanic
, which was to sail the next day.

Eventually, the plans were all set. As Rowan, Adele, and Jocelyn prepared for their trip first to London and then on to Southampton, Sean made the decision of who among his employees would make the voyage to England to serve as his representative. He finally decided on a young upstart named Tad Myers. Though Tad was relatively new with Brennan & Company, he was ambitious and eager to take the assignment on.

All seemed to go as planned—up to the moment
Titanic
hit an iceberg and sank in less than three hours. Though Tad and Adele each made it onto a lifeboat, Rowan and Jocelyn did not. They perished in the sinking, and their bodies were never found.

Once the ship that rescued the survivors,
Carpathia
, reached New York, Sean welcomed the daughter he hadn't seen for sixteen years and grieved with her as well. Though she'd been devastated by the tragedy, his hope was that in time she would recover and make a new life for herself here.

What he didn't expect was the news given to him by Tad Myers one year after the sinking. According to Tad, the woman calling herself Adele Brennan was lying. She wasn't Adele at all, Tad insisted, but was instead Adele's
cousin
, Jocelyn Brennan, just pretending to be Adele. Tad claimed that Adele had died the night
Titanic
sank and that for some unknown reason, once Jocelyn realized her cousin was dead, she'd taken the opportunity to assume her place.

Kelsey interrupted Walter to clarify. “Wait a minute. You're telling me these claims of Jocelyn posing as Adele trace all the way back to nineteen thirteen?”

“That's right. Sean had trouble believing it, but this guy Tad put up such a stink that he finally ended up sending Adele away to school at Swarthmore while he tried to sort things out.”

“Why did it take a whole year for him to say something?”

“Apparently, he claims he kept waiting for her to admit the truth herself. She had told him she would but never did, so finally he spoke up.”

“So what happened then?” Kelsey asked breathlessly.

“That's where things get a little muddy,” Walter replied. “It seems that Sean decided the best way to answer the question was to write to Oona over in Ireland and ask her. In his letter, he laid out the situation and enclosed a photo of the young woman who was claiming to be Adele. He asked Oona
to tell him whether the person in that photo really was Adele or if it was, instead, Jocelyn.”

“Clever thinking,” Kelsey said, heading back into the house. The wind had picked up and she was feeling chilly, plus she wanted to find pen and paper and once again attempt to jot down a family tree.

“In the letter Sean wrote to Oona,” Walter continued, “he said that if it turned out that it
was
a photo of Jocelyn, he would of course confront her about the situation but would do so with sensitivity, considering the trauma she'd been through. He pledged continued financial and familial support for the young woman regardless, whether she ended up being his daughter or his niece. He also promised to continue sending money over to Ireland in support of Oona and Quincy, especially now that Rowan had passed away.”

“Does the file have a copy of that letter?” Kelsey asked, stepping into the kitchen and pulling the door shut behind her.

“Yes. It also has a copy of the photo. It's an old black-and-white of a somber-looking young Adele, posed on the front steps of what I think is the old Brennan house on Liberty Street.”

Rooting through the kitchen drawers, Kelsey finally came up with pen and paper. She sat at the table, and as they continued to talk, she began again an attempt to sketch out the Brennan family tree.

“So all we need is Oona's response to settle this whole matter. What did she write back and say?”

She could hear more rustling of papers on Walter's end as he told her, “Well, see, therein lies the problem. Oona saved this letter and photo that Sean sent to her, and it ended up getting passed down to Quincy with her papers. When Quincy died, it came to the attention of his son, Ian, and that was when he first realized that Adele's identity had been questioned. Call it exhibit A.”

“Exhibit A? Are you saying this is the proof Rupert was talking about, the proof that Adele was an imposter?”

“This is the proof Rupert's father had, yes. But by the time Rupert came back and tried again himself after his father died, he had also managed to unearth a sworn affidavit from Tad Myers in which he officially made those claims against Adele.”

“But all this letter does is raise the question. It doesn't give any answers. It doesn't prove anything.”

“I know.”

“So what did Oona write in response?
That's
the letter that matters.”

“Yes, it is. Unfortunately, that letter no longer exists.”

Kelsey groaned.

“It's not that they didn't try to find it. This report details the extensive search the attorneys made through the company's archives and through Sean's personal papers, but Oona's response letter was never found. They concluded that Sean must have gotten it, read it, and at some point thrown it out without thinking—or maybe destroyed it intentionally, depending on what it said.”

“Wow. That's not good. So where does the report go from there? Were they able to find any sort of proof of her true identity?”

“In a sense. Hold on a sec.” He rustled around some more, and as Kelsey waited she jotted in the various names she could think of for her tree, adding lines to show how everyone was related.

“Here it is,” Walter said. “I'll read it to you. ‘It is the conclusion of this researcher that the woman claiming to be Adele Brennan was most likely telling the truth. This conclusion is based primarily on two points of evidence. One, company records show that a Mr. Tad Myers left Brennan & Company approximately six weeks after the date on Sean Brennan's letter to his sister Oona asking her to identify the woman in the photo. The assumption is that Oona wrote back confirming Adele's identity, which thus showed that Tad Myers had been the one who was lying. After he left, Myers disappeared for a while but then it was reported that he moved to California. Three years later, he contracted pneumonia and died at the age of twenty-seven.'”

“Could he have been paid off to keep quiet too?” Kelsey asked, worrying about how far back this conspiracy went.

“It doesn't say.” He resumed his reading of the report as she worked on her diagram. “‘Two, the issue of Adele's identity seems never to have come under question again. See attached documents for numerous references over the next twenty-six years, until Sean Brennan's death, where he repeatedly referred to Adele as his daughter. He died in nineteen thirty-eight, and she inherited his entire estate.'”

“That seems pretty clear to me. It was Adele's word against Tad's, and she was the one vindicated in the end.”

“You could interpret it that way.”

“So why the settlement, Walter? Their ‘proof' doesn't seem all that conclusive to me. Why did my father give them money?”

“Because it was cheaper than going to court, for one thing. But primarily he did it to keep them quiet. You know as well as I do that much of this company's cachet hinges on the ‘legend' of Adele, starting with her being a
Titanic
survivor. Mess with all that, and you might end up messing with the bottom line of Brennan & Tate.”

“But if Rupert's father couldn't prove his claims…”

“Don't be naive, Kelsey. Do you think that matters? Just having the question raised in the first place is enough. In the eyes of the world, Adele would be convicted without a trial. Besides, if it came to a trial, your father didn't really have any more solid proof than they did, and it is too risky to put a case like that before a jury.”

Kelsey knew he was right. The decision to pay them off, as infuriating as that must have been, had probably been the right one.

“Any idea what Tad's motivation was for lying about it in the first place?”

“No, but one could speculate. Perhaps he did seek some sort of payoff. Or maybe he was threatened by Adele's ambition or her business acumen. He was a rising star at Brennan & Tate before she came along. Maybe he just didn't like all the attention she stole away from him, especially the attention of her father.”

“Could be.”

“That would be my guess, but who can say, really?”

Kelsey hated that they didn't know why Tad had done it. It's not as though they could go back in time and ask the man himself. If only Adele had addressed this situation in her memoir! But Kelsey had read that book cover to cover a dozen times, and from what she could recall, the man who came to England as her father's representative had shown up in all of about one sentence, maybe two at the most.

For some reason, Adele had chosen to omit this part of her story. Consequently, the facts of what really happened between the two of them back then were anybody's guess.

M
oving on, Kelsey asked Walter if he could explain to her the basis for Rupert's claims. “I mean, why does he think they are owed some money? He said something yesterday about this having to do with a will?”

“Yes, with Sean's will, actually. Hold on.”

As she waited, Kelsey finished her sketch as best she could then picked it up and studied it. It read: