Unsinkable (8 page)

A splendid gentleman who seemed to have gained forty pounds since being measured for his tuxedo arrived at their table. “Bless my soul!” he roared through reddish muttonchop whiskers, seating himself across from the girls. “That I should be so fortunate as to be placed with such an abundance of delightful female company, each one more lovely and charming than the other! I shall become distracted trying to decide which one of you will be first to honor me with the pleasure of a dance!”

The image of being steered around the dance floor backing away from that ample belly nearly caused Juliana to laugh in the gentleman’s face. She looked over at Sophie, and saw that the American girl was having the same struggle.

Perhaps the daughter of an earl and an American deportee had something in common after all.

CHAPTER TWELVE

RMS
TITANIC

T
HURSDAY,
A
PRIL
11, 1912, 8:25
A.M.

The heat was unimaginable.

Every time Alfie climbed down the ladder to the orlop deck, he was surprised anew that his memory of it was not half the reality. Twenty-nine boilers 15 feet high, a total of 162 fireboxes, blazes raging. That was what it took to propel the
Titanic,
the largest moving object ever built by man. Added to the temperature was the earsplitting sound of machinery as the steam drove the engines that turned the enormous triple screw that propelled the ship.

It was a crowded place, too. Alfie always had a difficult time locating his father in this roaring hive of activity, the fiery realm of the
Titanic’s
“black gang.” It took more than 150 stokers to keep the boilers going, and they all looked alike — shirtless and black from head to toe with coal dust and ash. Da had been working at this on one ship or another for more than
twenty years. No wonder his voice sounded like gravel. He must have had a pound of sludge in his lungs.

Another stoker put a grimy hand on Alfie’s shoulder and pointed to one of the double-ended furnaces. “Your pa’s over there,” he rasped.

John Huggins smiled and beckoned. Even here, the closest thing to an inferno Alfie could imagine, his father was always glad to see him. Whatever ill luck that had already happened and might yet befall him, there was that to hang on to. Being loved was no small matter.

“Aren’t you on shift, boy?” Alfie’s father asked.

“Mrs. Willingham has a shawl that she’s especially fond of,” Alfie explained. “And I’ve been sent to the baggage hold to dig it out of her trunk.”

John Huggins spat into the roaring firebox.
“Especially fond of!”
he repeated in disgust. “I’m sure she’s got seventeen more in her stateroom. It’s a blessing to be working class. Money makes you soft in the head.”

Alfie laughed. “Then I must have the hardest head of anybody. They’re paying me three pounds ten for the entire voyage.”

His father jammed his shovel into the bin and came away with a scoopful of smoldering, smoking coal.

Alfie was alarmed. “Your bin is on fire!”

“Easy, lad,” his father soothed. “That happens when you’re working with coal. You’re supposed to keep it well watered, but some of the younger blokes just wet the top of the pile and don’t worry about what’s down below.”

“But fire at sea?” Alfie persisted.

“That’s not fire, lad.” He indicated the relentless flames inside the furnace.
“That’s
fire. Now, you’d best be off. Can’t keep a rich lady waiting for her favorite wrap.”

Alfie left his father and continued on his errand, passing through Number 6 Boiler Room. As he ducked through the hatch, he imagined the heavy watertight door that would clatter down at the flip of a switch by Captain Smith. Down here, it was easy to visualize the sixteen sealed compartments that made the ship unsinkable.

A delicious coolness washed over him as he entered the fireman’s passage forward of Number 6. A thermometer on the bulkhead read 88 degrees, but the improvement was measureless.

It took all his strength to open the heavy iron hatch to his left. Trunks, boxes, and luggage were piled nearly to the ceiling, secured in place by thick netting — the worldly goods of more than six
hundred first-and second-class passengers. It would surely take half the night to find Mrs. Willingham’s belongings. And by then, some other fancy-pants would no doubt send him on his next mission — after a watch fob or a makeup mirror this time.

He yanked open the hatch to his right, hoping against hope to see Mrs. Willingham’s trunk standing alone and unsecured, awaiting his key. No such luck. There was, instead, a vast cargo hold. Crates of all sizes, containing everything from tea to machine parts, were stacked one on top of the other, tightly tied down.

As if a wave exists large enough to toss a ship this size,
thought Alfie. The
Titanic
rode the Atlantic so sturdily that a pencil could be stood upright on a tabletop. He had seen it several times. It was a favorite game in the first-class lounge.

He surveyed the hold, his gaze passing over bales of rubber, rolls of linoleum, sacks of potatoes, and barrels of mercury and the scarlet resin called dragon’s blood. In the center of the compartment was parked a motorcar! It was large and bright red, yet it was almost completely hidden by the endless cases and parcels and casks.

And then something inside the automobile
moved!

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

RMS
TITANIC

T
HURSDAY,
A
PRIL
11, 1912, 8:50
A.M.

Alfie froze. “Is someone there?” he asked in a high-pitched voice.

There was no answer and no more movement. He had a small argument with himself. Was it part of a junior steward’s duties, for less than four pounds, to see if anyone was hiding in there?

Good sense told him no, but curiosity won the day. He picked his way through the piles of cargo and gingerly approached the motorcar. As he peered in through the windscreen, the last thing he expected to see was a pair of eyes looking back at him.

Twin gasps of shock rose in the hold.

With surprising speed, a small wiry figure in a rumpled steward’s uniform leaped out of the automobile, sending a stack of hosiery cases toppling. He stood, poised, as if trying to decide whether he should
fight or flee. Hemmed in by piles of cargo, escape seemed unlikely, and a struggle might bring half the crew down upon them.

Alfie stared at him. “You’re the one I saw in the uniform room!”

“So I was sleeping on the job,” Paddy blustered. “So what?”

“You don’t work here!” Alfie exclaimed. “You’re a stowaway! I saw the rags you threw off!”

“You must be thinking of someone else, friend,” Paddy insisted through clenched teeth.

“Perhaps we should let the captain make that decision. There’s a telephone to the bridge just outside in the fireman’s passage.”

“You do what you think you have to,” Paddy replied grimly. “And while he’s here, we can also ask him why a lad of fifteen is signed on to his crew.”

Alfie winced. “How do you know that?”

“I might have overheard a little father-and-son chat in that same uniform room,” Paddy told him with a slight smile.

“You’re a stowaway,” Alfie accused again.

“That I am,” Paddy admitted. “And you’re underage. So we’ll have each other for company when we’re put ashore at Queenstown before the
Titanic
crosses to America.”

“I think sneaking aboard a steamer bound for New York is more serious than a wee exaggeration in the hiring line,” the young steward said, a little less certainly.

“Looks like we’re going to find out, then.” Paddy sensed his advantage and pressed it. “I feel sorry for you, I do.”

“For
me
?” Alfie challenged.

“Well, if I get the bum’s rush, I’m right about where I started. But you’ve got a job — and your pa …”

“I won’t tell anybody about you,” Alfie blurted quickly.

“Now, where would the justice be in that?” Paddy began to pick his way through the maze of cargo. “Perhaps I’ll telephone the bridge myself —”

“Please don’t,” Alfie pleaded.

But Paddy did not stop. “All this is weighing on my conscience something terrible. And it wouldn’t hurt to put some food in my belly. Even in the brig, there’s a square meal to be had.”

“I’ll bring you food!”

The stowaway turned around and favored Alfie with a grin. “A sandwich would be lovely. And a glass of that nice, rich milk.”

Light dawned on Alfie. “You blackmailing little gangster!”

Paddy’s expression darkened suddenly. “A blackmailer I may be, but you’ll not call me a gangster….”

Alfie took a nervous step back, even though he was a head taller than the other boy. “I —”

“Gangsters murdered my friend,” seethed Paddy, his eyes glazing over. “Do you think I’d be aboard this ship if Daniel was still alive?”

“I’m sorry,” stammered the young steward. “I’ll bring you food. But first I have to find Mrs. Willingham’s favorite shawl!”

Paddy stared at him for a moment and then burst out laughing. “Well, we can’t deprive a rich lady of that, can we? Any search this important demands two pairs of eyes!”

He followed Alfie out of the cargo hold, through the fireman’s passage, and into the baggage compartment. “I’ve been in here before,” he commented casually. “Everything’s locked.”

Alfie turned on him sharply. “There’ll be no stealing or our deal is off!”

“Don’t get your knickers in a twist,” Paddy chuckled. “Why would I need to steal if someone’s bringing me food?”

“I want your word on it!”

“Like you gave yours to the White Star Line?” Paddy returned.

They began to scan luggage tags, which identified each trunk and crate according to the owner’s deck level and cabin number.

“Look at this!” Paddy held up a leather-bound book thick with inserts.

The young steward was angry. “Put that back!”

“I didn’t take it,” Paddy defended himself. “It was just lying here on the deck. It must have fallen out of one of the trunks. I wonder what it is.”

“It’s none of your business, that’s what it is!”

“There’s no name on it.” Paddy set the volume on top of a large box and opened it to the first weathered page. “It seems to be some kind of scrapbook.” A newspaper broadsheet was carefully pasted there. The headline read:

GHASTLY MURDER IN THE EAST END

Paddy stumbled over the first word, but the second he recognized at once. “Murder!”

It brought Alfie swiftly to his side. “What murder?”

Paddy indicated the newspaper. “Read it for yourself! Some lady in London was murdered with a knife! There was blood everywhere! It’s horrible!”

“This newspaper is old,” Alfie pointed out. “Look
how yellow it is. And the date — September second, eighteen-eighty-eight, twenty-four years ago. Mary Ann Nichols — why does that name sound familiar?”

“It can’t,” Paddy concluded. “She was dead before you were born.”

Alfie leafed through the scrapbook. There were newspaper stories of dreadful killings on every page, along with maps of London and line drawings of gruesome crime scenes. “These are the Whitechapel murders!”

“What-chapel?”

“Whitechapel — it’s a part of London!” Alfie explained breathlessly. “The whole of England lived in fear for months! People were afraid to leave their flats and houses. When I was a wee lad, my ma used to say, ‘Alfie, I won’t sleep sound in my bed at night until that monster is off the street for good.’ Even now, after twenty-four years, they’ve never found the killer! Ma’s still obsessed with the subject.”

“So is one of the passengers,” Paddy said. “What sort of person makes a pastime of recording the foul deeds of a terrible criminal?”

“This is no pastime,” Alfie countered, his face paling as he scanned the pages. “Look at this!” He pointed to a note scribbled by hand in the margin
beside an account of one of the murders:
Hanbury St. — extinguished gaslights 3 & 4.
“No mere scrapbook keeper could know details like these!”

A small cloth envelope was fastened to the cardboard beneath the broadsheet. With a none-too-steady hand, Alfie unfastened it and tapped the contents into his palm. Out tumbled a large, garish jade earring and two tiny objects, lumpy and ivory-colored. His eyes widened in revulsion.

“Teeth!” Paddy hissed. “Human teeth!”

Alfie jerked his hand away as if he’d been burned. The three items dropped to the deck of the hold. The earring lay there, but the teeth bounced and skittered, disappearing among the piled trunks and baggage.