The Titanic Secret (21 page)

From a small compartment at the bottom of his leather bag he took out a garrotte, a leather-covered and lead-filled cosh, and a sheath knife with a slim, stiletto-like blade.

‘Mansfield Cumming believes in both belt and braces,’ he said. ‘Apart from the knife, which is mine, he gave me all this lot, plus an interesting selection of lethal drugs, before we left London. Just what every aspiring assassin needs.’

‘I thought the idea was that there’d be three tragic accidents?’

‘That’s the best possible solution, yes. Three men falling overboard, or tumbling down the stairs and breaking their necks, but if all else fails we might have to ambush them somewhere, shoot them and then toss the guns over the side. But that has to be our last resort, for obvious reasons.’

Tremayne picked up the cosh, hefted it in his hand for a few moments, then slipped it into his right-hand trouser pocket, where it would be easy to reach. The Browning pistol was already out of sight in his left pocket. Then he locked the portmanteau again.

‘Right,’ he said, glancing at his watch. ‘They should be finishing dinner within the next half-hour, so let’s go down to the reception room and wait for them to come out. After that, we’ll just have to see what the evening brings.’

At that moment, there was a brisk double knock on their stateroom door. Tremayne strode across the room and pulled it open. A pageboy was standing in the corridor, a sealed envelope in his hand.

‘Mr Maitland, sir, good evening. I have a message for you,’ he said, proffering the envelope.

‘Thank you.’

Tremayne closed the door, slit open the envelope and extracted the piece of paper it contained. Written on it was a short message in the encrypted format that was now so familiar to them both.

‘There are only a few groups this time,’ Tremayne said, ‘so it won’t take too long to decipher it.’

He sat down at the occasional table, took out his notebook and a pencil, wrote out the next keyword in the sequence he’d memorized – ‘INTERVENING’ – and started work. In less than five minutes, he was able to read the message aloud to Maria.

‘It reads, “Essential all deaths are accidental, or bodies not found at all. Use weapons only if no other method possible and ensure bodies thrown overboard.” So no surprises there. I’d hoped for a moment that he was calling it all off. And there’s one other snippet. Mansfield’s agent in Berlin managed to find some more evidence at the engraving company. According to this, his man discovered that Voss had sent the company two pieces of paper a couple of months ago.’ Tremayne paused, then finished: ‘One was a mint ten-pound note, and the other a mint twenty-pound note, and nobody thinks he was using the money to pay a bill.’

Maria nodded. ‘That proves it, then. It was just as Mansfield thought. Now I think we should go and finish this. The meal in the dining saloon must be almost over.’

They walked into the first-class reception room. Several of the tables were already taken, but they found one in a corner close to the staircase which gave them a good view of one of the two entrances to the dining saloon, and when Voss and his companions left the room, they would have to pass in front of them to reach either the staircase or the elevators. Unless of course they’d decided to dine in another restaurant that evening. But the three men seemed to be creatures of habit.

They’d been sitting there for fifteen minutes when the door at the rear of the reception room opened and a group of people emerged from the dining saloon, talking noisily. At the back of the group, but clearly not a part of it, were the three men.

They didn’t stop in the reception room, but continued forward to the staircase and began climbing up it.

‘We’ll give them a couple of minutes and then we’ll follow,’ Tremayne said.

12 April 1912
RMS
Titanic

Although he appeared almost oblivious to his surroundings, Voss had seen the young man sitting at a table in the corner of the reception room along with a dark-haired pretty woman, and he repressed a smile. He had expected that the man would be waiting for him and his companions.

His bodyguard was nowhere in sight, which again was what he had ordered. But he knew that the men weren’t far away, and if everything went according to plan, sometime around midnight two bodies would vanish over the side of the ship and plunge into the waters of the Atlantic. And then there would be nothing to prevent their plan coming to fruition. Voss could almost savour the sweet taste of victory.

12 April 1912
RMS
Titanic

Ten minutes after their targets had started walking up the staircase, Tremayne and Maria stepped out onto the Promenade Deck. The air was cool, the breeze gentle and generated mainly by the ship’s passage through the water. Above them the heavens blazed with millions of tiny points of light.

‘I don’t know why it is,’ Maria said staring up at the display, ‘but the stars always seem to look brighter and more numerous when you’re at sea.’

Tremayne looked at her keenly. ‘You’ve spent some time on board ship, then?’ he asked.

‘Some time, yes,’ she replied, with a smile. ‘You’re not the only one with a faintly nautical background. I’ve worked on a couple of liners sailing out of America. And that’s something else I might tell you about some day,’ she added. ‘Now let’s get on with the job in hand.’

They walked down the passageway to the first-class lounge. Tremayne wanted Maria to get settled there, and for him to be seen with her, before he went to the smoking room by himself.

Card games were in progress at many of the tables, and the buzz of conversation filled the air.

‘I presume this is where the card sharps hang out in the evening,’ Tremayne remarked.

‘Actually,’ Maria replied, ‘I’m not so sure. I was talking to someone in here and they told me that it was the smoking room the wealthy sheep visit to be shorn. That’s where the serious gambling takes place. I imagine the professionals let their victims win the first few hands for inconsequential stakes, and then raise the bets and steadily empty their wallets or billfolds. That’s the usual technique. But here, these look like friendly, low-stakes games.’

‘You know about gambling, Maria? I’m finding out a lot about you tonight. Do you want to find a seat and play a few hands, before I go?’

Maria shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘It wouldn’t be fair.’

‘You mean you don’t want to play in case one of the professional card players here at one of the tables beats you?’

‘No, I mean it wouldn’t be fair on
them
.’

That silenced Tremayne, and he glanced at Maria with a sudden new understanding. She was an expert.

‘I don’t know much about cards,’ he murmured, ‘so I have no idea what these people are playing.’

In the centre of most of the tables were small piles of coins and, as Tremayne watched the activity at the one closest to them, the dealer completed the round, dealing two cards in front of each man, one face down and the other face up.

‘That’s poker,’ Maria told him. ‘Probably five-card stud. Depending on the type being played, they’ll each end up with either two or three cards face up, and the others face down. Before each round of cards is dealt, everybody in the game has to put more money into the pot, and how much depends upon the betting. Usually, the person showing the highest card – an ace or a picture card perhaps – will open the betting, and the other players can fold, meaning they drop out of the game and lose whatever money they’ve put in the plot, see the bet, or raise it. Now, just watch what’s happening at this table. The man on the dealer’s left has a king, so he’s just opened the betting. It’s a bit early in the hand for anyone to drop out, so my guess is they’ll all just match whatever he’s bet, and that gives them the right to be dealt another card.’

Without appearing to be paying too much attention to the men they were watching, Tremayne and Maria eased slightly closer to the table.

Each of the players in turn tossed coins onto the pile, and the dealer passed each one a third card, this one face down.

‘So the next card will be face up? Is that right?’ Tremayne asked quietly.

‘Probably,’ Maria replied, ‘but there are a huge number of variations and, really, it’s whatever the players decide they’re happiest with. Other times, it’s the dealer’s choice. He just says what the hand is going to be, and they all either agree to play it or opt out for that round.’

There was another round of betting, with all the men staying in, then a fourth card was dealt face up.

‘There’s lot of psychology involved in poker, that’s what I like about it,’ Maria explained, ‘and the game is much more interesting when you can see part of your opponents’ hands. Now, in this game, each player has two of his four cards face up and on show, and two hidden, so all of them can get some idea of the strength of the opposition. Obviously, if one man has something like two kings showing, and the highest card in your hand is, say, a jack, then no matter what the last card is, your hand can never beat his hand.’

‘So obviously you would give up – you would fold?’

Maria shook her head. ‘Not necessarily,’ she replied. ‘
You
know that your hand can never beat his, but at that stage,
he
doesn’t. The best poker players are those who can sit there with nothing showing on the table, and virtually nothing in their face-down cards, and still beat the man opposite who has two kings in front of him.’

‘And that works how, exactly?’

‘You bluff him. You carry on betting as if you have three wonderful cards face down, and raise the betting so high that the man doubts the evidence of his own senses, and eventually folds.’

‘You can do that? But if he matches your bet, then you lose, right?’

‘Of course. So the trick is to make the last bet so expensive for him to match that he won’t take the chance.’

‘It sounds as if you know a lot about poker, young lady.’ The speaker was a middle-aged man – American by his accent and dress – sitting at a table just behind them, with three companions, all of whom had stopped playing and were now looking at Maria with interest.

She turned at the sound of his voice and smiled at the group of people.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t mean to disturb your game. My husband has never played poker, but it was my father’s favourite game, and he taught me how to play it many years ago.’

The American gestured to two vacant chairs nearby. ‘Why don’t you and your husband join us?’ he suggested. ‘It’s rare to find a lady who enjoys the game.’

Maria shook her head. ‘No, really, I couldn’t. You were having a pleasant evening with your friends, and we would only be spoiling it.’

The American glanced at his companions. ‘I don’t think having this lady join us would spoil anything, fellows, do you? I think she would definitely improve the evening in fact.’

The other men nodded enthusiastically, and Maria turned to Tremayne, who bent his head so she could whisper in his ear.

‘We’ll sit here with this group,’ she murmured, ‘and then, in a few minutes, you can go off and find Voss and the other two men.’

‘Good idea,’ Tremayne whispered back.

Maria smiled again at the American. ‘I’d be happy to play a few hands with you,’ she said, ‘as long as you don’t make my husband join in. And as long as you don’t take all my money, of course.’ She batted her eyelashes.

The four men laughed dutifully, and Tremayne moved the two vacant chairs to the end of the table, positioning Maria’s close to the table but his own some way back so he wouldn’t interfere with the play.

The American who’d spoken to Maria first introduced his friends, and Tremayne reciprocated, then sat back in his chair, where he had a good view of the table.

It quickly became clear that the group Maria had joined was not a professional poker school. The initial stake was modest, and they’d placed a table limit on the maximum bet that could be placed, so the ‘pots’ were always small.

Maria was clearly right at home playing the game, winning and losing with equal grace, and never demonstrating the kind of aggressive killer instinct towards her fellow players that Tremayne guessed she could employ if she wished.

On one side of the lounge was a liquor pantry, and after a few minutes Tremayne went over to it and ordered a round of drinks for Maria and the four Americans, and then excused himself from the group.

He left the lounge, walked back down the passageway and then entered the smoking room again.

Previously, he’d only been in this room during the day, and it was immediately obvious that, like the first-class lounge, it had a very different atmosphere during the evening. Illuminated by the electric lamps, and with a flickering fire burning in the grate, the air turned blue by the smoke from myriad cigars and cigarettes, it could easily have been a room in a good London club. Almost every seat was taken and, above the hum of conversation, the dominant sounds were the distinctive slap as one card was laid upon another, and the riffling noise as a pack was shuffled.

It looked as if Maria was right. There was an almost palpable air of excitement about the room, and Tremayne was certain that the amount of money being staked on the turn of a card on these tables would be substantial.

He walked further into the smoking room, looking around him as he searched for his quarry, peering through the haze of tobacco smoke. Then, over in the far corner of the room, he saw them. The three Prussians – he refused to think of them as Americans – were sitting at a table with another two people, all smoking large cigars, and with drinks beside them. Voss had just cut a pack of cards, and four of the men were watching intently as the fifth – a man Tremayne had not seen on the ship before – dealt a hand. As he surreptitiously watched the activity at the table he slowed down, glancing around and looking for somewhere to sit.

There were very few spare seats, but eventually he found one which had been put aside by a group of men who had pushed two tables together to accommodate their game. He moved it a short distance away, angling it so that he could see the table where Voss was sitting, and sat down, ordering a drink from a passing waiter as he did so.