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Like all seaports, Southampton was a chaotic collection of quays and piers, warehouses and cranes, and in the harbour, tugboats and tenders crisscrossed the grey-blue water leaving frothy, white wakes. At the centre of this chaos floated the majestic hull of the Titanic, her white superstructure glistening in the sunlight. Three of her four mighty funnels smoked lazily as the plumes drifted away on the gentle breeze. She had sailed into port the previous week, quickly becoming the harbour’s focal point as she took on a seemingly never-ending list of supplies. Even now, just a few hours before her scheduled departure, the firemen and stokers were busy loading and trimming the last of the coal.
Into this maelstrom strode Patrick. He carried a battered suitcase, which contained almost everything he owned, and a hastily purchased secondhand valise. Inside the valise was Pandora. He’d always liked the name Pandora and it seemed a suitable name for a grumpy, ill-tempered, bag dwelling monkey. He had covered the valise in old hessian sacking he found behind one of the large warehouses so as not to draw attention to it, and he hoped, subdue Pandora.
Patrick weaved his way through the crowds of well-wishers, street sellers, and passengers saying emotional farewells, and walked purposefully towards the White Star Line’s purpose-built passenger terminal. As he walked, his eyes scanned the faces around him, searching for any sign the police were on to him. He presented his second class ticket at the gate and began climbing the stairway up to one of the Titanic’s gangplanks and his new life in America.
Patrick sensed the mounting excitement; the warm sunshine that bathed the quay below added to the crowd’s general good humour and made the cheerfully coloured bunting appear more vivid. He took a deep breath and smelt the usual mix of tar and sea salt mingling with the strong scent of the freshly caught fish being hawked around the quayside for a ha’penny. Pausing for a moment to look down on the crowds below, Patrick absorbed the atmosphere and was struck by the enormity of the moment. He was leaving England’s green fields the way his grandfather left the Emerald Isle: on a promise of a better life, and to evade the police.
Patrick quickly checked the clasp on Pandora’s valise then walked confidently across the gangplank, nodding a friendly greeting to the officer who stood welcoming the second and third class passengers aboard. All the while, Patrick waited for Pandora to screech or become restless, giving her presence away.
His legs turned to jelly, and his heart threatened to jump up through his mouth as he stepped off the gangplank and onto the ship’s spotless deck. He exchanged hasty pleasantries with the burly master-at-arms, the palms of his hands feeling damp and sweaty as he awaited his illicit luggage’s inevitable discovery and their resulting removal from the vessel.
But it never came. Instead, he found himself directed to a stairwell with further directions to his second class cabin. As he hurried away from the welcoming committee, his battered suitcase in one hand and the tatty valise wedged firmly under his arm, Patrick’s smile got broader with every step.
Patrick McGowan and his unusual traveling companion were on their way to America.
Esme’s first three hours as a White Star employee aboard the Titanic were a whirlwind of frenetic activity. She’d exchanged several tearful hugs with Charlotte before walking across the crew member’s gangplank into the bowels of the ship a minute or so after her allotted time. Once inside, she was met by a stern-faced woman who, although probably in her late fifties, had the wrinkled skin tone of a woman far older. She wore her hair pulled into a tight bun, with not a single gray strand daring to step out of line. She introduced herself as the head housekeeper, Miss Wilson, while looking down her pointed nose at Esme, her frosty expression falling somewhere between disapproval and outright contempt.
After what seemed like an age, Miss Wilson nodded, seemingly satisfied that Esme passed muster. “Here are your cabin details. You will find your uniform there. Please change and report to the first class dining saloon by eight thirty, sharp.” She snapped impatiently before striding away. A second, younger woman thrust a sheet of paper into Esme’s hand before scurrying off after Miss Wilson, leaving Esme to find her own way to her cabin.
If Esme had been expecting luxury accommodation, then her expectations were about to take a battering. At first, she walked the length of the narrow corridor mistaking her cabin for a broom cupboard and then, upon entering, discovered she shared the broom cupboard with another maid. A haphazard pile of clothes lay across the top bunk, and a pair of boots lay discarded on the floor. There was no sign of the woman herself, and Esme flung her small suitcase onto the lower bunk before hastily changing into the uniform neatly folded at its foot.
Esme finally ran into the lavish Dining Saloon on D Deck a little over ten minutes late, breathing heavily. A stone-faced Miss Wilson stood on the Grand staircase’s second step; arms behind her back. She glared at Esme who started to mumble an apology, then seeing the rising anger in the older woman’s wrinkled face and realising she was only making matters worse, stopped herself. She quietly joined the other housekeepers assembled at the foot of the stairs and was secretly relieved when two minutes later, another three women rushed in to join the group.
“Now that you are all finally ready, albeit sixteen minutes late, I would like to formerly welcome you to the crew of RMS Titanic and inform you of our expectations.” Miss Wilson then droned on for the next half an hour frequently mentioning words like, ‘tardy, punctuality’ and ‘fraternisation’, but Esme found it hard to concentrate, her thoughts drifting back to the events of the previous evening. If finding a dead body hadn’t been strange enough, the events that followed were so curious and gave her such a fright; it left her with an unnatural chill that still flowed through her veins.
Once she had ordered the children away, she quickly checked the body and found it to be very definitely dead. A fact she felt sure of due to the stench of death lingering around the corpse. Then she and Charlotte took the younger children home before stopping at the Belvedere Arms to ask a few regulars to escort them back to the body’s resting place. However, when they arrived back on the waste ground, the body had vanished, leaving a pile of discarded rags to mark its earlier location. The men from the pub had been sceptical of her story; after all, dead men didn’t just get up and walk away. They pointed out with some hilarity that maybe she’d supped a little too much Mother’s Ruin, but did, after some persuasion, agree to search the immediate area; although, Esme suspected they were only humouring her. They trampled around for a few minutes before succumbing to the lure of the distant hostelry, but it was long enough to prove there was no dead body in the vicinity. A fact Esme found worrying, leading her to conclude either a deranged killer or a firm of body snatchers were at work in Southampton.
Esme knew she had seen a dead body. There was no trick of the light, no drunken hallucination, just a dead man lying in a bundle of old rags. She would never forget his face, what with those strange markings and the smell; the vile smell of rotting meat left in the summer sun. She supposed the dead man had died some time ago, but if that were the case, why were his remains not discovered before? The waste ground was a regular playground for the children and a busy shortcut home from the docks. Surely, if the body had been there long enough to rot, then someone would have discovered it earlier, unless the children disturbed the killer during the act of disposing of the body. Maybe the killer lurked in the shadows while she and Charlotte took the children away, before swooping in to reclaim the body. She remembered her father telling her stories of Jack the Ripper and how he just slipped away. What if he had escaped abroad but now had returned to Southampton aboard a liner, free to kill again?
For a brief moment, her thoughts turned to Charlotte, and she uttered a silent prayer for her safety.
“Miss Jackson!” The sound of someone shouting her name with such venom roused her from her thoughts. She looked up in time to see the head housekeeper steaming towards her. Miss Wilson’s palm sounded like a whip cracking as it connected with Esme’s cheek, snapping her head to the side. For a split-second, Esme thought Miss Wilson had missed. Then the pain surged across her face leaving a stinging sensation that brought tears to her eyes.
Through the ringing in her ear, Esme heard Miss Wilson’s muffled voice, “How dare you daydream when I am talking to you, you insolent little girl! We should have left you in the gutter where you belong.”
Esme lifted her head and stared defiantly back into Miss Wilson’s baggy, bloodshot eyes. She could see the fury and hatred burning deep within the woman’s soul. It was more than just Esme’s idle daydreaming fuelling the rage. There was resentment etched in the woman’s face along with a lifetime of regrets, a deep desire for retribution, and maybe even a little bit of jealousy simmering below the surface. All of it waiting for that one spark that would send her emotions into a bubbling turmoil, hurling the demure Miss Wilson into a raging frenzy bordering on insanity.
A smirk twitched at the corners of Esme’s mouth. She had the very things this sanctimonious old bitch craved the most: youth, beauty, vitality, and opportunity. At that moment, as the other chambermaids looked on in hushed awe and Miss Wilson turned an interesting shade of apoplectic purple, Esme believed she had the whole world at her feet.
Miss Wilson was at a loss for words. She opened and closed her mouth several times before uttering, “Well I never ...!” before turning on her heels and storming off towards the kitchen.
Goaded by the presence of the other women, and despite the pain still stinging her left cheek, Esme muttered, just loud enough for the assembled chambermaids to hear, “No, I don’t suppose you ever did.”
Several of the young women looked shocked, a few sniggered quietly. The woman, who’d earlier directed Esme to her cabin, now handed her another sheet of paper. She tried to hide her smile as she spoke “You are to help with housekeeping duties in first class.” Lowering her voice to a whisper, she added quickly, “If you want to be on the return trip, I suggest you stay well clear of the Old Dragon.” Then she was gone, hurrying after Miss Wilson, every inch the loyal assistant.
Esme checked her assignment before handing the list to a nervous looking girl of about fifteen standing next to her. Esme gave the young girl a brief, reassuring smile, before climbing the Grand staircase in search of the first class Staterooms on A Deck where she was expected to welcome the passengers aboard with champagne, before assisting them with their unpacking.
