| |
The Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, DC
Senator William Alden Smith
Bill ran his hand through his hair and across the stubble on his chin. He knew that he was not looking his best. He was representing the United States Senate and was responsible for find the cause of the worst maritime disaster on record, but he had spent the night pacing his office and dozing in his chair. He had not even found time to go home and change his clothes. He had not bathed. He could feel the disapproval of his colleagues. They no doubt thought his interest in the Titanic was verging on a dangerous obsession. Any day now, the president would rouse himself from his melancholy and insist on ending the inquiry. It was surely time to send the crew of the Titanic home and allow the British to take over responsibility. But somehow, exhausted as he was, Bill was not ready to let go. Surely something good could be salvaged from the disaster—some lesson that could be learned and applied to the transatlantic shipping routes.
He rose wearily to watch Captain Lord entering the Caucus Room, and he remained standing as Lord placed his hand on the Bible and swore an oath to tell the truth. He was well aware that he was not in a courtroom and Captain Lord was not bound by anything other than his honor to tell the truth.
The master of the Californian was a tall, thin man with blue eyes and thinning hair. Despite his apparent youth, his eyes had the hooded squint of a man who had spent many years gazing at distant horizons. His expression was somber but not wary. Bill imagined that Stanley Lord would be hard to intimidate and even harder to shame. Would it come to that? he wondered. Would he be forced to shame Lord into admitting that he had not come to the aid of the Titanic?
Bill resumed his seat and looked out at the small audience. Eva Trentham was in her usual place in the front row. Today she wore a kingfisher-blue jacket and a hat adorned with peacock feathers. Now that she was fully rested from her ordeal on the Titanic, it was possible to see why she had been the toast of the Gilded Age. Even in old age, she was an arresting figure. Kate sat beside her, wearing a navy jacket, a feathered hat, and a worried frown. Joe Bayliss stood against the back wall with his gaze swiveling between Captain Lord and Kate as though uncertain which of the two would make a break for it.
Bill consulted his notebook, smiled at Lord, and asked his first question. He was not under the illusion that he could take Stanley Lord by surprise. Lord knew why he had been summoned, but it would take time to reach the point where Bill could ask for the answers he really needed. Meantime, he would begin with standard questions.
“What is your full name, sir, and where do you reside?”
“Stanley Lord. Liverpool, England.”
“And what is your business?”
Lord’s chest seemed to swell slightly. “Master mariner.”
Bill remembered Lightoller, the man whose heroism had captured the hearts of the New York newspapers. Lightoller had merely called himself a seaman. Lord apparently had no intention of appearing humble.
Bill glanced at his notes, skipped a few of his intended questions, and gestured for Lord to be seated. He had a feeling that his questions would take quite some time. Lord sat back in his seat, apparently relaxed.
“Where were you and your ship on the fourteenth day of April last?” Bill asked.
“Forty-two, forty-seven.”
Perhaps Lord intended to reveal Bill’s ignorance of marine navigation. Bill would not be intimidated.
“Would you be more specific, please?”
Lord produced a leather-bound book that he had carried in with him. He opened it and flicked through the pages. “Forty-two north and forty-seven west.”
Bill knew he would have to rely on the experts seated behind the senators to tell him the meaning of those numbers by plotting them on a chart he kept in his office. He continued his questioning.
“Are you reading from the log of the Californian?”
“I am.”
So Lord had brought his logbook into the inquiry. If he was willing to read from it, either Lord was supremely confident that he had done no wrong, or the log had been altered. Bill knew that the game was only just beginning.
“Captain Lord, what other entries have you in the log, of your position on that date?”
Lord flicked the page. “At six thirty, we had forty-two degrees five minutes and forty-nine degrees ten minutes as having passed two large icebergs. The next entry was seven fifteen: ‘Passed one large iceberg, and two more in sight to the southward.’”
“And,” Bill asked, “did you attempt to communicate with the vessel Titanic on Sunday? Is that entered in your log?”
“It is. We communicated at ten minutes to eleven.”
“A.m. or p.m.?”
Lord raised his eyebrows impatiently. “P.m.”
“What was that communication?”
“We told them we were stopped and surrounded by ice.”
“Did the Titanic acknowledge that message?”
“Yes, she did. I believe their operator told my operator he had read it, and told him to shut up, or stand by or something, that he was busy.”
Bill thought back to what he had heard in New York. Both Bride of the Titanic and Cottam of the Carpathia had said the same thing. The Titanic’s operator had been impatiently resisting incoming messages, declaring that he was too busy working Cape Race on behalf of the passengers. Bill made a note on his notepad. At some time very soon, the whole question of rules governing Marconi operators would have to be considered. The Marconi was a new and wonderful device, but its use would have to be codified and regulated. Perhaps the Titanic would not have collided with the iceberg if the radio operator had been able to concentrate on incoming messages instead of using his time to send personal messages for first-class passengers.
Bill realized that the room had fallen silent waiting for his next question. “Captain Lord, do you know the Titanic’s position on the sea when she sank?”
“I know the position given to me by the Virginian as the position where she struck an iceberg: forty-one degrees fifty-six minutes and fifty degrees fourteen minutes.”
“And so,” Bill said, “figuring from the Titanic’s position at the time she went down, and your position at the time you sent this warning to the Titanic, how far were these vessels from one another?”
Lord shrugged. “Approximately nineteen and a half miles.”
Bill tried to ignore the shocked murmuring rising from the senators beside him. He had taken a gamble, and it was about to pay off. Lord sat in the witness chair looking smug and admitting that his ship had been less than twenty miles away from the Titanic.
“Of course,” Lord said, “the Titanic was moving, but we were stopped altogether.”
“What did you stop for?”
“We stopped so that we would not run over the ice.”
“And you notified the Titanic of your condition?”
“Yes, of course. We always pass the news around when we get hold of anything like that. I didn’t know exactly where the Titanic was, but it was a matter of courtesy.”
So far, Bill thought, the captain of the Californian had said nothing to incriminate himself. He had been close to the Titanic, and he had stopped his ship because he was surrounded by ice. The Titanic had ignored his warning message and continued on her way to New York. Lord had been cautious; Captain Smith had been foolhardy. Or so it appeared. Or perhaps Smith had been under orders from Ismay to break the speed record.
“Did you see the Titanic?” Bill asked.
Lord shook his head. “No, sir.”
Bill glanced at Joe and then back at Lord. This was not what the two crewmen from the Californian had reported. “Did you see any signals from her?” Bill asked.
“No, sir.”
“You say that you were twenty miles away at the time she sank.”
“Yes. I was stopped and surrounded by ice.”
“And the Carpathia was fifty-three miles away.”
“That is what I’ve been told.”
“So, Captain Lord, how long did it take you to reach the scene of the accident, from the time you steamed up and got underway Monday morning?”
Lord consulted his logbook. “‘Six o’clock, proceeded slow, pushing through the thick ice. Six twenty, clear of thickest of ice, proceeded full speed, pushing the ice. Eight thirty, stopped close to steamship Carpathia.’”
“Am I to understand that the Carpathia coming from fifty-three miles away was at the scene of the wreck when you arrived?”
Lord looked at Bill with cool blue eyes that showed no sign that he understood the weight of Bill’s words, that the Carpathia had come fifty-three miles through the ice field and still arrived before the Californian. Could the man really be so unaware of what he had done, or did he truly believe that he had done nothing wrong?
“The Carpathia was taking the last people out of the lifeboats when I arrived,” Lord confirmed.
“Captain Lord,” Bill said, trying to keep his tone neutral, “did you see any distress signals on Sunday night, either rockets or Morse signals?”
Lord shook his head. “No, sir, I did not. The officer on watch saw some signals, but he said they were not distress signals.”
“Not distress signals?”
“No, Senator, they were not distress signals.”
“And yet the officer on watch reported them to you. Why is that?”
Lord closed the logbook and leaned back in his seat. “I think you had better let me tell the story myself.”
“I wish you would,” Bill replied grimly. “Please, Captain Lord, tell us your story.”
“When I came off the bridge at half past ten,” Lord said, “I pointed out to the officer on deck that I thought I saw a light coming along, and it was a most peculiar light, and we had been making mistakes all along with the stars, thinking they were signals. We could not distinguish where the sky ended and where the water commenced. You understand it was a flat calm. He said he thought it was a star, and I did not say anything more. I was talking with the engineer about keeping the steam ready, and we saw these signals coming along, and I said, ‘Do you know anything?’ He suggested it could be the Titanic, as he thought she was close by, but I told him what I had seen was too small to be the Titanic and it did not even look like a passenger liner.
“We went ahead and signaled her with the Morse lamp, but she did not take the slightest notice of it. We saw her lights go out, which meant to me that she had made a turn and was pointing north. I could see her red port light. We signaled her every fifteen minutes from ten thirty until one o’clock, and she did not take the slightest notice. After that, I decided to turn in for the night.”
Bill tried to put himself into the scene. He had made several transatlantic crossings, alone and with Nana. He remembered standing on deck at night and feeling the utter isolation of being a creature of the land adrift on the vastness of the ocean—an alien being who could neither swim nor fly to safety. He stared at Lord’s weathered young face. This man had not been lonely or alien. This man saw himself and his ship as part of a network of oceangoing vessels and was no more surprised to see the distant light of another ship than Bill would be surprised to see the passing of a train on a parallel track. Lord had signaled. The other ship had failed to reply and had apparently sailed away over the horizon.
And yet, Bill thought, the Titanic’s survivors were told to row toward a light that some had seen on the horizon. Had that been a comforting lie, or was there more to this?
Bill looked up and caught Joe Bayliss’s expression. The sheriff certainly thought that there was more to the story.
“Before I fell asleep,” Lord continued, “the second officer came to my cabin and told me that the ship we had seen was firing rockets. He claimed to see four white lights at three-minute intervals, but he heard no explosions. We agreed that they were most probably company signals, maybe some form of celebration. I again instructed the second officer to keep signaling, and then I went to sleep.”
The audience murmured as Bill confirmed Lord’s statement. “You went to sleep?”
Lord smiled. “Yes, Senator, I went to sleep. I have a faint recollection of awaking to hear the apprentice opening my room door, opening it and shutting it. I said, ‘What is it?’ He didn’t answer and I went to sleep again.”
The smile left his face, and for the first time, he seemed to realize how damning his words could be. Everyone in the room knew now that somewhere close by the Titanic had been sinking and more than a thousand people had been drowning, but Lord had apparently known nothing. Despite the words of the second officer and the apprentice, Lord had continued to sleep. Bill wondered if the captain of the Californian had been drunk. It was always a possibility. She was a British ship, and British sailors were very fond of their ration of rum.
Before Bill could formulate another question, Senator Fletcher rose to his feet and leaned forward across the table.
“Captain Lord, let me ask you a question with reference to that steamer you say you saw before you ... uh ... retired for the night. What was her position in reference to your ship?”
Lord swiveled his eyes to look at Fletcher. “Pretty near south of us, four miles to the south.”
“To starboard or port?” Fletcher asked.
“When he was coming along, he was showing his green light on our starboard side, before midnight. After that we slowly blew around and showed him our red light. He appeared to stop until one o’clock, and then he started going ahead again.”
“Was he ever any closer to you than four miles?”
“No.”
“And were you able to tell what kind of ship it was?”
Lord glanced around the room and then back at Fletcher. “We were of the opinion that it was an ordinary cargo steamer. We saw no tall funnels and just one masthead light.”
Bill turned to look at the members of his committee. They were all leaning forward in their seats. Obviously, they were transfixed by Lord’s testimony, but what did they believe? Had Lord truly seen the Titanic and failed to act, or had he seen a small cargo steamer plowing her way toward a European port with a sleepy lookout who had failed to see the Californian’s Morse signals? But why fire rockets, if there were rockets? Where was the truth in this tale?
Senator Bourne leaned forward on this elbows and stared down at Lord. “Captain Lord, did you or your crew hear anything, perhaps the sound of a siren or escaping steam? The Titanic’s survivors speak of a great noise.”
Lord shook his head. “No, we heard nothing.”
Bourne looked at Bill and shook his head. It seemed that he had heard enough. Bill looked at the other members of his committee. Senator Fletcher was still on his feet.
“Captain Lord, from the log which you hold in your hand, and from your own knowledge, is there anything you can say further which will assist the committee in its inquiry as to the causes of this disaster?”
Lord shook his head. “No, sir, except that in the morning, we saw a yellow funnel steamer about eight miles away.”
“Do you have anything further to say which will assist the committee?”
“No, sir, there is nothing. Only that it was a very deceiving night.”
Bill studied Lord’s face for a long moment, seeing how Stanley Lord had been remade in the past few minutes. Lord had entered the hearing room with the air of a man determined not to be browbeaten by a committee made up of hostile Americans, but his face had changed as he recalled details of that long April night. His eyes were shadowed now, and his face had been painted with lines of regret, maybe of doubt. He would not say, and maybe he could not even allow himself to think, that he had been a mere ten miles away from the Titanic.
Bill shook his head. The captain was ruined, of course. Perhaps Lord had been unaware, or perhaps he had chosen to act wisely for the safety of his own vessel. It would seem that his ship had been more or less trapped in the ice and unable to move without danger. If the Titanic had in fact been in trouble nearby, what could Lord have done by pushing through the treacherous ice in the dark? Everyone knew the Titanic was unsinkable, and therefore, whatever the trouble, it could wait until morning, when Lord could see his way through the ice.
I’ve ruined him, Bill thought as he closed his notebook, and for what purpose? He knew he could not go on this way, wondering if he was serving as anything other than an instrument of Eva Trentham’s war on J. P. Morgan. He needed time to think. He needed to go home.
He turned to the other members of his committee. “Thank you, gentlemen. We are adjourned until ten o’clock tomorrow morning.”
Bill tripped in his hurry to leave the dais and be free of the usual press of reporters, who seemed to flow toward him in an unrelenting tide. He felt a steadying hand on his elbow and saw Joe Bayliss chewing on an unlit cheroot and regarding him with curiosity.
“Finishing early?” Joe asked.
“To be honest, Joe, I don’t know how much more of this I can take.”
“I thought you made progress.”
“Well,” Bill snapped, “I’m glad you think so, because I don’t. So far, I’ve proved nothing.”
He took Joe’s silence as assent and allowed the sheriff to bulldoze a path through the press of politicians and reporters. With his mind reeling, he barely heard the questions being hurled at him. How could he answer their questions when he couldn’t answer his own questions?
Joe pushed open the outer door of Bill’s office and ushered him inside. Bill was heading straight for his inner office and the bottle he kept in his desk drawer when he realized that the office was not unoccupied. A tall blond figure, a Viking in everything except his clothing, rose from a chair in the corner.
“Mr. McSorley wants to see the president,” Joe said, “and he refuses to leave until you help him.”
Bill shook his head in frustration. “Mr. McSorley, we are finished with your testimony. You’ve been very helpful, but we don’t need you any longer. You should make your arrangements to travel to Newfoundland. There’s nothing left for you to do here.”
“Well,” Joe said, winking at Bill, “there’s the question of Miss Kate. I think that young Danny is—”
“No, I am not,” Danny interrupted dismally. “I have nothing left to say to Kate. She made it clear what she thinks of me. In fact, she made it very clear what she thinks of any man who did not go down with the Titanic. We’re all cowards.”
“That’s not true,” Bill said.
“I’m afraid it is,” Joe said solemnly. “It is now considered an act of cowardice for any man to have saved himself. With the current level of hysteria on the subject, I expect to see women handing out white feathers on the streets.”
“But that’s nonsense,” Bill argued. “I agree that there were some men who behaved poorly, but the fact of the matter is that many of the lifeboats had empty seats. If a man saw one and stepped in ...”
He stopped speaking, allowing his argument to die away as he realized what he had said. He had spent the past week publicly humiliating Bruce Ismay for the crime of taking a seat in a lifeboat. But this is different, he thought. Ismay wasn’t just a man who saved himself; he was the reason the ship had gone down in the first place.
Bill was seized with an overwhelming desire to go home and talk to his wife. Nana would help him chart a path through these troubled waters. Her instincts were not just political and social; they were also highly moral. She would warn him if he had gone too far, wouldn’t she?
Danny interrupted Bill’s train of thought. “I didn’t want to get into a boat. I was going to wait with the other men, but then Major Butt—”
Bill’s mind snapped back into focus. “How is Major Butt involved?”
“I can’t tell you. I have to tell the president and only the president. That’s what he said. I know Miss Kate thinks I’m a coward. In fact, she seems to believe that I shot someone in order to get into a lifeboat, but I didn’t, and I’m not a coward.”
“Why don’t you save yourself a lot of trouble and tell me what Major Butt said?” Bill asked. “I’m a United States senator. I can be trusted with state secrets.”
“I know my instructions,” Danny said, “and I’m not leaving here without seeing the president, and that’s all there is to it.”
“We can deport you,” Joe offered grimly, “or arrest you as a spy. We could find a way to make you talk.”
Bill shook his head, angered by Joe’s words and suddenly aware how little he had done to help the stranded Englishman. “Stop it, Joe. We won’t need to do anything like that. I’ll arrange a meeting for you, Mr. McSorley, on condition that I am also present.”
Danny nodded. “I think that would be all right. Shall we go now?”
“No,” Bill said, his irritation returning. “We can’t just walk into the president’s office. Good heavens, man! Would your government allow me to walk into Buckingham Palace and talk to the king without an appointment? We will go in the morning. Sheriff Bayliss will accompany you to the White House, and I will meet you there.”
Danny grinned with relief. “Thank you, sir.”
“After that,” Bill said, “I suggest you take the next possible passage to Newfoundland. I won’t need to take additional testimony from you. The afternoon train will take you to New York tomorrow, and from there you can board a packet steamer to St. John’s. I believe there is a regular service.”
Danny’s face was suddenly suffused with color. “I would like to see Miss Kate before I leave.”
“Whatever for?” Bill snapped. “Does she also have a message for the president?”
“No, sir, of course not.”
Joe grinned sardonically and poked Bill’s arm. “There’s more to life than sinking ships and state secrets,” he said. “Give the boy a chance.”
The Willard Hotel
Kate Royston
Kate wanted desperately to lock herself in her room and examine the contents of her portmanteau. Eva had already purchased a whole wardrobe of clothing to replace the items that had been stolen, but Kate still wanted to touch and hold her own few possessions—all that was left of her previous life.
She followed Bridie as Bridie wheeled Eva into the parlor of her suite. “If I can be excused,” Kate said, “I’d like to—”
“Why are you in such a hurry?” Eva asked. “Don’t you want to celebrate?”
“Celebrate? What do we have to celebrate?”
“Captain Lord,” Eva said, rubbing her hands together. “We can celebrate that the man is such a coward that he refused to move his ship. I know he saw the Titanic. I don’t believe any of this talk about seeing some other ship. I know what his crewmen said. They saw the Titanic and they did nothing. He said it himself. He went to sleep. We were out there, drowning, and he went to sleep.”
“And you want to celebrate that?” Kate asked.
“I want to celebrate the fact that the Californian is a Leyland liner, and therefore, she’s J. P. Morgan’s responsibility. I’ll have him for this, Kate. I swear that I will.”
If Kate had not heard Noël’s account of Eva’s feud with J. Pierpont Morgan, she would have thought the old woman had finally lost her senses. Eva’s eyes were bright with a kind of evil delight, and spittle gathered at the corners of her mouth as she chortled. Her voice had changed, taking on the faintest hint of an Irish lilt. Perhaps Kate would not have noticed before her conversation with Noël, but she noticed now. She glanced in Bridie’s direction. Had Bridie also noticed?
“Smith has him on the ropes,” Eva declared. “It’ll be a quick one-two punch—a punch from the US Senate and another one from the British tribunal. He’ll have to answer for what he’s done.”
“But ...”
“But what?”
Kate bit back her words. She had almost admitted that she knew Eva’s story, but even knowing the story could hardly excuse Eva’s jubilance. Fifteen hundred people were newly dead, their families still in mourning, but Eva’s joy was grounded in revenge achieved for the death of three people nearly sixty years before. For Eva, the sinking of the Titanic was just another stepping stone to her own vengeance.
Kate thought of the travel documents stowed safely in her purse and wondered how long she would have to wait until she could find a way to leave Eva. The thought of spending any additional time with the vicious old lady was almost as bad as the thought of spending time with Great-Aunt Suzanna.
She fingered the pearl brooch at the neck of her blouse. Eva had said it was a gift. Those were not her actual words. It’s just a cheap trinket; you might as well keep it. By the time I’ve finished grooming you, men will be giving you diamonds. She wondered what a pawnbroker would give her for it. She knew it wasn’t a high-quality piece, but perhaps it would bring a couple of dollars, and a couple of dollars could buy a third-class ticket to New York. But then what?
One step at a time, she told herself. See how much you can get, and then see what you can do. She leaned forward to speak softly to Eva. “I have a headache. Would you mind if I go to my room?”
“Go wherever you like,” Eva said expansively, “but be back in time for dinner. Tonight I think we will have champagne.” She flicked her fingers at Kate. “Off you go.”
Kate hurried along the corridor and into her own room. She locked the door behind her and stood for a moment contemplating the battered leather portmanteau. At last she lifted it onto the bed and unfastened the straps.
Slowly, fighting back tears, she removed the contents of her portmanteau. Noël’s maid had packed the scant few belongings with care. Here was the gray dress Kate had worn a year ago on the train to Pittsburgh. It had once been very fine, but now it was a shadow of its former self, still showing the marks where Kate had later removed the lace and the beadwork. Great-Aunt Suzanna had sneered at the original adornments.
“So you come here in a fancy dress and tell me you have nothing.”
“The house burned. This is all I could retrieve.”
“Do you expect me to clothe you as well as feed you?”
“I didn’t know where else to go.”
Kate stared down, seeing the fancy lace corset she had worn on her flight from home a year ago. She could almost laugh at her naiveté in thinking she should truss herself up in a corset before fleeing the smoky ruins of her home. She would have done better to search for the silver candlesticks that had once adorned the mantelshelf in the parlor.
She moved the corset aside and saw the cheap undergarments reluctantly purchased by Great-Aunt Suzanna.
“Your mother was a fool with money. Don’t expect fine things here.”
Kate shook her head to clear away the memory of her great-aunt’s sour face and grudging hospitality. Only once had she seen Great-Aunt Suzanna smile, and even that smile had been followed by sneering resentment.
“I won’t be staying here, Aunt. I’m going to New York to take up a position as a governess.”
“Do you expect me to pay your fare?”
“No, Aunt. I have pawned my mother’s jewelry.”
“You didn’t tell me you had jewelry. You told me you were penniless. You’re full of deceit, just like your mother. Well, be gone with you.”
There had been no supper that night, and no breakfast in the morning.
Kate knew that she was wrong to wallow in bitter memories. She could never return to the grim old house in Pittsburgh—not after the final goodbye at the kitchen door as Kate had buttoned her cape and prepared to go out into the smoky morning air. Great-Aunt Suzanna, watching her leave, still wore her nightcap, and her face twisted in contempt.
“I always suspected that my nephew was not your father. Your mother was a—”
Kate did not wait for the word to be spoken. Her hand shot out of its own accord, cutting off Great-Aunt Suzanna’s parting words and leaving a bright red imprint on the old lady’s cheek.
Kate dragged her mind away from the bitter memory of Pittsburgh. She was not there now, and she would never go there again. The Willard’s chambermaid had opened the window to air the room. Kate breathed in the clean afternoon air and looked around at the elegant furnishings. She had come a long way from that grim mansion in Pittsburgh, but she was still a prisoner. Great-Aunt Suzanna and Eva Trentham had almost nothing in common, but each one had held her captive. No, she thought, it was not the women who imprisoned her; it was her own poverty. She had been a prisoner from the moment her father had taken his own life and left his only child to cope with the aftermath.
She reached into the bag and took out the sturdy brown envelope that rested on top of the folded apron from the Carpathia. So this was it. This was the paper that Sir Bruce Ismay had carried in his pocket.
The envelope had not been sealed. Kate opened it and pulled out the single sheet of crumpled and stained paper. She studied the scribbled notes and numbers. Was this the evidence that would destroy Eva’s enemy? And if it did, who else would it destroy? The paper felt heavy in her hand, as though its importance was reflected in its weight. Only one other person knew that this paper still existed, and that person wanted nothing to do with it. What had the countess said? I’d sooner have a viper under my nightgown. It was in your portmanteau; it is your responsibility.
She wondered why Ismay had taken the paper. Maybe he hadn’t taken it; maybe it had been given to him. Perhaps someone, possibly Captain Smith himself, had given it to Ismay for safekeeping. Take this as proof you did nothing wrong. Was it possible that the captain had been thinking of Ismay’s fate even as the ship had been going down? Why hadn’t the captain given it to one of the officers? The answer was obvious. Captain Smith could not have known that any of his officers would be saved, because he had trusted them to put the safety of the passengers first. They would not have left the ship until the ship had left them. But Ismay had not been under the same restraint. Kate wondered if everyone had misunderstood Ismay’s actions. Was it possible that Captain Smith had ordered Ismay to save himself and take the evidence with him?
Kate’s mind was whirling. The paper presented so many possibilities, including the possibility that Ismay was innocent of all the charges brought against him. She shuddered. She knew what it was for one man to be blamed for the death of many. She imagined Ismay’s shock when he had reached the safety of the doctor’s cabin on the Carpathia and discovered that he no longer had that important scrap of paper. Did that account for his behavior on board the ship? She imagined him locked away in the cabin while women pounded on the door, demanding justice. He’d had nothing to say to them, because he’d no longer had proof of his innocence, and he had known what would happen next.
She realized that she was creating a house of cards. She could not translate the scribbled notes into anything meaningful, and she needed to find someone who could. She made a mental list of people who should not be trusted with the information. Lightoller seemed a noble and truthful man, but he was an officer of the White Star Line, with loyalty to his employers. Senator Smith needed to prove Ismay’s culpability in order to justify holding the Senate hearings and outraging the British government. Joe Bayliss was a good man, but he was not a sailor. He would not understand the notes. Eva, of course, was so filled with the need for revenge that she would not entertain any truth that did not fit in with her plans. Kate’s mind flashed back to Senator Smith’s suite at the Waldorf Astoria, where Danny McSorley had turned numbers on Marconigrams into positions on a makeshift chart. Danny was landlocked now, but he’d served his time at sea. He would know what this meant.
She thought of their conversation early in the morning. She could barely recall what she’d said to him in her righteous anger and suspicion, but she knew she’d accused him of cowardice. In fact, she had accused him of shooting someone in order to take their place in a lifeboat.
She folded the paper and returned it to its envelope. Without allowing herself any more time to think, she stuffed the envelope into her beaded purse, alongside her recovered documents. She settled her hat firmly on her head, tucking away a few stray tendrils of hair, and stepped out into the corridor.
Even as she descended in the elevator, Kate was not certain that she knew where she was going. She crossed the hotel lobby and stepped out through the revolving doors into bright afternoon sunshine. If she turned right, she would be a short walk from the Capitol View Guest House, where she could find Danny McSorley. Of course, she would have to apologize for her previous behavior if she expected any assistance from him. No, she told herself, I am not wrong. He saved himself, and that must mean he took a seat in a lifeboat that could have been given to someone else. And don’t forget, Mr. Stengel said he heard gunshots. She stood on the sidewalk, stoking the fires of her justifiable anger until she had convinced herself that she would sooner rip out her tongue than eat humble pie with Danny McSorley.
A fresh breeze whipped at her hat and distracted her by tugging at her hatpin. As she paused to replace the pin, she found her temper cooling along with the breeze. Perhaps she was being unreasonable. Perhaps she should speak to Danny again. Maybe he had a reasonable explanation for his behavior. She remembered her father’s words in the hours before he had ended his own life. If only they would stop shouting and let me explain. It wasn’t my fault, Kate. Kate stared down at the sidewalk with tears prickling behind her downcast eyes as she thought of her father. No one had been willing to listen to him, and he had found the only way to stop the shouting.
With her mind made up, Kate turned to the right. The brown envelope, with its incriminating scrap of paper, seemed to add disproportionate weight to her purse. She wanted to be rid of it. She wanted to give it to someone who would understand. If that meant apologizing to Danny, that was what she would do.
She took a step off the curb and immediately felt a firm grasp on her arm. She caught a whiff of strong tobacco smoke and turned to see Sheriff Bayliss standing beside her with a cheroot clenched between his teeth.
“I am not going to run out into the traffic,” she said impatiently. “I don’t need any help to cross the road.”
Joe tucked her hand into the crook of his arm. “Don’t make a fuss. Don’t do anything to draw attention to yourself; just walk with me like we’re going for an afternoon stroll.”
“No, I won’t. I’m going—”
“Yes, you will. This is official business.” Joe pulled the cheroot from his mouth and gestured toward two figures hurrying along the sidewalk. “That’s Ismay and Lightoller up ahead, and I’m following them. Stay with me, and they won’t suspect a thing. I’m just taking an afternoon walk with a pretty girl on my arm.”
“Why are you following them?”
“Because that’s the road to the train station, and they’re in time for the afternoon train to New York.”
“But why would they ...?”
“Because the Majestic is sailing out of New York on the morning tide.”