The earring lay there, but the teeth bounced and skittered, disappearing among the piled trunks and baggage.
“Trophies!” Alfie rasped in horror. “Souvenirs of the people he’s butchered!”
“Are you saying there’s a murderer aboard the Titanic ?” Paddy asked in amazement. “Who could it be?”
“The Whitechapel murderer was never identified,” Alfie replied, his voice filled with dread, “but his nickname is well known across England.” He let out a tremulous breath. “Jack the Ripper.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
PORT OF CALL: QUEENSTOWN
T HURSDAY, A PRIL 11, 1912, 11:35 A.M.
Ireland.
Now that he had Alfie sneaking him food, Paddy resolved to pass the voyage in hiding. But he couldn’t resist the chance to come up to the second-class promenade and take in the sight of the land of his birth.
How beautiful it looks!
In truth, it was not very beautiful. A misting rain and low overcast sky washed its green into a wet, dirty gray. And anyway, Queenstown was hundreds of miles away from Paddy’s village in County Antrim. To an Ulster boy, Cork, the southernmost county, might as well have been in England or even America.
So how did he explain the empty space where his heart was supposed to be? Why were his eyes filled with a moisture that had nothing to do with the rain? Why did this alien place feel like home?
Like Cherbourg, Queenstown’s harbor was too shallow for a large ocean liner. Paddy squinted at the mass of passengers packed aboard the tender that chugged slowly toward the anchored Titanic. Even from this distance he could make out the worn cloth coats and caps, the carpetbags in drab beiges and browns. Alfie had told him that no first-class passengers would be boarding at Queenstown, and only a handful of second class. The rest of the group — more than a hundred strong — was steerage.
Maybe that was why Queenstown seemed so familiar. These were poor people.
Like me.
He felt an almost irresistible urge to get off this floating palace. The impulse made no sense. Ireland meant poverty and hunger, having to steal to survive. How could he choose that over a dream ship filled with millionaires and equipped with luxuries he’d never even known existed?
Maybe that was the problem. The Titanic was too big, too rich, too perfect. There was something wrong with that. It wasn’t real. He’d been wrestling with the uneasy feeling ever since Southampton, when the enormous ship had sucked the New York into a near collision.
Now, seeing Ireland within reach again, the solution suddenly seemed simple. If he could stow away aboard the mighty Titanic, he could surely sneak onto the little tender that was bringing out the last contingent of passengers.
He was Irish. Ireland was where he belonged. When the small ferry unloaded its human cargo and went back to Queenstown, Paddy Burns intended to be on it.
His feet began to move almost of their own accord. He was being carried toward home by a force he could no longer resist. Before he knew it, he was stepping onto the elevator to E Deck, where the new passengers would be coming aboard.
“I don’t think I’ve seen you before,” the lift operator commented pleasantly.
“And you’ll not be seeing me again,” Paddy replied. It no longer mattered if he was identified as an imposter. What could they do? Put him off the ship? He was putting himself off.
“Good luck to you, then. A word of advice. If you’re really leaving us, you’d best change out of the uniform or they’ll hound you to the ends of the earth.”
Paddy laughed. “They can try.”
If Alfie Huggins was an example of White Star material, Paddy had nothing to worry about. The young steward seemed a nice fellow, but it hadn’t been very hard to blackmail him into protecting a stowaway. A few months in the neighborhoods of Belfast provided more education than all the schools in England.
Poor Alfie wouldn’t have lasted ten seconds on Victoria Street. He was too absorbed in a series of crimes from
Sidney Sheldon, Tilly Bagshawe