There was no answer. By now, Dessard’s internal warning system was screaming. His instincts told him that there was something terribly wrong, and he had a premonition that it centered, somehow, around this woman. A series of wild, outrageous thoughts danced through his brain. She had been murdered or kidnapped or—He tried the handle of the door. It was unlocked. Slowly, Dessard pushed the door open. Jill Temple was standing at the far end of the cabin, looking out the porthole, her back to him. Dessard opened his mouth to speak, but something in the frozen rigidity of her figure stopped him. He stood there awkwardly for a moment, debating whether to quietly withdraw, when suddenly the cabin was filled with an unearthly, keening sound, like an animal in pain. Helpless before such a deep private agony, Dessard withdrew, carefully closing the door behind him.
Dessard stood outside the cabin a moment, listening to the wordless cries from within. Then, deeply shaken, he turned and headed for the ship’s theater on the main deck. A porter was mopping up a trail of blood in front of the theater.
Mon Dieu, Dessard thought. What next? He tried the door to the theater. It was unlocked. Dessard entered the large, modern auditorium that could seat six hundred passengers. The auditorium was empty. On an impulse, he went to the projection booth. The door was locked. Only two people had keys to this door, he and the projectionist. Dessard opened it with his key and went inside. Everything seemed normal. He walked over to the two Century 35-mm. projectors in the room and put his hands on them.
One of them was warm.
In the crew’s quarters on D deck, Dessard found the projectionist, who assured him that he knew nothing about the theater being used.
On the way back to his office, Dessard took a shortcut through the kitchen. The chef stopped him, in a fury. “Look at this,” he commanded Dessard. “Just look what some idiot has done!”
On a marble pastry table was a beautiful six-tiered wedding cake, with delicate, spun-sugar figures of a bride and groom on top.
Someone had crushed in the head of the bride.
“It was at that moment,” Dessard would tell the spellbound patrons at his bistro, “that I knew something terrible was about to happen.”
BOOK ONE
1
In 1919, Detroit, Michigan, was the single most successful industrial city in the world. World War I had ended, and Detroit had played a significant part in the Allies’ victory, supplying them with tanks and trucks and aeroplanes. Now, with the threat of the Hun over, the automobile plants once again turned their energies to retooling for motorcars. Soon four thousand automobiles a day were being manufactured, assembled and shipped. Skilled and unskilled labor came from all parts of the world to seek jobs in the automotive industry. Italians, Irish, Germans—they came in a flood tide.
Among the new arrivals were Paul Templarhaus and his bride, Frieda. Paul had been a butcher’s apprentice in Munich. With the dowry he received when he married Frieda, he emigrated to New York and opened a butcher shop, which quickly showed a deficit. He then moved to St. Louis, Boston and, finally, Detroit, failing spectacularly in each city. In an era when business was booming and an increasing affluence meant a growing demand for meat, Paul Templarhaus managed to lose money everywhere he opened a shop. He was a good butcher but a hopelessly incompetent businessman. In truth he was more interested in writing poetry than in making money. He would spend hours dreaming up rhymes and poetic images. He would set them down on paper and mail them off to newspapers and magazines, but they never bought any of his masterpieces. To Paul, money was unimportant. He extended credit to everyone, and the word quickly spread: if you had no money and wanted the finest of meats, go to Paul Templarhaus.
Paul’s wife, Frieda, was a plain-looking girl who had had no experience with men before Paul had come along and proposed to her—or, rather, as was proper—to her father. Frieda had pleaded with her father to accept Paul’s suit, but the old man had needed no urging, for he had been desperately afraid he was going to be stuck with Frieda the rest of his life. He had even increased the dowry so that Frieda and her husband would be able to leave Germany and go to the New World.