Murder on the Oceanic A Mystery

Chapter One March 1910 "What sort of weather have we got today?" "It's raining." "How do you know?" she asked. "You haven't looked yet." "It always rains in Liverpool." "This is Southampton." "It makes no difference," he joked, crossing to the window. "Choose any port in England and you can guarantee rain on the day you sail." He pulled back the curtains and early morning sunlight flooded in. "There you are. What did I tell you?" Genevieve sat up in bed. "It's a beautiful day, George." "Then we must still be in New York." "Stop teasing!" "Well, it's completely out of character for Liverpool." "We're in Southampton." George Porter Dillman knew exactly where they were but he could not resist some gentle taunting about the vagaries of British weather. It was a bone of contention between him and his wife. Having been born in England, Genevieve loved its climate. Dillman, by contrast, was an American who usually managed to be on the other side of the Atlantic during unsettled weather. His first visit to England had coincided with days of high winds and torrential rain. It was an indelible memory. They were staying at the South Western Hotel, the best in the city and the place where wealthy and important passengers tended to spend the night before departure. George and Genevieve were far from wealthy but, since they were working as detectives aboard the Oceanic, they did feel that they had some importance. Posing as passengers, their job was to solve any crimes that occurred aboard and, in their experience, there was no such thing as a trouble-free voyage. Whichever shipping line they worked for, they invariably encountered major problems. "I daresay that it will be no different with the White Star Line," he said, slipping on his dressing gown. "We'll have the usual share of villains aboard." "How many passengers?" "Around seventeen hundred." "We could never police them all." "Our job is to work largely in first class," he reminded her. "That's where the richest pickings are and where we're likely to have the biggest headaches." "I feel sorry for the passengers in steerage." "So do I. Conditions are far from ideal." "I wasn't thinking about their accommodation on board," she said. "They're such easy targets before we set sail. Because they're strangers in the city, they're pounced on by all sorts of cheats, liars, and confidence tricksters." "Yes," he agreed, "the worst are the ones who claim to be official money changers and tell people that they must convert their pound sterling into dollars before they go aboard. They either give their customers an appallingly low rate of exchange or somehow inveigle them into taking a voucher that can be redeemed on the ship." "By the time they discover the voucher is worthless, it's too late." He nodded. "There are so many sharks around the docks." "We can only catch the ones who sail with us." "More should be done to protect emigrants before they leave," he said, seriously. "They have little enough to lose. Most of them are only quitting tAllen, Conrad is the author of 'Murder on the Oceanic A Mystery', published 2006 under ISBN 9780312342852 and ISBN 0312342853.