Read Chapter 6: The Detective's Questions

The rapping came three times, sharp and officious, against the door of Jack’s stateroom. He had been studying the locket’s inscription in the lamplight, tracing the four initials with his thumb—H.R., J.P., A.C., W.K.—each paired with numbers that meant nothing yet.

He slipped the locket into his breast pocket, beneath the counterfeit waistcoat he’d lifted from a tailor in Southampton, and crossed the room in his shirtsleeves. A glance through the brass peephole showed a man in a sober grey suit, carrying a leather satchel, with the patient, unblinking stillness of a predator that has learned to wait.

“Mr. Finch?” the man said when Jack opened the door a crack.

“Who’s asking?”

“My name is Elliot Graves. I’m a private inquiry agent, retained by a gentleman who wishes to speak with you regarding a matter of some delicacy.” He produced a card embossed with a London address and the words *Graves & Sons, Confidential Enquiries*. “May I come in?”

Jack’s pulse quickened. Vance. It had to be Vance, sniffing around his cover like a bloodhound. But a private detective meant Vance wasn’t sure—not yet. He was probing, testing the water before he moved.

“I’m rather busy,” Jack said. “Titanic doesn’t run itself, you know. There’s a deck to stroll, a dinner to prepare for.”

“I assure you, Mr. Finch, this will only take a few moments of your time.” Graves’s eyes were pale grey, almost colorless, and they did not blink. “It concerns a silver key.”

The words landed like a punch to the gut. Jack kept his face neutral, but his mind raced. How much did Vance know? And if Vance knew about the key, who else might?

“I’m afraid you’ve got the wrong man,” Jack said, starting to close the door. “I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.”

Graves’s hand shot out and caught the door edge with surprising speed. His grip was firm, but his expression remained placid. “Mr. Finch. Please. I have no wish to cause a scene in the corridor. But I have been hired to ask questions, and I am very good at my work. If you have nothing to hide, five minutes of your time costs you nothing.”

Five minutes. Jack weighed his options. Turning the man away would look suspicious; admitting him could be walking into a trap. But Jack had been walking into traps his whole life, and he was still breathing.

He opened the door wider and stepped back. “Five minutes. Then I’m off to the dining saloon, and you can tell your employer I was deliciously dull company.”

Graves entered with the measured steps of a man who noticed everything. His eyes swept the stateroom—the untouched bed, the half-empty glass of whiskey on the sideboard, the leather case Jack had hastily shoved beneath a pillow. Jack saw him register it, file it away.

“I understand this is your first voyage on the Titanic,” Graves said, settling into a chair without being invited.

“Is that a question?”

“Consider it an opening pleasantry.” Graves opened his satchel and withdrew a small notebook. “My employer—I’m not at liberty to say who, though I suspect you have a good idea—has asked me to investigate the theft of a particular item from a passenger who boarded at Southampton. A silver key, ornate, with a serpent motif on the bow.”

Jack’s blood went cold. The key in his pocket had exactly that: a coiled serpent worked into the silver, the detail so fine he’d assumed it was purely decorative.

“I don’t know anything about it,” Jack said, keeping his voice steady. “I’ve been too busy winning money off your employer’s associates to go around pinching keys.”

Graves made a note. “You admit to playing cards with Mr. Vance?”

“I admit to playing cards, period. I didn’t catch everyone’s name.”

“Mr. Vance is a careful man,” Graves said. “He noticed that you boarded at Southampton, that you occupy a first-class cabin, and yet no one on board seems to know you. He asked me to look into your background.” A thin smile. “I did. And I found something curious.”

Jack forced himself to breathe normally. The room felt suddenly warm.

“What’s that?”

“There is no Harold Finch listed among the ticket manifest in Southampton. In fact, there is no Harold Finch listed anywhere in England. The name appears to be rather… invented.”

The silence stretched between them. Jack could hear the distant hum of the ship’s engines, the vibration through the floorboards. He thought about running—about grabbing the case and bolting for the door—but where would he go? On a ship, there was nowhere to hide that a determined man couldn’t find.

“People invent names all the time,” Jack said. “Theatre folks. Poets with a literary bent. It’s not a crime to be interesting, is it?”

Graves’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. “Theft of property is a crime. Murder is a crime.”

“Murder?” Jack’s voice cracked on the word.

“Two men aboard this ship have already died under suspicious circumstances. A steward, stabbed on the dock at Southampton, was found with his wages unpaid and his accounts untouched. Another, a ship’s purser’s clerk, hanged himself in the mail room—except the rope burns suggest he fought, and a man who wishes to die does not usually scratch at his own throat.”

Jack’s mind flashed to Andrews—to the letter opener he hadn’t been holding, to the look of terror frozen on his face. They were connecting him. Graces and Vance were connecting the deaths to the key.

“Why are you telling me this?” Jack asked.

Graves leaned forward, his grey eyes sharpening. “Because I want you to understand what you’re involved in. The item you carry—or the item you know about—is valuable enough that men have already died for it. Two men that I know of. Perhaps more that I don’t. My employer believes you’re either the thief or the thief’s accomplice, and he’s willing to negotiate a recovery fee rather than involve the authorities. But he is not a patient man, and neither am I.”

Jack’s mind churned. Two murders. Vance thought Jack had the key—which he did—and Vance wanted it back. But was Vance the one who’d killed the steward and Andrews? Or was he hunting the same shadowy employer who’d used Andrews to deliver the case?

If Vance had killed them, he wouldn’t be sending a detective to ask questions. He’d be sending someone like Moran, with a blade and a willingness to use it.

Which meant there were two parties after the key.

“I’m sorry to disappoint you,” Jack said, rising from his chair. “But I’ve never seen a silver key. I’ve no idea what you’re talking about, and I don’t appreciate being accused of theft based on nothing but a suspicious name.”

Graves rose as well, tucking his notebook away. He reached into his coat and produced two photographs, which he laid on the table between them.

“These men were passengers in third class. Irish laborers, by the look of them. They were found in the bilge this morning—drowned, the doctor said, but their lungs were dry. Someone held them under water until they stopped moving.”

Jack stared at the photographs. Two faces, young and weathered, eyes wide in death.

“They tried to sell the key,” Graves said softly. “They approached the wrong buyer. Whoever they dealt with took the item and left them to die in the dark.” He picked up the photographs and returned them to his satchel. “These men had no connections, no one to ask questions. But the key they had—it was a fake. A clever reproduction, but the serpent motif was wrong. The real key has a ruby set in the eye.”

He looked at Jack with something that might have been pity. “My employer has sent me to ask questions because he wants the real key. But there are others on this ship who do not ask questions. They simply take.”

Graves moved toward the door, then paused with his hand on the handle. “You seem like a resourceful man, Mr. Finch. Whatever your real name is, I’d advise you to consider what it might be worth to be resourceful in the right direction.” He opened the door and stepped into the corridor. “Good evening.”

The door clicked shut, and Jack stood frozen in the center of the room. His hand drifted to his breast pocket, where the locket lay cold against his chest. The key was in the leather case beneath the pillow—the silver key with the serpent bow.

The moment Graves had produced that photograph, Jack had known it was no bluff. Men had died for the key. The steward on the dock. Andrews in the mail room. Two nameless Irishmen in the bilge. Someone on this ship was collecting the dead like ticket stubs to a gala.

And Jack had the item they all wanted.

He pulled out the locket, flipping it open to study the inscription again—four initials, four pairs of numbers. And now, finally, he understood. The key wasn’t just valuable. It was the key to something immense, something that had already cost four lives.

He snapped the locket shut and slipped it into his pocket. Then he crossed to the dresser, lifted the silver key from the leather case, and held it up to the light.

The serpent’s eye was empty. A tiny socket, waiting for a ruby.

Graves had just given him the answer to the first question. Who had the matching gem? And what would Jack have to do to get it before the ship reached New York—or before whichever shadow on board decided to stop asking questions entirely and start collecting?

The engines hummed beneath his feet, steady and patient, carrying him toward the ice.