after the boat set off early on the morning of April 4, 1930 into a clear day and a stiffening onshore breeze from Boston harbour. Certainly nothing was reported, though the vessel was equipped with a high-grade Marconi set. Nothing was known or suspected until she was found eight days later, drifting 150 miles offshore, unmanned and travelling lazily with the current.
She was towed back to New Jersey and impounded and searched. Nothing significant was found aboard her. Of the brothers Waltrow, there was no sign at all. Eventually, a month later, she was towed back to Boston. Here, perhaps because of Stephen’s wealth or perhaps because of Kevin’s status as one of Boston’s finest, she was searchedmore thoroughly and a primitive forensic examination was carried out.
‘Did they find anything?’
Suzanne sipped her drink. ‘They found quite a lot of blood. It looked as though the brothers might have been fighting. One of them could have been cut on a gaff or something. Accidents occur on boats all the time. But the boys were of different blood groups. And both types were present in fairly liberal quantities.’
‘Anything else?’
She nodded. ‘Stephen Waltrow’s chequebook. It was in a drawer in a bureau in the master cabin. That, too, was blood-smeared. In black ink, in his own hand, he had scrawled five words on the back of it. One sentence: “To be with the others.”’
‘Did the mystery create much of a stir?’
‘Not really. It occurred at a tumultuous time in American life. The country was short neither of scandal nor sensation. But it was the subject of a sort of probe. That’s where I got most of my information.’
The investigator was a man called Ernie Howes. Howes was a former cop and private eye who had turned to psychic investigation in the aftermath of the Great War when the collective grief of desolate parents created a boom for self-styled experts in reaching lost sons beyond the grave. Howes ran a lucrative line in exposing fake mediums. But he also fed the appetites of the gullible by filing news stories with an occult slant of his own whenever he could.
The dinghy tragedy could have meant that the boys were somehow doomed. The twins could be written up as a living and dying example of how it just wasn’t possible to cheat fate. Or he could just go with the unlucky boat angle. Spalding’s suicide had made national headlines. Stephen Waltrow had been the second millionaire in a year to come to a sticky end as owner of the
Dark Echo
. Surely she wascursed? People liked stories about unlucky boats. For whatever reason, they were apt to believe them, just as they were apt to believe in stories about haunted mansions.
‘Which story did he go with?’
‘Neither,’ Suzanne told me. At our table in the corner of the pub, she was worrying at a thumbnail with her teeth. ‘He interviewed Kevin Waltrow’s widow and was told about Kevin’s increasing moodiness and violence in the home in the weeks leading up to the voyage. And cynically, he approached Kevin’s seven-year-old son Michael in search of further lurid detail. I don’t believe Boston’s finest were too keen on stories about recently deceased officers who beat their wives and heard commanding voices in their heads at night. Ernie Howes woke up in a Boston hotel one morning and discovered a live bullet on the pillow next to his head. This item of ammunition was a soft-point police issue .38 calibre. He took the hint. He never wrote a word about the Waltrows or the
Dark Echo
.’
‘How did you find all this out?’
‘Believe it or not, the outcome of the story is not entirely tragic. Michael Waltrow and his younger sister Mollie eventually inherited the bulk of their uncle’s fortune. Michael is eighty-four now, in full possession of his senses and a distinguished landscape painter living out his last years on Martha’s Vineyard. I found his number and telephoned him and spoke to him there. I told him I was researching
She was towed back to New Jersey and impounded and searched. Nothing significant was found aboard her. Of the brothers Waltrow, there was no sign at all. Eventually, a month later, she was towed back to Boston. Here, perhaps because of Stephen’s wealth or perhaps because of Kevin’s status as one of Boston’s finest, she was searchedmore thoroughly and a primitive forensic examination was carried out.
‘Did they find anything?’
Suzanne sipped her drink. ‘They found quite a lot of blood. It looked as though the brothers might have been fighting. One of them could have been cut on a gaff or something. Accidents occur on boats all the time. But the boys were of different blood groups. And both types were present in fairly liberal quantities.’
‘Anything else?’
She nodded. ‘Stephen Waltrow’s chequebook. It was in a drawer in a bureau in the master cabin. That, too, was blood-smeared. In black ink, in his own hand, he had scrawled five words on the back of it. One sentence: “To be with the others.”’
‘Did the mystery create much of a stir?’
‘Not really. It occurred at a tumultuous time in American life. The country was short neither of scandal nor sensation. But it was the subject of a sort of probe. That’s where I got most of my information.’
The investigator was a man called Ernie Howes. Howes was a former cop and private eye who had turned to psychic investigation in the aftermath of the Great War when the collective grief of desolate parents created a boom for self-styled experts in reaching lost sons beyond the grave. Howes ran a lucrative line in exposing fake mediums. But he also fed the appetites of the gullible by filing news stories with an occult slant of his own whenever he could.
The dinghy tragedy could have meant that the boys were somehow doomed. The twins could be written up as a living and dying example of how it just wasn’t possible to cheat fate. Or he could just go with the unlucky boat angle. Spalding’s suicide had made national headlines. Stephen Waltrow had been the second millionaire in a year to come to a sticky end as owner of the
Dark Echo
. Surely she wascursed? People liked stories about unlucky boats. For whatever reason, they were apt to believe them, just as they were apt to believe in stories about haunted mansions.
‘Which story did he go with?’
‘Neither,’ Suzanne told me. At our table in the corner of the pub, she was worrying at a thumbnail with her teeth. ‘He interviewed Kevin Waltrow’s widow and was told about Kevin’s increasing moodiness and violence in the home in the weeks leading up to the voyage. And cynically, he approached Kevin’s seven-year-old son Michael in search of further lurid detail. I don’t believe Boston’s finest were too keen on stories about recently deceased officers who beat their wives and heard commanding voices in their heads at night. Ernie Howes woke up in a Boston hotel one morning and discovered a live bullet on the pillow next to his head. This item of ammunition was a soft-point police issue .38 calibre. He took the hint. He never wrote a word about the Waltrows or the
Dark Echo
.’
‘How did you find all this out?’
‘Believe it or not, the outcome of the story is not entirely tragic. Michael Waltrow and his younger sister Mollie eventually inherited the bulk of their uncle’s fortune. Michael is eighty-four now, in full possession of his senses and a distinguished landscape painter living out his last years on Martha’s Vineyard. I found his number and telephoned him and spoke to him there. I told him I was researching
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