The Flying Boat Mystery

by Franco Vailati

  ‘And the mechanic? Where is he?’

  The reporter indicated the rear of the plane:

  ‘The poor fellow has been exiled to the luggage compartment, and can probably hear what I’m saying, which, I must admit, is terribly indiscreet.’

  Things were going much better now. The young lady had closed her eyes for a moment and was trying her best to suppress a smile of amusement. Noticing this promising reaction, Vallesi advanced cautiously towards her seat, whilst trying to think of something interesting to say:

  ‘And so, we’ve had the chance to add a new and refreshing anecdote to our otherwise tedious trip....’

  Giorgio was mildly irritated with himself for his timid approach to the girl, but he couldn’t think of anything more exciting to say:

  ‘Is this your first flight, Signorina...?’

  ‘Yes, but who...? ’

  ‘I'm sorry to introduce myself like this. It’s not a very correct thing to do, I know, but when you’re floating in mid-air, conventions lose their grip... My name’s Giorgio Vallesi.’

  ‘Marcella Arteni, nice to meet you.’

  Swift answer. Very curt smile, followed by a small pause—one of those little, frail dams of silence demanding to be impetuously broken:

  ‘Don’t be so serious, please.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You have a marvellous smile, don’t be afraid of wearing it out.’

  Marcella looked at him in astonishment at his impertinence and reacted by withdrawing into herself. But Vallesi continued his desperate attack:

  ‘So, I’m trying to find some ridiculously funny remark in the hope of having the lucky chance to see it again. Good, now I can die happy.’

  Marcella really had smiled. Possibly the young man was not too unpleasant after all. He was daring and very impertinent, yes, but at the same time he seemed to be praying for her to not be put off by it.

  Vallesi was quite good-looking, after all, with his long, lean, boyish face.Quite a refined young man, daring but in some ways embarrassed by his own impertinence. His rosy cheeks perfectly matched his smooth, brown hair. Signorina Arteni looked out of the window. To her left, the grey mass of Mount Circeo loomed like a genial, saturnine big brother to the distant brown tooth of Torre Astura.

  The blue-clad mechanic came out of the luggage compartment, massaging his knees and shoulders.

  ‘Luggage doesn’t travel in very comfortable places, does it?’ asked the impertinent reporter.

  The man in blue indicated the front of the plane:

  ‘Ah, the one-hundred lire notes were very beautiful, but I’ll never do it again! Luckily, we’ll soon be in Naples and it will all be over!’

  He went to join the pilots in the cockpit for a few minutes, possibly to repeat his comments to the clandestine passenger, and returned to the cabin carrying a yellow-paper parcel.

  Gaeta Gulf was now behind them and the plane was flying over the small Pozzuoli Point. The landscape attracted curious passengers to the windows. It was quite a remarkable novelty to see beneath them the brown-blue film of the sea contrasting with the red-roofed coastline houses hidden amongst the trees.

  Nobody noticed the nervous excitement of the second country tradesman, who was trying for the second time to open the locked toilet. After a third attempt he exploded in his gruff, coarse voice:

  ‘Bloody hell, what’s he doing in there? He’s been inside for almost half an hour!’

  His vulgar outburst seemed to upset his fellow passengers. The lady in red sat bolt upright:

  ‘What’s happening?’

  In a gentler tone, the tradesman indicated the banker’s empty seat:

  ‘That fellow has been locked in the toilet for a long time....’

  ‘The banker is still in there? Perhaps he's not feeling...,’ interrupted Vallesi.

  ‘The banker? What banker?’ asked Marcella Arteni with an air of excitement.

  The mechanic’s face appeared from his den, curious. Hearing of the banker’s strange absence, he seemed more surprised than worried:

  ‘We must call the comandante immediately....’

  The plane was descending swiftly, circling over the crowded port located inside the protruding white tongue of Beverello Wharf. Flight Commander Girini left the sea-landing manoeuvre to the second pilot, knocked on the toilet’s small wooden door, called out Agliati’s name, and pushed vigorously on the door twice. Not receiving any answer, he announced very calmly to the passengers:

  ‘Please do not move after the landing. I and my crew will take care of the matter.’

  The plane caressed the water at one-hundred km/h, and broke the surface, creating a wave like the wake of a departing steamship, which jolted it briefly. As the sea receded and the plane reduced speed, Commander Girini repeated his order to the passengers:

  ‘Please do not leave your seats.’

  Even before the gangways were firmly attached to the plane, the pilot was already running along the floating wharf. He quickly notified the airport commander of the incident, whilst his crew politely but firmly thwarted any attempt to leave the cabin. The clandestine passenger was no luckier than anybody else and was swiftly and firmly restrained in the cockpit. The police inspector on duty at Beverello Wharf arrived with two officers whilst two mechanics started to break down the toilet's small wooden door. The astonished passengers watched the operation from the cabin with curious apprehension. Attracted by the commotion, airport clerks and sailors from nearby ships were beginning to crowd around the front of the plane.

  The two policemen took over from the mechanics, and the sudden surrender of the small door almost upset their precarious balance.

  The toilet was empty.

  Banker Francesco Agliati had vanished into thin air.

  2-COMMISSARIO BOLDRIN

  Assistant commissioner Luigi Renzi cut swiftly through the network of streets extending from the Tiber River to Monte Mario: Via dei Gracchi, Via degli Scipioni, Via Marcantonio Colonna, Via Fabio Massimo, Via Ottaviano... When he passed through that particular part of Rome, it always reminded him of his cousin, the mathematics professor, running to the University whilst tracing in his fertile mind fantastic, outlandish theorems about the right angles of the very straight and geometric Turin avenues.

  A newsstand attendant shouted, advertising his wares :

  ‘Italia! La Tribuna fifth edition! Il Littoriale! Special Tour De France edition! Pesenti beats Faure and Camusso on the Pyrenees with a breathtaking sprint!’

  Luigi Renzi bought La Tribuna and Il Littoriale, happy about the Italian cyclist’s swift assault on the Tour De France Yellow Shirt. But it was whilst he was quickly perusing La Tribuna that an article in the police news on the fourth page attracted his professional attention:

  BANKER FRANCESCO AGLIATI VANISHES

  MYSTERIOUSLY FROM THE ROME-NAPLES PLANE

  Almost immediately the Tour De France lost its alluring attraction. Unfortunately, the Naples correspondent was not forthcoming with very many details:

  A mysterious disappearance happened today on the Ostia-Naples-Palermo SANA (Società Anonima Navigazione Aerea) flying boat. The new-fangled Dornier Do-Wal 134, now on its first flights, was carrying twelve passengers, amongst them the well-known banker Francesco Agliati, who boarded at Ostia. The flight was uneventful until the arrival just before Naples, when passengers were alarmed by the prolonged absence of the banker, who had entered the small toilet half an hour earlier. The door was locked from the inside and nobody responded to repeated calls. When the plane landed at Beverello Wharf, the door was broken down, but the banker wasn’t inside, despite all the passengers having seen him enter the toilet. Nevertheless, Agliati was no longer on the plane, and the subsequent search proved fruitless. No one could have entered the small locked room after the banker, so this mysterious and totally incongruous disappearance has, for the moment, no possible explanation. Hopefully, further questioning of passengers and crewmen will shed some light on the matter. Having not
ed personally Agliati's disappearance, Commissario Boldrin, on duty at the time in the Beverello Wharf Airport, has begun his investigation, but, up to the present, nothing has been revealed to the press.

  Actually, the Naples police had followed the investigation with a certain anxiety. Chief Inspector Boldrin was a good man, but more suited to a small village constabulary in his native Veneto than to a big town. He had immediately been submitted to the assault of the passengers, upset by the delay caused by the mysterious incident. Only the important politician, a Foreign Office bigwig, was spared the consequences of the disaster. He was the first to be interrogated, and provided the police with the first important fact in the Agliati case. He affirmed with official certitude that only four passengers had left their seats during the flight: the country tradesman Giuseppe Sabelli was the first to visit the toilet before the banker; after his return, reporter Giorgio Vallesi had made a brief visit to the pilots in the cockpit; after that, the banker closeted himself in the toilet; after a further half an hour a second tradesman gave the alarm, having tried several times to open the locked door without success. The bigwig’s two minions confirmed his statement, and the three of them were allowed to leave and catch another seaplane, arriving successfully in Palermo before dusk.

  The Dornier Do-Wal 134 was, of course, grounded in its basin under strict police surveillance, awaiting a new and less perfunctory search. Boldrin began it under the influence of the bigwig’s statement, but even though he was energetic and thorough, he failed to discover any new clues.

  The hydroplane’s layout was very simple. The cockpit was in the prow, with three places for the pilots and the mechanic. From there, a glass door opened into a vestibule, with the small toilet on the left and the exit door on the right. yond that, a second glass door led to the passenger cabin. When both doors were open, the passengers could see into the cockpit and the pilots could see the greater part of the passenger cabin, which was the plane’s largest compartment, comprising two lines of six seats, each with a window. At the rear of the cabin was a wooden door which opened into the luggage compartment, which was triangular in shape and completely occupied the tail of the plane.

  The fuselage itself only had a few openings: the exit door in the vestibule, which was kept locked during the flight and only opened after landing by the flight commander with a special key; a small skylight in the roof of the toilet; the twelve windows of the passenger cabin; and a large hatch in the roof of the luggage compartment, which could be opened from the outside or inside, and was used for loading and unloading luggage.

  Boldrin searched slowly and very methodically in every corner, questioning the pilot and listening with great attention to his explanations, and checking the banker’s seat. He examined the toilet, which was 1 metre square and 1 metre 70 in height. He barely looked at the floor and the walls, not believing for a single moment that their tin could hide any sort of deadly trap or secret passage, or any leak whatsoever, as Girini had declared in his own statement. Boldrin was far more interested in the small skylight. The flight commander had given him the precise measurements: 39 centimetres by 32. The small window, which was not locked, could be opened inwards by means of a handle, but was impossible to open outwards because of the tremendous air pressure, as Girini had duly explained.

  The chief inspector took only a few brief notes. The plane had a very simple internal structure, and this very simplicity had a bad effect on his nerves. The search and the statements were pushing poor Boldrin down an investigative street which his instincts told him was a dead end.

  A

  1-cockpit

  2-exit door

  3-toilet window

  4-motors

  5-wings

  6-passenger cabin

  7-luggage compartment

  8-luggage compartment door

  9-helm

  B

  1-cockpit with three seats for the two pilots and the mechanic

  2-glass door to cockpit

  3-toilet

  4-exit door

  5 passenger cabin with 12 seats.

  6-wooden door of luggage compartment.

  7-luggage compartment

  Being a mere policeman, he wasn’t particularly sensitive to a place’s mood and atmosphere, but he began to find the tin walls of the small recess oppressive and suffocating, and he instinctively looked for a way out, in the hope that it was also Agliati’s way out.

  He looked again at the skylight. But unanimously the witnesses had described the banker as a tubby man with a paunch of considerable proportions, and it seemed quite impossible that he could have passed through the small window. It would have been an impossible operation even for poor Boldrin, with his own average width and height.

  It could have been murder. It seemed the only possible solution, after having excluded an improbable deadly accident, and an even more improbable suicide. (Who would ever have decided to kill himself in a plane’s toilet, without even knowing beforehand whether it was possible to throw himself from it?... And furthermore Boldrin had ascertained that it was absolutely impossible.)

  But a murder demanded the malicious, deadly intervention of a third person at some point. Boldrin was too sensible to imagine a fantastic, murderous trap set by someone under poor Agliati’s feet.

  For a start, there was not a single clue to indicate the presence of a third person in the toilet, nor any indication that a trap had been placed, nor by whom. And how could any murderer foresee the banker’s visit to the toilet at exactly the right moment? And what if another person had fallen into the trap? In any case, the bigwig’s statement rendered an external intervention in the toilet quite impossible. It was ridiculous to think that someone could have already been hidden in that small space, and all the passengers were present and accounted for when the banker entered the toilet.

  Only Sabelli, the country tradesman, had gone into the toilet before the banker, and he hadn’t noticed anything suspicious. In any case, he was out of there many minutes before the banker’s arrival. The reporter Giorgio Vallesi had gone past the door twice, once going to the cockpit and once returning to the cabin, but he hadn’t had time to do anything at all. And the same could be said of Marchetti, the second tradesman. His repeated assaults on the locked door could have been vaguely suspicious, but he’d only been out of his seat for a few moments before he began.

  In any case, even if Marchetti or someone else could theoretically have entered the small space, there were no traces whatsoever of breaking and entering on the small but solid lock, or on the small but very efficient inside bolt. And how was it possible to make the banker’s body disappear into thin air?

  Boldrin had only one possible explanation. The Foreign Office bigwig had only talked about his fellow passengers, and his statement confirmed only his and their movements. He couldn’t have checked the actions of the crew members or, above all, those of the mysterious clandestine passenger who had absolutely had to fly on the Dornier Do-Wal 134.

  He hoped very much that further questioning of passengers and crew would yield further clues in his investigation, and thus break the solid tin walls of the mysterious toilet. So he returned to his office in the airport, determined to spend all night, if necessary, interrogating each passenger and crew member separately.

  The small, dark typist assigned to him by SANA airlines was already there in the office. She seemed very happy about the new job, which would not only satisfy her natural curiosity, but would also place her at the centre of a sensational mystery on everyone’s lips, with the alluring prospect of being interviewed by many reporters. Her only misgiving was the tough policeman’s reluctance to be forthcoming.

  But the small, dark typist was mistaken. Poor Boldrin would have liked nothing more than to discuss the details of the case with someone, if only he could have explained his too few theories and his too many doubts. Desperate as he was to unearth promising leads from his interrogations, he confined himself to merely dictating the list of item
s found in the banker’s briefcase, which had been left on his cabin seat.

  In it, he had found a considerable quantity of papers and documents covered with numbers, and pencilled notes on the headed notepaper of the Italy & Greece Bank, where Agliati occupied the position of CEO.

  Also amongst the papers, Boldrin had found a six-day first-class return railway ticket from Naples to Brindisi Marittima, valid until that very same day, July 12th. It seemed very likely that Agliati had arrived in Brindisi from Athens, where he lived, on July 6th. Apparently, he had only intended to go to Naples, and so hadn’t bought a ticket to Rome. But something had necessitated him going to Rome and he had been obliged to remain there until that morning. Having apparently intended to stay for a couple of hours in Naples before his return, his only option had been to take the Ostia plane if he wanted to be back in Brindisi by dusk, as a quick check of the railway timetable confirmed: if he had wanted to be in Brindisi by the evening, he would have had to catch the five past three train from Naples. If Agliati had taken the quarter to nine train from Rome Termini, he could only have stayed in Naples for a short while, whereas the plane gave him the chance to remain in Rome a couple of hours longer. Certainly a car would have given him the same opportunity, but....

  Boldrin shrugged off Agliati’s predilection for planes and called Flight Commander Girini.

  3- AN ASSISTANT COMMISSIONER, A CHIEF INSPECTOR AND THIRTEEN SUSPECTS

  Assistant Commissioner Luigi Renzi scanned the morning newspapers rapidly. They were dedicating the most hysterical titles in their very rich repertoire to THE FLYING BOAT MYSTERY, but with the same sparse details of the evening before. The questioning of the witnesses was scarcely mentioned, but they did at least list the passengers’ names, and Renzi immediately recognised one of them: his college friend Giorgio Vallesi.