The Hindenburg Murders

by Max Allan Collins

  “Do you like mystery fiction in general, Eric? Or are you strictly a Saint fan?”

  The boy seemed to brighten a little. “Oh yes, I like detective stories and Wild West novels. Biographies, too.”

  “That’s an interesting combination—escape fiction and biographies.”

  “Well, sir, in both cases they represent lives more interesting than mine.”

  “What could be more interesting than working on a zeppelin? What’s your job, by the way?”

  “Rigger.”

  “That sounds more like duty on a sailboat.”

  “I use a sailmaker’s needle, sir, and heavy thread that can stand up to weather like we’ve been having.”

  “You work mostly with your hands, then.”

  He nodded. “I was an upholsterer’s apprentice before I came to work for the Reederei. But I am no seamstress.”

  This last seemed vaguely defensive.

  “I’m sure you aren’t, Eric.”

  “I have to climb high up into the ship to patch a gasbag tear, or repair the linen skin over the frames.”

  “Exacting work. Dangerous. And of course you get to travel.”

  Spehl nodded. “I like that very much. I’m just a farm boy, and now my world is so much bigger.”

  “Where were you raised?”

  Hilda sighed heavily. Charteris glanced at her again, trying to convey his unhappiness with her rude behavior. She glanced away.

  “Goschweiler, sir—a little village in the upland meadows of the Black Forest. Beautiful there. But just one small corner of the big world.”

  “Still, home always has its special place in our hearts, doesn’t it? Well, thank you, Eric, and do keep reading me.”

  Charteris held out his hand and the boy blinked, then accepted the handshake, and Spehl’s grip was firm, powerful, more than you might expect of a slender lad like this, if you didn’t know the good and taxing work he did with his hands.

  The inscription dry, Spehl closed the cover on the Saint book, nodded, muttered another thanks, and moved quickly off. Another jumpsuited crew member—whose presence Charteris hadn’t noticed before—rose from a bench by the slanting windows, where he had apparently been waiting for his friend. A shorter, more burly fellow, he fell in at Spehl’s side, and they made a quick exit.

  “Why were you so ill-mannered with that boy?” he asked the braided beauty, mildly aggravated with her.

  Her chin was high; she sniffed. “He was intruding. We were having a quiet moment. Why did you keep him here, talking to him, for such a long time?”

  He sipped his Scotch. “First, my dear, that young man is a reader of mine. That means he’s a customer. And callow youths all around the world, like that one, keep me in business, and allow me to maintain the high style of living to which I’ve become so accustomed, including the ability to flit about the skies with lovely mysterious women.”

  She couldn’t help herself: she laughed at that. Shaking her head, sipping her Frosted Cocktail, she said, “I was boorish. Accept my apologies.”

  “No. You’ll have to find some way to make it up to me.”

  “What do you have in mind?”

  “I’m sure you’ll think of something.”

  “You mean a late-afternoon nap in my cabin?”

  He yawned again, no more convincingly than before. “I could use a quick one. Snooze, I mean.”

  “You are an outrageous, impudent man,” she said.

  And stood, and held her hand out to him, and walked with him from the lounge, on the way to her cabin. As they headed for the stairs down to B deck, Miss Mather, seated on the window bench, glanced up from her poetry in progress to smile at him, and ignore her.

  He nodded at the spinster and they moved on.

  Soon the couple were just outside Hilda’s cabin door.

  “O beautiful Viking,” he said to her, “let down thy golden braids and unleash thy Valkyrie spirit upon me, and lift my undeserving soul to the skies.”

  And Hilda, bosom heaving with her full-bodied laugh, dragged him inside.

  ELEVEN

  HOW THE HINDENBURG’S ERSTWHILE CAPTAIN ENTERTAINED, AND LESLIE CHARTERIS HAD A CALLER

  AFTER THE USUAL SUMPTUOUS DINNER, as stewards moved in to clear the tables, word spread that Captain Lehmann was going to entertain in the lounge. Most of the passengers gathered there, or along the adjacent promenade, as the fatherly former captain of the airship stood like an itinerant street musician with the accordion slung before him. Charteris (in his white dinner jacket), Hilda (in a low-cut green gown), and the Adelts were seated at a table along the waist-high partition between lounge and promenade. It was fair to say that, with the exception of the die-hard chimneys in the smoking room on B deck below, the Hindenburg’s passengers were gathered nearly en masse.

  “Many of you who have sailed with us before,” Lehmann said in German (Charteris finding the word choice of “sailed” rather than “flown” an interesting one), “have inquired about the absence of our celebrated aluminum piano.”

  Gertrude Adelt called out gaily, “Oh yes! We enjoyed it so, when you played for us!”

  Lehmann smiled, with mixed embarrassment and pride, and said, “And I enjoyed it so when you, Mrs. Adelt, and other passengers sang along. But commerce rules even the skies—the piano weighed more than you, my dear… and we are fully booked on our return voyage with, as you know, so many travelers set to attend the English coronation.”

  Heads nodded all around the lounge.

  “So,” Lehmann continued, “rather than leave a pretty lady behind—we unloaded the piano.”

  Gentle laughter blossomed around the room, and now it was lovely Gertrude Adelt’s turn to react in embarrassment, and perhaps pride.

  Hoisting his accordion, Lehmann continued, “This portable ‘piano’ will have to do for the evening. If our German passengers will bear with me, I’ll repeat some of that for our American and English guests.”

  Lehmann gave a condensed English version of his spiel, and then—first in English, then in German—assured everyone that he would give equal time to German and American folk songs and English ballads… but said he would keep things neutral by beginning with an instrumental rendition of something by Straus.

  The evening evolved into a rather merry sing-along, and Charteris joined in lustily. The author had a pleasant second tenor and liked to sing, though he felt more than a pang or two for the absence of his wife, Pauline, who sang very well, and had been his duet partner in this same lounge just a year before.

  Hilda had a pleasant, relatively on-key alto that reminded Charteris enough of Marlene Dietrich to stoke the fires of his infatuation, and relegate his soon-to-be ex-wife to a distant compartment of his mind. Since he would sing the English and American tunes, and she the German ones, they were trading off, and singing to each other, and it was very romantic and not a little sexy.

  He was most disappointed when a finger tapped him on his shoulder and Chief Steward Kubis leaned in across the partition to whisper, “You are wanted in the officers’ mess, sir.”

  Sighing, nodding reluctantly, he patted Hilda’s hand, said, “You’ll have to excuse me, dear,” exchanging disappointed glances with his braided amour of the moment.

  The officers’ mess was cleared but for the blandly handsome Captain Pruss and the doleful Colonel Fritz Erdmann, seated again by the windows, the grayness of the day replaced by the ebony of the night. A small conical lamp on the booth’s table gave off a yellowish cast, to match Charteris’s own jaundiced reaction.

  “You know, Captain,” Charteris said in English, pointedly, not sitting, “I am a paying passenger. I have a right to enjoy myself like any other customer of the Reederei. If you’ve pulled me away from the side of that magnificent blonde country-woman of yours, just for me to give you a report of my amateur detective findings to date… then might I suggest we reschedule for a more propitious time?”

  “Please sit,” the crisply uniformed captain said, w
ith a respectful nod.

  Erdmann said, “We apologize for the intrusion into your evening. There are developments we need to share with you—and we need your help, your…” Erdmann searched for the English words. “… expert opinion.”

  “For God’s sake, I write blood and thunder. I’m not an ‘expert’ on real crime and espionage. Have you people gone mad?”

  The melancholy mask of Erdmann’s oblong face twitched a smile. He leaned forward, hands folded almost prayerfully. “There is much madness at large in our world today, would you not agree?”

  “Yes, but you may wish to speak to your boy Adolf about that. I’ve had little to do with causing it, personally. In fact I’ll go on record right now by saying that insanity in world leaders is in my view a less than desirable quality.”

  Pruss shifted uncomfortably in his seat, and Erdmann sighed heavily.

  Then the undercover Luftwaffe colonel said, “A bomb exploded today on the Paris-Marseilles Express. One death, twenty injuries—it could have been worse. Probably should have been worse—the train was at its maximum speed of sixty miles per hour and passengers were showered with shards of glass. The dead passenger could not be identified, so badly mangled was his corpse.”

  Charteris sat.

  “Apparently the bomb was smuggled aboard the train,” Erdmann continued, “tied to the coupling between passenger coaches. Investigators are convinced it was caused by a… how do you say Hollenmaschine?”

  “An infernal machine,” Charteris said.

  “Yes. A combination explosive and incendiary device. The Reich’s Ministry of Information cites this incident as further proof that the threat of anarchy hangs over us all.”

  “A threat hangs over the world, all right,” Charteris muttered.

  “Do I have to remind you,” Erdmann asked dryly, “that a bomb on this ship would do considerably more damage?”

  “That Parisian train wasn’t filled with hydrogen, you mean?”

  Captain Pruss said, firmly, “Because of your concerns about Joseph Spah’s unsupervised visit to his dog, Mr. Charteris, I have had the ship inspected again—bow to stern. No bomb was found.”

  “How reassuring,” Charteris said.

  “I believe the time has come to take Joseph Spah into custody,” Erdmann said. “Major Witt and Lieutenant Hinkelbein agree with me.”

  “Who are they?” Charteris asked. “The other two Luftwaffe men snooping around in mufti?”

  Erdmann frowned in confusion. “Mufti?”

  “Out of uniform, Fritz. Undercover. Spies.”

  Swallowing thickly, but not showing any pique, Erdmann said, “Yes—they are my assistants in our security effort.”

  “Why aren’t they here?”

  “Because they aren’t aware of your role in this affair—your undercover role, that is. Your spying.”

  “Is that the Nazi way, Fritz? Keep the right hand from knowing what the left is doing?”

  Erdmann grinned; it was a sudden, surprising thing. “I didn’t think you were naive, Leslie—that’s the way of all governments, of all spy agencies.”

  Charteris could only grin back at him: Erdmann had him.

  “All right,” the author said. “From what you say, I assume this radio blackout is over—it’s foggy and overcast, but the electrical storm isn’t snapping around us, anymore.”

  “That is correct.”

  “So what are your orders from the fatherland? Or is arresting Spah an order from the Ministry of Something or Other?”

  Erdmann glanced at Pruss, and both men seemed strangely chagrined.

  “What is it?” Charteris asked.

  Rather stiffly, Captain Pruss said, “We have decided not to inform the Air Ministry.”

  “What?” Charteris leaned forward. “Surely you’re joking, gentlemen. A murder on board the Hindenburg, and you’re keeping it to yourself?”

  “It was my decision,” Erdmann said.

  Another voice from behind them said, “And mine.”

  They all turned and were rather surprised to see Captain Lehmann standing in the officers’-mess doorway.

  “Ernst,” Erdmann said, with a nervous flicker of a smile, “I thought you were entertaining the passengers….”

  Thoughts raced through Charteris’s mind: Was Lehmann supposed to be keeping the passengers busy while this security/murder-investigation powwow was under way? Or had Erdmann, for some reason, held this meeting during Lehmann’s entertainment session to keep something from the Reederei director, something that would be discussed in this meeting?

  Strolling toward the booth, Lehmann said, “Oh the entertainment continues. Seems one of the passengers, Mr. Doehner, the father of those lovely little boys, also plays the accordion. He knew some American songs that I didn’t—so he is relieving me at my post, so to speak, briefly.”

  “Please join us,” Erdmann said, a little too cheerfully.

  Lehmann pushed in next to the colonel, looked toward Charteris and said, “Any message to the Air Ministry could be intercepted by non-Germans. This information in American or British hands, for example, could be harmful. The negative publicity could be damaging to both the Reederei and Germany herself.”

  “Knowing our policy makers as I do,” Erdmann said, “I believe we would risk serious reprimand should we broadcast this situation. We must contain it ourselves.”

  “Is that so,” Charteris remarked casually. “And you plan to start by arresting this buffoon Spah?”

  “What is this?” Lehmann asked, glaring at Erdmann.

  Charteris smiled to himself: he thought that might be what Erdmann hoped to conceal from Lehmann, executing the arrest before the Reederei director could do anything about it.

  “I have just informed Mr. Charteris of the French train bombing,” Erdmann said coolly. “And Captain Pruss has recently shared with me a fact of which neither you nor Mr. Charteris is aware.”

  Eyes now turned upon Captain Pruss, who sighed and said, “Chief Steward Kubis has informed me that Mr. Spah was found wandering through the body of the ship this afternoon, again to visit his animal, he says—again, unaccompanied, and without any permission.”

  Erdmann’s jaw was set; he spoke through his teeth, “That’s the second time this ‘buffoon,’ as you call him, Mr. Charteris, has strayed into forbidden territory. This alone is enough to justify his immediate arrest.”

  Lehmann, trembling, said in German, “We do not arrest passengers for disobeying ship’s guidelines.”

  “Oh, they’re guidelines now?” Erdmann said testily, shifting into German as well. “And here I thought these were rules, even laws. Understand, sir, that I had strict, specific orders from Berlin to keep this Spah under watch. To protect your ship from a potentially dangerous spy. Those were my orders, sir—not guidelines.”

  “May I remind you, Colonel, that you have no authority on this ship other than that which the Reederei, in a spirit of cooperation, grants you. This is a privately owned vessel and not under government control.”

  “Everything in Germany,” Erdmann said, “is subject to government control.”

  “Boys, boys,” Charteris said, pulling the conversation back into English, enjoying this. “Don’t squabble. Your uncle Adolf wouldn’t approve.”

  Captain Pruss said, “I have ordered another bow-to-stern inspection. Within the hour, we’ll have a report. But I would vote for detaining Mr. Spah in his cabin, under house arrest. The manpower and work hours he continues to cost us, checking up after him, are inexcusable.”

  “What is inexcusable, gentlemen,” Lehmann said, coldly angry, shifting back to German, “is that you would plan the arrest of this man without my knowledge.”

  “The captain of this ship…” Erdmann began, with a nod toward Pruss.

  “Reports to the director of the Reederei,” Lehmann said. “Which happens to be me. All decisions related to this matter are henceforth to be screened and approved by me…. Understood, gentlemen?”

  “Und
erstood,” Pruss said sheepishly.

  Erdmann only nodded.

  Charteris’s mood had improved; this was vastly more entertaining than the sing-along in the lounge.

  “When we arrive in New York,” Lehmann said, still in German though his voice had taken on his more usual, avuncular tone, “we face numerous responsibilities, both technical and diplomatic. Our corporation—with the government’s full backing—is attempting to form a transatlantic service in partnership with the Americans. This joint venture will not be jeopardized by our arrival in the States with an American in custody as an accused murderer/saboteur.”

  “He’s not an American,” Erdmann said defensively. “He is a Strassburger, a German!”

  “Technically, perhaps. But he carries a French passport and lives in America.”

  Charteris asked, in English, “May I inject the foreign viewpoint, gentlemen?”

  “By all means,” Lehmann said.

  “Spah is one of the few names on the list of Eric Knoecher’s ‘subjects’ that I haven’t got round to interviewing yet. No one’s asked, but I can report with a clear mind and a cool head that those I’ve spoken to have given me no reason to suspect them of Knoecher’s murder.”

  “Who have you spoken to?” Erdmann asked.

  Charteris gave them a brief rundown.

  “All of them have valid reasons for being on Knoecher’s list,” Charteris said, wrapping up, “but nothing worth killing him over. Not right here on the spot, anyway.”

  “No one reacted to your lie about Knoecher being sick in bed in your cabin?” Erdmann asked. “Not a suspicious eye movement, or nervousness of speech, or—”

  “Nothing. But I would suggest, before you arrest Spah, you allow me to continue my informal investigating. He’s a talkative little bastard—I’ll get something out of him.”

  “You would talk to him this evening?” Erdmann asked.

  “Yes. He was in the lounge, right in the swing of things. Decent voice; not off-key, anyway.”

  Lehmann nodded. “Yes, he’s not setting any bombs at the moment, that’s for certain.”

  Charteris gazed at Erdmann, keeping his expression soft but his eyes hard. “I believe our esteemed Captain Lehmann is correct in his assumption about the negative response to Spah’s arrest. This man is scheduled to appear at a very famous theater in New York City—his arrest would make front-page news all over America.”