The Hindenburg Murders

by Max Allan Collins

  Because this would be a short day—landing at Lakehurst was expected for around four P.M.—Charteris and Hilda had agreed to take an earlier breakfast than usual. But it was still a good hour before he was due to knock at her door. Before going back to his cabin, he strolled to the portside promenade, to view another gray, rainy dawn.

  The dining room was already doing a brisk business. Some of the passengers, convening for the trip’s final breakfast, were casually attired in pajamas and bathrobes. Others were already spiffily done up in their arrival outfits. Miss Mather, in a blue dress trimmed lacy white, was seated with her college boys, flirting, laughing. The trio of businessmen—Douglas, Morris, and Dolan—were having a rather silent breakfast, wearing seemingly slept-in suits, and looked hungover, which was not surprising, considering how much time they spent in the smoking room/bar area.

  “Lester!”

  Moritz Feibusch, seated alone at a table for two against the linen-paneled wall, was waving at him. Charteris strolled over and sat for a few moments with the pleasant, lumpy-faced tuna-fish man.

  “Just so you know,” Feibusch said, “I’m giving up.”

  “Giving up?”

  “I’m at a hundred and fifty and who-knows-how-many postcards and, oy, my poor hand is swollen from signing my name. How do you famous people stand it, all the autographs?”

  “Endorsing checks from publishers makes up for it. You have the whole day in front of you, Moritz. You can still make your quota.”

  “No. This is my birthday trip, Lester, remember? For once, I’m going to sightsee. We’ll be flying over Boston and New York and I wouldn’t miss it.”

  “Where’s your friend—Leuchtenberg?”

  “I think the drinking finally caught up with him. He should have a Hindenburg-size head about now.”

  A steward brought a cup of coffee to Charteris, who chatted with his friend in fancy goods for a few minutes, then returned to his cabin.

  It was still too early to knock at Hilda’s door, so he used the time to prepare his papers for customs and pack his things. He left the shaving kit out, in case he should decide to freshen up before landing in New Jersey; but otherwise he was ready for arrival. Then he left the cabin and angled across the hall to Hilda’s door.

  He gave her a good-morning peck. “You look even more beautiful than usual, my dear.”

  Which of course she did. Today, for the first time, her braids were tucked under a stylish, raffishly angled hat—a shallow-crowned, wide-brimmed straw hat, a vivid rose color matching the rose-and-pink-and-black floral design of her white crepe dress with attached cape and long tight sleeves. It was a slinky affair that made her look tall and slender without downplaying her curves.

  “Did you sleep well?” she asked, her arm tucked in his, as they moved down the cramped corridor.

  “Sound and deep. I couldn’t have slept sounder if a building had fallen on me.”

  She laughed. “You are so funny.”

  A laugh riot, he thought inside his throbbing head.

  In the dining room, they sat nibbling fresh rolls, saying little. Charteris was distracted by the knowledge of the behind-the-scenes investigation in progress; but there was also a certain sense of loss, knowing his comely companion on this journey would soon be exiting his life. As he was usually the one who drove the conversation, the couple settled into silence broken only by the occasional comment about how good something tasted, the clink of dishes and silverware, and the patter of rain gently pelting the skin of the ship.

  “You are quiet today,” she said, buttering a biscuit.

  “It’s always sad, when a pleasant journey ends.”

  “Has it been pleasant for you?”

  “You’ve made it so. Hilda… I hesitate to ask this, since you made it clear that ours is a… temporary friendship.”

  She reached across the table and touched his hand. “What is it, Leslie?”

  “It’s just that I know a shipboard romance in most instances should be tucked away in one’s memory book, each party moving his or her own separate way.”

  A wonderful smile blossomed. “Are you saying you would like to see me again, Leslie? After we land?”

  “The thought has crossed my mind. You’re visiting your sister in New Jersey, and I’m heading to Florida, to see my daughter… but I’ll be back in that part of the world next week, to meet with New York book and magazine editors.”

  “I would love to see you again.”

  He raised his coffee cup in salute. “Just for old times’ sake. That’s what this will all be by next week, you know—memories, old times.”

  Suddenly passengers were crowding around the promenade windows. Charteris and Hilda rose from their table to join them, finding a place along the slanting Plexiglas, where they discovered the sun was finally out, the fog burning off, the vast blue shimmer of Boston Harbor revealing itself below, ship whistles blowing them a robust welcome to America.

  Holding hands, he and Hilda watched as the airship—at an altitude of merely five hundred feet—coasted over suburbs, people tinted blue in the ship’s shadow as they would run out of houses to gaze up and point and wave, cars pulling over along roadsides as drivers got out to get a better look, dogs barking wildly, and, in rural stretches, barnyards where stirred-up pigs and fluttering chickens reacted in apparent terror, which for some reason elicited giddy laughter from the high-flying sightseers.

  Miss Mather flitted to his side, beaming, saying, “Is it ridiculous for me to feel so happy?”

  “Not at all,” he told her. “I feel the same.”

  “Did you see the flower gardens? Yellow forsythia in bloom, and other flowers trailing pink, grass plots so vivid green, apple trees in blossom, woods full of dogwood and young green leaves—”

  “Shouldn’t you be writing this down?”

  “I can’t steal myself away!”

  Then, like a hummingbird, she flew off. Hilda was amused, and so was he.

  They were wandering back to their table to finish their coffee when Chief Steward Kubis approached Charteris and again delivered a whispered message.

  “There’s something I need to do,” Charteris told her.

  “That’s all right. I have to go to my cabin to pack my things and collect my papers for passport examination.”

  “If I haven’t stopped by for you within an hour, my dear, I’ll meet you as soon as I can here at the promenade.”

  “Fine.”

  He took a moment to watch her walk away—that was always worth finding time to do—and then he fell in with Kubis, who ushered Charteris down to B deck, forward through the keel corridor, back to Lehmann’s cabin.

  Erdmann, Pruss, and Lehmann were all waiting; and no one was seated—they were standing in the relatively small space like men at a graveside.

  “What the hell is it?” Charteris asked.

  “Our inquiry into your midnight caller,” Erdmann said, “has turned something up—something very disturbing.”

  Lehmann looked gray and stricken.

  “You found him?” Charteris asked, brightening. “The man with my bite marks on his leg?”

  “All of the crewmen have been checked,” Erdmann said, “and none have such a wound.”

  Frowning, Charteris demanded, “What in God’s name is it, then?”

  “One of our crew members is missing,” Pruss said.

  THIRTEEN

  HOW THE HINDENBURG TOURED NEW YORK CITY, AND LESLIE CHARTERIS SPENT HIS MARKS

  THE MISSING CREWMAN WAS A mechanic, Willy Scheef. Lehmann explained that a mechanic on a zeppelin faced one of the ship’s hardest, most demanding jobs—and by all accounts the noisiest, stuck inside a cramped engine gondola (there were four), keeping an eye on oil pressure, water temperature, and engine revolutions. And the diesel din (“the hammers of hell!” Gertrude Adelt had called it) was rivaled by intense engine heat.

  “But mechanics also work the shortest hours,” Lehmann said in English. “Rotating shifts of two
hours in the day, and three at night.”

  “Plenty of time,” Charteris said, “to work a midnight visit in.”

  “We can’t be certain it was Scheef who attacked you,” Erdmann put in sharply.

  The four men were seated now, Lehmann on the edge of his desk, Pruss in the desk chair swiveled to face Charteris and Erdmann on the bunk. The foggy forenoon was filtering its way through the cabin’s small sloping window.

  “It’s a simple process of elimination,” Charteris said. “If none of the sixty men you inspected has a bite on his ankle, Colonel, then the missing crew member is the man I bit.”

  The Germans took a few moments to digest that tongue twister, then Captain Pruss said, somberly, “So we do have a murderer aboard.” His face was the color of pie dough.

  “Perhaps not,” Lehmann said, wincing in thought. “Perhaps Mechanic Scheef had an accident and fell from his post; it’s happened before. The guardrail is rather insubstantial, and no doubt slippery in the rain.”

  Hands on his knees, Charteris laughed, once. “Now that stretches coincidence and convenience a little far, doesn’t it?”

  “Or,” Lehmann continued, as if the author hadn’t spoken, “Scheef may have panicked when he realized a Luftwaffe inquiry had been launched, and hastily committed suicide, rather than face Nazi justice.”

  “It’s even possible,” Pruss said, “he might have parachuted. We’re close enough to shore.”

  Charteris’s eyes widened, his monocle popping out; he caught it and said, “And no one saw?”

  Pruss winced, as if embarrassed by his own argument. “He would not necessarily be noticed, if he jumped far enough aft.”

  Erdmann was shaking his head. “If this Willy Scheef is our guilty party, he didn’t know my inquiry had to do with him. My two assistants and I went through the ship inspecting footwear, making sure the new regulation canvas-topped crepe-soled shoes were in proper use. It seemed the easiest way to check ankles for Mr. Charteris’s tooth marks.”

  His unlit pipe in hand, Lehmann smirked humorlessly, saying, “A spy might easily have seen through such a simple ruse.”

  “And I thought I wrote fantastic plots,” Charteris said, shaking his head, monocle back in place. “Gentlemen—a few hours ago, in this very cabin, we confronted the man who sent Willy Scheef to scare me off—one Rigger Eric Spehl—after which the man who sent the message scurried to push his messenger overboard.”

  “Incredible,” Lehmann huffed.

  “Well, it’s not as entertaining as slippery catwalks and suicidal murderers and parachuting spies. In a mystery novel, we call it ‘tying off loose ends.’ Something we picked up from real-life experts in murder… like Eric Spehl.”

  “What evidence do you have that Spehl did this?” Lehmann almost demanded. “Even circumstantial—please share it with us.”

  Charteris waved dismissively. “What more do you need? After we accused Spehl, he rushed to remove his accomplice!”

  “We didn’t accuse him—we looked at his ankles.”

  “Doing that may have been enough to inspire Spehl to confront Scheef, and then Spehl would have seen the bite, and, as the Americans say, push would have come to shove.”

  “You’re spinning fiction again, Leslie,” Lehmann said, eyelids at half-mast, prop pipe in his teeth.

  “I don’t understand you, Ernst. You have a murderer aboard. What are you going to do about it?”

  Lehmann gestured with the pipe. “You haven’t answered my question, yet: what evidence, even circumstantial evidence, have you against Spehl?”

  That stopped him. Charteris drew in a breath, held it, released it. “Nothing, really. Just what you already know.”

  “That he sought you out for an autograph.”

  Charteris’s forehead tensed. “I have the unsettling feeling you’re about to tell me that you intend doing nothing.”

  “We will be landing this afternoon,” Lehmann said.

  “Approximately four o’clock,” Pruss put in.

  “It is my feeling,” the Reederei director continued, “that our best course of action is to land, allow our passengers to debark, bring new passengers aboard, and head home. Once home, a few days from now, the matter will be turned over to the S.D., and if Eric Spehl or any other crew member is guilty of murder, the S.D. will find it out, and prosecute and punish. We will not deal with this matter in the air, or on American soil.”

  “Good Lord, man, he’s killed twice!”

  Lehmann shrugged grandly. “Who has killed twice? We have gone over that. We don’t know what in fact happened to our missing passenger and our missing crew member. We will turn it over to the proper German authorities for investigation—in Germany.”

  “Ernst, this is madness—”

  Erdmann, who’d been strangely silent, said, “Mr. Charteris, while I am more in your camp in this matter than Captain Lehmann’s, I would have to agree with him that it is unlikely Spehl—or whoever our assailant might be—would kill again.”

  “Fritz! What is your reasoning?”

  “Let’s assume you’re right about Spehl—or substitute any other crew member, for that matter, including Scheef himself. Obviously, Eric Knoecher had something on whoever murdered him. So Knoecher was disposed of. Then Spehl… or whoever… became aware of the story you were spreading that Knoecher was still alive and unwell in your mutual cabin. This told him you were up to something, that you knew something. And of course you were asking questions, around the ship—discreetly investigating… but investigating.”

  “Yes.”

  “So you were ‘warned.’ By an accomplice, apparently. And now that accomplice has been removed. This is all according to your own version of the events, Mr. Charteris.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Well, if no further investigation takes place, and you debark this afternoon—why would Spehl… or whoever… kill again?”

  “And if Scheef alone was the murderer,” Lehmann said, “he’s either dead, by his own hand or God’s, or has escaped.”

  “In either event,” Erdmann said, “the safety of the passengers and the rest of the crew would seem assured.”

  Charteris threw up his hands. “By Nazi standards, maybe. But by any other, this is insanity.” He looked to Lehmann. “How far will you go to protect yourself from damaging publicity in America, Ernst?”

  “This far.”

  “I am still capable of blowing the whistle to the police and the press, you know.”

  “We do know.” Lehmann’s voice was at its gentlest, its most fatherly. “I would ask you, Leslie, as a friend, to allow us to handle this ourselves. In a few hours, this voyage will be over. You’ll be off the ship. What is it to you what a bunch of Nazis do to each other?”

  Charteris laughed humorlessly. “That’s the best argument you’ve come up with, I’ll give you that. But you’ll have to do better.”

  “What would you suggest?”

  “Put Eric Spehl into custody.”

  Erdmann frowned. “On what charge?”

  “Jesus Christ, man! You’re a Nazi! Who cares what charge?” Then he again turned to Lehmann. “Ernst, if we are friends, at all, to the slightest degree, for God’s sake listen to me: that boy is guilty. I saw it in his eyes.”

  “His eyes,” Lehmann said quietly.

  “Put that boy in custody and keep him there at least until you lift back off from Lakehurst. And I would suggest keeping him in custody until you turn this business over to your authorities in the fatherland.”

  Lehmann’s eyes narrowed. “And that will buy your cooperation?”

  “Yes.”

  The Reederei director looked to Erdmann. “Colonel?”

  Erdmann was already nodding. “I agree with Mr. Charteris. And I will take Rigger Spehl into custody myself, and keep him in my cabin.”

  Lehmann glanced to Captain Pruss. “Is that acceptable, Captain?”

  “Yes. We can cover for Rigger Spehl’s duties. Perhaps this is the pr
udent thing, at that.”

  “My only other concern,” Charteris said, “is Spehl’s access until this very moment to every nook and cranny of this ship. If he is, in addition to a murderer, a saboteur…”

  Captain Pruss held up a hand, palm out. “The ship has been thoroughly checked. Our chief rigger has inspected gas cells and shafts, every bracing wire, every catwalk. And I will instruct him to do so once again, after Colonel Lehmann has secured Spehl in custody.”

  Relieved, heaving a huge sigh, Charteris stood. “Thank you, gentlemen. I appreciate this.”

  They shook hands all around. Comrades again. The author was thanked for his cooperation and his investigative efforts. Lehmann assured him the promise of unlimited future passage on the Reederei line would be kept.

  “You must be relieved,” Lehmann said, as Charteris was leaving the cabin, “to have your amateur-detective duties behind you.”

  But as he walked the plank once more, moving through the sliding door into B deck, sauntering down the keel corridor, Charteris was nagged by feelings, by thoughts, that he simply could neither shake nor fully identify. Even with Spehl in Erdmann’s custody, the mystery writer in him—the amateur detective he’d become—felt something remained to be done. This first case of his, minus the Saint, seemed unfinished, somehow.

  The trip was certainly coming to a close. Coming up the stairs to A deck, he found Kubis and other stewards piling baggage under the bust of Marshal von Hindenburg. Down the corridor, other stewards could be glimpsed with armloads of dirty bedclothes, making a pile at the far end.

  Charteris called out to the chief steward. “Heinrich!”

  The chief steward looked up from his work; Charteris’s own suitcase was in the pile Kubis was erecting. “Yes, sir?”

  “A word?”

  If Kubis was impatient with yet another demand from the author, it did not show in the man’s bright-eyed, cheerful countenance.

  Apologizing for taking the steward away from his work, Charteris walked him around to the dining room, which was otherwise empty at the moment.