“If you will allow.”
“I’m not stopping you.”
She swallowed; her lips trembled. “I did not mean to hurt you.”
“You didn’t hurt me, dear. A damn zeppelin blew up in my face—that’s what hurt me.”
“Then… we won’t see each other again.”
“How can we? You don’t exist.”
Then he turned away from her, his eyes reverting to the glowing, smoldering framework, as he waited for her to go.
Which, before too very long, she did.
Charteris stayed at the New Yorker Hotel for three days, before taking the train to Miami for his birthday festivities. A United States naval intelligence officer had taken a perfunctory interview with him, to see whether or not the creator of the Saint would be needed to testify at the upcoming American inquiry into the crash. The author told the investigator nothing of the plan devised by Erdmann, Spehl, and Hilda/Beatrice, working hard to make it seem he had nothing pertinent to offer; and so he was not required to testify.
Reporters tracked him down at the hotel and, though he normally didn’t shy away from publicity, he gave no interviews, and thus was barely mentioned in the press, though he did follow the story intently himself.
Joe Spah got plenty of publicity, posing with his pretty wife, his three tiny children and a police dog the kids had been led to believe was the late Ulla. Joe’s acrobatic leap from the burning airship was heralded, though he had fractured his heel in the fall, and the Radio City Music Hall appearance had to be postponed.
Margaret Mather and the Adelts were widely interviewed, and it was revealed that Margaret would write her story for Harper’s (prose, not poetry) and Leonhard’s article (which now had an ending) would appear in Reader’s Digest.
Other survivors—none badly harmed—were frequently quoted, including that rootin’ tootin’ Nazi George Hirschfeld (happily in the arms of some showgirl by now, Charteris hoped) and stockyard king Colonel Nelson Morris—though his businessman friends, advertising man Ed Douglas and perfume king Burt Dolan, had perished, as had Moritz Feibusch, though Moritz’s crony Leuchtenberg, who’d been drunk most of the trip, made it. The Doehner boys also survived, and so did their mother, but they lost their father.
Among the surviving crew members were Chief Steward Kubis, who had jumped from the ship, then turned around and helped the American ground crew rescue passengers and other crew; Chef Xavier Maier and two other cooks; and Dr. Kurt Ruediger, who needed a physician’s help himself, as he had broken his leg on his leap.
Mechanic Walter Barnholzer died in the Paul Kimball Hospital, as did Captain Ernst Lehmann, who on his deathbed spoke of sabotage causing the disaster. Captain Max Pruss survived, with disfiguring burns.
It was said Pruss was in far worse shape than Lehmann, but that the despondent Reederei director had simply lost the will to live.
Thirteen passengers were listed as dead, twenty-two crew members. Charteris noted with wry interest that Eric Knoecher’s name was included on the former list, and Willy Sheef’s on the latter.
Charteris never regretted his decision to keep what he knew to himself: the American commission blamed a hydrogen leak ignited by a spark of static electricity as the most probable cause of the explosion; and the German inquiry decided essentially the same thing, calling the terrible event “an act of God.”
Sabotage never was seriously discussed in either tribunal, as America wished to avoid an international incident on her own shores, and Germany did not wish to acknowledge itself vulnerable to sabotage by a resistance movement within its own borders—a resistance movement its government claimed did not exist, at that.
Still and all, there were interesting scraps of testimony and evidence.
Such as a number of witnesses who felt they had heard a gunshot prior to the first explosion. A mechanic, Richard Kollmer, said he “heard the ‘pop’ of the firing of a gun, a small gun or rifle.” Chicago stockyards magnate Morris, who had been in the writing lounge, also said he’d heard “a report, not loud,” of a weapon.
Even Dr. Hugo Eckener, the father of the Hindenburg, had originally stated his belief that his airship was a victim of sabotage, saying, “Only the firing of a burning bullet into the gasbags from a distance would have accomplished it.” But by the time of the official German inquiry, Eckener had changed his tune to the familiar gas-leak-and-spark scenario.
As the latter explanation settled uneasily into history, Charteris began to think his mystery writer’s mind had imagined it all—at least until he read about two neglected items of evidence found in the wreckage, given no serious consideration by either panel of inquiry:
A solid black chunk of residue identified by the New York City Police bomb squad as the residue of a dry-cell battery.
And a charred Luger—one shot discharged.
A TIP OF THE HALO
THIS NOVEL IS A FOLLOW-UP of sorts to my previous historical mystery, The Titanic Murders, in which Jacques Futrelle—an esteemed detective-story writer of his day, and an actual passenger on the great doomed ship—solves two murders prior to a certain incident involving an iceberg.
So the most obvious question a reader might pose is: Was Leslie Charteris, creator of the Saint, actually a passenger on the Hindenburg? The answer is a resounding, absolute yes… sort of. As is indicated in this tale, Charteris (and his then-wife Pauline) were well-publicized passengers aboard the airship’s maiden voyage; but history does not record his presence on the Hindenburg’s final run.
Every good mystery needs a detective, however, and—in the tradition of Futrelle’s role in The Titanic Murders—I seized upon Charteris’s Hindenburg connection and ran. Just as I was a childhood reader of Futrelle’s “Thinking Machine” tales, so was I an avid fan of Charteris and his Saint—the Saint was my first big enthusiasm as a reader of mysteries, and I was expelled from my fourth-grade class at Grant School in Muscatine, Iowa, for having in my little desk The Saint and the Sizzling Saboteur, an Avon paperback with a wonderfully racy, rather sadomasochistic cover. Numerous references in this novel to that particular Saint tale can be found by the keen-eyed Charteris fan, and of course my tongue-in-cheek chapter titles are firmly in the fashion of what Charteris referred to as his “Immortal Works.”
The literate yet adventurous and even hard-boiled detective fiction of Leslie Charteris was my introduction to a world of writers that included Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Erle Stanley Gardner, and Mickey Spillane, and—for better or worse—set me on my life’s path. Any writer of mystery fiction might look with envy at the gloriously successful career of this sophisticated, fascinating man, who saw the Saint reach radio, television, the comics page, and the silver screen; few doubt that without the Saint, there would have been no James Bond (and TV’s “Saint” Roger Moore, of course, graduated to Bondage). At the time of his death in 1993, at age eighty-five, in Windsor, England, Leslie Charteris saw his Robin Hood sleuth again heading to the screen for a big-budget production (and he would certainly have been as displeased with the final result as he was with Hollywood’s previous efforts).
With the exception of Charteris’s fanciful role, however, I have attempted herein to stay consistent with known facts about the Hindenburg and her final voyage, though the books and articles on this subject are often inconsistent, particularly on smaller points, and the various experts disagree on all sorts of matters, trivial and profound. When research was contradictory, I made the choice most beneficial to the telling of this tale. Any blame for historical inaccuracies is my own, reflecting, I hope, the limitations of this conflicting source material.
Three nonfiction books were the cornerstones of my research. A. A. Hoehling’s pioneering Who Destroyed the Hindenburg? (1962) first identified Eric Spehl as the probable saboteur; his book is a detailed, fascinating account of the trip and was extremely helpful to me. Hoehling’s research was substantiated and somewhat expanded upon in Michael Macdonald Mooney’s first-rate The Hindenburg (19
72); though it covers similar ground, Mooney’s book adds other details and perspectives, and was particularly rewarding in background information regarding passengers who became characters in this novel. A lavish coffee-table-style volume in the manner of their book on the Titanic, Hindenburg: An Illustrated History (1994) by writer Rick Archbold and illustrator Ken Marschall covers the golden age of the airship in general, and is less detailed about the Hindenburg’s final flight than the Hoehling and Mooney volumes; but its overview of the Zeppelin Company—and wonderful photos, paintings, and diagrams, some of them elaborate foldouts—put it on the short list of volumes vital to my research. My sincere thanks to all of these gentlemen.
With an exception that will be noted, the characters in this novel are real and appear with their true names; the conflicts with Nazi Germany suffered by the subjects on Eric Knoecher’s list are grounded in reality. There is no reason, however, to think that the real Eric Knoecher was a Nazi agent, that he was in fact anything but an innocent importer who died tragically on the Hindenburg. History records little else about him, or about Willy Scheef, who certainly did not attack Leslie Charteris in the night, since of course Leslie Charteris wasn’t actually aboard the ship. These two were chosen from among the otherwise anonymous deceased because of the melodramatic felicity of their names and for purposes of verisimilitude. No disrespect is intended, and the characters wearing these real names in this novel should be viewed as entirely fictionalized. And—despite their real names and basis in history—these are all characters in a novel, fictionalized and doing the author’s bidding.
Hilda Friederich has a basis in reality, though I am not privy to her real name: both Hoehling and Mooney cite her as Spehl’s likely coconspirator, and both use pseudonyms. She was not aboard the flight, rather back home in Frankfurt, expectantly and continually checking in with the Zeppelin Company office on news of the flight.
The notion that Colonel Oberst “Fritz” Erdmann may have been party to the sabotage is suggested in the 1975 film version of Mooney’s book, and Hoehling and Mooney both note Erdmann’s strange, gloomy mood, with the latter indicating at least some discontent on Erdmann’s part toward the Nazi regime; but the theory that his wife may have smuggled aboard the explosive device—in their well-documented last-second good-bye aboard the airship—is to my knowledge new to this book. I do not offer this as anything more than a theory that at least loosely fits the facts and possibilities.
Two books on the life and career of Leslie Charteris were enormously constructive: The Saint and Leslie Charteris: A Biography (1972) by W.O.G. Lofts and Derek Adley; and The Saint: A Complete History in Print, Radio, Film and Television by my friend Burl Barer, who is also the latest author to continue chronicling the Saint’s adventures, including his first-rate novelization of the recent Val Kilmer–starring film. Also consulted was The Saint (1989) by Tony Mechele and Dick Fiddy, which focuses on the Roger Moore television series but does include material on the Saint’s creator, as well.
Fans of the Saint and Charteris should run, not walk, to go online at www.saint.org, the phenomenally colorful, detailed Web site run by Dan Bodenheimer. Dan was incredibly generous with his time and knowledge, providing a copy of the long-out-of-print Lofts/Adley book mentioned above, sending photocopies of rare articles from obscure British and American fanzines, sharing personal anecdotes about Charteris, and pointing me to another remarkable Saint expert, Ian Dickerson. The benevolent Mr. Dickerson provided photos of Charteris and information he’s gathered for a biography of Leslie Charteris, in progress.
Ian also shared a complete set of “A Letter from the Saint,” a weekly letter written to fans by Charteris that ran from April 1946 through February 1947; this material—sixty-thousand-plus words of it—gave me a rather personal, inside look at the author’s mind-set and lifestyle, and created much of the basis for his characterization in these pages—numerous throwaway lines in this novel, and stretches of interior monologue, are derived in part from this vital, vintage material. Should I ever be lucky enough to have fans as dedicated as Dan and Ian, I would be blessed indeed (haven’t quite shaken this British thing yet—sorry).
A good deal of inspiration for the appearance and panache of Charteris-as-detective came from the May 1941 issue of Life magazine, which featured a six-page photo-illustrated mystery story by Charteris (celebrating the hundredth anniversary of the genre) in which the author portrayed his own character. Charteris posed as the Saint in monocle, mustache, and dapper apparel including tuxedos and sporty ensembles. Those images seldom strayed from my mind as I wrote this tale. Also productive in this vein was “Meet the Saint,” a chapter from Meet the Detective (1935), edited by Cecil Madden, provided by Dan Bodenheimer.
Numerous standard references, such as Contemporary Authors and Twentieth Century Authors, were consulted in regard to Charteris and his career. Specific reference books used include British Mystery Writers 1920-1939 (1989) edited by Bernard Benstock and Thomas F. Staley, and Encyclopedia of Mystery and Detection (1976) by my friends Otto Penzler and the late Chris Steinbrunner.
My fact-based novels about fictional 1930s/’40s era Chicago private detective Nathan Heller have required extensive research not unlike what was required of this project. I called upon my Heller research assistants, George Hagenauer and Lynn Myers, to help me in my attempt to re-create the final voyage of the great ill-fated airship. They both dug out numerous articles from sometimes obscure sources, and without them this journey would not have been possible.
Among these articles were “The Last Trip of the Hindenburg” by Leonhard Adelt (Reader’s Digest, November 1937) and “I Was on the Hindenburg” (Harper’s Magazine, November 1937) by Margaret G. Mather. Obviously, these two articles were essential to this book. Leonhard Adelt, incidentally, survived the Hindenburg only to die in the firebombing of Dresden; his wife, Gertrude (sometimes spelled Gertrud), survived Dresden and her articulate, vivid remembrances of the airship and its crash have been among the most important resources for Hindenburg researchers.
Another helpful article (one of George Hagenauer’s finds) was “Aboard the Airship Hindenburg” (Wisconsin Magazine of History, Winter 1965–1966) by Louis P. Lochner, actually excerpts from Lochner’s diary of the maiden flight to the States, the same one Charteris was on. Also of interest were “What Really Downed the Hindenburg” (Popular Science, November 1997) by Mariette DiChristina, which reveals the little known fact of the flammability of the “doping” material that coated the airship; and “The First Airship Flight Around the World” by Dr. Hugo Eckener (The National Geographic Magazine, June 1930). On the Web (at www.airships.net) I discovered a detailed travel brochure from the Deutsche Zeppelin-Reederei company that included many details about life on the airship.
I would also like to cite the excellent History Channel documentary The Hindenburg, produced and directed by Don Cambou (no writer credit given). I also screened The Hindenburg (1975), the lavish Hollywood production based on Mooney’s book, directed by Robert Wise from a screenplay by Nelson Gidding from a screen story by Columbo creators Richard Levinson and William Link; rather heavily fictionalized, and something of a soap opera in the manner of the then-popular disaster picture, legendary director Wise’s film impeccably recreates the ship’s interior.
Other books consulted include Dirigibles That Made History (1962) by David C. Cooke, and Airshipwreck (1978) by Len Deighton and Arnold Schwartzman.
I would like to thank several editors: Natalee Rosenstein and Sara Carder of Berkley Prime Crime; my agent and friend, Dominick Abel; and of course my wife, Barbara Collins, on deadline working on a book herself during the writing of The Hindenburg Murders but still willing to lend a hand, to help try to guide this baby to the mooring mast… without any unexpected explosions.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo credit: Bamford Studio
MAX ALLAN COLLINS IS THE New York Times best-selling author of Road to Perdition and multiple award-winning novels, screenplay
s, comic books, comic strips, trading cards, short stories, movie novelizations, and historical fiction. He has scripted the Dick Tracy comic strip, Batman comic books, and written tie-in novels based on the CSI, Bones, and Dark Angel TV series; collaborated with legendary mystery author Mickey Spillane; and authored numerous mystery series including Quarry, Nolan, Mallory, Eliot Ness, and the best-selling Nathan Heller historical thrillers. His additional Disaster series mystery novels include The Titanic Murders, The Lusitania Murders, The London Blitz Murders, The War of the Worlds Murder, and The Pearl Harbor Murders.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication Page
CONTENTS
START READING
DAY ONE: MONDAY, MAY 3, 1937
ONE: HOW THE HINDENBURG VOYAGE BEGAN IN A HOTEL, AND LESLIE CHARTERIS MADE NEW FRIENDS
TWO: HOW THE HINDENBURG DISEMBARKED, AND LESLIE CHARTERIS MET TWO WOMEN
THREE: HOW THE HINDENBURG FLOATED INTO THE NIGHT, AND LESLIE CHARTERIS SHARED A CABIN
FOUR: HOW THE HINDENBURG DELIVERED THE MAIL, AND LESLIE CHARTERIS SLEPT ALONE
DAY TWO: TUESDAY, MAY 4, 1937
FIVE: HOW THE HINDENBURG MISPLACED A PASSENGER, AND LESLIE CHARTERIS WALKED THE PLANK
SIX: HOW THE HINDENBURG’S DOCTOR PRESCRIBED SLIPPERS, AND LESLIE CHARTERIS WAS SUMMONED
SEVEN: HOW THE HINDENBURG LOST CONTACT WITH HOME, AND LESLIE CHARTERIS WAS RECRUITED
EIGHT: HOW THE HINDENBURG CONSERVED WATER, AND LESLIE CHARTERIS FOUND A CABIN MATE
DAY THREE: WEDNESDAY, MAY 5, 1937
NINE: HOW THE HINDENBURG PROVIDED A PUZZLE, AND LESLIE CHARTERIS POSTED CARDS
TEN: HOW THE HINDENBURG SHADOWED THE TITANIC, AND LESLIE CHARTERIS MET A FAN
ELEVEN: HOW THE HINDENBURG’S ERSTWHILE CAPTAIN ENTERTAINED, AND LESLIE CHARTERIS HAD A CALLER
The Hindenburg Murders Page 21