by Jack Treby
Finch peered at me in confusion. ‘You were in his room?’
I had not yet had the chance to tell him about my visits to Walter Kendall’s cabin. The subject hadn’t cropped up the last time we had spoken. And since I didn’t want to implicate myself in Kendall’s murder, I had no intention of telling him about the second of those visits now. But there was no harm in mentioning the first. Finch regarded me with bewilderment as I explained to him how I had crept into the American’s cabin the previous morning. ‘I had a look at this book when I was searching for the negatives,’ I said. ‘But I’m sure there was nothing missing from it then.’ I handed the pad back to the detective. ‘Still, it doesn’t tell us much.’ Had someone crept into the room after me, last night, to tear the pages out? It seemed unlikely. Maurice had been in there, of course, to plant the draught, but he would have no reason to rip anything out of a notebook.
‘That’s not the worst of it,’ Finch said. He lifted up the leaf just below the tear. ‘One trick I did learn from the forensic chaps. There’s a bit of an impression left on the page underneath. You can make out a few of the words if you hold it up to the light.’ He handed the pad back to me and I held it up against the window. One of the stewards was polishing a nearby table and he glanced across at us with curiosity.
I screwed my eyes, gazing at the impression that Kendall’s pencil must have made on the under sheet. Two words I recognised instantly: Adelina Koenig. I frowned at the rest of the passage. I could only pick out a smattering of it. ‘...had a (something) knowledge of (something) engineering...’ Aeronautical engineering? ‘...and a less than (something something) of geography.’ I dropped the pad and regarded Finch quietly for a few moments. ‘Sounds like character assassination,’ I concluded. ‘You don’t think Mrs Koenig had something to do with Kendall’s death?’
Finch shrugged. ‘I’ve no idea. I wish I did.’
It made me smile just to think of it, it seemed so improbable. ‘She was one of the people on the Croydon flight, wasn’t she?’
‘Yes, she was.’
‘So she might have had something to do with the original theft of your documents.’
Finch did not think that likely. ‘How could a German woman know anything about a file from Special Branch?’
I had no answer to that. ‘But you think she might have had something to do with Kendall’s death?’ Adelina Koenig was as mad as a box of frogs, but she seemed completely harmless to me. Besides, she had been too busy debauching herself last night to creep anywhere and tear out pages from a notebook.
‘She may have had some grievance that we know nothing about,’ Finch suggested. ‘That notepad is the only real evidence we have. And it’s pretty incriminating. Tearing the pages out like that.’
‘But you can’t be sure it has anything to do with Kendall’s death.’
‘I can’t be sure of anything!’ Finch declared mournfully. ‘That’s the trouble. At the very least, I think I’m going to have to search her cabin. I should have done it already, her and Miss Hurst’s. It’s a dreadful business, having to rifle through a lady’s luggage, but I can’t see any alternative.’
‘She’s going out on the dinghy. You could nip in there while she’s outside.’
He gripped his legs again. ‘I suppose so.’ I could see the idea did not appeal to him.
‘It’ll be the best time to do it,’ I said. ‘There are quite a few people going out, by the sounds of it. They’re all stark staring mad.’
‘I suppose so. But we’ll need to keep an eye on Frau Koenig in the meantime. If she is mixed up in this, we daren’t let her out of our sight.’
I shrugged. ‘She can’t do much harm in a dinghy.’
‘I wouldn’t be so sure. If she did kill Walter Randall, she might be capable of anything. She might try to dispose of the evidence, if she hasn’t already. Who knows, you might be able to catch her in the act.’
‘Wait a minute. You’re not suggesting...?’
‘I think you should go out with her, in the dinghy. Just to be on the safe side.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ I scoffed. ‘I’m not getting on a boat.’ I had only just survived one catastrophe. I wasn’t about to risk another.
‘Well, I can’t go, if I’m searching her room. You don’t get sea sick do you?’ he asked.
‘Well, no, but...’
‘Thank goodness for that. One of us needs to keep an eye on her. She might try to toss the poison over the side while everyone’s looking the other way.’
Finch was assuming Mrs Koenig had brought her own poison with her. He did not know about the tin Maurice and I had found in Gerhard Schulz’s old room. I could put him straight on that easily enough, but I wasn’t entirely sure how far I trusted this strange policeman. Adelina Koenig might not have known anything about the Special Branch file, but Finch certainly did and I could not be certain he was not involved in this affair himself. I only had his word, after all, that he was acting in any kind of official capacity.
‘But if there was a poison,’ I said, ‘it would have been in the sleeping draught they found in Kendall’s cabin.’
‘Yes, but he must have bought that himself in Seville. It’s got Spanish scribbled all over it. If Frau Koenig did interfere with it, she had to have done it later on. Look, I know it’s asking a lot. Heaven knows, I wouldn’t want to step on a boat with Adelina Koenig on it, but we really do need to keep a watch on her now, especially away from the ship. If she is involved in all this, there’s no telling what she might do.’
I scowled at the fellow. Why was it, I wondered, that people kept expecting me to put my neck on the line? I had half a mind to refuse the request. If I had stood up to Charles Lazenby I would not be in this mess in the first place. Perhaps I should get Maurice to do it, I thought; but then I remembered his abject fear of boats. I would have to take care of this myself. ‘Very well. I just hope you find what you’re looking for in her cabin.’
‘So do I,’ Finch said. ‘So do I. Then we might be able to make some sense of this god-awful mess.’
I left him to his search and followed the other passengers down to B Deck. A group of crewmen were noisily manoeuvring a large dinghy towards an exit ramp out of view of us on the far side of the deck, but another ramp had also been lowered at the near end of the port corridor, to allow the passengers access to the boat once it had been successfully dropped into the water.
Miss Tanner was waiting in line. I was surprised to see her here, given her reaction to the news of Walter Kendall’s death a few hours earlier. She had left her coat in her cabin but was sporting the same black rayon dress, with its elegant floral design, that she had worn at the breakfast table that morning. Either she was running out of clothes, or her thoughts were elsewhere.
‘How are you doing?’ I asked her, as sympathetically as I could.
She frowned for a moment, reflecting on her own state of mind. ‘I don’t know,’ she admitted, taking her place in line. ‘I just feel numb. Thomas doesn’t want me to go outside, but I need a distraction.’
McGilton was standing a little way ahead of us, in his shirt sleeves and a light yellow waistcoat. The stewards were handing out life jackets and the Irishman was being strapped into one of them. He had a camera with him, which he had placed on the floor while the crewman helped him into the cumbersome brown jacket.
‘It’s certainly that,’ I said. A distraction. I suspected that was why Captain Albrecht was allowing the expedition to go ahead; to distract us all, so that we didn’t dwell too much on all that had gone wrong. That, and the fact that the sea was now as calm as a fish pond, as Sir George had predicted.
The dinghy dropped to the sea with a muffled thud as Miss Tanner and I took hold of our life jackets. The gap toothed crewman showed us how to strap ourselves in and then we waited as the first two people were guided down the gangway onto the gently rocking dinghy.
Miss Tanner leaned her head in to me. ‘There’s something not right about Walter�
�s death,’ she whispered, confidentially. I could see the matter had been playing on her mind for some time. ‘He always slept like a log. He used to joke about being asleep before his head hit the pillow He wouldn’t need a sleeping draught.’ I cursed my own stupidity, for mentioning the powder in the first place.
‘How long is it since you last saw him?’ I asked. ‘I mean, before this trip?’
She shrugged, pulling the cord tight around her waist. ‘Three years, I suppose.’
‘A lot can happen in that time.’
‘But he would have mentioned it,’ Miss Tanner insisted. ‘The poor dear.’ Her eyes were beginning to moisten, but she stiffened herself. Now was not the time for tears and Lucy Tanner was an Englishwoman through and through.
‘One of the stewards told me he was planning to send a cable this morning. Was he writing an article?’ I asked. Perhaps she might have some idea what he had been scribbling in that notebook.
She nodded. ‘I believe so. A colour piece, for his newspaper.’
The terminology was unfamiliar too me. ‘A colour piece?’
‘Life on board ship. What it’s like to travel on an airship. A sort of general feature, rather than a news article. Not really Walter’s forte, but his editor sent him a telegram shortly after we left Seville, insisting that he write one.’
A telegram. That would have been around the time I was searching his room on Monday morning. Someone had knocked on the door and frightened the life out of me. It must have been one of the stewards, trying to deliver the message. When there was no reply, he had gone looking elsewhere. ‘And would he have written about us? The passengers?’
‘Oh, absolutely. But he’s always scrupulously fair. Was fair,’ she added, her face falling.
The gap-toothed crewman was gesturing the next two passengers forward. McGilton was at the head now and Miss Tanner moved across to join him, so that the couple could descend together. I watched them disappear and my stomach tightened as I was gestured forward in their wake.
Even with the comfort of a life jacket the metal steps down to the sea were an alarming sight. Miss Tanner gazed up at me with reassuring eyes from the gently bobbing dinghy as I descended. I could scarcely believe I was joining Sir George’s mad expedition, but I supposed a dinghy adrift in the middle of the Atlantic was no less safe just now than a German airship.
Adelina Koenig was in her element, examining the damage to the exterior of the craft as we floated gracefully away from the ship. The English knight was sitting next to her on the boat, pointing out aspects of the damage. I was gripping tightly on to the rope running along the edge of the dinghy, my life vest firmly secured, looking back at the Richthofen. I had not wanted to be on this boat, but I had to confess, now I was out here, it was a relief to be away from the airship. I was no sailor, but the breeze on my face and the gentle lap of the ocean provided far more reassurance to me than the constant buzz of the Zeppelin’s five engines.
Thomas McGilton was busy taking photographs with his Leica camera, at Miss Tanner’s insistence. In other circumstances, I suspected he would rather have enjoyed the experience, but it had not been his idea to allow his fiancée out onto the water. Even in her grief, the woman was as stubborn as a mule.
Sir George had a pair of binoculars and was examining the damage in fine detail. Captain Albrecht was in a second dinghy, positioned once again underneath the lower fin, directing the repairs in person. Half of the rudder had been torn away. Sir George handed his binoculars across to Mrs Koenig. ‘A fine ship, the Richthofen,’ he declared. ‘Battered but not unbowed, eh, what?’
‘Battered, certainly,’ I observed.
A handful of brave fellows were scampering about on top of the craft, at the opposite end. Mrs Koenig was paying particular attention to them, I noticed. There was a relatively minor tear in the outer fabric and the crewmen were clinging on to various guide ropes in order to patch it up.
Karl Lindt was more concerned with the damaged fin. ‘I hope the repairs will not take long.’
At the passenger windows, I could make out one or two familiar figures staring back at us; that Spanish fellow McGilton shared with standing next to Miss Annabel Hurst. There was no sign of Jacob Finch, however. He would be in Mrs Koenig’s room by now, searching for any incriminating evidence. I had lent him my home made lock pick so he could get through the door. I doubted the captain would be willing to provide him with a key.
I looked back at Adelina Koenig, sat on the edge of the dinghy. She was a fearsome dragon of a woman, for all her comparative youth, but I could not picture her as a murderess. A couple of sheets torn out of a notebook were not enough to incriminate her, even assuming it was she who had torn them out. That did not seem likely, given all the other activity in her cabin last night. And even though she had been on that flight out of Croydon, Finch was right, she could not know anything about the Special Branch file. But what had prompted Walter Kendall to write about her? A ‘colour’ piece surely wasn't the place to stick in the proverbial knife. From the few words I had made out on the under sheet, it sounded like he had doubted some of the details of her heroic exploits. Was she really an expert aviator or was she a clever fraud? It seemed rather tenuous. And would the prospect of a few harsh scribblings in the American press be enough to provoke murder? In any case, how would she have managed to get hold of both the rat poison and the bottle of sleeping draught? She might have slipped into my cabin without being seen, but she would have had to break into Gerhard Schulz’s first, and his cabin had been properly locked up. And, come to that, how would she have known I had a sleeping draught with me in the first place or that I was planning to use it on Walter Kendall? The American’s death, I was convinced, must have had something to do with those documents from Scotland Yard, and if the German woman had any involvement with that then she had to have an English accomplice.
Only two individuals, that I was aware of, had any prior knowledge of the Maggie Meller affair: Jacob Finch and Charles Lazenby. Could she be in collusion with one of them? I wondered. Jacob Finch was on board, but if he had been working with Mrs Koenig, he would not have drawn attention to her like this. That just left Charles Lazenby. His instructions to me had been completely at odds with the reality of the situation. Why had he not told me Finch was on board? Could he really not have known? Or did he have a more sinister motive? He provided the sleeping draught, after all, and perhaps he had met up with Mrs Koenig in Seville and told her all about it. It was a possibility, I had to admit, though it did not seem particularly likely. Perhaps the murder of Walter Kendall had nothing to do with the Special Branch file. Or perhaps Mrs Koenig’s accomplice was somebody else, who I hadn’t considered yet. I couldn’t really believe Charles Lazenby would sell out his country for a few pounds and Finch didn’t have the wit to do it.
Sir George Westlake was chuckling away heartily to my left. He and Mrs Koenig were becoming very close, I observed. Could he be involved in it somehow? He was certainly in need of the funds, according to McGilton. Mrs Koenig might not have the clout to purloin secret files, but Sir George was a pillar of the establishment. He would have access to all kinds of sensitive information and there was no guarantee he would be any more discreet than the Prince of Wales. Ordinarily, I would have dismissed the notion of such a grand person being involved in something quite this grubby, but I supposed, on reflection, that his elevated status was no bar to criminality. He had not been on the flight from Croydon, of course – he was already in Germany as part of his lecture tour – but Mrs Koenig had been on the flight and the two of them had certainly spent quite a bit of time together in the control gondola this morning. Sir George might even have been the gentleman caller in her bedroom last night.
There were several other contenders, however. The remaining passengers on board that London flight.
Annabel Hurst was a frail, insipid creature but she did have a strong connection to Gerhard Schulz. It was possible she had acted as a courier, if nothing else.
Frederick Gray was another possibility. He still seemed to me the most likely suspect, if Adelina Koenig was discounted. I could see him up on the passenger deck now, chatting to the Spanish fellow. Gray was clearly not a workaday postman. The pinched looking GPO man was involved in research and development. It was not beyond the bounds of possibility that he had connections with Special Branch or MI5. I knew from experience that the GPO had regular contact with the security services. If MI5 wanted a letter intercepted, it was the post office that opened it and photographed it for them. I had had lunch with a couple of GPO Censors during my time in Gibraltar and they always seemed to be in the know about everything. Perhaps Mr Gray had heard tell of Prince Edward’s file and marked it out as a decent retirement fund. It was always the middle men you had to watch, after all. But he had shown no interest whatever in Adelina Koenig.
A sudden cry interrupted my reverie. ‘Mein Gott!’ Mrs Koenig pointed a stubby finger towards the top of the Richthofen. One of the crewmen had slipped and was dangling by a piece of cord from the upper edge. The poor fellow only had one hand gripping the rope, which had come away from the side of the ship. He was struggling to find a footing while his other arm tried to grab hold of the line.
Lucy Tanner brought her hand up to her mouth. ‘Oh, my goodness!’
All at once, the man lost his grip and skidded across the upper curve of the airship. The relentless pull of gravity had him in its clutches and there was no way for him to recover himself. ‘Ludwig!’ Mrs Koenig cried out in horror. The drop to the ocean had to be a hundred feet or more. I heard the man scream as he plummeted to his doom but the splash of water was barely audible as he hit the sea.
Could he survive a drop of that distance? I wondered.
The oarsmen were already manoeuvring our dinghy in his direction. We were closer than the captain, whose boat in any case had been secured to the rear fin.
Sir George had his binoculars trained on the water. ‘He’s surfaced!’ he announced to the rest of us. The man was splashing and calling out. He was alive. I could see the stricken face bobbing up and down in the water. It wasn’t clear whether he was able to swim. He might be too dazed in any case. And he certainly wasn’t wearing a life jacket.