The Hindenburg Murders Page 2

The performance Charteris had taken in at the Crystal Palace had consisted of Spah’s rather remarkable rubber-kneed drunk act, the comic acrobat doing various gymnastics with a post as his prop, playing an inebriated playboy in a tux trying to get a light from a gas street lamp.

  Scratching the dog’s head, Spah said, “It’s a possibility. I could use a new routine, but first I’ll have to pry him loose from my daughters.”

  “German shepherds are beautiful animals.”

  “I prefer to call her an Alsatian… though I’m still a German national, my loyalties lie elsewhere.”

  “You took a chance, razzing that customs agent. I’ve been told he’s S.S.”

  “He can kiss my S.S. I’m never routing through Germany again—no more bookings there, either. Who needs it? I’m at Radio City, starting next week, for a solid month.”

  “That’s an impressive engagement. You’re very good, Mr. Spah.”

  “‘Joe,’ please, make it ‘Joe.’ You prefer ‘Leslie’ or ‘Les’?”

  “‘Leslie,’ I’m afraid. Anyone who’d suffer an affectation like this”—and he gestured to the monocle—“has to be a ‘Leslie.’”

  Spah laughed at that; the police dog was looking at Charteris, too, with what seemed a smile. “How do you keep that hunk of glass in, anyway?”

  “Immense concentration and a dab or two of chewing gum. How do you travel with… what’s her name?”

  “Ulla,” Spah said, petting the dog. “She’ll be in a ‘kennel basket,’ they call it, a cargo compartment aft of the airship. I’m told they’ve had quite an assortment of animals on the Hindenburg, including antelopes. I only hope I’ll be allowed to see Ulla a few times a day—seems cruel, otherwise.”

  “I wouldn’t count on it. The way this is going so far, I’d say pampering the passengers has fallen off the Reederei’s list.”

  Deutsche Zeppelin-Reederei was the German name for the Zeppelin Transport Company.

  Charteris was finishing up his Scotch and water. “Think I’ll flag down a waiter for another. Can I get you something, Joe?”

  “No thank you, Leslie.” Spah rose and his dog snapped to attention. “Actually, I have to take Ulla out to the airport, early, to deal with the cargo people. I’ve hired a car… can’t take her on the bus with the rest of you peasants.”

  “You show-business folk certainly do know how to live.”

  Spah and Ulla made their exit, other passengers smiling at them and tossing an occasional compliment—as the acrobat’s ridicule of the customs agent had done all their hearts good—and Spah bowed comically, doffing his golfer’s cap in a sweeping gesture that got him a few laughs… though not from the customs agents.

  Charteris rose, to seek out a waiter and order another drink, pausing to light up another Gauloise.

  “Can I bum one of those matches?” a rough-edged male voice inquired, in American-accented English.

  “Certainly,” Charteris said, turning to a ruggedly handsome apparent businessman of perhaps forty, seated at a table with another two of his ilk. Brown hair touched with gray, mustache thick but well trimmed, eyes gray blue and knowing, the businessman withdrew a Camel from a pack and allowed Charteris to light him up.

  Without standing, the man introduced himself as Ed Douglas, and the other two men at the table gave their names as well—Nelson Morris and Burt Dolan, Americans with the flat slightly nasal tone of the midwest, fortyish, prominent-looking sorts in business suits that hadn’t come off a rack. Charteris introduced himself and his name seemed to mean nothing to the trio.

  “Join us?” Douglas asked.

  “I was just going to commandeer a waiter and get something to drink—alcohol seems to be the only way to make this afternoon tolerable.”

  “He’s on his way over,” Douglas said, nodding toward a busy waiter. “Sit, why don’t you?”

  Charteris sat.

  “I’m only in advertising,” Douglas said, gesturing with cigarette in hand, “but my friends here are worth knowing—Burt’s in perfume, and Colonel Morris’s hobby is collecting meatpacking plants and stockyards.”

  “Perfume and steaks,” Charteris said, shaking hands all around. “Two ways to a girl’s heart—I will have to get to know you boys. I may want some ammunition for a shipboard romance.”

  Morris, sturdy and distinguished looking, probably the oldest of the three, who had been studying Charteris, said, “Your name is familiar to me, sir.”

  Charteris explained that he was an author.

  “Mystery writer, aren’t you!” Morris said, grinning. He had the fleshiness that came with prosperity, but grooves had been worn in his face by a certain amount of nonsoft living. “What is it, what’s your detective’s name, don’t tell me—the Saint! My wife reads your books.”

  Everybody’s wife seemed to be reading him.

  “Perhaps you know her, Mr. Charteris—Blanche Bilboa?”

  “Oh! The musical-comedy star. No, I haven’t had the pleasure, though I have seen her perform. You know, Mr. Morris, come to think of it, I believe I’ve heard of you, too.”

  “Not so formal, please, sir—call me ‘Colonel.’”

  Charteris managed not to smile at that, saying, “Well thank you, Colonel.”

  “Colonel in the army reserves,” Douglas explained, with sarcasm so faint only Charteris caught it.

  “Ah.” To Morris, Charteris said, “And do call me ‘Leslie.’ Uh, forgive me, but weren’t you formerly married to Jeanne Aubert, the actress?”

  “That’s true,” Morris said, a little pride showing. Both his wives had been extremely attractive. This boy must be rich, Charteris thought.

  “Is your lovely wife traveling with you?” Charteris asked. Your most current lovely wife, that is, he thought.

  “No, Blanche has stage engagements in Paris that will keep her there till June. She has no love of dirigibles, at any rate.”

  “I don’t love them, either,” Douglas said, exhaling Camel smoke, “after this horseshit treatment.”

  “It’s not the Reederei’s fault, Ed,” Morris said. “Dr. Eckener’s at the mercy of these goddamned Nazis.”

  “I don’t know about that, Colonel,” Dolan said. The perfume magnate was smaller than his mates, a round-faced man with thinning blond hair. “I hear they’ve been using the Hindenburg to drop Nazi leaflets.”

  “Yes,” Morris admitted, “and they showed off the airship at the Olympics, too, but that’s not Dr. Eckener’s fault—it’s just the foul political waters he’s forced to swim in, these days.”

  “Are you acquainted with Dr. Eckener, Colonel?” Charteris asked.

  Dr. Hugo Eckener, avuncular head of the Zeppelin Company, was a world-famous figure whose name was synonymous with dirigibles. He had designed the massive Hindenburg to complement the renowned Graf Zeppelin, the airship that had over the past eight years established successful service between Germany and Brazil.

  The Hindenburg—Eckener having been encouraged by his American partners in Akron’s Goodyear-Zeppelin Corporation to establish a North American service—had flown ten flawless flights last year between Germany and the United States, plus seven nonstop flights to Rio de Janeiro. This would be the first of eighteen scheduled flights for 1937—transatlantic crossings were becoming routine.

  “I’m proud to call Dr. Eckener my friend,” Morris said, rather pompously. “I served in France, during the Great War, and learned to fly, there—I’ve had an interest in aviation ever since.”

  “Now you’ve started him,” Douglas said, waving at the waiter.

  Morris went on, undaunted. “Dr. Eckener arranged, on one booked-to-capacity flight, for me to share quarters in the keel of the Graf Zeppelin, with its captain…. I love airship travel—no words can properly express the sensations.”

  “I met Dr. Eckener on the maiden voyage,” Charteris said, flicking cigarette ash into a round glass Frankfurter Hof tray. “Got to know him rather well—and my impression is, no love is lost between him and the Nazis.
”

  “Damn right,” Morris said. “He despises his beloved zeps being used for Nazi propaganda.”

  “Nonetheless,” Charteris said, “the Hindenburg and the Graf Zeppelin are the best weapons in the Nazis’ public-relations arsenal. People do love dirigibles.”

  “Phallic symbols are always popular,” Douglas said dryly.

  “Will Dr. Eckener be along for this flight?” Dolan asked.

  “I don’t believe so,” Charteris said. “My understanding is he’s on the outs with the Reich.”

  “Kicked upstairs,” Morris said glumly.

  Charteris didn’t know the idiom. “What’s that?”

  “Given some kind of honorary chairmanship. Captain Lehmann’s the anointed one now, I hear—and he’s along for the ride, this time.”

  “Glad to hear it,” Charteris said. “They say Lehmann’s the best airship captain alive.”

  Morris shrugged. “He’s not captain, this time around. Merely observing—just for show, first flight of the season and all.”

  The waiter finally came over and said, in German, “Last call, gentlemen. The omnibuses to the airfield are here.”

  “What did he say?” Morris asked.

  Charteris translated, and the men ordered their drinks.

  The torturous afternoon of indignity and delay was over, the delights of travel by airship awaiting.

  TWO

  HOW THE HINDENBURG DISEMBARKED, AND LESLIE CHARTERIS MET TWO WOMEN

  THE BURLY MAJORDOMO AT THE front door of the Frankfurter Hof was as elaborately uniformed as a cast member of The Student Prince, rather a relief after the Nazi-ish attire of the customs officials. But the doorman was almost as officious, hustling the Hindenburg passengers through the drizzling rain to the three buses, shooing them aboard like schoolchildren late for class.

  It was approaching seven P.M. and the lights of Frankfurt did their best to sparkle and twinkle in a dreary dusk. Charteris had managed to select a bus that included a drunken gentleman who was singing German folk songs from a seat toward the back. The author chose a seat toward the front.

  The drunk had not been Charteris’s only objective in his forward-seat selection. Across the aisle from him was a rather Nordic-looking dark-blue-eyed blonde, in her early thirties, her frozen-honey locks worn up in Viking braids, a coiffure that only wide cheekbones and classic bone structure like hers could pull off. She was one of those pale beauties whose demeanor conveyed a stately beauty and whose near voluptuousness promised earthier delights. Like Charteris, she wore a belted London Fog trench coat and he was about to comment across the aisle about their mutual taste in rainwear when another woman came between them.

  This new woman in his life was younger than sixty but not much, a slender, sparrowlike lady standing (in the aisle of the bus) barely five feet in her practical heels. She had been pretty once, but that prettiness had congealed into a pixie-ish mask, and her stylish attire bespoke both money and a desire to affect youth—white flannel suit narrowly pin-striped black, black gloves, black soupbowl chapeau with a long sheer shadowy veil designed to serve the same function as Vaseline on a movie lens aimed at a beautiful but aging actress.

  “Would you mind terribly scooting over?” she asked ever so sweetly.

  Charteris had taken the seat nearest the aisle, to obtain proximity to the Viking blonde, leaving the window seat empty.

  “Not at all,” Charteris said, and did so. He thought he caught the barest amused glimpse from the Viking—which was at least an acknowledgment by her that he was alive.

  “Thank you, ever so,” his new neighbor said, settling snugly into her seat. “I’m Margaret Mather—Miss.”

  She extended a ladylike gloved hand, which he took, introducing himself.

  “Oh, the mystery writer! I do so enjoy your novels.”

  “Well, thank you.”

  She beamed beneath the veil. “The villains always receive their just deserts. Would that real life had the decency to perform the same service.”

  He squinted at her. “Are you an American, Miss Mather?”

  “Born in Morristown, New Jersey, of all places. Now I consider myself a resident of the world.”

  “Do tell.”

  “My apartment is at the top of the Spanish Steps in Rome—from the second floor you can see St. Peter’s.”

  “Really.”

  “But I spend most of my time in travel. I do so adore travel, flying in particular. The Hindenburg should suit me perfectly—all the comfort of a luxury liner, and none of the seasickness…. What takes you to America, Mr. Charteris?”

  He was polishing his monocle on his handkerchief. “I’ve been maintaining residences in both England and America, for several years now. Large country estate in the former, a bungalow in Florida… or rather I had a bungalow in Florida.”

  “But no longer?”

  Reinserting his monocle, he replied, “It’s my wife’s, now. My soon-to-be ex-wife.”

  “Oh, you’re getting divorced? How terrible.” But a distinct tinge of “How wonderful” colored her tone. “I do hope this is not too melancholy a time for you.”

  “Not at all, Miss Mather. My wife and I are parting friends. We have a wonderful daughter together, and we’ve agreed not to subject each other to any unnecessary unpleasantness.”

  “How very admirable.” The smile again beamed beneath the veil. “How very civilized.”

  They were in the middle bus, which just now was pulling out behind the lead vehicle. The rumble of the engine joined with the rough music of tires on cobblestone streets, accompanying the drunken folk songs emanating from the rear. None of this racket prevented Miss Mather from filling Charteris in on her life.

  Henry James might have written it. Like most spinsters, Miss Margaret Mather—“a direct descendant of Cotton Mather himself”—had a dead fiancé in her distant past, due to a sailing accident on Cape Cod, near her family’s Quisset summer home. Her man’s-man father had been a successful lawyer in New York who had once gone ’round the world by clipper ship (“So, you see, my seven-league boots come naturally to me”). After her father retired, the family joined her ailing brother in Capri; the brother recovered, became a professor of art at Princeton, while the family stayed behind. Her mother had died in 1920, and Miss Mather had cared for her father until his death in ’29 at the ripe old age of ninety-four.

  “I’m afraid I’m something of the black sheep of the family,” she admitted, “with my two meager years of schooling—but I’ve learned so much in my travels, and I’ve written a bit of poetry.”

  “Ah.”

  “Perhaps I could impose on you, at some point on the voyage, to read some of my work—the opinion of a professional author would mean so much to me.”

  “Perhaps you could.”

  What she really loved to do, as she’d indicated, was fly—from the glimmering Mediterranean to the sand dunes of the Sahara, from the Albanian mountains to the capitals of Germany and France, she’d seen them all from the open cockpit of a two-seater, goggles and helmet against the wind.

  “You sound like you could give Amelia Earhart competition,” Charteris said. “When did you learn to fly?”

  “Oh, I don’t know how to fly, myself. I always hire a pilot.”

  Good-looking young male ones, he’d wager.

  She continued her flirtatious chatter, letting him know what a woman of the world she was, as he took in the dusk-softened scenery through his rain-flecked window. Young tree toads sang in the farmlands they glided past; and as they neared the airfield, agriculture gave way to beech groves and pine stands, representative of that timeless bucolic Germany that seemed so incongruous in a country overrun with Nazis.

  Miss Mather was noticing the scenery, too. “How enchanting, their green young leaves… May I share something rather personal with you, Mr. Charteris?”

  “If you like.”

  She touched a gloved finger to a veiled cheek. “It may seem absurd, for one who loves travel
and flight, as I do… but all this afternoon, I’ve felt a certain… uneasiness.”

  “Those thugs at the hotel would make anyone uneasy.”

  “Oh yes! Do you know they charged me for fifteen kilos of excess baggage? I pointed out that at ninety-eight pounds I weigh considerably less than the average man, and some compensation would seem logical—but I was told, ‘It’s the rule—only twenty kilos allowed.’”

  “Does seem unfair.”

  “But no, no, Mr. Charteris, I don’t think it’s the dreadful gestapo that are giving me this sense of… what else can I call it but foreboding? Do you believe in premonitions?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Well, would I seem a silly girl if I told you, that when I gaze out at that lovely forest, I find myself thinking, ‘What a beautiful farewell to earth’… ?”

  She was trembling, almost on the verge of tears. He took her gloved hand in his and held it, rather tightly.

  “It will be fine,” he told her.

  Beneath the veil, she smiled in gratitude and, for a moment, she was indeed a girl again, and a beautiful one.

  They were passing through a town, now—or rather a town in progress. Identical white stucco houses, each with a red tile roof, stood along either side of the autobahn, with dozens more in the process of being built. This, Charteris knew, was Zeppelinheim—a planned village for zep crewmen and their families. Finally, beyond the village, over a bridge, as the trio of buses barreled down a slope, the vastness of the new Rhein-Main World Airport revealed itself.

  Many new buildings designed for airplanes had been constructed here in recent days, for what was being planned as a combined airship and airplane harbor, to accommodate passengers from all around Europe seeking passage to North or South America.

  But what set this airfield off from all others was the immense zeppelin hangar, a virtual Olympic stadium with a roof, a staggering thousand feet long and twenty stories high, seeming ghostly and unreal in the misty twilight. Just beyond the yawning doors of the hangar, floating on its nose cone tethers, was the great seamed silver ship, an impossibly small ground crew scurrying beneath, like ants carrying off some enormous gourd from a slumbering giant’s picnic.