The Hindenburg Murders

TEN


HOW THE HINDENBURG SHADOWED THE TITANIC, AND LESLIE CHARTERIS MET A FAN





SUMMONED BY THE SHIP’S GONG, Charteris and Hilda had a delicious if uneventful lunch with the Adelts. Several casual mentions of his bedridden cabin mate created no reaction whatever from either husband or wife, though Gertrude made an interesting observation about the undercover Luftwaffe colonel.

“That man whose wife came aboard to see him off,” she said, “Colonel Erdmann… what do you suppose he’s a colonel of?”

“Beats me,” Charteris said.

“Military of some kind,” her husband said dismissively, dipping a spoon into his soup.

“He has such a sad face.” Gertrude’s pretty face was sad, itself. “So often he just sits near one of the observation windows, staring out at nothing with such a… profound look of sadness. Have you noticed, Leslie?”

“No,” he lied.

“It all but makes me cry.”

Her husband patted Gertrude’s hand. “You’re just tired. There’s nothing like boredom to wear a person out.”

Gertrude could only agree, and, after dessert, the man and wife disappeared for a postluncheon nap—such snoozes having become de rigueur on this voyage, which—though so much quicker than travel by steamer—seemed every bit as leisurely.

“You wouldn’t like to go to your cabin for a nap, dear, would you?” Charteris asked Hilda, as they strolled over toward the starboard lounge.

She almost smiled, her eyes wide and amused. “Alone or together?”

“I was thinking, together.” He yawned, not very convincingly.

“Do you think the Adelts are… napping?”

“If I had a wife that beautiful, I wouldn’t be.”

She nudged him with an elbow, but the faint amusement on her lips had fully blossomed into that wonderful kiss of a smile.

At the starboard promenade, he and Hilda saw more evidence of passengers lost in ocean-liner mode—an old couple sat in the lounge, blankets covering their legs, staring out at the grayness, as if on a steamer deck. (It was chilly today, and the stewards were rushing around closing the fresh-air vents.) Those two little boys were on the floor of the lounge, playing dominoes while at the adjacent table their mother wrote a letter and their father read a book—reading and letter writing not being restricted to the library. Around the lounge, and on the upholstered benches by the windows, other passengers were similarly occupied, jotting messages to friends or engrossed in some novel, unfortunately none of them having the courtesy of being wrapped up in anything of Charteris’s.

Margaret Mather, in a powder-blue frock with lacy collar and cuffs, appropriate for a woman perhaps half her age, sat alone on one of the padded benches, looking rather expectantly out the slanting windows. In her lap, a hand clutching it, was a spiral pad.

“Hello, Miss Mather,” he said. “May we join you?”

The sparrowlike spinster beamed at him, smiled rather coolly at Hilda, and said, “Oh most certainly,” patting the bench next to her, her eyes locked on his.

The three of them squeezed onto the banquette.

“Do you know something we don’t know?” Charteris asked Miss Mather, as she continued to watch the gray overcast sky, an endless blue-gray sea below, about as boring a tonal study as he could imagine.

“Chief Steward Kubis came by a few moments ago,” Miss Mather said brightly, “and said we’d be coming to Newfoundland, shortly.”

Hilda rose and leaned against the shelflike sill. “I do not see land yet, Miss Mather.”

“Patience, dear.” Miss Mather smiled over at the author, perhaps pleased that he had not moved away, even though now there was more room on the bench. She almost whispered, “Your friend must not be an experienced traveler.”

“How often do you get to America, Miss Mather?”

“I try to get home at least once a year, to visit my brother—he teaches art and architecture at Princeton University. Or did I mention that already?”

“Is your brother as political as many professors are, these days?”

“I suppose so.” Again, she spoke sotto voce: “He’s certainly unhappy with the Germans for stifling the arts.”

“Well, it’s mostly the Jewish artists they’re stifling.”

“I hope that’s not all right with you, Mr. Charteris!”

He gave her an easy smile. “No. No, it isn’t. But what can one do?”

“One must try. What would you say if… I shouldn’t say.”

But she wanted him to ask, so he did. “What would I say if what, Margaret?… May I call you Margaret?”

“Certainly, Leslie.”

“You were saying….”

“Oh. Well, you may recall my extra luggage. Perhaps you thought that was just feminine vanity.”

“Never.”

“You see…” She curled a finger to bring his face closer to hers. “I carry certain items home with me, to sell for friends of mine.”

“Jewish friends?”

She reared away. “I didn’t say that. But it is true that there’s a terrible need for money for these poor people to buy their freedom. Isn’t it a shame?”

“Yes.”

Hilda almost squealed. “I see it! I see land!”

Charteris and Miss Mather joined Hilda at the windows and watched as Cape Race grew from a smudge on the horizon into a lighthouse-dotted shoreline giving way to vast green foothills. But even more exciting were the white dots along the coast.

“What are those?” Hilda asked, rather breathlessly.

“You’ll see soon enough,” Charteris said.

“Why, they’re icebergs!” Miss Mather said. Her eyes were glittering. “Oh, how thrilling! Did you know the Titanic met its fate in icy waters nearby? Just twenty-five years ago, that iceberg did its terrible deed….”

“I doubt we’ll crash into one,” Charteris said.

But there was no denying their ghostly beauty. The ship was flying low, the captain giving the passengers an eyeful of their first scenery, dipping to steer over a huge ’berg that might have been an abstraction in marble, set afloat by an eccentric artist.

“O iceberg shining white against the stone-gray sea,” Miss Mather said, regally, “with pools of vivid green whose forms spread greener still beneath the pale waters….”

Quickly, the spinster scampered back to the bench, snatched up her notebook, sat, withdrew the pencil from its wire spiral spine, and jotted down her immortal words.

“She’s a poet,” Charteris whispered to Hilda. “Muse struck her, apparently.”

Smirking, Hilda nodded and turned away, smothering a little laugh with a hand.

“Don’t be cruel, dear,” he whispered to her.

Miss Mather slapped her notebook shut and returned to the author’s side, saying, “I’ll complete it later. One must capture magic when one can—don’t you agree?”

“Oh yes.”

“I’ll let you see it, when I’ve finished.”

“Ah.”

Hilda said, “Look now!”

The sun had come out to lay a double rainbow around the airship, the mammoth iceberg sparkling as if diamond-studded.

“O rainbow, spring from everywhere,” Miss Mather proclaimed, “and I will watch you grow and grow, until beneath our floating galleon you form a circle complete.”

Then, pleased with herself, she scurried back to her notebook and preserved these magical words in pencil.

The coastline soon receded into the distance as the ship swung southward; before long, they were lost in gray fog over an invisible sea—familiar territory for this ship on this trip.

Charteris returned to Miss Mather’s side, on the bench. Hilda remained at the sill, watching the fog slither by like a giant’s cigar smoke.

Blessedly self-satisfied, Miss Mather closed her notebook, and then—as he was searching for a way to bring up Eric Knoecher—she did it for him, saying, “You know, that nice young gentleman I saw at your table, the first night?”

“Yes?”

“What’s become of him? He seemed like such a lovely boy.”

“He did? That is, he did. You spoke to him?”

“Yes.” She gazed contentedly into the memory of the encounter. “Very sweet—he sought me out, to… it embarrasses me to say so.”

“Please. You’re among friends.”

“He said I dressed beautifully. He said with my slender figure I might well be a… you’ll laugh.”

“No.”

“… a fashion model.”

Hilda laughed, but managed to turn it into a cough.

“His name is Eric, isn’t it?” Miss Mather went on.

“Yes,” Charteris said, “Eric Knoecher. He’s my cabin mate, actually.”

“Really? Well, where is he keeping himself?”

“In the cabin, I’m afraid. He’s come down with a terrible cold.”

“Oh dear! Such a nice-looking young man. Perhaps I could take him some soup.”

Charteris shook his head. “No, he’s specifically requested I keep everyone away from him—he’s afraid he’s contagious.”

“Oh!” Miss Mather glanced suspiciously at Hilda, then back to Charteris. “Well, uh, where are you staying, then?”

“With him. I seem to be immune.”

She sighed and sat back, notebook in her lap, held by both hands. “Well, please do give him my best.”

“We’ll do that,” Charteris said, and rose, and he and Hilda wandered over to the lounge. A steward was taking drink orders from the bar and Charteris asked for a double Scotch and water and Hilda requested a Frosted Cocktail.

They sat and chatted, and then their drinks came and they sat and drank and chatted—all the while Charteris wondering if Miss Mather had been so easily forthcoming about her aid to German Jews with that nice-looking young Eric Knoecher.

“Excuse me, sir?” piped up a voice just to his left, a male voice, rather high-pitched, almost as if it had not quite changed yet. The English words were precise if heavily German-accented.

Looking up, swiveling slightly, Charteris saw respectfully standing there, in gray coveralls and crepe-soled slippers, a young crew member—the boy couldn’t be older than twenty-five—fresh-faced, blue-eyed (weren’t they all?), a tall, pale lad whose wholesome good looks were offset by ears that stuck out slightly from the elongated oval of his head, features somewhat embryonic, his lips puffily feminine, his jaw a bit weak.

“Excuse me for interrupting, sir.”

Suddenly Charteris realized this was the baby-faced crew member who had stared down at him from the rafters of the ship, on yesterday afternoon’s tour.

“Not at all. It’s rather a treat to see one of the crew invade our sacrosanct little world.”

But Hilda seemed annoyed by this intrusion, openly frowning, and Charteris gave her a quick sharp look, and she softened.

“I was hoping you might sign my book.” From behind his back the boy withdrew a well-read-looking copy of The Saint Overboard, the Hodder & Stoughton British edition, its dust jacket protected in the manner of a lending library, one of whose cast-off copies this apparently was.

“Well, it would be my pleasure,” the author said. “Everyone on board seems to know who I am, and some even claim to read me, but you’re the only one with proof. Do you have a pen?”

“I came prepared, sir.” The boy rather stiffly handed forward both the book and a fountain pen.

“This particular work has been translated into German,” Charteris said, as he thumbed to the title page. “But you have an English copy, I see.”

“I prefer to read American and British books in the tongue they were written in, sir.”

“You speak very well. What’s your name, son? So I can it inscribe in the book?”

“Eric,” he said. “Eric Spehl.”

Another Eric. Another blue-eyed Eric, at that.

“No joke intended, Eric, but could you spell Spehl?”

The boy didn’t smile; well, it hadn’t been much of a joke and he’d probably heard it a thousand times.

“S-P-E-H-L,” he said.

Charteris signed it—“To Eric Spehl, with Saintly best wishes”—and added the stick figure with halo that was the “sign of the Saint,” a logo that had risen out of Charteris’s own limited artistic ability but which had added enormously to the success and recognizability of his swashbuckling creation.

He handed the book back to the lad, who held it open, letting the glistening black ink dry. Strangely, Spehl’s expression remained blank, with little of the die-hard fan’s glowing-eyed pleasure. Obviously a shy one.

Hilda was frowning again, tapping her finger on the table. Embarrassed, Charteris made conversation with the young crew member.

“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.