The Hindenburg Murders

DAY FOUR:


THURSDAY, MAY 6, 1937





TWELVE


HOW THE HINDENBURG BUZZED BOSTON, AND LESLIE CHARTERIS TUGGED A PANT LEG





IN THE DRIZZLY DARKNESS OF the predawn morning hours, the Hindenburg got its bearings thanks to the tiny twinklings of coastal lighthouses, glimmering up through the gloom below like displaced stars. Trekking along at sixty-three knots, just a few miles from the shore, the great airship swooped so low, her altitude was less than her own length. Rudely wakened fishermen floundered from their shacks, rubbing sleep from their eyes, summoned by the husky rumbling of engines in the sky, only to see the massive ship pass overhead like a mysterious gray cloud.

About the same time those fisherman were stumbling groggily back to their beds, Leslie Charteris was sitting up in his, every bit as groggy as they, if not more so. How he had gotten into the bunk, he was unsure—he assumed sometime in the night he’d woken from the blow, found himself on his cabin floor, and felt his way up to the softer surface of the bedding, flopping there, unconsciousness giving way to sleep.

Now he was awake, but his head was pounding and he was dizzy to boot. The cabin was still shrouded in darkness. He managed to rise to his feet—a task that seemed to him no more difficult than scaling a cliff—and stood there for several long seconds getting his bearings, his balance, then his fingers guided him like a blind man reading Braille to the light switch.

As the light clicked on, its forty watts seemingly flooding the cabin with dazzling light, Charteris closed his eyes tight and groaned with discomfort. He sat down on the edge of his bunk and held his head in his hands; in back, his fingers found a goose egg almost dead center—no clotted-over blood, though.

Breathing easier now, his head still hurting but the dizziness ebbing at least, he returned to his feet, which were steady enough, and lumbered the great distance of a foot or two to the washbasin, where he stood sloshing water on his face for at least a minute.

Studying himself in the mirror, he realized he was still wearing his white dinner jacket—rumpled, to say the least, though his bow tie was perfectly in place. That made him laugh, which made his head throb, so he stopped. Something winked at him from the floor—his monocle. He stooped, picked it up—it was in the corner, where the bunk met the wall—and the round glass eyepiece was undamaged. He snugged it into place.

Soon he was in his underwear, slippers, and a robe. His wristwatch said the time was 4:30 A.M.; most of the Hindenburg was still asleep, the passenger decks anyway. He was unaware that the ship was a mere four-hundred-some miles from Lakehurst, New Jersey, her destination.

But he did realize that time was slipping away. He could not roll back into his bunk, however his head might throb, however tired he might still be. So in his robe he made his way down to B deck, where the shower was free; in fact, not even a steward was in attendance. No reservations, no one to cut off the flow of water for conservation reasons.

He therefore took the longest shower in the history of the Hindenburg—perhaps a good fifteen minutes—and while the water pressure was nothing to write home about, the spray was hot enough to relax and soothe him and make him feel human again. Alive.

Back in his cabin, he put on a yellow sport shirt, tan slacks, and a brown herringbone drape-style sport coat. The freshly shaven man in the mirror seemed none the worse for wear, so Charteris set about his business.

The first order of which was to knock at Chief Steward Kubis’s door. Kubis was up, already in his crisp white jacket and perfectly knotted black tie; but the steward was still surprised to see Charteris so early.

“What is it, sir?”

“Take me to see the two captains.”

“Captain Pruss and Mr. Lehmann, sir?”

“That’s right. Then fetch Colonel Erdmann and bring him to us. And that’s all the discussion we’re going to have about it, Heinrich.”

Kubis nodded, and within five minutes Charteris was once again in Ernst Lehmann’s cabin, in the forward officers’ quarters section of the ship. The small window let in the light of early morning; the former Hindenburg captain’s accordion again sat on the floor, resting against the bulkhead as if tuckered out from last night’s sing-along.

Lehmann, in a gray suit and blue bow tie, sat with his back to his aluminum desk, facing Charteris, who again sat on the single bunk. Captain Pruss, in his impeccable blue uniform, stood at the door, hands clasped behind him. Kubis, God bless him, had gone after coffee and a metal pot on a metal tray rested on the desktop and all of the men were sipping at steaming hot cups, savoring the brew as if it were a lifesaving elixir.

Both captains listened with quiet alarm lengthening their expressions as the author informed them of his midnight intruder, apparently a crew member.

Lehmann, teeth clasped on the stem of his unlighted pipe, posed the first question, not to Charteris but to Captain Pruss. “Do you think this has to be a crew member? Could someone else have acquired a uniform?”

Pruss frowned, shrugged. “Uniforms are plentiful enough on this ship, but I’m not sure how—”

“It has to be a crew member,” Charteris said, interrupting. “Or someone higher up than that, pretending to be one.”

Lehmann drew back. “What are you implying?”

“Nothing. Just examining the facts. My cabin door was locked—and my uninvited guest was waiting inside for me.”

“So he had a passkey,” Pruss said.

“Yes—which means a crew member, a steward, an officer. Not a passenger.”

Sighing, shaking his head, nibbling on the prop pipe, Lehmann said, “And here we’ve been considering only passengers as our suspects.”

“What if the murderer—a passenger—had Knoecher’s key?” Pruss asked. “Your cabin mate, after all?”

“I’ve considered that. But that key almost certainly went out the window with Knoecher, tucked away in his pocket—and now in some shark’s belly.”

A knock at the cabin door announced Erdmann, who looked alert and businesslike in a well-pressed three-piece brown suit. The Luftwaffe colonel nodded his good mornings, helped himself to a cup of coffee, sat next to Charteris, who filled him in.

“I could not have anticipated this,” Erdmann said, eyes glazed. “There were no crew members on Knoecher’s subject list at all.”

“Mr. Charteris,” Captain Pruss said, exasperation coloring his voice, “we have sixty-one crewmen on this ship. How do you suggest, in the short time left on this voyage, we narrow that number to one?”

Charteris sipped his coffee. “Oh, I already have a suspect for you—that is, if you’re interested, gentlemen.”

“Don’t be coy,” Erdmann growled.

“You have a rigger named Eric Spehl.”

Everyone frowned, but particularly Captain Pruss, who said, “Why, yes—how is it that you know one of our crewmen, Mr. Charteris?”

“He went out of his way to come meet me on A deck—broke a regulation doing so, for all I know.”

Lehmann looked up from his coffee cup to say, “He did. Crew members are strictly segregated from passengers.”

Charteris shrugged. “In any event, he sought me out, said he was a fan—even had a book for me to autograph.”

Colonel Erdmann shrugged, too. “Why take that at anything but face value? You’re a famous man, Mr. Charteris. Is it surprising you have a reader among our crew?”

“Something about his manner seemed… off-kilter. His words were admiring, but now, upon reflection, his manner seemed something else again. I believe I was being sized up.”

Eyes narrowing, Lehmann leaned forward. “For a midnight beating, you mean?”

“Yes. I’m somewhat bigger than he is, and he might have wanted a look at me. He’s rather slight, young Spehl, but he has powerful hands.”

And Charteris touched his throat, twitching a smile as he recalled the stranglehold.

Erdmann shifted on the bunk, saying, “And his purpose was to warn you off your investigation?”

“The voice in the dark said I was to stop what I was doing, that’s right.”

Lehmann was shaking his head, chewing on the pipe stem. “Just because this boy asked you for an autograph… that isn’t very much to base a case on, Leslie.”

“We have much more than that. It, uh, may not seem very sporting to you, gentlemen, but I took a bite out of this particular assailant.”

Erdmann blinked. “A bite?”

“Not having a guard dog handy, or Spah’s bitch Ulla, I had to do it myself. I bit him on the ankle—good and deep. I drew blood.” He sipped his coffee, as if to banish the taste.

Lehmann’s eyes were wide. “So if Eric Spehl has a human bite mark on his ankle…”

“More or less human,” Charteris said. “Why don’t you fetch the lad?”

The two captains and the Luftwaffe colonel all exchanged glances, as if waiting for someone to make a decision.

Oddly enough, considering the influence of the Reederei director and the Luftwaffe undercover agent, it was Captain Pruss who stepped forward.

“I’ll have him summoned. I believe the boy is on duty right now.”

Pruss stepped out, and Charteris said, “I think it was his right ankle, but I can’t be sure. It was, after all, pitch-black in there.”

Pruss, having dispatched an underling to bring the rigger, stepped back inside the cabin.

“What do you suggest we do,” Erdmann said, “if the boy does have the impression of your teeth on his ankle?”

Charteris grinned. “Well, hell, Fritz—you’ve been dying to pinch somebody. Here’s your chance. Put him under house arrest and haul his Aryan behind back home and turn him over to one of your goon squads. Put all that nasty gestapo energy to some proper use, for a change.”

Half of Erdmann’s face smiled but there was no mirth in it. “Sometimes you test my patience, Mr. Charteris.”

“My apologies. I get cranky when I’m attacked in the night.”

Before long, a steward delivered the seemingly bewildered, baby-faced Spehl to the cabin. Holding his cap in his hands, the tall, slender rigger—in his gray uniform and matching slippers—already looked like a prisoner.

“Mr. Spehl,” Captain Pruss said in German, “lift your trouser leg.”

“The right one,” Charteris said, also in German.

The pale, blue-eyed boy frowned in blinking confusion, turning to Pruss. “Sir?”

“Just obey the order, Rigger.”

“Yes, sir.”

And the wide-eyed, apparently perplexed young crew member tugged up his gray pant leg.

No bite mark was readily apparent.

Charteris knelt before the lad, and had a closer look: nothing. Just pale flesh, and an innocent blond down, as if Eric Spehl had barely entered puberty.

Irritated, Charteris lifted the rigger’s left pant leg himself—and the result was the same.

Nothing. No bite mark. Pink downy flesh.

The author pulled the boy’s right sock down, yanked the trouser leg higher, thinking perhaps his bite had been higher or lower than his memory, and his perception in the darkened cabin, had led him to believe.

“Captain Pruss,” Spehl said, voice cracking with embarrassment, “with all due respect, sir, what is he doing?”

“Just stand fast, Rigger.”

Charteris did the same with left sock and pant leg.

Nothing.

Chagrined, his head still pounding, Charteris rose, and found himself staring into the blank face of Eric Spehl, and the clear blue eyes of Eric Spehl—eyes that somehow, somewhere, conveyed to Charteris laughter.

This boy was guilty—in one fashion, one way, or another. But Charteris could not prove it—nor could he even say, at this moment, why he was so convinced.

“That will be all, Rigger,” Pruss said.

“Yes, sir,” Spehl said, with a respectful nod to his captain, and darted out.

Charteris sat back down on the bunk, heavily. “Could I possibly have a goddamn cigarette?”

Lehmann nodded, and took a book of matches from a desk drawer. Charteris fired up a Gauloise, and provided the Luftwaffe colonel with one, as well.

Getting his pipe going, Lehmann said, “So much for your suspect.”

“He’s the one,” Charteris said.

“How do you know?” Pruss asked.

“I know.” His eyes were laughing at me, he thought, but didn’t say it.

Wreathed by his own sweet-smelling tobacco smoke, Lehmann said, “Perhaps you didn’t bite as hard as you thought….”

“I drew blood. I broke skin.”

Erdmann said, “Then that young man has remarkable recuperative powers.”

Charteris snapped his fingers. “Damn! That’s it.”

“What is ‘it’?” Erdmann asked, sighing smoke.

“He sent the message, but he didn’t deliver it.”

“What?”

“He sent some crony of his, some other crew member to thrash me.”

Lehmann was shaking his head. “Now, please, there’s simply no basis to this…. You’re just being stubborn, Leslie.”

“Oh, I’m stubborn all right, but there’s a basis, too. Spehl had another crew member with him—who accompanied Spehl when he came to see me, to have his book autographed.”

Now Lehmann leaned forward, keenly interested. “What other crew member?”

“I didn’t get much of a look at him. Just a burly bloke, huskier than Spehl. He didn’t approach me, this other fellow. Sat on a window bench while Spehl talked to me. He got a good look at me—I barely noticed him.”

Erdmann laughed hollowly. “That’s not much of an identification.”

“One of your crew members has a bite mark on his leg. Find him and you’ve found our man.”

Pruss stepped forward, shaking his head. “If you’re suggesting we repeat this farce, sixty more times—”

“You have a murderer on this airship,” Charteris said. “Or perhaps two murderers—accomplices. If you don’t care to pursue it, so be it. I, however, will be talking to the New York police and the American press, to everyone who will listen in fact, who might be interested in hearing of my delightful voyage on the Hindenburg.”

“Please, Leslie,” Lehmann began, his expression grave. “Be reasonable—”

“Do you know what a real murder, widely reported in the press, could do for my book sales? I can see the royalties now….”

Silence filled the cabin, touched barely by the distant thrum of diesels and raindrops dancing lightly on the ship’s sheath.

Finally, abruptly, Erdmann stood. “My men and I will handle this. Discreetly.”

Lehmann looked up, narrow-eyed, at the Luftwaffe colonel. “I believe that’s a wise course of action.”

“When we have your bitten assailant in custody,” Erdmann said, “we’ll inform you. Perhaps you’d like to confront him yourself.”

“Perhaps I would,” Charteris said. “I believe he’ll give up his friend Spehl, and you’ll have Eric Knoecher’s murderer in custody—and no publicity problems whatsoever.”

“We’re in agreement, then,” Lehmann said, looking toward Pruss. “Colonel Erdmann and his men will handle this inquiry.”

The captain nodded. “I have to get back to the control gondola. Gentlemen.”

And Pruss slipped out.

Charteris got to his feet. Yawned. “I believe I’ll have breakfast. Getting the hell knocked out of me has worked up an appetite.”

Erdmann said, “Thank you for your cooperation.”

“You know, one thing apparently has not occurred to you yet, Fritz.”

“And what would that be… Leslie?”

“The unanswered question.”

“Which is?”

“If Spehl is our man—and I believe he is—what was his motive for dumping Knoecher overboard?”

Lehmann jack-in-the-boxed to his feet, asking, “What are you saying?”

“If Spehl is a saboteur, then never mind comical ol’ Joe Spah taking the occasional unsupervised stroll, aft. Who better than a rigger to tuck a bomb away somewhere in the skin of this airborne monster?”

And Lehmann, his expression more grave than ever, sat back down.

Erdmann merely nodded, in affirmation of Charteris’s assessment, as the author made his way out of the cabin, and down the planklike gangway to the entry to B deck.

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.