The Hindenburg Murders

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.

Miss Mather gasped in wonderment. “Forget what I said, Mr. Charteris…. Such majesty sweeps any of my doubts away.”

The archness of his poetic companion aside, Charteris also felt a wave of elation roll through him. They would soon be boarding the largest aircraft ever to trade earth for the heavens, a ship only a few feet shorter than the fabled ocean liner Titanic.

Once through the main gate, the buses drew up alongside the hangar, where the passengers were again rudely herded by Reederei officials in paramilitary midnight blue, into the cavernous building, the inside of which was illuminated by arc lights—or least partly illuminated: the greenish glow gave way to shadow in the upper recesses of the man-made grotto.

Yet again the travelers were subjected to queuing up at a table where another group of Nazi-uniformed customs agents inspected tickets and passports, and checked one last time for lighters, flashlights, or camera equipment (numerous books of hotel matches were confiscated). Dusk gave way to darkness as this tedious process continued, and Charteris approached his new old friend, Fritz Erdmann.

“Why all these precautions, Fritz?”

The Luftwaffe officer in mufti stood with arms folded, a posture more of supervision than observation. “Would you have the Zeppelin Company take chances with its passengers’ safety? The Reederei have a flawless record; I’m sure they’d like to maintain it.”

Very quietly, Charteris said, “It’s a bomb scare, isn’t it?”

Erdmann’s eyes tightened in an otherwise impassive mask. “I told you before, Mr. Charteris… I’m merely an observer, here.”

“Please, Fritz—it’s ‘Leslie’… and, since we’re friends, I must beg you please not to insult my intelligence. Hydrogen is the most flammable, hottest-burning gas in the world… and that big silver sausage is filled with it.”

“And that is why such careful precautions are being taken… excuse me.”

But before Erdmann could wander off, Charteris gripped him by the arm. “Why the hell don’t you people use helium, instead? Of course, you couldn’t make as much money that way, could you?”

With cheap, buoyant hydrogen, the Hindenburg could lift an extra sixteen and a half tons of cargo and passengers than with inert helium, a gas so safe you could smother a fire with it.

“I’m surprised at your ignorance… Leslie.” Erdmann plucked off the author’s hand as if removing a bothersome insect that had landed there. “The Americans control the world helium market… and their government refuses to export it to us.”

“Hell, that’s a difficult one to figure. Who wouldn’t want to help your man Hitler keep his airships safely flying?”

Erdmann chuckled hollowly. “I believe boarding is beginning, Mr. Charteris… Leslie. Perhaps you and your wry wit should make your way aboard.”

Stewards in white jackets and dark ties were escorting the ladies the brief distance between hangar and zeppelin. Umbrellas were available for the men, as well, and Charteris snatched one and sidled up to the Viking blonde before one of the stewards could beat him to the punch.

“May I?” he asked, offering her an arm, tipping the umbrella’s shelter above her.

She gazed at him with an amusement that wasn’t as detached as it pretended to be. Her full, lushly red-lipsticked lips pursed in a smile that was tantalizingly near a kiss.

But, as she’d said nothing, he repeated his question in German.

“We have not met,” she said, in German-accented English.

“Well, then by all means we should. Allow me to introduce myself—I’m the man who’s going to keep your lovely braids from getting damp. And you are?”

Now she laughed, lightly, and it was fluid, musical. “I am the woman who is going to allow you to do so.”

They began to walk across the final expanse of hangar toward the drizzle and the airship.

“I thought you already had a female companion,” she said, nodding toward Miss Mather, who was on the arm of a young steward.

“I think I’m a little old for her. By the way, my name is Leslie—Leslie Charteris.”

“Hilda—Hilda Friederich. May I ask a favor, Leslie?”

“I hope you will.”

“Could we go for a quick stroll on the airfield? I would like a better look at this balloon that promises to swallow us up.”

“Certainly,” he said, already liking this woman, who seemed as sharp as she was alluring. “After all, I’m sure Jonah would have appreciated a closer look at the whale.”

Rain beating an uneven tempo on the umbrella, they walked out onto the runway, the plump silver airship looming; they couldn’t seem to get far enough away from it to get a decent look at the beast. Finally they stopped and he tilted back the umbrella and they both gaped, unable even from this distance to take it all in without moving their heads side to side, a motion that seemed to express their disbelief. Monocle flecked with droplets, Charteris squinted behind the glass and opened his other eye wide as he surveyed the airship he and Hilda would soon be flying.

The overall impression was of a stupendous streamlined seamed silver specter; but here and there were markings and mechanical manifestations that indicated this was indeed, for all its size, a man-made object. Perhaps a quarter of the way back from the nipplelike mooring cone, lower-case Old English lettering spelled out in red the designation: HINDENBURG. Almost directly below, underneath the belly of the flying whale, extended the boothlike control gondola, seeming ridiculously small. Moving aft, fairly low, lay a long narrow bank of observation windows; farther aft, toward the final third of the ship, perched the propellers of an engine car, like a bug hopping a ride. Another such bug was farther aft still, but between it and its prop-driven predecessor, higher up, were bold block numerals: D-LZ129. Toward the tail, a rocketlike fin separated the rudder-bearing fins above and below—both of which wore the Nazi hakenkreuz—the swastika.

“It is impressive,” Hilda said.

“Size isn’t everything,” Charteris pointed out, and—as she seemed to ponder this concept—walked her toward the ship, skirting puddles.

Despite the drizzle, the Hindenburg was not without spectators to see her off, prominent among them a detachment of Hitler youth in their Nazi uniforms, and a brass band in blue-and-yellow finery, their instruments festooned with matching streamers. Right now they were playing a German folk song, “Muss I denn?”—which, coincidentally, that drunk had already executed (in several senses of the term) on the bus.

A pair of puny-looking aluminum retractable stairways served as the gangway of the ship; between the two sets of hinged stairs, stewards collected umbrellas—the underbelly of the ship providing a roof away from the rain—as the passengers climbed up the flimsy steps into the Hindenburg.

Immediately, ooohs and aaahs of pleasant surprise drifted up the stairwell, as only passengers who (like Charteris) had flown this very ship before could have anticipated such splendid surroundings. Unlike the zeppelins that preceded her, the Hindenburg boasted two decks of luxury-liner lavish passenger accommodations. (Even the grand Graf Zeppelin had housed its passengers in a cramped gondola slung under the ship.)

At the first landing, Hilda paused—taking in the sleek modernity of the surroundings, the soothing pale peach-linen walls, the rich rust-color carpeting, the gleaming chrome railings—until Charteris guided her toward the stairs that led on up.

As they climbed, Hilda glancing back at him, Charteris said, “The bar and smoking room are that level—B deck. We’re headed up to A deck, where the cabins and dining room are, and the observation area, so we can watch the world shrink as we lift off.”

Hilda smiled and nodded at this news. She was still snugged into her trench coat, and Charteris admired the pistonlike action of what appeared to be a fine female bottom beneath.

At the top of the stairs, an ample aisle extended laterally across the ship. Charteris was pleased—in fact, relieved—to see that the bust of Marshal Paul von Hindenburg still held its position of prominence on a high central shelf overlooking this foyerlike area, off of which the cabins were accessed; Dr. Eckener had bragged to Charteris, on the maiden voyage, that he’d refused to replace the bust with one of Der Führer. Considering the repressive treatment the passengers had received going through customs, the author wouldn’t have been surprised to see Hitler’s glowering picklepuss in the place of the ship’s namesake.

Charteris took Hilda’s arm and—following behind several other passengers, who were still moving slow, taking it all in—escorted her to the starboard side, where a spacious lounge was outfitted with modernistic tables and chairs of an aluminum chrome so light a child could lift them.

The lounge—dominated by a huge mural-style wall map with sailing ships, denoting the routes of famous explorers—was bereft of the feature that had been its most popular item on the maiden voyage: the lightweight yellow pigskin-covered aluminum Bluthner baby grand piano, around which Charteris and his wife, Pauline, had so often stood as Captain Lehmann played. He and Pauline would offer slightly tipsy renditions of Cole Porter, to the delight of their fellow passengers. “Cheek to Cheek” had been their showstopper.

“Leslie,” Hilda said. “Is something wrong?”

“No,” he said, realizing he’d paused in reflection, now moving on, dismissing a pang of loss that he told himself was for the Bluthner baby grand but was in fact for his soon-to-be ex-wife. “Let’s find a nice front-row seat.”

Separated from the lounge by an aluminum railing, an observation deck ran the length of the starboard side (a similar one would be found portside). A number of passengers—Miss Mather among them—had found positions along this promenade. Padded upholstered rust-orange benches, now and then, sat at a right angle to the wall of big slanted windows, offering an aquariumlike view on the world below.

Right now that view was of the Nazi Boy Scouts and that blue-and-yellow-garbed brass band, as well as several dozen spectators—friends and relatives denied permission to go aboard before castoff, waving their bon voyages in the rain.

Charteris and Hilda had just taken one of the seats—barely room enough for two, but a pleasant sort of crowding, the author thought—when the brass band began to play “Deutschland über Alles.”

“Ah,” Charteris said, “we’ll be casting off soon…. Would you like to remove your raincoat?”

“No, thank you. I rather enjoy this breeze.”

The slanting windows were open, letting in cool evening air but no rain; even at cruising speed, Charteris knew, nasty weather could not find its way in these ingeniously rigged windows, which had a generous shelflike sill. Unfortunately the blaring German band—somewhat off-key—was having no trouble getting in.

When the band had completed the ponderous anthem, the crowd applauded and cheered and whistled; above this clamor came a voice over the ship’s loudspeakers, a blaring announcement in German that could be heard outside, as well.

“Will the wife of Colonel Erdmann please come forward!”

So Erdmann of the Luftwaffe was a colonel—but unlike the stockyard king from Chicago, Nelson Morris, Fritz hadn’t bragged about the fact.

From the crowd stepped a slender woman in a green-and-white gingham dress and large-brimmed green straw hat, protecting herself and her stylish attire under an umbrella. Even at this distance, it was apparent that Mrs. Erdmann was a strikingly attractive woman. A steward ran to greet her and escort her to the ship, the pair walking out of view from the promenade windows.

“Privileges of military men,” Charteris muttered, glancing around to see if Erdmann was on this side of the ship.

He was, but not with the others, at the slanted windows—the Luftwaffe colonel had taken a seat, by himself, in the lounge area, which was otherwise unpopulated, his hands folded on the table, his expression an odd amalgam of glum and anxious.

Soon the woman in green and white emerged on A deck, appearing like an apparition; and she was indeed striking, Charteris noted—brunette, slenderly shapely, her face a pale oval, as perfect and lovely as the image on a cameo brooch.

Erdmann sprang to his feet and she rushed to him. They embraced, not kissing, not speaking, just clutching each other with a passionate intensity that caused most of the passengers witnessing this private moment to turn away, out of respect, or embarrassment.

But Charteris watched. As an author, he had trained himself to observe and this farewell was both touching and unusual. Erdmann’s wife was grasping her husband so tightly her knuckles had whitened; and when they finally drew away, her face was streaked with tears. He withdrew a handkerchief from his suit coat pocket, dried her face with it, then pressed it into her hand. They kissed, briefly, and he walked her toward the stairs, both of them disappearing from view.

Charteris caught Miss Mather’s gaze, down the promenade; the spinster was frowning as her eyes sent him a question: Had Erdmann, too, had a premonition?

“What do you make of such an emotional auf wiedersehen?” Hilda asked.

Charteris shrugged. “That gentleman is involved with ship security. He may know something we don’t.”

“I cannot say I like the sound of that.”

“I can’t say you’re alone.”

Then a voice blared over the loudspeaker, first German, then English: “Schiff hoch! Up ship!”

The band began to play again, a reprise of the national anthem; figures were scurrying below, loosening mooring lines, unhooking the nose cone at the bow, searchlights on the field fanning the great ship as if at a motion-picture premiere. Diesel engines sputtered to life, but on the observation deck, the sound seemed muffled, even remote.

Down on the runway, Mrs. Erdmann had not rejoined the crowd—she stood closer to the ship than anyone else, staring up at the windows, waving with the handkerchief her husband had given her to dry her tears. And indeed Erdmann stood at the promenade windows, now, staring down at his wife, his hand raised in a frozen wave that uncomfortably resembled a Nazi salute.

Then Mrs. Erdmann and everyone else on the airfield grew smaller.