Max Collins - The Hindenburg Murders

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.”