Max Collins - The Hindenburg Murders

“So,” Lehmann continued, “rather than leave a pretty lady behind-we unloaded the piano.”

Gentle laughter blossomed around the room, and now it was lovely Gertrude Adelt’s turn to react in embarrassment, and perhaps pride.

Hoisting his accordion, Lehmann continued, “This portable ‘piano’ will have to do for the evening. If our German passengers will bear with me, I’ll repeat some of that for our American and English guests.”

Lehmann gave a condensed English version of his spiel, and then-first in English, then in German-assured everyone that he would give equal time to German and American folk songs and English ballads… but said he would keep things neutral by beginning with an instrumental rendition of something by Straus.

The evening evolved into a rather merry sing-along, and Charteris joined in lustily. The author had a pleasant second tenor and liked to sing, though he felt more than a pang or two for the absence of his wife, Pauline, who sang very well, and had been his duet partner in this same lounge just a year before.

Hilda had a pleasant, relatively on-key alto that reminded Charteris enough of Marlene Dietrich to stoke the fires of his infatuation, and relegate his soon-to-be ex-wife to a distant compartment of his mind. Since he would sing the English and American tunes, and she the German ones, they were trading off, and singing to each other, and it was very romantic and not a little sexy.

He was most disappointed when a finger tapped him on his shoulder and Chief Steward Kubis leaned in across the partition to whisper, “You are wanted in the officers’ mess, sir.”

Sighing, nodding reluctantly, he patted Hilda’s hand, said, “You’ll have to excuse me, dear,” exchanging disappointed glances with his braided amour of the moment.

The officers’ mess was cleared but for the blandly handsome Captain Pruss and the doleful Colonel Fritz Erdmann, seated again by the windows, the grayness of the day replaced by the ebony of the night. A small conical lamp on the booth’s table gave off a yellowish cast, to match Charteris’s own jaundiced reaction.

“You know, Captain,” Charteris said in English, pointedly, not sitting, “I am a paying passenger. I have a right to enjoy myself like any other customer of the Reederei . If you’ve pulled me away from the side of that magnificent blonde country-woman of yours, just for me to give you a report of my amateur detective findings to date… then might I suggest we reschedule for a more propitious time?”

“Please sit,” the crisply uniformed captain said, with a respectful nod.

Erdmann said, “We apologize for the intrusion into your evening. There are developments we need to share with you-and we need your help, your…” Erdmann searched for the English words. “… expert opinion.”

“For God’s sake, I write blood and thunder. I’m not an ‘expert’ on real crime and espionage. Have you people gone mad?”

The melancholy mask of Erdmann’s oblong face twitched a smile. He leaned forward, hands folded almost prayerfully. “There is much madness at large in our world today, would you not agree?”

“Yes, but you may wish to speak to your boy Adolf about that. I’ve had little to do with causing it, personally. In fact I’ll go on record right now by saying that insanity in world leaders is in my view a less than desirable quality.”

Pruss shifted uncomfortably in his seat, and Erdmann sighed heavily.

Then the undercover Luftwaffe colonel said, “A bomb exploded today on the Paris-Marseilles Express. One death, twenty injuries-it could have been worse. Probably should have been worse-the train was at its maximum speed of sixty miles per hour and passengers were showered with shards of glass. The dead passenger could not be identified, so badly mangled was his corpse.”

Charteris sat.

“Apparently the bomb was smuggled aboard the train,” Erdmann continued, “tied to the coupling between passenger coaches. Investigators are convinced it was caused by a… how do you say Hollenmaschine ?”

“An infernal machine,” Charteris said.

“Yes. A combination explosive and incendiary device. The Reich’s Ministry of Information cites this incident as further proof that the threat of anarchy hangs over us all.”

“A threat hangs over the world, all right,” Charteris muttered.

“Do I have to remind you,” Erdmann asked dryly, “that a bomb on this ship would do considerably more damage?”

“That Parisian train wasn’t filled with hydrogen, you mean?”

Captain Pruss said, firmly, “Because of your concerns about Joseph Spah’s unsupervised visit to his dog, Mr. Charteris, I have had the ship inspected again-bow to stern. No bomb was found.”

“How reassuring,” Charteris said.

“I believe the time has come to take Joseph Spah into custody,” Erdmann said. “Major Witt and Lieutenant Hinkelbein agree with me.”

“Who are they?” Charteris asked. “The other two Luftwaffe men snooping around in mufti?”

Erdmann frowned in confusion. “Mufti?”

“Out of uniform, Fritz. Undercover. Spies.”

Swallowing thickly, but not showing any pique, Erdmann said, “Yes-they are my assistants in our security effort.”

“Why aren’t they here?”

“Because they aren’t aware of your role in this affair-your undercover role, that is. Your spying.”

“Is that the Nazi way, Fritz? Keep the right hand from knowing what the left is doing?”

Erdmann grinned; it was a sudden, surprising thing. “I didn’t think you were naive, Leslie-that’s the way of all governments, of all spy agencies.”

Charteris could only grin back at him: Erdmann had him.

“All right,” the author said. “From what you say, I assume this radio blackout is over-it’s foggy and overcast, but the electrical storm isn’t snapping around us, anymore.”

“That is correct.”

“So what are your orders from the fatherland? Or is arresting Spah an order from the Ministry of Something or Other?”

Erdmann glanced at Pruss, and both men seemed strangely chagrined.

“What is it?” Charteris asked.

Rather stiffly, Captain Pruss said, “We have decided not to inform the Air Ministry.”

“What?” Charteris leaned forward. “Surely you’re joking, gentlemen. A murder on board the Hindenburg, and you’re keeping it to yourself?”

“It was my decision,” Erdmann said.

Another voice from behind them said, “And mine.”

They all turned and were rather surprised to see Captain Lehmann standing in the officers’-mess doorway.

“Ernst,” Erdmann said, with a nervous flicker of a smile, “I thought you were entertaining the passengers….”

Thoughts raced through Charteris’s mind: Was Lehmann supposed to be keeping the passengers busy while this security/murder-investigation powwow was under way? Or had Erdmann, for some reason, held this meeting during Lehmann’s entertainment session to keep something from the Reederei director, something that would be discussed in this meeting?

Strolling toward the booth, Lehmann said, “Oh the entertainment continues. Seems one of the passengers, Mr. Doehner, the father of those lovely little boys, also plays the accordion. He knew some American songs that I didn’t-so he is relieving me at my post, so to speak, briefly.”

“Please join us,” Erdmann said, a little too cheerfully.

Lehmann pushed in next to the colonel, looked toward Charteris and said, “Any message to the Air Ministry could be intercepted by non-Germans. This information in American or British hands, for example, could be harmful. The negative publicity could be damaging to both the Reederei and Germany herself.”