Max Collins - The Hindenburg Murders

“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.

The missing crewman was a mechanic, Willy Scheef. Lehmann explained that a mechanic on a zeppelin faced one of the ship’s hardest, most demanding jobs-and by all accounts the noisiest, stuck inside a cramped engine gondola (there were four), keeping an eye on oil pressure, water temperature, and engine revolutions. And the diesel din (“the hammers of hell!” Gertrude Adelt had called it) was rivaled by intense engine heat.

“But mechanics also work the shortest hours,” Lehmann said in English. “Rotating shifts of two hours in the day, and three at night.”

“Plenty of time,” Charteris said, “to work a midnight visit in.”

“We can’t be certain it was Scheef who attacked you,” Erdmann put in sharply.

The four men were seated now, Lehmann on the edge of his desk, Pruss in the desk chair swiveled to face Charteris and Erdmann on the bunk. The foggy forenoon was filtering its way through the cabin’s small sloping window.

“It’s a simple process of elimination,” Charteris said. “If none of the sixty men you inspected has a bite on his ankle, Colonel, then the missing crew member is the man I bit.”

The Germans took a few moments to digest that tongue twister, then Captain Pruss said, somberly, “So we do have a murderer aboard.” His face was the color of pie dough.

“Perhaps not,” Lehmann said, wincing in thought. “Perhaps Mechanic Scheef had an accident and fell from his post; it’s happened before. The guardrail is rather insubstantial, and no doubt slippery in the rain.”

Hands on his knees, Charteris laughed, once. “Now that stretches coincidence and convenience a little far, doesn’t it?”

“Or,” Lehmann continued, as if the author hadn’t spoken, “Scheef may have panicked when he realized a Luftwaffe inquiry had been launched, and hastily committed suicide, rather than face Nazi justice.”

“It’s even possible,” Pruss said, “he might have parachuted. We’re close enough to shore.”

Charteris’s eyes widened, his monocle popping out; he caught it and said, “And no one saw?”

Pruss winced, as if embarrassed by his own argument. “He would not necessarily be noticed, if he jumped far enough aft.”

Erdmann was shaking his head. “If this Willy Scheef is our guilty party, he didn’t know my inquiry had to do with him. My two assistants and I went through the ship inspecting footwear, making sure the new regulation canvas-topped crepe-soled shoes were in proper use. It seemed the easiest way to check ankles for Mr. Charteris’s tooth marks.”

His unlit pipe in hand, Lehmann smirked humorlessly, saying, “A spy might easily have seen through such a simple ruse.”

“And I thought I wrote fantastic plots,” Charteris said, shaking his head, monocle back in place. “Gentlemen-a few hours ago, in this very cabin, we confronted the man who sent Willy Scheef to scare me off-one Rigger Eric Spehl-after which the man who sent the message scurried to push his messenger overboard.”

“Incredible,” Lehmann huffed.

“Well, it’s not as entertaining as slippery catwalks and suicidal murderers and parachuting spies. In a mystery novel, we call it ‘tying off loose ends.’ Something we picked up from real-life experts in murder… like Eric Spehl.”

“What evidence do you have that Spehl did this?” Lehmann almost demanded. “Even circumstantial-please share it with us.”

Charteris waved dismissively. “What more do you need? After we accused Spehl, he rushed to remove his accomplice!”

“We didn’t accuse him-we looked at his ankles.”

“Doing that may have been enough to inspire Spehl to confront Scheef, and then Spehl would have seen the bite, and, as the Americans say, push would have come to shove.”

“You’re spinning fiction again, Leslie,” Lehmann said, eyelids at half-mast, prop pipe in his teeth.

“I don’t understand you, Ernst. You have a murderer aboard. What are you going to do about it?”

Lehmann gestured with the pipe. “You haven’t answered my question, yet: what evidence, even circumstantial evidence, have you against Spehl?”

That stopped him. Charteris drew in a breath, held it, released it. “Nothing, really. Just what you already know.”

“That he sought you out for an autograph.”

Charteris’s forehead tensed. “I have the unsettling feeling you’re about to tell me that you intend doing nothing.”

“We will be landing this afternoon,” Lehmann said.

“Approximately four o’clock,” Pruss put in.

“It is my feeling,” the Reederei director continued, “that our best course of action is to land, allow our passengers to debark, bring new passengers aboard, and head home. Once home, a few days from now, the matter will be turned over to the S.D., and if Eric Spehl or any other crew member is guilty of murder, the S.D. will find it out, and prosecute and punish. We will not deal with this matter in the air, or on American soil.”

“Good Lord, man, he’s killed twice!”

Lehmann shrugged grandly. “Who has killed twice? We have gone over that. We don’t know what in fact happened to our missing passenger and our missing crew member. We will turn it over to the proper German authorities for investigation-in Germany.”

“Ernst, this is madness-”

Erdmann, who’d been strangely silent, said, “Mr. Charteris, while I am more in your camp in this matter than Captain Lehmann’s, I would have to agree with him that it is unlikely Spehl-or whoever our assailant might be-would kill again.”

“Fritz! What is your reasoning?”

“Let’s assume you’re right about Spehl-or substitute any other crew member, for that matter, including Scheef himself. Obviously, Eric Knoecher had something on whoever murdered him. So Knoecher was disposed of. Then Spehl… or whoever… became aware of the story you were spreading that Knoecher was still alive and unwell in your mutual cabin. This told him you were up to something, that you knew something. And of course you were asking questions, around the ship- discreetly investigating… but investigating.”