Max Collins - The Hindenburg Murders

“Yes.”

“So you were ‘warned.’ By an accomplice, apparently. And now that accomplice has been removed. This is all according to your own version of the events, Mr. Charteris.”

“That’s right.”

“Well, if no further investigation takes place, and you debark this afternoon-why would Spehl… or whoever… kill again?”

“And if Scheef alone was the murderer,” Lehmann said, “he’s either dead, by his own hand or God’s, or has escaped.”

“In either event,” Erdmann said, “the safety of the passengers and the rest of the crew would seem assured.”

Charteris threw up his hands. “By Nazi standards, maybe. But by any other, this is insanity.” He looked to Lehmann. “How far will you go to protect yourself from damaging publicity in America, Ernst?”

“This far.”

“I am still capable of blowing the whistle to the police and the press, you know.”

“We do know.” Lehmann’s voice was at its gentlest, its most fatherly. “I would ask you, Leslie, as a friend, to allow us to handle this ourselves. In a few hours, this voyage will be over. You’ll be off the ship. What is it to you what a bunch of Nazis do to each other?”

Charteris laughed humorlessly. “That’s the best argument you’ve come up with, I’ll give you that. But you’ll have to do better.”

“What would you suggest?”

“Put Eric Spehl into custody.”

Erdmann frowned. “On what charge?”

“Jesus Christ, man! You’re a Nazi! Who cares what charge?” Then he again turned to Lehmann. “Ernst, if we are friends, at all, to the slightest degree, for God’s sake listen to me: that boy is guilty. I saw it in his eyes.”

“His eyes,” Lehmann said quietly.

“Put that boy in custody and keep him there at least until you lift back off from Lakehurst. And I would suggest keeping him in custody until you turn this business over to your authorities in the fatherland.”

Lehmann’s eyes narrowed. “And that will buy your cooperation?”

“Yes.”

The Reederei director looked to Erdmann. “Colonel?”

Erdmann was already nodding. “I agree with Mr. Charteris. And I will take Rigger Spehl into custody myself, and keep him in my cabin.”

Lehmann glanced to Captain Pruss. “Is that acceptable, Captain?”

“Yes. We can cover for Rigger Spehl’s duties. Perhaps this is the prudent thing, at that.”

“My only other concern,” Charteris said, “is Spehl’s access until this very moment to every nook and cranny of this ship. If he is, in addition to a murderer, a saboteur…”

Captain Pruss held up a hand, palm out. “The ship has been thoroughly checked. Our chief rigger has inspected gas cells and shafts, every bracing wire, every catwalk. And I will instruct him to do so once again, after Colonel Lehmann has secured Spehl in custody.”

Relieved, heaving a huge sigh, Charteris stood. “Thank you, gentlemen. I appreciate this.”

They shook hands all around. Comrades again. The author was thanked for his cooperation and his investigative efforts. Lehmann assured him the promise of unlimited future passage on the Reederei line would be kept.

“You must be relieved,” Lehmann said, as Charteris was leaving the cabin, “to have your amateur-detective duties behind you.”

But as he walked the plank once more, moving through the sliding door into B deck, sauntering down the keel corridor, Charteris was nagged by feelings, by thoughts, that he simply could neither shake nor fully identify. Even with Spehl in Erdmann’s custody, the mystery writer in him-the amateur detective he’d become-felt something remained to be done. This first case of his, minus the Saint, seemed unfinished, somehow.

The trip was certainly coming to a close. Coming up the stairs to A deck, he found Kubis and other stewards piling baggage under the bust of Marshal von Hindenburg. Down the corridor, other stewards could be glimpsed with armloads of dirty bedclothes, making a pile at the far end.

Charteris called out to the chief steward. “Heinrich!”

The chief steward looked up from his work; Charteris’s own suitcase was in the pile Kubis was erecting. “Yes, sir?”

“A word?”

If Kubis was impatient with yet another demand from the author, it did not show in the man’s bright-eyed, cheerful countenance.

Apologizing for taking the steward away from his work, Charteris walked him around to the dining room, which was otherwise empty at the moment.

“Do you know Eric Spehl?” Charteris asked him.

“Yes. He seems a nice boy. Farm stock.”

“How well do you know him?”

“Just to drink with.”

“What about Willy Scheef?”

“He’s a mechanic on the ship. I know him, too.”

“To drink with.”

“Yes. We all drank together in Frankfurt, the night before we sailed, just about the whole crew. Where we always go-to the Heldenkeller.”

“What’s that, a weinstube? A rathskeller?”

“Yes. Yes, of course.”

Charteris put a hand on the steward’s shoulder. “Heinrich, if I wanted to talk to a mutual friend of theirs, could you arrange that?”

“What mutual friend?”

“I don’t know. That’s part of your role-to suggest someone who I could talk to, who I could… question about Spehl and Scheef.”

“What questions about them? And why?”

Charteris waggled a finger. “Now, that’s not part of your role. What would be part of it, however, would be keeping this between us…. Heinrich, you know how they have passengers pay thirty reich marks a day in advance, into an account, to cover daily shipboard expenses?”

The bright blue eyes blinked. “Yes, certainly.”

“Well, since tips and full board are included in the cost of my ticket, I must have sixty or seventy marks left in that silly account. What good are marks to me, Heinrich? You wouldn’t know a good German I could bequeath them to?”

Fifteen minutes later, Kubis delivered a stocky gray-jumpsuited crewman named Walter Barnholzer-dark blond, chipmunk-cheeked, in his late twenties-to the author’s cabin, which looked sparse indeed, stripped of its bedclothes, and no fresh flower in the wall vase.

Kubis, who made a quick discreet departure, had also delivered (as Charteris had further directed) a bottle of bourbon and two water glasses.

“It’s all right if I have a little,” Barnholzer said in German, and licked his lips. “I’ve served my last rotation in the gondola-I’m in number four.”

Barnholzer, like the (apparently) late Willy Scheef, was a mechanic.

Gesturing for his guest to have a seat on the lower bunk, Charteris poured Barnholzer some bourbon, added some tap water, and did the same for himself (if less generously, where the liquor was concerned).

“I know that you are a famous writer,” Barnholzer said, after a long satisfying sip from the water glass. He had an earnest smile highlighted by crooked front teeth. “Heinrich said you were writing an article.”

“Yes,” Charteris said, leaning against the wall by the little sink, “talking to passengers, to crew members. Getting the human side of the Hindenburg . Tell me about yourself, Walter.”

The crooked-tooth smile flashed. “Well, I am a proud party member. I think I believed in the party from the very beginning, though I didn’t join till thirty-two.”

“Ah.”

Barnholzer frowned a little. “Are you going to take notes, Mr. Charters?”

“ Chart -er-is. No. I have a photographic memory, Walter. Do go on.”

“You see, we’ve had to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps from the poverty the Jews and the socialists plunged us into. And the Fuhrer’s plan is working-there are jobs now for everyone, and Germany has taken its rightful place among the nations of the world.” He gestured expansively with his free hand. “Look at this great airship-it tells you what Germany can do… could I have another?”