The Hindenburg Murders d-2

by Max Allan Collins

  Barnholzer laughed. “Eric? No, no… You understand I am not S.S., I don’t feel the need to inform. If it were my duty, of course, I would….”

  “Of course.”

  “But Eric, he’s a Catholic, you know. Very religious. Wears a blessed Virgin Mary medal on a chain on his neck. He’s been complaining about the arrests of these perverted priests, and sex-crazed nuns.”

  “Oh, they’re the worst kind. So he has some controversial ideas, this Eric Spehl?”

  “He walks a dangerous path. The woman he lives with, Beatrice Schmidt, is on the dangerous citizens’ list. Older woman, dark-haired, a tramp, and a leftist. He frequents coffeehouses, cafes, bars, where these black-shirted Communists talk against the state.”

  “Do you think Spehl could be aligned with the resistance?”

  Three glasses of bourbon or not, Barnholzer saw the danger in that question. The plump crewman’s eyes raced with the knowledge that he’d been too free with his words.

  “There is no resistance in Germany,” he said softly.

  “Oh. I forgot. Is your fellow engineer, Willy Scheef, also a friend of Eric’s?”

  Barnholzer nodded, grinning crookedly, glad to be back on safer ground. “Willy’s a good man. Everybody’s pal. Fun. Do anything for a friend. Maybe drinks too much.”

  “Not in Communist bars, I hope.”

  “Willy! No. No, no. He’s not a party member but he is loyal…. I may have misspoken about Eric. I didn’t say he was disloyal. Sometimes a man will do foolish things to get into a woman’s… well, into a woman.”

  “Walter,” Charteris said, taking the empty water glass from the mechanic, “you’ve been most helpful to me.”

  Barnholzer looked like he was trying to decide whether to frown or cry. “Please don’t put my name in your article.”

  “Oh, wouldn’t it be all right to write up your fervent views about the party you love?”

  And the crooked-tooth smile blossomed. “That, yes… please don’t say I told you what I did, about Eric Spehl.”

  “You will remain an unnamed, reliable source, Walter…. Here-take the bottle with you.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Chartiss.”

  Before long, feeling every bit the proficient amateur detective, Charteris was heading to the portside promenade, thinking how right he’d been about Spehl. So Willy Scheef was the kind of fellow who’d do anything for a friend? Well that would seem to include attacking someone in the night.

  Most troubling were the indications that Spehl was a leftist zealot, an active member of that supposedly nonexistent resistance. Much as he might sympathize with Spehl’s anti-Nazi sentiments, much as he tended to agree that Eric Knoecher had made a prime candidate for casting overboard, Charteris could only wonder if somewhere, tucked in the folds of fabric holding together this ship, a bomb ticked away, waiting to make a great big point about the fallibility of Hitler’s Germany.

  He found Hilda saving a seat for him in the dining room at a table for four, shared with the Adelts. The handsome middle-aged journalist wore the same dark suit he’d come aboard in, and his blonde young wife looked typically pretty in a yellow-and-white frock.

  “Luncheon’s a bit premature, isn’t it?” Charteris said, pulling up a chair, joining them.

  “They’re serving it early,” Gertrude said, “so we’ll all be able to take in the view.”

  “We will pass over New York shortly,” Hilda said.

  “Ah,” Charteris said.

  “Yes,” Leonard said, “and we’ll be flying low enough to get a nice close look. I think after this long, dull crossing, the captain wants to finally give us our money’s worth.”

  “I trust that isn’t a sentiment expressed in that article of yours,” Charteris said, pouring Hilda and then himself a glass of Liebfrauenmilch.

  “Oh, no,” Leonard said. “I assure you I’ve lied so thoroughly and convincingly that even the Ministry of Propaganda would approve.”

  “So you’ve finished it, then? Your article?”

  “All but the ending. This brush with the roofs of skyscrapers should provide it.”

  The view of New York from the promenade’s slanting windows proved no disappointment. With his arm around Hilda’s shoulder, Charteris stared down as the towers of Manhattan revealed themselves magically, poking up through the mist.

  “We’re flying quite high,” Leonhard said, at Charteris’s left. “The skyline looks like a board of nails….”

  “We’ll get a closer look. Patience. It’ll be worth the wait.”

  “There’s the Statue of Liberty!” Gertrude said.

  “Small as a porcelain figure,” her husband muttered, as if writing his article aloud.

  Hilda said, “So then you like New York, Leslie?”

  “It was love at first sight,” he said.

  As the airship dipped lower, and the skyscrapers seemed to reach for them, he thought of how when he had first arrived in America, on that small steamer, with twenty-five bucks in his pocket, he’d found the buildings of Manhattan even taller and shinier than he’d imagined. He remembered sitting in that cheap hotel room on Lexington Avenue, looking across at the soaring white towers of the Waldorf-so clean and graceful compared with the stodgy, smoke-grimy architecture of home, rising sheer and white against a spotless blue sky the likes of which London seldom saw.

  When was that? Thirty-two?

  And now, after this very gray trip, the sky was that spotless blue again. The sun was out, and the ship was loping low across Times Square, sightseers pointing to the sky, standing frozen on the west side of Broadway. How he loved the electric nervous urgency down there, scurrying crowds on sidewalks, the press of honking traffic in packed streets. The elemental force of it had spurred him to try to match that pace, dazzling him with the prospect of infinite horizons.

  But the Hindenburg had the power to bring this frantic city to a standstill, stopping traffic, and that was a delight, as well. On rooftops and firescapes, from windows and sidewalks, thousands of sophisticated New Yorkers gaped like farmers, craning their necks for a look at the vast airship draping its blue shadow over their city.

  Despite the bright sunshine, lurking behind the tall buildings, thick black clouds billowed, like foul factory smoke.

  “More rain coming,” Charteris said softly.

  “Oh dear,” Hilda said. “Will our landing be delayed?”

  “I don’t know. I doubt it.”

  The sunshine carried them over Brooklyn, where the Dodgers were playing some team or other (the prevailing opinion on the promenade was the Pittsburgh Pirates), a game that halted temporarily as the fans stared upward, cheering and waving. The ship-which had acquired an escort of small planes of press photographers-swung north, crossing crowds on Wall Street.

  The ship swooped so low over the Empire State Building, the shouted greetings of sightseers and photographers on the observation platform were easily heard; a passenger could have readily recognized a familiar face in the crowd.

  “That was originally designed to be this ship’s mooring mast,” Charteris said to Hilda, pointing out the Art Moderne structure’s tapering silver peak.

  “It would be more glamorous than Lakehurst, New Jersey,” Leonhard said. “But also less practical.”

  The good weather lasted as the airship flew over the Hudson River, and as it turned south to the lower bay, toward New Jersey, the boats in the harbor tooting hello as the ship glided over. But to the west, black clouds were conspiring to conjure up a summer thunderstorm.

  Charteris felt a hand on his shoulder, and turned to see Lehmann, his expression genial.

  “I thought you would like to know,” the Reederei director whispered, “Mr. Spehl is safely in Colonel Erdmann’s custody.”

  “Were there any problems?”

  “None.”

  Then Lehmann began circulating among the passengers, many of whom stood expectantly, small luggage in hand, as he bid them, “Auf wiedersehen.” This seemed to be th
e former captain’s way of reassuring them the landing would come off without further delay-original arrival time was to have been six A.M., but the rain and head winds of the voyage had long since changed that.

  By the time the airfield at Lakehurst came into view, the storm clouds were closing in, snapping with electricity, though there was no thunder, at least not that could be heard about the ship.

  “We will land?” Hilda asked, clutching his arm.

  “I don’t think so,” Charteris said.

  No land crew stood assembled on the tarmac. Around the edges of the field, autos were parked and a modest crowd stood, waving. The vast, arched, hungry hangar awaited.

  But no crew.

  As if on cue, the rain began, pelting the ship, sounding gentle but in the context of the swarming black clouds, alive with lightning, disturbing indeed. Hilda clutched his arm, trembling, as the ship moved on, crossing over the pinewoods, making for the coast, to ride out the storm.

  FOURTEEN

  HOW THE HINDENBURG MADE A DETOUR, AND LESLIE CHARTERIS PLAYED A HUNCH

  For over three hours the passengers of the Hindenburg waited for the storm to clear, many of them shuffling from the starboard promenade adjacent the lounge to the portside windows by the dining room, taking in alternating vistas of seacoast and forest. Some had their cameras out (no flashbulbs, of course) while others just sat with hand luggage in their laps, and the slightly dazed expressions of the delayed traveler. Others expressed pleasure at having their cruise expanded at no extra cost, while the two Doehner boys seemed fairly glazed over with boredom, perfect little bookends in their Buster Brown suits as they sat on either side of their mother on an upholstered window bench, clutching their teddy bears like life preservers.

  The view was pleasant enough, as the ship swung southeastward, over Toms River, down the narrow, sandy peninsula that paralleled the coastline, the all-but-deserted beaches of resorts blindingly white in the streaming sunshine. At times they flew over the scrub oak and pine of the coastal plains. Miss Mather pointed out poetically, to anyone who might be interested (or not), pairs and trios of startled deer scurrying through the sparse woods, fleeing the ship’s shadow.

  To the west, however, the sky looked ugly, boiling with black storm clouds, through which spears of lightning thrust themselves.

  Leonhard Adelt, narrowed eyes slowly scanning the dark-cloud-infested sky, said, “They’re like a pack of angry wolves.”

  “It’ll let up,” Charteris said, not convincing himself let alone Leonhard. Charteris and Hilda were standing with the Adelts at the slanting windows, cool air easing in.

  Kubis and other stewards had begun to circulate with silver trays, serving tea and biscuits.

  The author nodded toward the lounge. “Why don’t we all sit down? It would appear to be teatime, and I for one have had my fill of sand and scrubby trees and storm clouds.”

  “Hell,” Leonhard said, and heaved a sigh. “What a bitter damn disappointment…”

  Hand in hand with Hilda, Charteris arched an eyebrow in the journalist’s direction. “What’s your rush anyway?”

  Gertrude said, “We’re being met by Leonhard’s two brothers, who my poor husband hasn’t seen in thirty years. Apparently an extra hour or two is simply too much to bear.”

  “All right, all right, you’ve made your point,” Leonard said, laughing gently, slipping his arm around his pretty wife’s waist as the two couples made their way into the lounge and found a table.

  Thunder rumbled; the first they’d heard.

  “Not at all dangerous,” Steward Kubis said, as he served the two couples tea.

  “What time will we land?” Hilda asked, her voice cool but anxiety tensing her brow. She had taken off the rose-colored straw hat, which was fine with Charteris, who felt that any woman beautiful enough to wear a fashionable hat without appearing foolish would look more beautiful bareheaded.

  “You need not worry, madam,” Kubis said, with his practiced charming smile, “a zeppelin can cruise about indefinitely above storms. It is not like a plane that has to come down for fuel.”

  Charteris nodded. “I understand the Graf Zeppelin arrived over some South American country or other, during a revolution, and had to circle around for days.”

  “I heard that, too,” Leonhard said, a biscuit poised for a bite. “They waited until the fighting was over, and then landed!”

  With a chuckle, Kubis confirmed this tale, and went on to serve tea, and reassure other passengers.

  But Hilda still seemed distressed. He patted her hand. “What’s wrong, dear? Are you so anxious to leave my side?”

  “I should have wired my sister about the delay. I waited too long.”

  “And I, as well,” Leonhard said. “I’m sure my brothers were standing in that crowd at Lakehurst.”

  “I’m sure they’ll understand,” Charteris said, then turning to Hilda, added, “Which reminds me-do you have a number where I can reach you in Trenton?”

  “Why don’t you call me where I’m staying,” she said, “at the Sterling? I don’t know the phone number, but it is a well-known hotel.”

  “All right. Let me give you my number in Florida.”

  Leonhard loaned Charteris a fountain pen and the author jotted down his number on a napkin and gave it to Hilda. Then, in the time-honored tradition of travelers at the end of their journey, he traded similar information with the Adelts, who would still be in New York on business when Charteris returned to talk to publishers, everybody passing around scribbled-on napkins like business cards.

  “Ironic, isn’t it?” Leonhard said, half a wry smile tugging his face. “You know what today is, don’t you?”

  Charteris sipped his tea. “No, what?”

  Hilda said, “Ascension Day.”

  “Is it forty days after Easter already?” Charteris toasted with his teacup. “Ah, yes, another holy day of obligation. Well, we’ve ascended, all right.”

  “Are you Catholic too, Leslie?” Gertrude asked.

  “Nominally. This is the day we celebrate Jesus telling the disciples to get off their duffs and spread the Good News.”

  Hilda blinked twice and smiled at him.

  “I’m impressed,” Leonhard said.

  “Well, don’t be,” Charteris said, buttering a biscuit. “You see, my brother is a priest. Which, considering the sort of life I lead, would seem to indicate some incredible form of family compensation.”

  That amused everyone, but soon Hilda was frowning again, drumming her fingers.

  “It’ll be fine, dear,” Charteris told her. “We’ve swung northward again. Look-they’re preparing the table for the customs and immigration men.”

  Which Kubis and another steward were in the process of doing, where the promenade emptied into the stairway.

  “Have you noticed that sad colonel anywhere?” Gertrude asked them.

  “Erdmann?” Charteris said, innocently, “No.”

  “It’s funny he’s nowhere to be seen.” The pretty blonde shook her head, her cap of curls shimmering, her big blue eyes wide with thought. “You’d think he’d be sitting here, waiting to be first off the ship.”

  “Why do you say that, darling?” her husband asked.

  “Well, when we… ascended, to use the word of the day, he seemed so reluctant to be leaving. Remember him sitting just over there, so melancholy? And his wife coming aboard to embrace him so warmly? You’d think they were never going to see each other again.”

  Before long the stewards were passing among them again, with sandwiches of cold cuts and cheeses piled on their silver trays. Carafes of Liebfrauenmilch were distributed, as well.

  A muffled sound-a steam whistle-caused everyone to turn and look.

  Leonhard Adelt said, “We will be landing soon-that was the call for the ship’s crew to landing stations.”

  Hilda sighed and smiled, relief dancing in her dark blue eyes.

  Charteris touched a napkin to his lips. “If you’ll excuse me.”<
br />
  “What is it, Leslie?” Hilda asked, reaching out for him, fingertips brushing his hand.

  “Little boys’ room. I’ll be back before too long. They won’t let any of us off without going through customs.”

  He went up to Kubis, who was supervising the other stewards in their sandwich-serving. “Can you get away for just a few moments?”

  “Well, sir, I…”

  “Can’t I wring one last imposition out of those marks I bequeathed you?”

  Kubis smiled a little. “Certainly, sir. Anything for the man who wrote Saint in New York.”

  “Take me to Colonel Erdmann’s quarters.”

  Now the steward frowned; he had been made aware of Erdmann’s house arrest of Spehl. “But, sir…”

  “No questions, Heinrich. This is an imposition, remember?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  As he followed Kubis out of the lounge and along the starboard promenade, the slanting rain-flecked windows-cool air rushing in-revealed an early twilight had settled in, though as overcast as it now was, the difference between day and dusk was minimal. They’d be over Lakehurst again, shortly-he wondered if they would land or swing around for another sightseeing jaunt.

  As Kubis began down the stairs, Charteris-somewhat surprised by the chief steward’s route-asked, “Does Colonel Erdmann have one of the new rooms down on B deck?”

  “Yes-they’re larger, you know. With windows.”

  Though the bulk of the Hindenburg’s cabins were on A deck, where Charteris had been, a handful had been added to B deck since the ship’s successful first season, to increase passenger space. These cabins were aft, taking up space that had originally been tentlike crew quarters.

  At the bottom of the stairs, Kubis turned sharply to the left, where the floor itself was the retracted gangway, moving through a newly punched door giving access to the keel corridor. On the Hindenburg’s previous season of flights, the keel corridor was closed to passengers; but with the addition of this new wing of cabins, that was no longer the case.

  The steward turned to the right, down the narrow corridor, and stopped at a door marked B-1, looking to Charteris with a hesitant expression. “Should I knock, sir?” he whispered.