by Jack Treby
Kaufmann nodded unhappily. ‘I’m afraid so. It may be that he behaved inappropriately in a...physical manner.’ The German was trying to phrase his concerns as delicately as he could.
‘And you think Mr Kendall may have leapt to her defence?’ That did make sense. Ever the gentleman. No wonder Miss Tanner had kept her distance from Mr Lindt up on the promenade. I hoped to God McGilton didn’t get to hear of it or there would soon be another death on board ship. ‘But you’re not suggesting that Mr Lindt had something to do with Kendall’s death? Or Mr Schulz’s? I mean, he couldn’t have, could he? They both died of natural causes.’
‘Apparently so,’ Kaufmann agreed. ‘I am certain at least that Gerhard Schulz took his own life. But perhaps Karl may have driven him to it, in part. He has something of a temper.’
‘That’s an understatement. But as to Mr Kendall, you need have no fear. He died in his sleep. That’s what the first officer told me. There was nothing odd about it, so far as I am aware.’
‘You are probably right,’ Kaufmann agreed, downing the last of his sherry. ‘But I do feel partly responsible. Karl is my colleague, after all.’
‘You’re not his mother, Mr Kaufmann. It’s not your job to keep him on a leash.’ I stubbed out the end of my Piccadilly and an awkward silence descended; or at least, as much of a silence as there could be with that rain battering away against the canvas.
It seemed I was not the only one to have my suspicions about these two deaths. I had done my best to put the German off – there was no point alarming anyone any further – but after the discovery of the rat poison in Gerhard Schulz’s cabin I was finding it difficult to reach any other conclusion. Kaufmann was right, it was too much of a coincidence, both men dying like that within twenty four hours of each other. And I was certain now, having considered the matter carefully, that the sleeping draught Maurice had used to drug Walter Kendall had been tampered with. When I had first arrived on board ship, on Monday morning, I had taken the bottle out of my wash bag and placed it on the shelf above the sink. But when I had come back to grab it that afternoon it was not on the shelf but back inside the bag. I hadn’t noticed at the time but now, on reflection, I was certain it had been moved. Maurice had not shifted it; he had assured me he had not been anywhere near it. So someone must have slipped into my cabin and substituted the sleeping draught for rat poison. It wouldn’t have been difficult, what with that damned lock of mine. And if someone had done that, it meant Walter Kendall had been murdered. Maurice may have unwittingly carried out the deed, but someone else had been behind it. I struggled for some time to make sense of the notion. No one on board could have known we were planning to dope the American. The idea had come from Charles Lazenby, who was thousands of miles away in Spain. He could not have broken into my cabin and doctored the contents of that bottle. There was, however, one slightly more chilling option, which Maurice had cheerfully suggested to me before I had left the cabin. It could be that the poison had been intended for me. I pulled out a second cigarette from my case. That was one idea I did not wish to dwell on.
Once again, Josef Kaufmann was kind enough to provide a light. Even at close quarters, however, I was having difficulty igniting the cigarette. The airship was shuddering now to such an extent that I had some difficulty maintaining a steady hand. Part of me just wanted to grab hold of the sofa from the bottom and hang on for dear life. We were stuck down here, I realised, for the duration of the storm. I doubted I could even stand up now, less still walk over to the door. And I wasn’t even within stumbling distance of a water closet.
‘This weather,’ the German sighed, taking a puff from his own cigarette. The thunder and lightning were firing more or less in tandem now. ‘I hope it does not delay us. Karl and I have an important meeting in Sao Paulo on Friday afternoon.’
‘I don’t care about being delayed,’ I said, raising my voice involuntarily as the lightning crackled again. ‘I just want to get out of here alive. I don’t think my nerves will suffer much more of this.’ With a trembling hand, I took a quick drag of the cigarette. ‘I think I’m going to get off at Rio. If we get that far. Where’s that man with my Scotch?’
‘Here he comes,’ Kaufmann said.
The door to the bar crashed backwards and the barman staggered with his tray. There was an almighty roar and I cried out as the room tilted upwards. Max went flying through the air towards us, the whisky glass shattering on the floor, and I heard a heavy ripping sound. There were screams from the passenger deck above us. Crewmen were calling out urgently to each other in indecipherable German.
And, at that moment, my stomach lurched and I felt the Zeppelin plummet from the sky.
Chapter Twelve
Sea water slapped hard against the shell of the dinghy. There were eight of us in the boat, six passengers and two crew. The grizzled young crewmen were pulling at the oars but the rest of us were staring up at the airship, hanging morbidly above us, its lower tail fin ripped apart. A second dinghy had positioned itself as best it could below the damaged fin and men on wires were already crawling around it, doing their best to effect repairs. A patch of cloth had been torn off the roof of the ship towards the front and another group of crewmen were braving the slippery surface on top of the Richthofen to patch it up. It was lucky that they had enough material on board to replace it. Captain Albrecht was in the second dinghy, overseeing the repairs in person. He would doubtless say it was not luck, but preparation.
One of the crewmen in our boat – the gap-toothed fellow who had given me the guided tour – confided to us in his broken English that this was not the first time something like this had happened to a Zeppelin airship.
‘There was nothing about that in the guide book,’ I muttered.
When the fin had ripped, chaos had broken out on board ship. Screams from the passenger deck had mixed with urgent exchanges from the engineers and crewmen across the length of the Richthofen. It had seemed obvious to me that we were going to die. The craft had plummeted some distance through the air, though in truth we had fallen for no more than a couple of seconds. The captain had struggled to regain control of the ship, but with a damaged rudder the only way to do that was by moving into a less turbulent air stream. In this case, that meant lowering the craft, since the worst of the storm was playing out at a higher altitude. And so we had dropped down and gradually the crew had managed to regain some semblance of control.
I only learnt the details of this afterwards. At the time, having been flung the length of the smoking room and scared half to death, all I was aware of was that the attitude of the cabin was gradually re-established. Josef Kaufmann had faired better than I – he had grabbed onto the edge of the sofa – and was back on his feet within half a minute. A couple of chairs had overturned and our ashtray had skidded across the peach wood floor, but otherwise little damage had been done to our small corner of the world. It was Max, the barman, who had suffered the worst of it. He had smacked into the bar room door and blood was streaming out of that enormous nose of his. Kaufmann rushed over to the dazed crewman, who was slumped by the far wall. I struggled across to join them as soon as I had recovered my wits.
‘How is he?’ I asked.
Kaufmann had grabbed the top of Max’s head and was examining his reactions. ‘He has concussion, I think.’
I pulled my handkerchief from my breast pocket and knelt down in front of him, wiping the blood from the man’s nose and his heavy moustache. It was already starting to congeal. The poor fellow was shaking his head, trying to bring himself round.
‘You’re going to be all right,’ I reassured him. There was no other wound that I could see. ‘Just a bit of a bump.’
He nodded and tried to grin.
I looked across at Kaufmann. ‘What the hell happened?’ The airship was still juddering, even at the lower altitude, and there was an unpleasant whacking sound coming from behind us.
Kaufmann did not know. ‘We must have sustained some damage.’
/> I grunted. ‘You have a knack for understatement.’
‘But we are still alive and in one piece,’ he added, thankfully.
‘Just about. My God, I thought we were done for.’
The German nodded. ‘And the storm is not yet over.’ Lightning was continuing to flash at us through the underfloor windows.
A crewman arrived a moment later to check up on the passengers in the smoking room. He summoned a second steward and they quickly saw to Max.
I stumbled over to the viewing windows, to see if anything more was heading our way but the angle was too low to see anything and – as it transpired – we were already through the worst of it. The airship was now cruising at about sixty feet, having suffered only minor damage. But for the quick thinking of the captain, the situation might have been an awful lot worse.
‘Captain Albrecht is a fine airman,’ Kaufmann concluded, rising to his feet, and – despite the sheer terror of the experience – I was inclined to agree. More than anything, I was just glad to be alive.
When the storm had died down, the stewards politely directed us back up onto A Deck and into the dining area. The crew wanted to make sure all the passengers were accounted for. I had to make another quick diversion on the way and this time I was not the only one. Thankfully, none of the guests had suffered serious injuries, although nerves were understandably frayed.
Sir George Westlake had a small plaster on his forehead. He had nipped out from the control gondola at the height of the storm and had been making use of the facilities when the rear fin had torn. ‘Crashed my head on the wash basin,’ he explained, with a chuckle. He was taking it in surprisingly good spirits. ‘I spent three months in Antarctica without a scratch but thirty seconds in a German water closet...’ He roared with laughter.
Not everyone was coping with the situation as well as the explorer. Karl Lindt had a face like a bruised kipper. He had been so proud of his country’s aeronautical prowess and was upset to discover the airship was not quite as invincible as he had supposed. Josef Kaufmann leant in and whispered to me that, in fact, Lindt was rather more worried about the possibility of arriving late in Brazil.
The stewards were doing their best to normalise the situation and, to their credit, they quickly managed to organise a spot of lunch for us all. Goodness knows what carnage the storm had caused in the kitchens, but somehow the chef and his acolytes had knocked together a light meal and it was served on the dot of twelve o’clock, as scheduled. With that and the storm receding, spirits gradually began to revive. Captain Albrecht was already outside inspecting the damage – the aircraft had come to a halt now and was hovering gently a few feet above the ocean – so it was left to Captain Rüdiger, the first officer, to visit the passenger decks and soothe our nerves. It was not a job he was well suited to.
‘Repairs will be effected over the next two or three hours,’ he told us, his stern, granite face not quite communicating the reassurance the situation required; but at least his brisk manner prevented any dissembling. ‘We hope to resume our journey sometime in the late afternoon, but we may have to continue at a slower speed. This may set back our arrival time by some hours.’
Karl Lindt grimaced at that but made no comment.
Captain Rüdiger confirmed the sad news about Walter Kendall and apologised for not passing on the information sooner. ‘We will radio the appropriate authorities shortly and make sure the news is passed on to his relatives in New York,’ he said.
Sir George was more interested in the repairs. He had seen Captain Albrecht head out in one of the dinghies and, true to form, was keen to venture outside himself and inspect the damage. ‘You’ve got a couple of those things, haven’t you?’
‘There is a second dinghy, yes,’ Rüdiger admitted, reluctantly.
‘There you go then!’ The Englishman beamed.
The other man shook his head. ‘I am afraid the sea is far too rough to allow...’
‘Nonsense!’ Sir George declared. ‘I’ve been trapped in Antarctic pack ice. This will be a picnic in comparison.’
‘The storm is dying off,’ Mrs Koenig volunteered, in her harsh German growl. As an aviator, I guessed, she would know about such things. And doubtless she would be just as happy to head off into danger.
‘Take it from a veteran, old boy,’ Sir George added, ‘that sea will be as calm as a bath tub in an hour’s time.’
The first officer was not about to be bullied into anything. ‘I am sorry, Sir George, I do not think it will be possible...’
‘You can at least ask Captain Albrecht,’ Mr Lindt suggested testily. Why on earth he was voicing support for the scheme I could not begin to fathom. Perhaps he wanted to see for himself how bad the damage was.
Rüdiger pursed his lips together. ‘Very well.’ It was clear he was under orders not to upset any of the guests. ‘I will speak to the captain, when he returns to the ship. But I do not think he will allow it. Passenger safety is paramount.’
I snorted. ‘Yes, we noticed that.’
‘If you will excuse me,’ he said, ignoring the barb, ‘there is much work to be done.’
Sir George was not willing to let the idea go, however, and once the rains had evaporated he took the matter into his own hands, button-holing Captain Albrecht when the officer returned briefly to the Richthofen and securing his agreement to let a few of the passengers go outside. I was surprised the captain agreed to it, but it was probably more hassle than it was worth for him to refuse.
My mind was elsewhere, in any case. I was already in deep conversation with Jacob Finch. The ginger-haired policeman had been searching Walter Kendall’s cabin when the ship had dropped and he had banged his hip on the metal ladder. The pain did not stop his leg from wobbling, however, as we settled ourselves at the far end of the port promenade. The damned fellow could not keep still to save his life; but he was anxious to pass on his findings.
‘I’m not a pathologist, you understand,’ Finch told me, his left foot tapping self-consciously on the carpet. ‘I don’t know one end of a body from the other. And it’s a horrible thing, having to examine a corpse.’ His eyes screwed shut with distaste. ‘I try to avoid it where I can. Just the stench of it. It’s appalling. No bowel control, the dead.’
I nodded sympathetically. I had noticed a bit of a smell last night and clearly it had worsened with time.
‘But I have seen a few dead bodies in my time and I’m fairly sure Mr Kendall didn’t die of a heart attack.’
‘How did he die then?’
Finch clutched his fists together. ‘I can’t be certain, but I think the poor chap was poisoned.’
‘Good grief!’ I did my best to sound surprised.
‘It was the lips that were the giveaway.’ Finch shuddered. ‘And the tongue. I’ve seen pictures of that sort of thing. Horrible way to die. Of course, I could be completely wrong. Without a proper medical examination, there’s no way of knowing for certain. But I did find a sleeping draught next to his bed and I have a horrible feeling it may contain arsenic.’
‘Good lord,’ I said.
‘He may even have administered it himself, unwittingly.’ Finch clamped a hand to his leg, to keep it under control. ‘It wouldn’t have been at all pleasant, if it was arsenic. I remember reading up on the subject.’ He shuddered at the memory. ‘There’d be dizziness and confusion to start with, then stomach cramps and a splitting headache. He must have got himself half undressed before the worst of it kicked in, then collapsed onto the mattress.’ Finch shook his head. ‘The poor chap, in his shirt sleeves, breathing his last and no one to know.’
‘Good God,’ I whispered. ‘So there really is a murderer on board.’ I’d had some time to get used to the idea, but speaking the words out loud served to underline the horror of the situation.
‘It looks like it,’ Finch agreed, closing his eyes in despair. ‘In cold blood, in the dead of the night. It’s appalling! Utterly depraved.’ He took a moment to gather himself together. ‘Unfort
unately, I’m working in the dark here. We can’t know for certain if he was poisoned until the powder is properly analysed. But the way he was lying there...’ He shuddered again. ‘I have a terrible feeling, this time, my intuition is spot on. I’ll have to tell the captain. The poor chap. He’ll be absolutely mortified. A murderer on board the Richthofen. And most likely it’ll be one of the other passengers.’ Finch released the grip on his leg. ‘What I don’t understand is why would anyone want to kill Walter Kendall. It doesn’t make sense. He had nothing to do with our missing file. Even if he was a potential buyer, there would be no reason for anyone to want to murder him.’ He gazed across at me, completely baffled. ‘I don’t know what to make of it all, Mr Bland. What on earth am I going to tell the authorities, when we arrive in Brazil?’
‘Lord knows,’ I said. We would have to cross that bridge when we came to it. ‘Did you find anything else in the cabin? Anything suspicious?’ Perhaps the telegram he had been intending to send, if he had ever got around to writing it? Or, more to the point, anything that might incriminate me in his death. After all, I had no reason to suppose the murderer had even been in Walter Kendall’s cabin. The poison must have been added to that sleeping draught well in advance of my valet planting the bottle there.
‘I did find one curious thing,’ the policeman admitted. He glanced across at the dining hall. A couple of stewards were clearing away the lunch things but the passengers had vacated the room. Finch reached into his jacket and pulled out a pale blue pad. ‘This is Mr Kendall’s notebook,’ he said. ‘It was lying on the table on top of a portable typewriter.’ He opened the book up for me to see. I remembered flicking through it, on Monday morning. ‘Look, two pages have been torn out.’
My eyes widened as I took hold of the pad. The leaves had been torn very neatly. At first glance, I would not even have noticed they were missing. But flipping to the back of the book, the two corresponding pages could be seen hanging loose. The pad had definitely been tampered with. ‘It wasn’t like that yesterday morning,’ I said. ‘When I was in there.’
