The Red Zeppelin (Hilary Manningham-Butler Book 2)

by Jack Treby

  ‘Yes, poor woman. Two deaths in two days and one of them an old friend. And Miss Hurst too. No wonder that woman walks around the place looking like a ghost.’ I glanced down at the telegram in McGilton’s hand. ‘And your fiancée's writing an obituary, you say?’

  ‘Helps take her mind off things. She likes to keep busy. It wouldn’t surprise me if she wrote something about the storm, as well. She’s always looking for stories. Even had me going out taking photographs of the damage, to illustrate what she’s going to write.’

  ‘An enterprising woman.’

  ‘It’s just her way of coping. Two deaths and a storm, it’s enough to rattle anyone. But they say bad luck comes in threes, so hopefully we’ve had our ration for this trip.’

  I raised an eyebrow. ‘There’s nothing like tempting fate, Mr McGilton.’

  It was the last cigarette in the case and I didn’t know how long it would be before I could get hold of another. There is nothing quite like a Piccadilly to soothe the nerves at the end of a stressful day but the atmosphere was marred somewhat by a smoking room packed with loud voiced passengers. I needed time to think and it was clear I was not going to get it.

  Adelina Koenig was gnashing away in her harsh German voice on the opposite side of the room, cutting through the fog of tobacco like a knife through charred flesh. I had the impression the woman was upset about something, but as she was speaking fluent Kraut I had no idea what had annoyed her. It couldn’t be Karl Lindt. He was sitting to her right, having just returned from the bar, and I doubted even he would have the nerve to get fresh with the likes of Adelina Koenig. Besides, Sir George Westlake was sitting at the table with them, a glass of brandy in one hand and a fat cigar in the other, and he would make sure there was no impropriety.

  Josef Kaufmann was keeping well away from his odious colleague. The tubby German was over in the corner, talking to that Spanish fellow McGilton shared with, a rather small man with an egg-shaped head and a rakish moustache. I was sure somebody had mentioned his name to me but for the life of me I couldn’t recall it.

  Frederick Gray arrived back at the table with my whisky and soda. I grunted my thanks as the GPO man placed the tumbler down in front of me and resumed his seat. Not that he had paid for it – the drinks were on the house this evening – but he had at least made the effort to deliver the glass.

  I took a final sad gasp of the Piccadilly and stubbed it out in the ashtray. ‘What’s Mrs Koenig so upset about?’ I enquired, before Gray had the chance to say anything. He had been droning on about his facsimile machine for some minutes before he had headed off to the bar – it was being shipped out to New York, apparently, and then put on a train for San Francisco, in readiness for some demonstration or other – and I was determined not to allow him to resume his dreary monologue.

  The man glanced back at the Germans and then leaned across the table towards me. He lowered his voice, as if imparting some great secret. ‘Frau Koenig believes someone has broken into her cabin, at least according to Herr Lindt.’ Gray must have had a brief chat with the businessman while he was getting the drinks. ‘Somebody’s been rifling through her clothes,’ he added, salaciously.

  ‘Was anything stolen?’ I reached for my glass. Had anyone put two and two together, now that Finch’s identity was in the public domain? Did they realise it was the policeman who had been snooping about?

  ‘Not that she’s aware of,’ Gray replied, his irritating voice reverting to its usual nasal tone as he leant back in his seat. ‘Herr Lindt thinks it must be one of the staff. He says the whole trip has been a shambles from the start.’

  I took a large gulp of whisky. ‘He’s not wrong there.’ Mind you, Lindt was probably still fuming about the change of course. I wondered briefly whether it had upset anybody else’s plans. Lindt seemed to be on rather good terms with Mrs Koenig, anyway. Was there some prior connection between the two of them that I wasn’t aware of? I growled, dismissing the idea. I was starting to think like Jacob Finch.

  Sir George Westlake guffawed loudly from the other table and I saw the Spanish fellow look across in surprise. Josef Kaufmann met my eye and raised his glass. He had been due to leave the Richthofen in Rio, as had his companion. What did the Dago make of all this? I wondered. Actually, I didn’t much care. ‘Sir George seems to be enjoying the trip anyway,’ I commented dryly.

  Frederick Gray’s eyes lit up at the mention of the explorer. ‘He’s promised to show me the sights in New York. I’m not due in San Francisco until next week. I’ll have a bit of free time now, since we’re going straight there.’ He picked up his glass and took a small sip of water. ‘This trip has been a lot livelier than any of us anticipated.’

  ‘I’ll say. I’m not looking forward to America, though. All that publicity.’ I shuddered at the thought. McGilton was right. The Richthofen would be headline news. I finished off the whisky and soda in another quick gulp. ‘You not drinking?’ I asked, as the GPO man set down his glass of water.

  Gray shook his head sadly. ‘I think I ought to wait until after supper. Otherwise it’ll go straight to my head.’

  The dinner gong sounded from across the deck and Maurice adjusted my tie with some satisfaction. It seemed absurd, given the events of the day, that everyone should retire from the bar half an hour before dinner to change their clothes, but there was something reassuring in the upholdance of this tradition. My valet had not been able to get my other shirt dried in time, much to his annoyance, but I had at least been able to put on my dinner jacket and a fresh tie. Maurice had moved his clothes out of the cabin into the room next door, but was spending far more time in my own cabin than was probably required. He did fuss rather. Luckily, the man had had the foresight to change his own clothes before I had returned from the bar. For all his faults, Maurice knew the correct order of these things. I was still smarting at the thought of him joining us for dinner, but I was not holding it against him personally. ‘Better make tracks,’ I said, glancing at my pocket watch as the sound of the gong faded away. I had moderated my intake of alcohol in the run up to supper, but once I had a bit of food inside me I could allow my thirst full rein.

  Maurice pulled opened the cabin door and stepped into the corridor. McGilton was just emerging from his own room next door. He waved a hand at me as I came out and then greeted his fiancée and Miss Hurst, who were already on their way to the dining hall. They had emerged from the stairs running down to B Deck, at the far end of the central passageway. Miss Tanner must have dressed for supper while the rest of us were down at the bar.

  Maurice was hovering in the starboard corridor, waiting for me to follow the Irishman, but I waved him forward. ‘You go on. I want to have a quick word with Mr Finch, before I sit down to dinner.’ I had not heard back from the detective yet about that telegram he had received.

  ‘Very good, Monsieur,’ the valet replied.

  Finch was probably still in his bedroom on the port side but I nipped left first, into the lounge area, on the off-chance that he might be out and about. As I entered the saloon, I spotted Josef Kaufmann making his way out from the reading room.

  ‘Feeling hungry?’ I asked.

  ‘Indeed,’ the man replied, passing me by with a genial smile. He had a surprisingly modest appetite, given his size, but the rotund German was always very complimentary about the quality of the food.

  There was no sign of Finch on this side of the ship, so I followed Kaufmann back through the door. Karl Lindt had just appeared from his cabin on the corner of the starboard passage and the two men greeted each other politely. I hung back for a moment, not wishing to get into a conversation with either of them. The two Germans headed off down the central passage while I dawdled behind them. I glanced left, idly, and noticed Lindt had left a crack open in the door to his cabin. No, hang on, that wasn’t his room. It was the second door along. The ladies’ room. That’s odd, I thought. I had already seen Miss Hurst and Miss Tanner heading for the dining hall.

  There was a
flicker of movement from inside the cabin. A shadow. So that was where Finch was. I grinned. He had said he wanted to look through the women’s cabin at some point, but the idea had been lost in all the furore over Mrs Koenig. Perhaps he had seen his chance and nipped in now.

  The two Germans had disappeared through the far door into the dining room, leaving me free to shuffle unobserved along the length of the starboard corridor. There was the usual row of three rooms here, clumped together at the rear of the deck. Mr Lindt, the two girls and Mr Kaufmann at the far end. I smiled to myself and grabbed the handle of the middle door. Finch would have the fright of his life when I opened it.

  I tugged at the handle but the panel would not budge. An aroma of perfume assaulted my nostrils – the typical smells of a woman’s boudoir – but there was something obstructing the door. I used a little more force and the panel slid back another couple of inches, giving me a brief glimpse of the interior of the cabin. As I had suspected, clothes were hanging everywhere. There were probably a couple of dresses on the back of the door getting in the way of the tracks. I pulled harder and the panel finally trundled to one side. There was a ledge above the wash basin piled high with make up and other beauty products. But my attention shifted abruptly as a pair of feet thudded out into the corridor at ground level. Jacob Finch was lying face down across the length of the cabin, in a swamp of his own blood. His body was twitching and there was a gaping wound in the middle of his back.

  ‘Good God!’ I exclaimed, from the doorway.

  At the sound of my voice, Finch let out a low moan. He was still alive. I moved quickly into the room, stepping awkwardly across his legs, which had been obstructing the door. That must have been the movement I had seen; him kicking against it. I lowered myself to my knees and rolled the poor fellow onto his side. ‘Finch, what happened?’

  The man was shuddering uncontrollably. His jacket was caked in blood, as was quite a large section of the carpet beneath him. Most of it had congealed, suggesting he had been here for some time. Perhaps he had been unconscious. But he was awake now, barely. He gestured as best he could to the bunk bed. Underneath it I could make out a large, bloodied knife with a serrated edge. A steak knife, perhaps.

  ‘Somebody stabbed you?’ I exclaimed. My God, in broad daylight. Well, the lighting was electric, but in full view of anyone who might happen by.

  He nodded his head, though with some difficulty. An unpleasant liquid bubbled up from his mouth.

  ‘I should summon a doctor,’ I said, then cursed as I remembered there was no medical man on board. And even at a glance I could see the poor fellow was not long for this world.

  Finch shook his head emphatically. ‘No...no...you...’ He was having difficulty talking. There was too much fluid in his mouth and I could see the effort he was expending trying to communicate with me. ‘You must...you must tell...’

  ‘Who did this to you?’

  ‘...tell the captain...it’s...it’s...’ His left hand grabbed my shoulder. With an enormous effort of will, he shook his head, gathered together the last of his wits, and managed to form one final coherent sentence. ‘I just knew something like this was going to happen,’ he said.

  And then he died.

  Chapter Fifteen

  I stood for some moments staring down at the lifeless body. My mind was struggling to make sense of what had happened. I had only known Jacob Finch for a few hours and now here he was, lying dead in a pool of blood. I could scarcely believe it. Anger welled up inside me. Who had done this horrible thing? What kind of callous brute would stab a man in the back and then leave him for dead on the bedroom floor? Finch may have been a policeman, and as such a potential threat to somebody on board, but he was only doing his job. He did not deserve to die like this.

  I reached down and closed his eyes. In life, Jacob Finch had never stopped moving, but now the poor fellow would never move again. He looked strangely peaceful lying there, childlike almost. His features had relaxed, the wrinkles on his brow smoothing themselves out in death. It was only the blood splattered across his shirt and jacket that gave testament to the pain he had endured in his final moments.

  At least no one could blame me for this murder, I thought. It is strange how quickly one’s attention returns to one’s own predicament in these circumstances. It was typical of my luck, however, that I should be the one to stumble across the body. Now I would have to call the alarm and deal with all the fuss. The fates really did have it in for me; though not, perhaps, as much as they did for Jacob Finch.

  How had he been knifed without anybody noticing? I wondered. The run up to dinner was one of the busiest times of day on the passenger decks. And, come to that, why hadn’t Miss Hurst and Miss Tanner been in their cabin, changing for supper, like everybody else? Why had they been down on B Deck? It was very odd. I couldn’t tell how long the policeman had been lying here before I had found him. Ten minutes? Fifteen at most. And what had drawn him to search this particular room at a time when all sorts of people might have been flitting about? It could surely have waited until tomorrow.

  Whatever his reasons, Finch must have discovered something important. Why else would anybody have bothered to stab him like this? He must have been getting close to the truth. If only he had managed to hold on for a few more moments and told me something useful. I growled. But there was no point getting upset about that now.

  I lifted myself up and pulled the arm of my jacket over my hands. Gingerly, I reached under the bed and retrieved the bloodied knife. I held it by the hilt, with my fingers under the cuff of the jacket. I wasn’t about to put my fingerprints on it, but I wanted to get a good look. It was definitely a steak knife. We had used them at dinner the day before and any one of the passengers might have stolen it. But who would have the nerve to creep in here and stab Finch from behind?

  The telegram. It had to be something to do with that. Some new information from London. I looked down at the corpse. If Finch had decrypted the message, perhaps he had the English translation with him in one of his pockets. I could see his copy of Alice In Wonderland poking out of the inside of his jacket.

  No. I wasn’t going to start rifling through those blood soaked clothes. Not yet, anyway. For once, I was going to play this by the book. I would summon Captain Albrecht, tell him all I knew and let him sort it out. I had come on board the Richthofen to retrieve a roll of film and – so far as I knew – that task had been completed. I wasn’t going to offer myself up as the next sacrificial victim, if someone on board had it in for policemen.

  I rose to my feet, placed the knife carefully back where I had found it and slid out the doorway. I would summon a steward and get him to call the captain. I moved out into the starboard corridor. The stewards would be hovering around the serving hatch about now, on the port side, conveying food into the dining hall. I rounded the corner into the connecting passage and walked slap bang into Miss Annabel Hurst, who was returning to her cabin.

  This time, I think she was more surprised than I was. She recoiled from the brief impact but then recovered herself and shot past me with a barely audible ‘excuse me’ before I could even begin to apologise. She had already slipped around the corner and was at the door of her room before I could call a word of warning. ‘Miss Hurst, I wouldn’t...’

  It was too late. I had left the cabin door wide open and in an instant the girl had caught sight of Jacob Finch in all his deathly glory. Her hand went to her mouth and she let out a piercing scream. She tottered backwards for a moment and then looked at me in horror. I glanced down at my shirt and it was then I noticed the blood stains. Finch must have dribbled a bit over me when he had grabbed my shoulder. Miss Hurst shrank away in terror.

  I was standing at the intersection of the corridors, with the door to the lounge just behind me. At the far end of the central passageway, a steward had been lifting a platter of cold meats from the serving hatch. On hearing the scream he had nearly dropped it. He looked across at me in alarm and I gestured for him
to come. He returned the platter to the ledge and raced over to find out what was going on.

  ‘Miss Hurst has had a terrible shock,’ I said. ‘Get her into the lounge. I’ll fetch some whisky.’

  I didn’t give the young fellow any time to enquire further. I rushed back to my own cabin to grab the bottle and a glass. I poured out a measure for myself and downed it in one before heading back out into the corridor. Miss Hurst was not the only one in a state of shock. Then I quickly crossed into the lounge room.

  The young woman was sitting in a chair halfway across the saloon. She tensed at the sight of me.

  ‘Don’t be afraid,’ I said, holding up the glass and bottle in my hands and gesturing to the steward. His presence would serve to reassure her of my good intentions. ‘I saw the door of your room open. I went to investigate and discovered Mr Finch. He’d been stabbed in the back. Not by me,’ I added.

  The steward poured out the whisky and handed the glass to Miss Hurst. ‘Mr Finch is dead?’ he enquired, screwing the lid back onto the bottle top.

  ‘I’m afraid so. He was searching Miss Hurst’s room.’

  ‘Someone...someone said he was a policeman,’ the young woman muttered absently. So she too had heard the rumour.

  ‘Yes, him and me both.’ It was a white lie but I was aiming for reassurance. ‘We’ve been investigating a theft. Look, do you know why he was searching your room?’

  She nodded numbly. Her hands were trembling, gripping tightly to the glass. ‘I think so, yes. You've found out, haven’t you?’

  ‘What’s going on?’ a voice called from the doorway behind us. It was the chief steward, Stefan. ‘Sir, is Miss Hurst all right?’

  ‘No, she’s not.’ I turned back to look at the new arrival. ‘She’s had a hell of a shock.’ We both have, I thought. ‘Keep an eye on her.’ This instruction I shot at the junior steward as I moved across to talk to Stefan. ‘You need to fetch the captain at once. There’s been a terrible incident. Another one.’