The Red Zeppelin

by Jack Treby

  ‘Well, that’s something anyway. They won’t know for sure what killed him until we get to port.’ I bit my upper lip, thinking furiously.

  ‘And did you find the negatives?’ the valet asked.

  ‘What? No, I didn’t. What does that matter?’

  Maurice rubbed the side of his face. ‘They were not in the room?’

  ‘No. Not a sign of them. I searched everywhere.’

  ‘That is rather curious.’

  ‘I don’t give a damn about the negatives! A man’s just died, for heaven’s sake. What are we going to do? They’ll find the sleeping draught in our cabin and we’ll be hung out to dry.’

  ‘Not necessarily, Monsieur.’

  ‘What do you mean, not necessarily? We can’t just throw the bottle out of the window.’ I stopped. Why couldn’t we throw it out of the window? Come to think of it, that was exactly what we should do. The windows could be opened and at this time of night it was unlikely the men in the engine cars would see us doing it. But, no. ‘That wouldn’t do any good in the long run. My fingerprints would still be all over the cabin.’

  ‘Yes, Monsieur.’ Maurice had a better idea, however. ‘But what if the sleeping draught were also discovered in the cabin?’

  ‘I don’t follow.’

  ‘If the bottle was placed next to the bed then it would be natural to conclude that Monsieur Kendall had accidentally overdosed himself.’

  I thought for a moment. ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘The authorities would be unlikely to enquire further.’

  ‘Well...perhaps not,’ I conceded. ‘If we wiped the fingerprints from the bottle at least. But...I can’t just break into his room a third time and pop the bottle on the sideboard.’

  ‘Why not, Monsieur? It would avert suspicion.’

  ‘Yes, but....’ I took a deep breath. ‘Look, Morris. I can’t go back in there. I simply can’t. My nerves wouldn’t stand it.’ It had been bad enough with the body; but then bumping into Miss Hurst. It was as if my whole life had suddenly unravelled before me.

  ‘But I can do it, Monsieur,’ Maurice suggested.

  I stared at him for a moment. ‘You?’ I was hard pushed not to start laughing. Maurice was not the type to volunteer for anything. It had taken all my hectoring just to get him to drive me out to the airfield on Sunday afternoon. And he was hardly secret agent material. ‘Look, Morris, I appreciate the offer. But you don’t have the necessary skills. You don’t know the first thing about lock picking.’

  ‘I do have some experience, Monsieur. If you are prepared to lend me your pick.’

  I stared at him, dumbfounded. The man was full of surprises. ‘You know how to unlock a door? With a hairpin?’

  ‘Yes, Monsieur.’

  I waited for him to provide an explanation, but none was forthcoming. ‘How on earth would you pick up a skill like that? You worked in a draper’s shop, didn’t you?’ It struck me then just how little I knew about the man, even after all this time.

  ‘Yes, Monsieur. But my father was a locksmith. I worked with him as a boy. I am familiar with every type of lock.’

  I blinked. Then I scowled. ‘Why the devil didn’t you tell me this before?’ I thought back to all the occasions when I could have used a decent pick lock, in the pursuit of my work.

  ‘It has never come up, Monsieur.’

  ‘Never come up! For goodness sake, Morris, you must have realised how useful this could be to me, in my line of work. I could have sent you off to do all kinds of dirty work.’ Instead of putting my own head in the noose.

  ‘Yes, Monsieur. But it is you who works for the Security Service,’ he told me firmly. ‘I do not.’

  That was typical of him, I thought. Always digging in his heels at the most inconvenient of times. ‘But you’re willing to slip into Kendall’s apartment now?’

  ‘Yes, Monsieur.’

  ‘And stash the sleeping draught?’

  ‘Yes, Monsieur.’

  ‘But why now, if not before? Why would you take the risk this time?’

  ‘I am paid to look after you, Monsieur. If you are executed for murder, I would have to find a new employer.’

  I threw up my hands. ‘Good God. Morris, I am speechless.’ I had no idea what to make of the fellow. He seemed to exist on an entirely different plane from me. We had just had the longest conversation the two of us had ever had and I still had no idea what was going on inside his head. What other skills was he keeping from me? I wondered.

  ‘I will attend to the matter now, Monsieur,’ he said, before I had the chance to enquire further. He rose up and headed for the passenger quarters without another word.

  I remained where I was for some moments, in a state of complete bewilderment.

  The knife scraped the butter from the block and Maurice spread it gently across the toast. The dining hall was full now, with white-coated stewards flitting around, attending to the passengers. Thomas McGilton was sitting opposite me, his mouth full of scrambled egg. My valet was perched to his right, pouring himself a cup of coffee. I had not raised any objection, when Maurice had joined us at the table. The man deserved a hearty breakfast, after what he had accomplished a few hours earlier. I could scarcely believe he had managed to do it. He had crept into Walter Kendall’s cabin, secreted the glass bottle and then returned to our own room and promptly fallen asleep. I, by contrast, had barely slept a wink. I felt like the condemned man, awaiting sentence. Or the condemned woman. That would come out too, if I was brought to trial. The walk to breakfast might as well have been a stroll to the gallows. It could only be a matter of minutes before the American’s body was discovered. With all of us at breakfast, the stewards would be unlocking the cabins and changing the bed linen. I had sat myself opposite the main door, so that I could see what was going on. The entrance was wide open at the moment. A serving hatch was positioned just to the left of the door on the far side. I could see the stewards – those who were not waiting tables – moving back and forth with the bed linen beyond the door. Even with the powder skilfully planted – and fingerprints dutifully removed, according to Maurice – it would only be a matter of time after the body was found before suspicion fell upon me.

  The rest of the diners were in damnably good spirits. A news sheet had been posted up by the crew and Karl Lindt was holding forth on the fate of King Alfonso, who was had apparently fled from Spain the previous evening. Mr Gray, the post office fellow, was more interested in the weather report, with Sir George Westlake relishing the prospect of a little turbulence ahead. He was sitting with Mrs Koenig, I noticed. I wondered if anyone had noticed her extra-curricular activities last night. The walls were thin enough for that kind of sound to travel, but doubtless most of the passengers would have been fast asleep.

  Miss Hurst was sitting at another table, nursing a cup of milky tea with Josef Kaufmann and that Spanish fellow, whose name I still hadn’t caught. I had glanced over at her several times during the course of breakfast, but she had never looked back. What had she made of our nocturnal encounter? I wondered. My panicked reaction to it all seemed rather absurd now. Miss Hurst had only glanced at me for the briefest of moments. She couldn’t have learnt the truth in that one instant, even if she had looked directly at my drawers. People invariably see what they want to see and she had no reason to expect anything other than a man in his underpants. Funnily enough, it was Lucy Tanner who was looking at me oddly this morning, across the floor of the dining room. She was sitting away from her fiancé again – they were not the clingy couple that some love birds are, forever in each other’s pockets – and the Irishman seemed in good spirits.

  ‘You missed out last night,’ he informed me cheerfully. ‘The game was just getting interesting when you left.’ The poker game. I had all but forgotten about that.

  ‘It was a slaughterhouse,’ Jacob Finch lamented, clutching his hands together in distress. The red-haired fellow never seemed to have a calm reaction to anything. You would have thought a stockbroker wo
uld be used to the occasional bad luck.

  ‘Sir George didn’t take any prisoners,’ McGilton agreed. ‘You were probably wise to leave when you did.’

  ‘I wasn’t prepared to lose another twenty five dollars,’ I grumbled.

  ‘You got off lightly,’ Finch observed. ‘He took me to the cleaners. It was a disaster! I’m lucky I’ve still got the shirt on my back.’

  ‘All good fun, though.’ McGilton smiled. He had obviously not lost quite as much as the Englishman.

  ‘If you say so,’ I muttered. I was not in the mood for gentle badinage this morning. I bit into my toast and stared past the Irishman at the door.

  All through the early hours, lying in bed, I had been running back through the sequence of events that had led me to this point. I couldn’t understand any of it. Gerhard Schulz committing suicide and now Walter Kendall dying in bed. The more I thought about it, the less plausible any of it seemed. Two men who had been in possession of documents vital to the security of Great Britain had died within half a day of each other. Could that really just be a coincidence or was something more sinister going on? And then I remembered that it was Charles Lazenby who had given me the sleeping draught and at that point my blood had run cold. It was Lazenby who had suggested drugging the American – albeit jokingly – and had then reinforced the idea with a telegram. What if the bottle he had given me did not contain a sleeping draught at all? What if it was a poison of some kind, something he had slipped me in order to deliberately murder Walter Kendall? There was no way of checking the powder, now that Maurice had planted the bottle in the American’s cabin, but could Lazenby really have set me up? He had certainly organised the tickets for the Richthofen well in advance. If he had arranged Kendall’s death, might he also have bumped off Gerhard Schulz and made it look like a suicide? After all, Lazenby had still been in Seville on Monday afternoon when I had sent him that telegram. On a day like that, with the king about to flee Spain, he should have been on the first train back to Madrid. The possibilities swam around in my head like a set of hungry piranhas. Could it really be true? Charles Lazenby, one of His Majesty’s finest, in truth a cold-blooded murderer? It didn’t seem possible. What motive could he have had for arranging a double killing? He had nothing to gain, so far as I could see, and everything to lose. No, I told myself firmly, Lazenby could not be responsible for any of this. I was letting my imagination run away with me. As like as not, it was just a tragic accident. Gerhard Schulz had taken his own life and either Kendall had a heart condition or we had misjudged the dose of the powder. And then he had died. It was as simple as that.

  But whatever the truth, one thing was certain: it was I who was going to be held to account.

  ‘Mind you, it’s Herr Lindt I feel sorry for,’ Mr Finch proclaimed, interrupting my reverie. ‘Three nights in a row he’s lost out.’

  I had no idea what the ginger fellow was talking about. ‘Three nights?’

  ‘Three games of poker,’ McGilton explained, as Finch pushed back his chair and rose to his feet. ‘Couldn’t have happened to a nicer fellow. And I don’t begrudge Sir George his winnings.’ He glanced across the room at the veteran explorer. ‘He needs every penny he can get, so I’ve heard.’

  ‘Sir George does?’

  The Irishman nodded. ‘His last Antarctic expedition practically bankrupted him, so I hear. I was talking to Mr Gray about it. Lost a small fortune.’

  ‘He can’t be that badly off,’ I said, looking round, ‘if he can afford a ticket on the Richthofen.’

  ‘Oh, he’s not paying for it. He had it written into his contract. He’s doing another lecture tour, in America this time. Bit of a come down for the great explorer,’ McGilton thought.

  ‘He doesn’t seem to have let it get him down,’ I said, taking a last sip of tea from my cup. The man himself was hooting with laughter at another table. I wished he would quieten down. I was starting to get a headache.

  Breakfast was beginning to wind up. Mr Finch had made his excuses and some of the other diners were preparing to vacate the hall. The stewards were collecting up their plates and, out in the passengers quarters, the dirty bed linen was being gathered together and carted away. That was dashed peculiar, I thought. No one at breakfast had commented on Mr Kendall’s absence. No one had cried out in alarm at the discovery of a corpse. And none of the stewards seemed to be panicking. I checked my pocket watch. It was half past nine, the cabins had all been cleaned, and no one had discovered the body of Walter Kendall.

  Chapter Nine

  ‘You haven’t seen Mr Kendall, have you?’ I asked the steward, out in the corridor, as the guests were departing the dining room. ‘He wasn’t at breakfast.’ I tried to make the question sound as casual as possible. It was a reasonable thing to ask, though I knew it was something of a risk, drawing attention to myself in this manner. But I couldn’t think of any other way to find out what was going on. How could the crew not have found the corpse of Walter Kendall?

  Heinrich shook his head, in answer to my question. The steward was on his way back to the dining hall, to lend a hand with the cleaning up. I had buttoned-holed him midway along the connecting passage. He had thought for a moment before answering. ‘I am afraid not, sir. I haven’t seen him since last night. Is something the matter?’

  ‘No, not at all,’ I insisted, a little too firmly. ‘I just wanted to check he was all right. We had a bit of an extended night cap last night. Probably had a bit too much of the old sauce.’

  The steward did not understand. ‘Sauce?’

  ‘Lemonade. Alcohol.’

  ‘Oh, I see.’ He smiled.

  ‘Must have a splitting headache this morning. Probably still in his cabin sleeping it off. Did you...clean the rooms yourself?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Myself and two other cabin stewards. We change the sheets every day, for your comfort.’ The young man was doing his best to be helpful but he wasn’t making any sense.

  ‘So...Mr Kendall was in there when you cleaned it?’

  The steward considered for a moment. ‘No, sir. He couldn’t have been. We don’t clean the cabins if they are occupied.’

  ‘Ah. So he must be up and about then?’

  ‘I suppose so, sir,’ Heinrich said. ‘I believe he may have been intending to send a telegram this morning. Perhaps he has gone to the radio room?’

  ‘Yes, of course. That must be it. Journalists, eh? Always keeping busy. Can’t trust them as far as you can throw them.’

  ‘No, sir.’ The steward hesitated. ‘Is there anything else I can help you with?’ I was hovering, rather, and he did have duties to attend to.

  ‘No, nothing else.’ My brain was racing, trying to make sense of the situation. How could the stewards not have found Walter Kendall’s body? The American was stone cold dead. There was no way they could have missed him. What on earth was going on? ‘And you’re certain his cabin was cleaned?’ I asked again. I had no reason to doubt Heinrich’s word – he certainly had an honest face – but the body couldn’t just have gone walkabouts. Kendall had been as dead as the proverbial dodo.

  ‘Yes, sir. All the rooms have been cleaned. Those that are occupied.’

  I scratched my chin distractedly. ‘Occupied? Why, are there empty cabins?’

  ‘Yes, sir. We are not fully booked.’ He gestured to the port corridor. ‘This one on the corner is empty. And one of the rooms next door to your own cabin.’ On the other side from Thomas McGilton.

  A sudden, mad thought struck me. Could someone have moved the body, before the room was cleaned? No, that was ridiculous. No one could have broken into Kendall’s cabin after Maurice and I had both been in there and dragged a hefty corpse across the deck. And even if they had, they could not have got far. The passenger decks may have been quiet, in the small hours, but the rest of the ship, even in the dead of night, would have been swarming with crewmen. Unless they had dumped the body somewhere nearby, I thought. Perhaps in one of these empty rooms.

  Heinrich was
attempting, very politely, to make sense of my rambling questions. ‘Do you wish to change cabins, sir?’

  ‘No, I...’ I considered for a moment. I didn’t want to provoke his suspicion any further than I already had. ‘Well, yes, actually. Not me, my manservant. Maurice. Can’t get a wink of sleep with him in the room,’ I said. ‘He snores abominably. Thought I might shuffle him off somewhere else.’

  ‘I understand, sir. It was quite a noise.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’ I stared at the lad blankly.

  He grinned again and his whole face lit up. ‘I heard quite a noise when I was returning the boots to your door this morning.’

  What on earth was he babbling about? Maurice didn’t really snore. He was quieter in bed than Walter Kendall and Kendall was dead. ‘I’m not sure I understand.’

  The steward’s smile vanished as he realised he had overstepped the mark. ‘Nothing, sir.’ Perhaps he had heard McGilton next door. ‘If your valet wishes to move, I can arrange it for you.’ He gestured again to the cabin on the corner. ‘Would you like me to open it up so that you can have a look?’

  ‘No!’ I exclaimed. That was the last thing I wanted. If I was right and Kendall’s body had been moved, then like as not it would have been dumped somewhere close by, where no one was likely to look. And that cabin was the best bet available. It was next door to Mrs Koenig, two doors down from Kendall himself. If the body was in there, the last thing I wanted was Heinrich stumbling across it at my behest. ‘No, I think the one next door to mine will do. Keep my man close at hand, for emergencies.’

  ‘I understand, sir. I will arrange it for you.’

  ‘Thank you, Heinrich. I appreciate it. Oh, you might have a look at the lock on my door, while you’re at it.’ I was saying anything now, just to distract his attention. ‘I can’t get the damn thing to close properly.’

  ‘I will attend to it this morning,’ he assured me.

  ‘Good man.’ My hand went automatically to my pocket, to grab a few coins, but I stopped myself, knowing the young lad would not accept them. I was trying my best not to appear flustered, but I was not making a good job of it. Thankfully, the steward was already heading off about his duties.