The Hindenburg Murders

THIRTEEN

The missing crewman was a mechanic, Willy Scheef. Lehmann explained that a mechanic on a zeppelin faced one of the ship’s hardest, most demanding jobs-and by all accounts the noisiest, stuck inside a cramped engine gondola (there were four), keeping an eye on oil pressure, water temperature, and engine revolutions. And the diesel din (“the hammers of hell!” Gertrude Adelt had called it) was rivaled by intense engine heat.

“But mechanics also work the shortest hours,” Lehmann said in English. “Rotating shifts of two hours in the day, and three at night.”

“Plenty of time,” Charteris said, “to work a midnight visit in.”

“We can’t be certain it was Scheef who attacked you,” Erdmann put in sharply.

The four men were seated now, Lehmann on the edge of his desk, Pruss in the desk chair swiveled to face Charteris and Erdmann on the bunk. The foggy forenoon was filtering its way through the cabin’s small sloping window.

“It’s a simple process of elimination,” Charteris said. “If none of the sixty men you inspected has a bite on his ankle, Colonel, then the missing crew member is the man I bit.”

The Germans took a few moments to digest that tongue twister, then Captain Pruss said, somberly, “So we do have a murderer aboard.” His face was the color of pie dough.

“Perhaps not,” Lehmann said, wincing in thought. “Perhaps Mechanic Scheef had an accident and fell from his post; it’s happened before. The guardrail is rather insubstantial, and no doubt slippery in the rain.”

Hands on his knees, Charteris laughed, once. “Now that stretches coincidence and convenience a little far, doesn’t it?”

“Or,” Lehmann continued, as if the author hadn’t spoken, “Scheef may have panicked when he realized a Luftwaffe inquiry had been launched, and hastily committed suicide, rather than face Nazi justice.”

“It’s even possible,” Pruss said, “he might have parachuted. We’re close enough to shore.”

Charteris’s eyes widened, his monocle popping out; he caught it and said, “And no one saw?”

Pruss winced, as if embarrassed by his own argument. “He would not necessarily be noticed, if he jumped far enough aft.”

Erdmann was shaking his head. “If this Willy Scheef is our guilty party, he didn’t know my inquiry had to do with him. My two assistants and I went through the ship inspecting footwear, making sure the new regulation canvas-topped crepe-soled shoes were in proper use. It seemed the easiest way to check ankles for Mr. Charteris’s tooth marks.”

His unlit pipe in hand, Lehmann smirked humorlessly, saying, “A spy might easily have seen through such a simple ruse.”

“And I thought I wrote fantastic plots,” Charteris said, shaking his head, monocle back in place. “Gentlemen-a few hours ago, in this very cabin, we confronted the man who sent Willy Scheef to scare me off-one Rigger Eric Spehl-after which the man who sent the message scurried to push his messenger overboard.”

“Incredible,” Lehmann huffed.

“Well, it’s not as entertaining as slippery catwalks and suicidal murderers and parachuting spies. In a mystery novel, we call it ‘tying off loose ends.’ Something we picked up from real-life experts in murder… like Eric Spehl.”

“What evidence do you have that Spehl did this?” Lehmann almost demanded. “Even circumstantial-please share it with us.”

Charteris waved dismissively. “What more do you need? After we accused Spehl, he rushed to remove his accomplice!”

“We didn’t accuse him-we looked at his ankles.”

“Doing that may have been enough to inspire Spehl to confront Scheef, and then Spehl would have seen the bite, and, as the Americans say, push would have come to shove.”

“You’re spinning fiction again, Leslie,” Lehmann said, eyelids at half-mast, prop pipe in his teeth.

“I don’t understand you, Ernst. You have a murderer aboard. What are you going to do about it?”

Lehmann gestured with the pipe. “You haven’t answered my question, yet: what evidence, even circumstantial evidence, have you against Spehl?”

That stopped him. Charteris drew in a breath, held it, released it. “Nothing, really. Just what you already know.”

“That he sought you out for an autograph.”

Charteris’s forehead tensed. “I have the unsettling feeling you’re about to tell me that you intend doing nothing.”

“We will be landing this afternoon,” Lehmann said.

“Approximately four o’clock,” Pruss put in.

“It is my feeling,” the Reederei director continued, “that our best course of action is to land, allow our passengers to debark, bring new passengers aboard, and head home. Once home, a few days from now, the matter will be turned over to the S.D., and if Eric Spehl or any other crew member is guilty of murder, the S.D. will find it out, and prosecute and punish. We will not deal with this matter in the air, or on American soil.”

“Good Lord, man, he’s killed twice!”

Lehmann shrugged grandly. “Who has killed twice? We have gone over that. We don’t know what in fact happened to our missing passenger and our missing crew member. We will turn it over to the proper German authorities for investigation-in Germany.”

“Ernst, this is madness-”

Erdmann, who’d been strangely silent, said, “Mr. Charteris, while I am more in your camp in this matter than Captain Lehmann’s, I would have to agree with him that it is unlikely Spehl-or whoever our assailant might be-would kill again.”

“Fritz! What is your reasoning?”

“Let’s assume you’re right about Spehl-or substitute any other crew member, for that matter, including Scheef himself. Obviously, Eric Knoecher had something on whoever murdered him. So Knoecher was disposed of. Then Spehl… or whoever… became aware of the story you were spreading that Knoecher was still alive and unwell in your mutual cabin. This told him you were up to something, that you knew something. And of course you were asking questions, around the ship-discreetly investigating… but investigating.”

“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?”

“My pleasure, Walter.” And Charteris made the friendly Nazi an even stronger mix of bourbon and water, having barely touched his own first drink. “Tell me something about your background, why don’t you?”

“Well, I was born in Tettnang, near the Bodensee. My father was a foreman in the Daimler works and that’s where I first went to work….”

Charteris stopped listening, though the pudgy-cheeked mechanic could never have guessed. Barnholzer’s was a story the author didn’t feel the need to hear-after all, he knew it already.

This was a man, like so many of his countrymen, who had been born at exactly the right moment to receive the worst education possible, to endure postwar Soviet government, inflation, and depression. To men like Barnholzer-who didn’t seem such a bad sort-the National German Socialist Workers Party must have seemed like the greatest thing since sliced bread. After the perfidy of Versailles, the perceived greed of Jewish bankers, the ineptitude and anarchy of Catholic and Communist “democracy,” a weak boy like this could only inevitably embrace the strength of Hitler.

It was already an old story, and it sickened Charteris, whose smile did not betray that fact.

“I don’t know if this is what you are looking for, for your article, Mr. Chartreuse.”

“Oh yes, very interesting, very interesting indeed… can I freshen that for you?”

“Please.”

Charteris did so, then said, “Tell me about some of your friends. Steward Kubis mentioned one of the riggers-Eric Spehl?”

“Yes. Yes, Eric is a friend. Maybe not a close friend. Kind of odd, Eric-quiet, reserved. He even likes to read books.”

“Imagine. Is he in the party?”

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 the 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.