The Hindenburg Murders (20 page)

TWELVE

HOW THE HINDENBURG BUZZED BOSTON, AND LESLIE CHARTERIS TUGGED A PANT LEG

I
N THE DRIZZLY DARKNESS OF
the predawn morning hours, the
Hindenburg
got its bearings thanks to the tiny twinklings of coastal lighthouses, glimmering up through the gloom below like displaced stars. Trekking along at sixty-three knots, just a few miles from the shore, the great airship swooped so low, her altitude was less than her own length. Rudely wakened fishermen floundered from their shacks, rubbing sleep from their eyes, summoned by the husky rumbling of engines in the sky, only to see the massive ship pass overhead like a mysterious gray cloud.

About the same time those fisherman were stumbling groggily back to their beds, Leslie Charteris was sitting up in his, every bit as groggy as they, if not more so. How he had gotten into the bunk, he was unsure—he assumed sometime in the night he’d woken from the blow, found himself on his cabin floor, and felt his way up to the softer surface of the bedding, flopping there, unconsciousness giving way to sleep.

Now he was awake, but his head was pounding and he was dizzy to boot. The cabin was still shrouded in darkness. He managed to rise to his feet—a task that seemed to him no more difficult than scaling a cliff—and stood there for several long seconds getting his bearings, his balance, then his fingers guided him like a blind man reading Braille to the light switch.

As the light clicked on, its forty watts seemingly flooding the cabin with dazzling light, Charteris closed his eyes tight and groaned with discomfort. He sat down on the edge of his bunk and held his head in his hands; in back, his fingers found a goose egg almost dead center—no clotted-over blood, though.

Breathing easier now, his head still hurting but the dizziness ebbing at least, he returned to his feet, which were steady enough, and lumbered the great distance of a foot or two to the washbasin, where he stood sloshing water on his face for at least a minute.

Studying himself in the mirror, he realized he was still wearing his white dinner jacket—rumpled, to say the least, though his bow tie was perfectly in place. That made him laugh, which made his head throb, so he stopped. Something winked at him from the floor—his monocle. He stooped, picked it up—it was in the corner, where the bunk met the wall—and the round glass eyepiece was undamaged. He snugged it into place.

Soon he was in his underwear, slippers, and a robe. His wristwatch said the time was 4:30
A.M
.; most of the
Hindenburg
was still asleep, the passenger decks anyway. He was unaware that the ship was a mere four-hundred-some miles from Lakehurst, New Jersey, her destination.

But he did realize that time was slipping away. He could not roll back into his bunk, however his head might throb, however tired he might still be. So in his robe he made his way down to
B deck, where the shower was free; in fact, not even a steward was in attendance. No reservations, no one to cut off the flow of water for conservation reasons.

He therefore took the longest shower in the history of the
Hindenburg
—perhaps a good fifteen minutes—and while the water pressure was nothing to write home about, the spray was hot enough to relax and soothe him and make him feel human again. Alive.

Back in his cabin, he put on a yellow sport shirt, tan slacks, and a brown herringbone drape-style sport coat. The freshly shaven man in the mirror seemed none the worse for wear, so Charteris set about his business.

The first order of which was to knock at Chief Steward Kubis’s door. Kubis was up, already in his crisp white jacket and perfectly knotted black tie; but the steward was still surprised to see Charteris so early.

“What is it, sir?”

“Take me to see the two captains.”

“Captain Pruss and Mr. Lehmann, sir?”

“That’s right. Then fetch Colonel Erdmann and bring him to us. And that’s all the discussion we’re going to have about it, Heinrich.”

Kubis nodded, and within five minutes Charteris was once again in Ernst Lehmann’s cabin, in the forward officers’ quarters section of the ship. The small window let in the light of early morning; the former
Hindenburg
captain’s accordion again sat on the floor, resting against the bulkhead as if tuckered out from last night’s sing-along.

Lehmann, in a gray suit and blue bow tie, sat with his back to his aluminum desk, facing Charteris, who again sat on the single bunk. Captain Pruss, in his impeccable blue uniform,
stood at the door, hands clasped behind him. Kubis, God bless him, had gone after coffee and a metal pot on a metal tray rested on the desktop and all of the men were sipping at steaming hot cups, savoring the brew as if it were a lifesaving elixir.

Both captains listened with quiet alarm lengthening their expressions as the author informed them of his midnight intruder, apparently a crew member.

Lehmann, teeth clasped on the stem of his unlighted pipe, posed the first question, not to Charteris but to Captain Pruss. “Do you think this has to be a crew member? Could someone else have acquired a uniform?”

Pruss frowned, shrugged. “Uniforms are plentiful enough on this ship, but I’m not sure how—”

“It has to be a crew member,” Charteris said, interrupting. “Or someone higher up than that, pretending to be one.”

Lehmann drew back. “What are you implying?”

“Nothing. Just examining the facts. My cabin door was locked—and my uninvited guest was waiting inside for me.”

“So he had a passkey,” Pruss said.

“Yes—which means a crew member, a steward, an officer. Not a passenger.”

Sighing, shaking his head, nibbling on the prop pipe, Lehmann said, “And here we’ve been considering only passengers as our suspects.”

“What if the murderer—a passenger—had Knoecher’s key?” Pruss asked. “Your cabin mate, after all?”

“I’ve considered that. But that key almost certainly went out the window with Knoecher, tucked away in his pocket—and now in some shark’s belly.”

A knock at the cabin door announced Erdmann, who looked alert and businesslike in a well-pressed three-piece
brown suit. The Luftwaffe colonel nodded his good mornings, helped himself to a cup of coffee, sat next to Charteris, who filled him in.

“I could not have anticipated this,” Erdmann said, eyes glazed. “There were no crew members on Knoecher’s subject list at all.”

“Mr. Charteris,” Captain Pruss said, exasperation coloring his voice, “we have sixty-one crewmen on this ship. How do you suggest, in the short time left on this voyage, we narrow that number to one?”

Charteris sipped his coffee. “Oh, I already have a suspect for you—that is, if you’re interested, gentlemen.”

“Don’t be coy,” Erdmann growled.

“You have a rigger named Eric Spehl.”

Everyone frowned, but particularly Captain Pruss, who said, “Why, yes—how is it that you know one of our crewmen, Mr. Charteris?”

“He went out of his way to come meet me on A deck—broke a regulation doing so, for all I know.”

Lehmann looked up from his coffee cup to say, “He did. Crew members are strictly segregated from passengers.”

Charteris shrugged. “In any event, he sought me out, said he was a fan—even had a book for me to autograph.”

Colonel Erdmann shrugged, too. “Why take that at anything but face value? You’re a famous man, Mr. Charteris. Is it surprising you have a reader among our crew?”

“Something about his manner seemed… off-kilter. His words were admiring, but now, upon reflection, his manner seemed something else again. I believe I was being sized up.”

Eyes narrowing, Lehmann leaned forward. “For a midnight beating, you mean?”

“Yes. I’m somewhat bigger than he is, and he might have wanted a look at me. He’s rather slight, young Spehl, but he has powerful hands.”

And Charteris touched his throat, twitching a smile as he recalled the stranglehold.

Erdmann shifted on the bunk, saying, “And his purpose was to warn you off your investigation?”

“The voice in the dark said I was to stop what I was doing, that’s right.”

Lehmann was shaking his head, chewing on the pipe stem. “Just because this boy asked you for an autograph… that isn’t very much to base a case on, Leslie.”

“We have much more than that. It, uh, may not seem very sporting to you, gentlemen, but I took a bite out of this particular assailant.”

Erdmann blinked. “A bite?”

“Not having a guard dog handy, or Spah’s bitch Ulla, I had to do it myself. I bit him on the ankle—good and deep. I drew blood.” He sipped his coffee, as if to banish the taste.

Lehmann’s eyes were wide. “So if Eric Spehl has a human bite mark on his ankle…”

“More or less human,” Charteris said. “Why don’t you fetch the lad?”

The two captains and the Luftwaffe colonel all exchanged glances, as if waiting for someone to make a decision.

Oddly enough, considering the influence of the
Reederei
director and the Luftwaffe undercover agent, it was Captain Pruss who stepped forward.

“I’ll have him summoned. I believe the boy is on duty right now.”

Pruss stepped out, and Charteris said, “I think it was his right ankle, but I can’t be sure. It was, after all, pitch-black in there.”

Pruss, having dispatched an underling to bring the rigger, stepped back inside the cabin.

“What do you suggest we do,” Erdmann said, “if the boy does have the impression of your teeth on his ankle?”

Charteris grinned. “Well, hell, Fritz—you’ve been dying to pinch somebody. Here’s your chance. Put him under house arrest and haul his Aryan behind back home and turn him over to one of your goon squads. Put all that nasty gestapo energy to some proper use, for a change.”

Half of Erdmann’s face smiled but there was no mirth in it. “Sometimes you test my patience, Mr. Charteris.”

“My apologies. I get cranky when I’m attacked in the night.”

Before long, a steward delivered the seemingly bewildered, baby-faced Spehl to the cabin. Holding his cap in his hands, the tall, slender rigger—in his gray uniform and matching slippers—already looked like a prisoner.

“Mr. Spehl,” Captain Pruss said in German, “lift your trouser leg.”

“The right one,” Charteris said, also in German.

The pale, blue-eyed boy frowned in blinking confusion, turning to Pruss. “Sir?”

“Just obey the order, Rigger.”

“Yes, sir.”

And the wide-eyed, apparently perplexed young crew member tugged up his gray pant leg.

No bite mark was readily apparent.

Charteris knelt before the lad, and had a closer look: nothing. Just pale flesh, and an innocent blond down, as if Eric Spehl had barely entered puberty.

Irritated, Charteris lifted the rigger’s left pant leg himself—and the result was the same.

Nothing. No bite mark. Pink downy flesh.

The author pulled the boy’s right sock down, yanked the trouser leg higher, thinking perhaps his bite had been higher or lower than his memory, and his perception in the darkened cabin, had led him to believe.

“Captain Pruss,” Spehl said, voice cracking with embarrassment, “with all due respect, sir, what is he doing?”

“Just stand fast, Rigger.”

Charteris did the same with left sock and pant leg.

Nothing.

Chagrined, his head still pounding, Charteris rose, and found himself staring into the blank face of Eric Spehl, and the clear blue eyes of Eric Spehl—eyes that somehow, somewhere, conveyed to Charteris laughter.

This boy was guilty—in one fashion, one way, or another. But Charteris could not prove it—nor could he even say, at this moment, why he was so convinced.

“That will be all, Rigger,” Pruss said.

“Yes, sir,” Spehl said, with a respectful nod to his captain, and darted out.

Charteris sat back down on the bunk, heavily. “Could I possibly have a goddamn cigarette?”

Lehmann nodded, and took a book of matches from a desk drawer. Charteris fired up a Gauloise, and provided the Luftwaffe colonel with one, as well.

Getting his pipe going, Lehmann said, “So much for your suspect.”

“He’s the one,” Charteris said.

“How do you know?” Pruss asked.

“I know.”
His eyes were laughing at me,
he thought, but didn’t say it.

Wreathed by his own sweet-smelling tobacco smoke, Lehmann said, “Perhaps you didn’t bite as hard as you thought….”

“I drew blood. I broke skin.”

Erdmann said, “Then that young man has remarkable recuperative powers.”

Charteris snapped his fingers. “Damn! That’s it.”

“What is ‘it’?” Erdmann asked, sighing smoke.

“He
sent
the message, but he didn’t deliver it.”

“What?”

“He sent some crony of his, some other crew member to thrash me.”

Lehmann was shaking his head. “Now, please, there’s simply no basis to this…. You’re just being stubborn, Leslie.”

“Oh, I’m stubborn all right, but there’s a basis, too. Spehl had another crew member with him—who accompanied Spehl when he came to see me, to have his book autographed.”

Now Lehmann leaned forward, keenly interested. “
What
other crew member?”