The Hindenburg Murders (16 page)

Charteris shook his head. “Bad movies.”

“Wagner on the radio, all day, all night.”

“Not exactly music to fall asleep by, is it?”

Feibusch sighed. “So my friend Leuchtenburg chooses to stay drunk.”

“What do you do, Moritz? Besides fill out postcards?”

“I enjoy life, Lester. So this is a German ship? Does that mean Chef Maier’s food is any less tasty? Make the best of life, I say.”

“I guess that’s possible, when you can go back to San Francisco, at the end of the day.”

Feibusch paused in his postcard assembly. “You make a good point.” In a hushed voice, he said, “I still have many relatives in Germany. I help as I can.”

“How?”

“I’m bringing my two nephews over, to work in a canning plant. My mother, in October, when I come for the Easter selling, I will bring home with me. My wife and I have no children; Mama will be no burden.”

“Aren’t there restrictions… ?”

“The papers are difficult to come by, yes.” Feibusch looked side to side. Very quietly, he said, “A little money here, a little money there. German palms grease up like anybody’s. My biggest problem is Mama herself.”

“How so?”

“She doesn’t want to leave ‘her Germany’—even though it has not been
her
Germany for a long time. Did you know that there was a law passed recently, in the glorious fatherland? No Jewish old people allowed in German old folks’ homes; no Jewish orphans in the orphanages, either. Takes up too much valuable space.”

“Criminal.”

Feibusch shrugged elaborately, and returned to his postcards. “It will be Germany’s loss, America’s gain. The Nazis deprive Jews of their very citizenship—they cannot hold public office or enter the civil service, many fields are closed to them, teaching, farming, journalism, radio, even the stock exchange. Next it will be medicine, law….”

“It’s difficult to imagine where it will end.”

“Difficult and terrible, Lester. The real tragedy is, the German people themselves, they are not bad. It’s these leaders, these mad leaders.”

“But a people are only as good as their leaders.”

“I know, I know. Still, as individuals—I’ve met so many nice people on this trip. Like you, Mr. Charteris. What, if I may ask, is your heritage?”

“British subject—my mother was English, my father Chinese, a surgeon. I spend more time in America, these days. I plan to naturalize.”

“Good. Nothing against Britain, but America—that’s the place.”

A wry smile tickled Charteris’s lips. “No prejudice there?”

“Plenty. A Jew like me—a man of mixed blood like you, we will always meet stupidity, in a free land like America. Just, thank God, not this madness.”

Charteris nodded. “Well, as you say, on an individual basis, the Germans are a fine people. My cabin mate is German—poor blighter’s under the weather, though. Cooped up in our cabin with shakes and sniffles.”

“Too bad. Even with this rain, this voyage is a delight.”

“Well, Eric’s in no condition to enjoy. Eric Knoecher is his name, my cabin mate.”

“Oh, I’ve met him! The importer.”

“Yes, that’s right.”

Feibusch paused again, at his postcards. “He looked me up, first night. He seemed healthy enough, then. Compared notes, tricks of the trade. We’re in the same business, right?”

“Right.”

“Fine fellow, friendly fellow. Do give him my best, my sympathy. You see, there’s an example for you. Like you said.”

“Pardon?”

“Your cabin mate! As individuals, the Germans can be wonderful people.”

“Yes.” Charteris rose. “Eric would seem to be a shining example, at that…. If you’ll excuse me.”

“Certainly, Lester. Pleasure meeting you, nice chatting with you.”

“Likewise, Moritz. Can I post those for you?”

“Please!” Feibusch handed a batch of cards to Charteris, who dropped them down the pneumatic tube to the ship’s post office, while the seller of fancy goods returned his full attention to his stamping and signing.

TEN

HOW THE HINDENBURG SHADOWED THE TITANIC, AND LESLIE CHARTERIS MET A FAN

S
UMMONED BY THE SHIP’S GONG,
Charteris and Hilda had a delicious if uneventful lunch with the Adelts. Several casual mentions of his bedridden cabin mate created no reaction whatever from either husband or wife, though Gertrude made an interesting observation about the undercover Luftwaffe colonel.

“That man whose wife came aboard to see him off,” she said, “Colonel Erdmann… what do you suppose he’s a colonel of?”

“Beats me,” Charteris said.

“Military of some kind,” her husband said dismissively, dipping a spoon into his soup.

“He has such a sad face.” Gertrude’s pretty face was sad, itself. “So often he just sits near one of the observation windows, staring out at nothing with such a… profound look of sadness. Have you noticed, Leslie?”

“No,” he lied.

“It all but makes me cry.”

Her husband patted Gertrude’s hand. “You’re just tired. There’s nothing like boredom to wear a person out.”

Gertrude could only agree, and, after dessert, the man and wife disappeared for a postluncheon nap—such snoozes having become
de rigueur
on this voyage, which—though so much quicker than travel by steamer—seemed every bit as leisurely.

“You wouldn’t like to go to your cabin for a nap, dear, would you?” Charteris asked Hilda, as they strolled over toward the starboard lounge.

She almost smiled, her eyes wide and amused. “Alone or together?”

“I was thinking, together.” He yawned, not very convincingly.

“Do you think the Adelts are… napping?”

“If I had a wife that beautiful, I wouldn’t be.”

She nudged him with an elbow, but the faint amusement on her lips had fully blossomed into that wonderful kiss of a smile.

At the starboard promenade, he and Hilda saw more evidence of passengers lost in ocean-liner mode—an old couple sat in the lounge, blankets covering their legs, staring out at the grayness, as if on a steamer deck. (It
was
chilly today, and the stewards were rushing around closing the fresh-air vents.) Those two little boys were on the floor of the lounge, playing dominoes while at the adjacent table their mother wrote a letter and their father read a book—reading and letter writing not being restricted to the library. Around the lounge, and on the upholstered benches by the windows, other passengers were similarly occupied, jotting messages to friends or engrossed in some novel, unfortunately none of them having the courtesy of being wrapped up in anything of Charteris’s.

Margaret Mather, in a powder-blue frock with lacy collar and cuffs, appropriate for a woman perhaps half her age, sat
alone on one of the padded benches, looking rather expectantly out the slanting windows. In her lap, a hand clutching it, was a spiral pad.

“Hello, Miss Mather,” he said. “May we join you?”

The sparrowlike spinster beamed at him, smiled rather coolly at Hilda, and said, “Oh most certainly,” patting the bench next to her, her eyes locked on his.

The three of them squeezed onto the banquette.

“Do you know something we don’t know?” Charteris asked Miss Mather, as she continued to watch the gray overcast sky, an endless blue-gray sea below, about as boring a tonal study as he could imagine.

“Chief Steward Kubis came by a few moments ago,” Miss Mather said brightly, “and said we’d be coming to Newfoundland, shortly.”

Hilda rose and leaned against the shelflike sill. “I do not see land yet, Miss Mather.”

“Patience, dear.” Miss Mather smiled over at the author, perhaps pleased that he had not moved away, even though now there was more room on the bench. She almost whispered, “Your friend must not be an experienced traveler.”

“How often do you get to America, Miss Mather?”

“I try to get home at least once a year, to visit my brother—he teaches art and architecture at Princeton University. Or did I mention that already?”

“Is your brother as political as many professors are, these days?”

“I suppose so.” Again, she spoke sotto voce: “He’s certainly unhappy with the Germans for stifling the arts.”

“Well, it’s mostly the Jewish artists they’re stifling.”

“I hope that’s not all right with you, Mr. Charteris!”

He gave her an easy smile. “No. No, it isn’t. But what can one do?”

“One must try. What would you say if… I shouldn’t say.”

But she wanted him to ask, so he did. “What would I say if what, Margaret?… May I call you Margaret?”

“Certainly, Leslie.”

“You were saying….”

“Oh. Well, you may recall my extra luggage. Perhaps you thought that was just feminine vanity.”

“Never.”

“You see…” She curled a finger to bring his face closer to hers. “I carry certain items home with me, to sell for friends of mine.”

“Jewish friends?”

She reared away. “I didn’t say that. But it is true that there’s a terrible need for money for these poor people to buy their freedom. Isn’t it a shame?”

“Yes.”

Hilda almost squealed. “I see it! I see land!”

Charteris and Miss Mather joined Hilda at the windows and watched as Cape Race grew from a smudge on the horizon into a lighthouse-dotted shoreline giving way to vast green foothills. But even more exciting were the white dots along the coast.

“What are those?” Hilda asked, rather breathlessly.

“You’ll see soon enough,” Charteris said.

“Why, they’re icebergs!” Miss Mather said. Her eyes were glittering. “Oh, how thrilling! Did you know the
Titanic
met its fate in icy waters nearby? Just twenty-five years ago, that iceberg did its terrible deed….”

“I doubt we’ll crash into one,” Charteris said.

But there was no denying their ghostly beauty. The ship
was
flying low, the captain giving the passengers an eyeful of their first scenery, dipping to steer over a huge ’berg that might have been an abstraction in marble, set afloat by an eccentric artist.

“O iceberg shining white against the stone-gray sea,” Miss Mather said, regally, “with pools of vivid green whose forms spread greener still beneath the pale waters….”

Quickly, the spinster scampered back to the bench, snatched up her notebook, sat, withdrew the pencil from its wire spiral spine, and jotted down her immortal words.

“She’s a poet,” Charteris whispered to Hilda. “Muse struck her, apparently.”

Smirking, Hilda nodded and turned away, smothering a little laugh with a hand.

“Don’t be cruel, dear,” he whispered to her.

Miss Mather slapped her notebook shut and returned to the author’s side, saying, “I’ll complete it later. One must capture magic when one can—don’t you agree?”

“Oh yes.”

“I’ll let you see it, when I’ve finished.”

“Ah.”

Hilda said, “Look
now
!”

The sun had come out to lay a double rainbow around the airship, the mammoth iceberg sparkling as if diamond-studded.

“O rainbow, spring from everywhere,” Miss Mather proclaimed, “and I will watch you grow and grow, until beneath our floating galleon you form a circle complete.”

Then, pleased with herself, she scurried back to her notebook and preserved these magical words in pencil.

The coastline soon receded into the distance as the ship swung southward; before long, they were lost in gray fog over an invisible sea—familiar territory for this ship on this trip.

Charteris returned to Miss Mather’s side, on the bench. Hilda remained at the sill, watching the fog slither by like a giant’s cigar smoke.

Blessedly self-satisfied, Miss Mather closed her notebook, and then—as he was searching for a way to bring up Eric Knoecher—she did it for him, saying, “You know, that nice young gentleman I saw at your table, the first night?”

“Yes?”

“What’s become of him? He seemed like such a lovely boy.”

“He did? That is, he did. You spoke to him?”

“Yes.” She gazed contentedly into the memory of the encounter. “Very sweet—he sought me out, to… it embarrasses me to say so.”

“Please. You’re among friends.”

“He said I dressed beautifully. He said with my slender figure I might well be a… you’ll laugh.”

“No.”

“… a fashion model.”

Hilda laughed, but managed to turn it into a cough.

“His name is Eric, isn’t it?” Miss Mather went on.

“Yes,” Charteris said, “Eric Knoecher. He’s my cabin mate, actually.”

“Really? Well, where is he keeping himself?”

“
In
the cabin, I’m afraid. He’s come down with a terrible cold.”

“Oh dear! Such a nice-looking young man. Perhaps I could take him some soup.”

Charteris shook his head. “No, he’s specifically requested I keep everyone away from him—he’s afraid he’s contagious.”

“Oh!” Miss Mather glanced suspiciously at Hilda, then back to Charteris. “Well, uh, where are
you
staying, then?”

“With him. I seem to be immune.”

She sighed and sat back, notebook in her lap, held by both hands. “Well, please do give him my best.”

“We’ll do that,” Charteris said, and rose, and he and Hilda wandered over to the lounge. A steward was taking drink orders from the bar and Charteris asked for a double Scotch and water and Hilda requested a Frosted Cocktail.