The Hindenburg Murders - By Max Allan Collins Page 0,38

in a breath, then let it out in that rough-edged laugh he so adored. “You are shameless.”

“Thoroughly.”

Breakfast was typically Hindenburg opulent: oranges, bananas, scrambled eggs with cheese, two kinds of sausage, and those luscious warm pastries and rolls with honey and a rainbow array of jellies and jams.

In between nibbles of grape-jellied roll, she said, “You are not a philanderer, Leslie. After all, I am not a married woman, and you are not a married man.”

“To tell you truth,” he said, applying strawberry jam to his own roll, “technically I am. My divorce isn’t final for several months.”

“Still, you are unattached. As am I—I too am divorced.”

“You’ve been married?” He knew she had spoken of a boyfriend who died in the Spanish Civil War, but marriage hadn’t come up before.

“Twice,” she said. “That should not surprise you, considering last night.”

“When flying above the world, a worldly woman would seem an apt companion.”

A one-sided smile twitched her cheek; her eyes were fixed on him. “You remind me so of my first husband—he was an artist, too.”

“I’m glad to be thought of in that way—but I take it you mean he worked in oils on canvas.”

“Yes, and in watercolor. He really was not a wonderful artist by any standard, or even a successful one—but he was a beautiful man, with a big well-shaped head and strong round shoulders.”

“He does sound like me.”

She laughed a little. “I was only nineteen, and he was at least forty. We were together a long time.”

“How long is a long time?”

“Six years. Then, one day, he just left. He was gone for over a month, two months I think. My bad luck was that when he did come home, he found me with someone else. He beat the poor boy to a pulp, then stormed out again. That was the last I saw of him—the divorce was handled in the mails.”

Charteris sipped his black coffee. “He does sound like an artist. Was your second husband any improvement?”

“Not really. He owned a bar in Frankfurt. I am afraid I was attracted to him for more practical reasons, though he was fine to look at, too. I met my boyfriend—the patriot—and then my second marriage was over. Not after six years, that time—just six months.”

“Why are you sharing this with me, Hilda? Do you expect me to be shocked?”

“No. I expect you to understand that there have been many men in my life—you owe me nothing but these days, these wonderful days. And nights.”

“That’s a very modern outlook.”

“Thank you, Leslie.”

“But what if I develop old-fashioned ideas?”

A tiny smile flickered on the full lips, glistening with lipstick and just a little jam, in one corner. “I like you, Leslie.”

“I had assumed as much.” He reached across and gently thumbed away the jam.

Her chin crinkled in another smile, and then she said, “You see, I like men. Most women do not. Oh, they say they do—but what they are after, most women, is house and home and security. They do not see what I see in a man—or at least, some men.”

“Which is?”

Her eyes narrowed and glittered. “An opportunity to live a larger life. Without a man there is no way for a woman to get beyond a limited sphere of influence, of experience.”

Somehow he didn’t think this meant she was a gold digger: he took her at her word. It was adventure she wanted; a life worth living, not dishwater dull.

Nonetheless, the only adventure awaiting Hilda, after breakfast, was a shared puzzle with Gertrude Adelt in the starboard side’s reading and writing room.

“A thousand little gray-and-blue pieces,” Gertrude said, as the two attractive women drew up around a small round table, “and, properly assembled, we’ll have a magnificent picture of this very airship.”

“Sounds like a perfectly dreadful way to waste a morning,” Charteris said, eyeing a certain individual across the room, “but I won’t stand in your way.”

Nodding to Leonhard Adelt, who was pecking away at a typewriter at one of the wall desks, still earning his keep via that article on zep travel, Charteris headed over to a small table where a stocky man in his mid-fifties sat with a stack of postcards as thick as a Manhattan phone book.

The man—who wore a rumpled brown suit about the same color as his thinning hair, with pleasant if rather lumpy features—was Moritz Feibusch. Charteris had never met the man, nor had Feibusch been pointed out to him. But Charteris—newly minted amateur detective that he was—had deduced the identity of the