The Hindenburg Murders - By Max Allan Collins Page 0,5

villains always receive their just deserts. Would that real life had the decency to perform the same service.”

He squinted at her. “Are you an American, Miss Mather?”

“Born in Morristown, New Jersey, of all places. Now I consider myself a resident of the world.”

“Do tell.”

“My apartment is at the top of the Spanish Steps in Rome—from the second floor you can see St. Peter’s.”

“Really.”

“But I spend most of my time in travel. I do so adore travel, flying in particular. The Hindenburg should suit me perfectly—all the comfort of a luxury liner, and none of the seasickness…. What takes you to America, Mr. Charteris?”

He was polishing his monocle on his handkerchief. “I’ve been maintaining residences in both England and America, for several years now. Large country estate in the former, a bungalow in Florida… or rather I had a bungalow in Florida.”

“But no longer?”

Reinserting his monocle, he replied, “It’s my wife’s, now. My soon-to-be ex-wife.”

“Oh, you’re getting divorced? How terrible.” But a distinct tinge of “How wonderful” colored her tone. “I do hope this is not too melancholy a time for you.”

“Not at all, Miss Mather. My wife and I are parting friends. We have a wonderful daughter together, and we’ve agreed not to subject each other to any unnecessary unpleasantness.”

“How very admirable.” The smile again beamed beneath the veil. “How very civilized.”

They were in the middle bus, which just now was pulling out behind the lead vehicle. The rumble of the engine joined with the rough music of tires on cobblestone streets, accompanying the drunken folk songs emanating from the rear. None of this racket prevented Miss Mather from filling Charteris in on her life.

Henry James might have written it. Like most spinsters, Miss Margaret Mather—“a direct descendant of Cotton Mather himself”—had a dead fiancé in her distant past, due to a sailing accident on Cape Cod, near her family’s Quisset summer home. Her man’s-man father had been a successful lawyer in New York who had once gone ’round the world by clipper ship (“So, you see, my seven-league boots come naturally to me”). After her father retired, the family joined her ailing brother in Capri; the brother recovered, became a professor of art at Princeton, while the family stayed behind. Her mother had died in 1920, and Miss Mather had cared for her father until his death in ’29 at the ripe old age of ninety-four.

“I’m afraid I’m something of the black sheep of the family,” she admitted, “with my two meager years of schooling—but I’ve learned so much in my travels, and I’ve written a bit of poetry.”

“Ah.”

“Perhaps I could impose on you, at some point on the voyage, to read some of my work—the opinion of a professional author would mean so much to me.”

“Perhaps you could.”

What she really loved to do, as she’d indicated, was fly—from the glimmering Mediterranean to the sand dunes of the Sahara, from the Albanian mountains to the capitals of Germany and France, she’d seen them all from the open cockpit of a two-seater, goggles and helmet against the wind.

“You sound like you could give Amelia Earhart competition,” Charteris said. “When did you learn to fly?”

“Oh, I don’t know how to fly, myself. I always hire a pilot.”

Good-looking young male ones, he’d wager.

She continued her flirtatious chatter, letting him know what a woman of the world she was, as he took in the dusk-softened scenery through his rain-flecked window. Young tree toads sang in the farmlands they glided past; and as they neared the airfield, agriculture gave way to beech groves and pine stands, representative of that timeless bucolic Germany that seemed so incongruous in a country overrun with Nazis.

Miss Mather was noticing the scenery, too. “How enchanting, their green young leaves… May I share something rather personal with you, Mr. Charteris?”

“If you like.”

She touched a gloved finger to a veiled cheek. “It may seem absurd, for one who loves travel and flight, as I do… but all this afternoon, I’ve felt a certain… uneasiness.”

“Those thugs at the hotel would make anyone uneasy.”

“Oh yes! Do you know they charged me for fifteen kilos of excess baggage? I pointed out that at ninety-eight pounds I weigh considerably less than the average man, and some compensation would seem logical—but I was told, ‘It’s the rule—only twenty kilos allowed.’”

“Does seem unfair.”

“But no, no, Mr. Charteris, I don’t think it’s the dreadful gestapo that are giving me this sense of… what else can I call it but foreboding? Do you believe in premonitions?”

“Sometimes.”

“Well, would I seem