Thunderstruck (36 page)

“I feel certain that, if the audience present at my lecture had known that in addition to the ordinary chances of failure in difficult lecture experiments the display was carried through in the teeth of a cowardly and concealed attempt to spoil the demonstration, there would have been a strong feeling of indignation.”

Fleming allowed that tapping Marconi’s wireless communications might indeed constitute fair play, but disrupting a lecture to the Royal Institution was out of bounds. “I should have thought,” he sniffed, “that the theatre which has been the site of the most brilliant lecture demonstrations for a century past would have been sacred from the attacks of a scientific hooliganism of this kind.”

He wrote that he did not yet know who had attempted this sacrilege and urged any reader who might “happen to obtain a clue” to pass the information to him. “There may not be any legal remedy against monkeyish pranks of this description; but I feel sure that, if the perpetrators had been caught red-handed, public opinion would have condoned an attempt to make these persons themselves the subject of a ‘striking experiment.’”

From Fleming’s perspective, the letter was perfect, a jewel of subtle threat. He could not prove beyond doubt that Maskelyne was the pirate and therefore could not accuse him openly, but he had crafted his letter so as to transmit to the magician a warning that such behavior would not be tolerated. It is easy to imagine his satisfaction at opening
The Times
that Thursday morning and seeing those few inches of black type, knowing full well that not just Maskelyne but all of Britain’s scientists, statesmen, barristers, thinkers, and writers, perhaps even the king, would read them, and that Maskelyne’s teacup would by then be chattering against its saucer as the chill of impending danger crept down his spine.

T
HE LETTER
WAS
PERFECT—EXACTLY
what Maskelyne had hoped for. Better, actually, given the charmingly veiled threat that Fleming might stoop to inflicting physical harm. If his teacup chattered, it was from delight at the prospect of composing his reply. He posted his own letter on Friday, June 12, from the Egyptian Hall.
The Times
published it the next day.

“Sir,” Maskelyne wrote, “The matter referred to in your columns, yesterday, by Professor Fleming has a public importance far greater than he appears to imagine. It is a case in which members of the public are driven to take extreme measures in order to obtain information to which they are justly entitled.”

He wrote, “The Professor complains that, during his lecture on the 4th inst., the Marconi instruments were disturbed by outside interference, and desires to know the names of those who perpetrated the ‘outrage.’ His suggestions of public opprobrium, legal proceedings, and personal violence may, of course, be dismissed as mere crackling of thorns beneath the pot. Personally, I have no hesitation in admitting my complicity as an accessory before the fact, the original suggestion having been made by Dr. Horace Manders.”

He countered Fleming’s charge of hooliganism by asking, “If this be described as ‘scientific hooliganism’ and the like, what epithets must we apply to the action of those who, having publicly made certain specific claims, resent being taken at their word?

“We have been led to believe that Marconi messages are proof against interference. The recent Marconi ‘triumphs’ have all been in that direction. Professor Fleming himself has vouched for the reliability and efficacy of the Marconi syntony. The object of the lecture was to demonstrate this.” He wrote that he and Manders merely had put Fleming’s claims to the test. “If all we had heard were true, he would never have known what was going on. Efforts at interference would have been effort wasted. But when we come to actual fact, we find that a simple untuned radiator upsets the ‘tuned’ Marconi receivers—”

Here he twisted the knife.

“—and Professor Fleming’s letter proves it.”

Immediately the press leaped into the fray. If Fleming simply had kept the cap on his inkwell, the whole matter likely would have remained dormant. As the
Morning Leader
of June 15, 1903, noted, “Nothing would have been heard of it had not Professor Fleming sent his indignant letter to the ‘Times’ denouncing the ‘scientific hooligans’ who upset him. That was just what Mr. Maskelyne hoped for; and now he is chuckling at his success in ‘drawing the badger.’” In an interview in the Saturday, June 13, edition of the
St. James Gazette,
Maskelyne noted that he himself had composed the “diddling” verse. Now he added another, deeper dimension to his attack. “The Professor called up the name of Faraday in condemning us for what we did. Supposing Faraday had been alive, whom would he have accused of disgracing the Royal Institution—those who were endeavouring to ascertain the truth or those who were using it for trade purposes?”

He accused Fleming of giving two lectures that afternoon. “The first was by Professor Fleming the scientist, and was everything that a scientific lecture ought to be; the second was by Professor Fleming, the expert adviser to the Marconi Company.”

T
HAT
D
ECEMBER
M
ARCONI
declined to renew Fleming’s contract.

A
H

C
HIEF
I
NSPECTOR
D
EW BEGAN HIS INQUIRY
by paying a visit to the Music Hall Ladies’ Guild at Albion House, accompanied by an assistant, Det. Sgt. Arthur Mitchell. They were careful to keep their presence from being discovered by Crippen, whose office—“curiously enough”—was in the same building.

Over the next six days the detectives interviewed Melinda May, the Burroughses, and the Martinettis and talked again with John Nash and his wife, Lil. Dew heard about the rising sun brooch, and examined the correspondence that had taken place between Crippen and various members of the guild in the months since Belle’s alleged disappearance. He learned that Belle had been “a great favorite with all whom she came in contact with.” He collected details about her relationship with Crippen. Maud Burroughs described Belle “as always having her own way with her husband and going about just as she liked, which he apparently was content to submit to.”

Dew wrote a sixteen-page report on his findings and turned it in to Froest on July 6, 1910. Dew had doubts about whether further inquiry would turn up anything criminal. On the first page he wrote, “The story told by Mr. and Mrs. Nash and others is a somewhat singular one, although having regard to the Bohemian character of the persons concerned, is capable of explanation.”

Still, the story did contain contradictions that Dew considered “most extraordinary.” His recommendation: “without adopting the suggestion made by her friends as to foul play, I do think that the time has now arrived when ‘Doctor’ Crippen should be seen by us, and asked to give an explanation as to when, and how, Mrs. Crippen left this country, and the circumstances under which she died…. This course, I venture to think, may result in him giving such explanation as would clear up the whole matter and avoid elaborate enquiries being made in the United States.”

Superintendent Froest agreed.

On Friday morning, July 8, at ten o’clock, Chief Inspector Dew and Sergeant Mitchell walked up the front steps to No. 39 Hilldrop Crescent. The knocker on the door was new; the house seemed prosperous and well kept.

A
GIRL IN HER LATE TEENS
answered the door. Dew asked, “Is Dr. Crippen at home?”

The girl was French and spoke little English but managed to invite Dew and Mitchell into the front hall. A few moments later a woman appeared whom Dew judged to be between twenty-five and thirty years old. “She was not pretty,” Dew recalled, “but there was something quite attractive about her, and she was neatly and quietly dressed.”

He noticed that she was wearing a diamond brooch and knew at once it must be the rising sun brooch he had heard so much about.

“Is Dr. Crippen in?” Dew asked again.

He was not, the woman said. She explained that he had gone to his office at Albion House, in New Oxford Street.

“Who are you?” Dew asked.

“I am the housekeeper.”

Dew said, “You are Miss Le Neve, are you not?”

Her cheeks turned a faint rose, he noticed. “Yes, that’s right.”

“Unfortunate the doctor is out,” he said. “I want to see him rather urgently. I am Chief Inspector Dew of Scotland Yard. Would it be asking too much for you to take us down to Albion House? I am anxious not to lose any time.”

He of course knew exactly where Albion House was but did not want to give Le Neve an opportunity to telephone Crippen and warn him that two detectives were on the way. Le Neve went upstairs and returned with her coat. Dew noticed she had removed the brooch.

A few moments later they were aboard the electric tram on Camden Road. They rode it to Hampstead Road, where they caught a cab for the remainder of the journey through Bloomsbury to Albion House.

E
THEL’S RECOLLECTION OF THIS
encounter differed from Dew’s. Hers made no mention of the brooch or her initial claim to be the housekeeper but added a plume of detail that illuminated the moment and the personalities involved.

She was helping straighten up the house, “making beds and so on,” when she heard the knocker on the front door. It surprised her because tradesmen always used the side door. She listened at the top of the stairs as the French maid opened the door and a man asked, “Is Dr. Crippen at home?”

The maid did not understand the question. “Yes,” she said.

“What a stupid creature that is!” Ethel whispered to herself, then came down the stairs and saw that two men stood at the door. “I had not the faintest idea who they were or what they wanted,” she wrote.

“He is not at home,” she told the men, “and will not return until after six o’clock this evening.”

One of them looked at her “in a curious way,” she recalled. He said, “I beg your pardon, but I am informed that Dr. Crippen is still here, and I wish to see him on important business.”

“Well, you have been wrongly informed,” Ethel said. She told him that the doctor had left at his usual hour, just after eight o’clock.

“I am sorry to doubt your word,” the man said, “but I am given to understand that Dr. Crippen does not go to his office until after eleven. I feel quite sure he is in the house, and I may as well tell you at once I shall not go until I have seen him. Perhaps if I tell you who I am you will find Dr. Crippen for me.”

He then identified himself as Chief Inspector Walter Dew of Scotland Yard, and his partner as Sgt. Arthur Mitchell.

“All the same,” she said, “I cannot find Dr. Crippen for you. He is out.” She was angry now. “You will have to stay a long time if you want to see him here,” she said. “He will not be home until after six this evening. As you decline to believe me when I say he is not at home, you had better come inside and look for him.”

She led them into the sitting room.

Dew repeated that his visit “was most important” and that he would not leave until he had spoken with Crippen. He told Ethel to be “a sensible little lady” and get him.

Ethel laughed at Dew. She repeated that Crippen was not home. She offered to telephone him at his office.

Dew asked her instead to accompany them to the office.

“All right,” she said, “but you must give me time to dress properly.”

She went to the bedroom to change. She wrote, “I had no compunction in making them wait a good long time while I arranged my hair, put on a blouse, and generally made myself look presentable.”

Their visit puzzled her. “Yet I can honestly say that I was not much alarmed,” she wrote, “—only a little bewildered and more than a little annoyed.”

When she went back downstairs, she found Dew to be a changed man, suddenly affable and friendly and “inclined for conversation.” He asked her to sit down. “I would very much like to ask you a few questions,” he said.

He asked when she had come to live at Hilldrop and about Mrs. Crippen’s departure. Sergeant Mitchell took notes. Ethel told them what she knew and mentioned Crippen having received cables telling him of his wife’s illness and, later, her death.

“Did you see the cables?” Dew asked.

“No. Why should I? I do not doubt Dr. Crippen’s word.”

“Ah,” Dew said.

Ethel wrote, “He was always saying that little word, ‘ah,’ as though he knew so much more than I did.”

Again Dew asked her to accompany them to Crippen’s office. Now she resisted. She told him she was a woman “of methodical habits” and did not like having the day disrupted.

“No; I quite understand that,” Dew said, “but you see this is a matter of very special importance to Dr. Crippen. It is for his sake, you see.”

She assented.

A
T
A
LBION
H
OUSE
Ethel went to the upstairs workroom to get Crippen. She found him sitting at a table working on dental fittings, alongside his partner, Rylance. She touched him to get his attention and whispered, “Come out, I want to speak to you.”

Crippen asked why.

“There are two men from Scotland Yard,” Ethel said. “They want to see you on important business. For heaven’s sake, come and talk to them. They have been worrying me for about two hours.”

“From Scotland Yard?” Crippen said. “That’s very odd. What do they want?”

He was utterly calm, she wrote. She accompanied him down the stairs. The time was now, by Ethel’s recollection, about eleven-thirty
A
.
M
.

D
EW WAITED
. A
FEW
moments later Le Neve reappeared “with an insignificant little man at her side.” For Dew it was a revelatory moment. So this was the doctor he had heard so much about. Crippen was a small man, balding, with a sandy mustache. His most notable feature was his eyes, which were blue and protruded slightly, an effect amplified by his spectacles, which had thick lenses and thin wire rims. If Crippen was at all troubled by a visit from two detectives, he gave no sign of it whatsoever. He smiled and shook hands.

Dew kept it formal: “I am Chief-Inspector Dew, of Scotland Yard. This is a colleague of mine, Sergeant Mitchell. We have called to have a word with you about the death of your wife. Some of your wife’s friends have been to us concerning the stories you have told them about her death, with which they are not satisfied. I have made exhaustive inquiries and I am not satisfied, so I have come to see you to ask if you care to offer any explanation.”