A Question of Guilt

17

Crippen was everywhere. At Vernet-les-Bains in the eastern Pyrenees with a youth. At Llangranog in west Wales with a young lady. At Stonebridge in Sussex, he was arrested. Seeking lodgings with his companion at Willesden in London, he needed rescuing from a fierce crowd by the police.

A young female found drowned at Bourges in central France, and many others elsewhere in Europe, were weightily announced by the police forces as not being Miss Le Neve. The Battersea Flat Crime, the Slough Murder, the Train Murder were outshone in the newspapers. _The Times_ gave Crippen four columns and invariably called him 'Dr' in inverted commas, which infuriated Eliot. The William Atherstone who comforted Belle after her disaster at the Metropolitan shot himself in Battersea. The coroner relished the coincidence, and the next day dropped dead himself.

In the North Atlantic, shortly after midday on Friday, July 22, Captain Henry Kendall of the 5,000-ton Canadian Pacific Line's Montrose, sent his white-jacketed 'tiger' to present his compliments to Dr Stewart and invite him for a peg before lunch.

A ship's captain's life is as lonely as Diogenes'. He intrudes among his officers like a headmaster amid his boys. The passengers who are not wearisome provoke jealousy among the others from invitations to his cabin. Engineers prefer their own company, and he can no more sit with his purser than a lord with his butler. His only irreproachable companion is the ship's doctor, trusted confidant of everyone on board.

The captain's quarters in the Montrose shone with teak, brass and leather, in the style of supreme marine comfort. The ship was ten years old, 250 steerage passengers segregated by sex with bunks in her converted hold, twenty saloon class with cabins and meals at the officers' tables. She had sailed two days before, from Antwerp for Quebec.

'Mr John Robinson and Master Robinson.' Captain Kendall swivelled in his leather chair. He was middle-aged, square-jawed with a long mouth and protuberant ears. 'Have you noticed anything about them?'

'The son is a wee bit overweight,' observed the doctor over his whisky. 'I saw a couple of safety-pins holding his trousers together at the back. He's going to California for his health. I haven't been invited to inspect his chest.'

'I should think not!' exclaimed the captain. 'They booked through our Brussels' agents, just before sailing. Their luggage consists of a handbag bought in Belgium. Their clothes, the brown suits and canvas shoes they stand up in. I examined their hats while they were at lunch yesterday,' he continued significantly. 'The rim of the boy's is packed with paper.'

The doctor thought it odd that the captain should go about spying on passengers' hats.

'My suspicions were aroused before we left the Scheldt. I saw the boy squeezing the father's hand immoderately upon the boat deck. Unnatural for two males.'

'Unnatural, but not unknown.'

The captain leaned towards the doctor, who sat on a leather bench against the bulkhead. 'When I spoke to Robinson just now, he said they'd laughed all night over the comic ditty at the smoking-concert, _We All Walked Into the Shop.'_

Smiling, the doctor recollected in song, _'One night while out with several pals, 'Twos raining hard outside, we saw a card in a milkshop window, Families Supplied…_ How's the chorus go…? _We ordered a couple of kids apiece, Then we all walked out again…We all walked into the butcher's where The Meat was hung on pegs, The fat old butcher kept shouting out, I've got some lovely legs-'_

'I told Robinson a funny story,' the captain interrupted. 'To make him laugh,' he explained. The doctor looked lost. 'To see if he had false teeth. And he had,' said the captain triumphantly. 'He has no moustache, but is growing a beard. It makes him look more like a farmer every day. His nose has marks. Yet he wears so spectacles. Well, doctor? What do you make of that?'

'I can't make anything of it, sir.'

'I make of it that Master Robinson is a girl.' The captain folded his arms. The doctor said nothing. Like many captains, his was a spasmodic eccentric.

'A girl,' Captain Kendall repeated, delighted with the mystification. Insatiable with detective stories, he revelled in playing the detective. As a junior officer, he was scourge of the ship's card-sharpers. 'Haven't you seen the "boy's" hands? Soft and white. Nails carefully manicured. And how refined and modest he is, how under his father's thumb. And his endearing smile?'

'Well, I noticed the father cracks nuts for him.'

'This morning I called, "Mr Robinson!" on deck. He paid no heed, till the boy had the presence of mind to make him turn.'

Captain Kendall tapped the pile of crumpled newspapers Dr Stewart had observed on his desk. 'Why do you suppose I had the chief officer collect every English and Belgian newspaper on board? They must not suspect their deeds are discovered-they might do something rash. They must not suspect what I suspect. That the Robinsons are _Dr Crippen and Miss Le Neve.'_

'Good God,' exclaimed the doctor. 'Shall you put them in irons?'

'On the other hand, they may not be,' the captain admitted lamely. 'Which could land me in all sorts of trouble with head office. So I prepared this for the Marconi operator.'

The doctor read the pencilled form from the captain's desk drawer.

PIERS LIVERPOOL HAVE STRONG SUSPICIONS THAT CRIPPEN LONDON CELLAR MURDERER AND ACCOMPLICE ARE AMONG SALOON PASSENGERS MOUSTACHE TAKEN OFF GROWING BEARD ACCOMPLICE DRESSED AS BOY VOICE MANNER AND BUILD UNDOUBTEDLY A GIRL BOTH TRAVELLING MR AND MASTER ROBINSON KENDALL.

'This very morning,' Captain Kendall continued impressively, 'Robinson-Crippen-sat looking aloft at the wireless aerial, with the crackling electric spark of the messages, and said, 'What a wonderful invention it is!' But time is running short. Our wireless has a range of 150 miles. We are already 130 miles west of the Lizard. Should I send it?'

'Undoubtedly,' urged the doctor. 'Now you mention it, I have noticed how the girl's under his hypnotic influence, how she follows him everywhere. Though from her lack of distress, she must surely be utterly ignorant of the horrible crime committed?'

'Do you know what he's reading?' The captain grinned. 'A shocker by Edgar Wallace, _The Four Just Men._ It's about blowing up Parliament. The villains have Ј1000 on their heads-two-hundred and fifty apiece, the same as our friends the Robinsons. Another peg?'

'Thank you, sir. Only a chota peg.' It was seafarer's Hindustani for a small drink.

The Morse of Captain Kendall's message was received at 3.30 that Friday afternoon by Crookhaven Wireless Station on the coast of County Cork, which passed it to the Canadian Pacific office in Liverpool, which passed it to Scotland Yard, which dispatched Chief-Inspector Dew the next morning by the White Star Laurentic from Liverpool as 'Mr Dewhurst' on 'Operation Handcuffs', unbeknown even to his wife.

The life of a secret with a fortune in its pocket is short among the brigands of Fleet Street. Monday morning's papers announced that Dew had left. He was aboard the Allen Line's Sardinia to New York from Le Havre. Crippen had fled, disguised as a cleric with an effeminate son. By Tuesday the _Liverpool Courier_ laid hands on Kendall's message. Crippen was _trapped by wireless!_

The Montrose carried the marvellous instrument, which a member of Parliament had tried a fortnight earlier to make compulsory on all ships, but was defeated on the argument of expense. Crippen was under restraint. Miss Le Neve had confessed. No, he was not, and she had not. The only sure news was their sailing westwards unaware of Dew overhauling them in a liner three knots faster. It caught public imagination like a race to the moon.

The front pages had Atlantic maps, the two ships' positions marked daily. The world first learned of Father Point, near the New Brunswick port of Rimouski. '"Dr" Crippen will arrive home in ample time for the adjourned inquest on August 15,' observed _The Times_ cosily. CRIPPEN'S LIFE AT SEA DESCRIBED BY 'WIRELESS', said a special edition of the _Weekly Dispatch,_ above photographs of Crippen with his round glasses and moustache, Belle Elmore, Inspector Dew, Captain Kendall in oak-leaved cap, Ethel looking soulful, and even Charlotte the first Mrs. Crippen, short-haired and pudding-faced, who had died in fits at Salt Lake City. Mr Eddie Marr, backer of Aural Remedies, appeared at its Kingsway Office and scraped Crippen's name from the glass front door.

The world held its breath-the Laurentic was slowed by fog in the mouth of the St Lawrence. Perhaps the pursuit of Dr Crippen might reach the ears of the only couple in civilization still ignorant about it? Perhaps they would jump over the side, and ruin the fun? The Laurentic reached Quebec on Friday night. Inspector Dew was cheered from the dockside. At 8.30 on Sunday morning, in a white hat and blue suit disguised as a pilot, a lifeboat rowed by sailors took him to the newly-anchored Montrose off Father Point quarantine station.

The two men met on the boat deck, abaft the funnel. 'Good morning, Dr Crippen.' Ethel was in her cabin, reading Georgie Sheldon's _Audrey's Recompense._ She was arrested, screamed and fainted in Dew's arms.

'Murder and mutilation-oh God!' said Crippen. He was searched. He had 10 dollars, and two diamond rings sewn into his undervest. He carried visiting-cards printed, _E Robinson amp; Co. Detroit, Mich. Presented by Mr John Robinson._ One had written on the back, _I can't stand the horror I go through every night any longer, and as I see nothing bright ahead and money had come to an end, I have made up my mind to jump overboard tonight. I know I have spoiled your life, but I hope one day you can learn to forgive me. With last words of love, your H._

Ethel had a sachet of white powder. 'Doubtless poison,' reported _The Times,_ though it was a headache cure. The stewardess lent her a blouse, skirt and petticoat. The _Montrose_ blew her whistle. The press poured aboard from their pilot boat, overrunning the ship, interviewing every passenger, even if few spoke English. Ten days later, some reporters were struck by measles, which was rampant in the steerage.

'How can the man possibly have a fair trial after this cinematograph chase?' Eliot demanded furiously. 'It was completely unnecessary. Captain Kendall could have got him arrested in Quebec. The Canadian police are surely equipped with handcuffs and an extradition treaty?'

It was the Monday morning of August 19. All the newspapers printed a photograph of the gale-swept dockside at Liverpool. Crippen's plea against extradition from Quebec as an American citizen had been brushed aside. The Canadians excitedly discovered that he had lived fourteen years before in Toronto with a plump, fashionable woman, presumably now recovered from the Hilldrop Crescent cellar floor. In prison, Ethel had a dressmaker to provide a costume from the $60 found on her. Crippen so disgusted the other prisoners, he had to exercise alone. The Bishop of London sent him a book, but he never read it. Inspector Dew took a holiday at Niagara.

On the suddenly lowered baggage gangway of the Megantic at Liverpool, bowler-hatted, raincoated Dew clutched the handcuffed Crippen wearing his captor's ulster, collar up to hide his face from the booing crowd. As Strachey was writing of General Gordon, Dew had left England already famous and would soon be glorious. The Liverpool police saw no point in shading from his radiance. Their chief took a tender to the Mersey Bar and his officers swarmed aboard in port like bumboat women at Suez.

The homecomers had been reinforced by Crippen's other luncheon guest at the Holborn Restaurant, Sergeant Mitchell, dispatched in the _Lake Manitoba_ with wardresses Foster and Martin from Holloway Jail. Dew sailed home as Silas P Doyle, Crippen as Cyrus Field, Ethel as J Byrne, Mitchell as M F G Johnston, but the wardresses remained themselves.

Ethel used the passenger gangway. On the 2.23 to London, the pair had separate compartments with blinds drawn in the reserved coach next to the engine, first class. At 7 o'clock, Inspector Kane was waiting to welcome them at Euston. Groaning and hissing, straining against the wooden barriers, the crowd glimpsed three motor-cabs taking them to Bow Street police station.

''The most exciting episode in the history of police work,' they call it.' Eliot tossed the paper with the Liverpool photograph disgustedly across the breakfast table. 'Instead of two lives splintered on the anvil of public ghoulishness.' For a month, he had complained angrily about the crowds with their cameras in Hilldrop Crescent. 'The organs they dug up might be anyone's.'

Nancy sighed. 'Eliot, dear, a suspicious mind is unattractive, but even the Archangel Gabriel would purse his lips over that cellar.'

'I know more about those famous remains than people on the newspapers, who can have no possible idea what they really look like, or smell like. Remember I went to the Society of Medicine on Saturday?' Nancy nodded. 'I met one of the pathologists who's working on them at St Mary's. Bernard Spilsbury, thought a pretty sharp fellow, about my own age. I knew him at St Bartholomew's. Do you know, there's no head? No bones? And they were buried in slaked lime, which does nothing to encourage decomposition. A doctor like Crippen would have known that quicklime was a different chemical.'

'You always said what a rotten doctor he was.'

'There weren't even any sex organs. The body may not be a woman's at all. Belle could still be alive and laughing. The publicity would put her top of the bill for life.'

'Miss Le Neve wouldn't do badly either. I saw she was offered $1000 a week to appear in vaudeville in New York.'

'She'd do better in London. This country has an unhealthy preoccupation with transvestism. Look at Vesta Tilley-made a fortune on the music-halls, dressing as a man and singing 'Burlington Bertie.' Look at pantomime. As much as English institution as Christmas, and the principal boy's always a girl in tights. But Ethel will end up on the scaffold, not the stage,' he ended gloomily.

'Perhaps she'll strike a bargain? Get her charge reduced from murder, by telling the police all she knows?'

'Turn King's evidence? Slip the noose round her lover's neck with her own hands? Women don't do that sort of thing.' Eliot stared speculatively through the lace curtains of their downstairs dining-room. He ejected Crippen from his mind. 'Can you be back at the surgery by midday, Nancy? I'm lunching with my father, remember.'

'Are you going to tell him about us?'

'If you like,' he said casually.

'What about us?'

'Whatever you like.'

'He'll be dreadfully shocked we're not married.'

'Less than your father would. In ducal circles, fornication is thought an occupation as healthily natural as hunting. Only the middle class disapprove. I suppose because of their everlasting suspicion of paying full price for slightly shop-soiled goods.'

Major Beckett was waiting on the broad marble chessboard of the Imperial Club's hall floor. Eliot found his hand seized with startling enthusiasm. The major usually greeted his son far more casually than his friends.

'You know him. You've met him,' the major exclaimed. 'By jove! Living just round the corner from Hilldrop Crescent. What's he like? A fish-eyed monster, as the servants say? A smooth-tongued Bluebeard?' He stopped two clubmen. 'May I introduce my son, Dr Eliot Beckett? He is a neighbour of the Crippens, on intimate terms with Belle Elmore and Ethel Le Neve.'

The pair instantly afforded Eliot an interest never given the son of a duke's man of business.

'It's so shockingly unfair,' Eliot repeated as they sat down to lunch. 'Crippen and Miss Le Neve have only this morning been faced with, and had the right to reply to, the charges which have already entered our folk-lore.'

'Yes, I saw they were due in the police court,' said the major absently, ordering the club's famous hors-d'oeuvre, which included relishes from India, China, Malay and Borneo.

At quarter-to-eleven, Ethel and Crippen had shared the well-shone wooden bench within the unassuming black cast-iron railings of the Bow Street dock. He appeared from the cells below first, politely standing aside for her, whispering something. He was in frock coat with wide lapels of grey silk, a high starched collar and striped shirt with a bright print tie. She wore a navy coat and skirt and a large blue hat with a motoring veil, which she raised to face Sir Albert de Rutzen, the magistrate. She kept twisting her black gloves.

Crippen was charged with murder, Ethel with being an accessory after the fact. The booing crowd still filled the street outside. A man from Madame Tussaud's waxworks took their photograph with a camera hidden in his bowler. In court was Sir William Gilbert, librettist of _Trial By Jury._

'Meanwhile, the inquest on Belle Elmore stands adjourned in the Holloway Central Library,' Eliot continued. 'With PC Gooch lugubriously telling Coroner Shroeder of five hours' hard digging in the cellar, as though it was his potato bed. The inquest will certainly return a verdict of wilful murder against Crippen. That's enough to commit him for trial at the Old Bailey, if the Bow Street magistrate hasn't obliged already. For a man to be effectively twice on trial for his life, in the same London postal district simultaneously, is something overlooked in Magna Carta.'

'Come, Eliot,' his father said impatiently. 'It's all open and shut, as if Inspector Dew had burst upon the wretch with the bloodstained chopper in his hand.'

'May I disagree, sir? Why, some tramp may have intruded into the house while Crippen was out at work.'

'Cutting up a man's wife is a procedure demanding more forethought than stealing his gold watch.'

'I cannot believe that one as mild, agreeable and loving as Crippen could live six months with Ethel Le Neve while the wife he had killed-or about half of her-was a foot under his boots every time he went to replenish the kitchen fire,' Eliot said firmly. 'And I think I know as much of the human mind as anyone. Crippen's only peculiarity was a taste for younger women-Belle 13 years his junior, Ethel 24. That's a failing he shares with a few men in this room, I daresay. I'm sorry for Crippen, I'm determined to help him as best I can.'

'You'll make yourself dreadfully unpopular.'

'Among whom? Not the people who matter to me, the working men, the labourers, the poor.'

'Listen to some advice which has stuck in my mind. 'Remember, never to make yourself the busybody of the lower classes, for they are cowardly, selfish and ungrateful. The least trifle will intimidate them, and him whom they have exalted one moment as their demagogue, the next they will not scruple to exalt upon the gallows'.'

Eliot smiled. 'Who said that? It's shrewd enough for either Charles I or Cromwell.'

'A sailor called Parker, just before he was hanged after the Nore mutiny of 1797.'

'As innocence is useless without a good lawyer,' Eliot resumed, 'I'm trying to get Marshall Hall for Crippen. I expect he'll take the brief cheap. The advertisement's worth a thousand times as much.'

'No. Get F E Smith.'

'Who's he?'

'The cleverest man in the Kingdom,' his father told him. Eliot shrugged. 'Did you see about me in the _Daily Mail?'_

'I do not read the yellow press.'

'It gave me quite a reputation as a medical missionary. Where one's most needed. Here in London.'

'How much longer are you going to throw your talents at the poor? You're like some _nouveau riche_ speculator courting popularity by tossing shillings to his tenants,' his father reprimanded him. He continued more pleadingly, 'Settle down. Make yourself a proper living. The Duke will still help you, I'm sure of that. His concern for myself has increased, as the father of a son with such peculiarities.'

'As a matter of fact sir, I am thinking of chucking the free surgery,' Eliot confessed. 'The trade unions have stopped supporting me. I suppose they feel their money is buying glory for myself, rather than their officials. So has the Church. It finds that relieving humanity of its pains in the next world is less expensive than in this one. Perhaps I'll go back to Switzerland and open my own sanatorium? Though that's like running a luxurious hotel, in which closest attention to the welfare of your guests cannot prevent your regularly losing a good many customers for ever.'

'That would be the end of your political ambitions.' His father sounded hopeful.

'I did badly in the last election, I might do worse in the next. What if I became a Labour MP? I'd have to be as respectable as a family solicitor. Look at our dashing, brilliant Victor Grayson. In the House of Commons at my own age, too independent a spirit for the burnt-out firebrands running the Labour Party. He's taken to the bottle in frustration. I'm chucking politics into the bargain. Medicine is far too important a human activity to be complicated by idealism. This club claret is excellent, sir.'

His father asked slyly, 'May I suppose there is a woman behind this welcome change of heart?'

'Yes. I'm living out of wedlock with an American lady.'

'Well, it's among a young man's amusements, _faire la bкte а deux dos._ Is she respectable?'

'Entirely.'

'No money, I suppose?'

'Oh, yes. About five million dollars.'

The colonel dropped his knife and fork. 'Good God, Eliot. And I was beginning to think you a bit of a fool.'

'How's mother?'

'She has discovered a new sort of climbing rose.'