Thunderstruck

THE LADIES INVESTIGATE

FIRST SHE DISAPPEARED, ALLEGEDLY TO AMERICA, and now she was dead. None of it made sense; all of it stretched credibility. It was wonderful, in the Edwardian sense of the word, yet here was Crippen, the very soul of credibility, telling them it was so. He was, according to Maud and John Burroughs, “a model husband”; so “kind and attentive,” said Clara Martinetti; a “kind-hearted humane man,” said Adeline Harrison.

And yet.

There was the rising sun brooch worn so brazenly by the typist, and the fact that Belle had neither written nor cabled her friends since her departure and had not thought to send a wireless message—by now a “Marconigram”—from her ship, the kind of thing she would have delighted in doing for the surprise of it. There was the fact too that Crippen all along had seemed unsure of Belle’s exact whereabouts and was unable to produce an address. She was in the “wilds of California,” as he had put it, yet Belle never had mentioned relatives in California, let alone in the state’s nether portions.

Even before word arrived of Belle’s death, her successor as guild treasurer, Lottie Albert, asked a friend, Michael Bernstein, to make inquiries about Belle on behalf of the guild.

Crippen had said Belle had sailed aboard a ship of French registry and that it had sailed out of Le Havre. The name, he thought, was something like La Touee or Touvee. Bernstein searched the passenger lists of French ships for a passenger named Crippen or Elmore but found nothing.

On March 30, a Wednesday and thus a day when the Ladies’ Guild met, Clara Martinetti and Louise Smythson walked down the hall to Crippen’s office ostensibly to offer condolences. In fact, they intended to perform a kind of interrogation.

Mrs. Martinetti asked him for the address of the person who had nursed Belle in her last moments, but Crippen said he did not know who it was.

She asked how long Belle had been ill. Crippen said she had become ill on the ship and failed to look after herself and as a consequence contracted pneumonia.

Mrs. Martinetti asked where Belle was buried and explained that the guild wanted to send an “everlasting wreath” to place on her grave. Crippen said she had not been buried—she had been cremated, and that soon her ashes would arrive by post.

Cremated.

Belle had never once mentioned a wish to be cremated after death. She was so forthcoming about everything in her life, to the point of having friends touch her scar, that surely she would have mentioned something as novel as cremation.

Mrs. Martinetti asked where Belle had died. Crippen did not answer directly. He said only, “I will give you my son’s address.”

“Did she die with him, and did he see her die?” Mrs. Martinetti asked.

Crippen answered yes, but in a confused manner, then gave her Otto’s address in Los Angeles.

She and Mrs. Smythson left, their suspicions aflame. Mrs. Martinetti immediately wrote a postcard to Otto asking for details of Belle’s death.

It took him a month to reply. He apologized for the delay but explained that he had been distracted by the illness and death of his own son.

Turning to the subject at hand, he wrote, “The death of my stepmother was as great a surprise to me as to anyone. She died at San Francisco and the first I heard of it was through my father, who wrote to me immediately afterwards. He asked me to forward all letters to him and he would make the necessary explanations. He said he had through a mistake given out my name and address as my step-mother’s death-place. I would be very glad if you find out any particulars of her death if you would let me know of them as I know as a fact that she died at San Francisco.”

AT NO. 39 HILLDROP CRESCENT Ethel Le Neve cleaned house. This proved a challenge. To begin with, the place smelled terrible, especially downstairs in the vicinity of the kitchen, though the odor to a degree had permeated the entire house. Mrs. Jackson sensed it immediately on her first visit and mentioned it to Ethel. “The smell,” Jackson said, “was a damp frowsy one, and might have resulted from the damp and dirt. It was a stuffy sort of smell.”

“Yes,” Ethel told her, “the place is very damp and in a filthy condition. This is how Belle Elmore left it before she went away to America.”

Ethel opened windows and cleared away clothing and excess furniture, piling much of it in the kitchen. Crippen invited his longtime employee William Long to come over and see if there was anything he wanted. “A night or two after this,” Long said, “I went there and in the kitchen he shewed me a pile of woman’s clothing such as stockings, underclothing, shoes and a lot of old theatrical skirts, and old window curtains, table cloths, rugs, etc.”

Over several evenings Long took it all. Crippen also gave him the gilt cage and the seven canaries.

Ethel hired a servant, a French girl named Valentine Lecocq. “I have at last got a girl which I am thankful for,” Ethel wrote to Mrs. Jackson. “She is only 18 yrs. but seems anxious to learn & willing enough. The poor girl however hasn’t hardly a rag to her back, not a black blouse or anything & as Dr. is asking some friends to Dinner next Sunday, I feel I must rig her out nice & tidy.”

With the French girl’s help, Ethel made progress. In another letter to Mrs. Jackson she wrote, “Have been ever so busy with that wretched house and think you would hardly recognize same.” She found it hard to keep the house “anywhere near clean” and at the same time attend to her duties at Crippen’s office. “It gives me little time to myself,” she complained.

But the housework soon would end, she knew. Crippen’s lease was to expire on August 11, at which point they planned to move to a flat in Shaftesbury Avenue.

“Still,” she told Mrs. Jackson, “notwithstanding the hard work [I] am indeed happy.”

She delighted in the little moments with Crippen. In her memoir she wrote, “He used to come with me to the coal cellar, scuttle in hand, and while he was shoveling up the coals I would lean up against the door holding a lighted candle and chatting with him.”

The house grew brighter and more welcoming, and the awful scent dissipated. Crippen helped whenever he could and every day held her, kissed her, talked with her. They were not yet married in the eyes of the law and could not be married until Belle’s death in America was duly certified, but they were as much husband and wife as could be.

“So time slipped along,” Ethel wrote, “—both of us extremely happy and contented, working each of us hard in different ways.”

THE LADIES WATCHED.

They saw Crippen leave with the typist and arrive with the typist. They saw them walking together. The typist wore furs that looked very much like Belle’s, but of course one could never be sure, as furs were hard to tell apart. They saw them together at the theater and at restaurants. One day Annie Stratton and Clara Martinetti ran into Crippen on New Oxford Street. “Whilst we were talking to him,” Mrs. Martinetti said, “he seemed anxious to get away, and after he left us I saw him joined by the typist, and both got into a bus.”

And the ladies learned a troubling fact: Only one French liner had been scheduled to sail for America on the day of Belle’s departure, a steamer called La Touraine.

The ship had never left port, however. It was under repair.

STRANGE NEWS, BUT THEN these were strange times. On May 6, 1910, at 11:45 P.M. King Edward VII died, casting the nation into mourning. For the first time in England’s history the directors of Ascot ruled that all in attendance must wear black, a moment known ever after as “Black Ascot” and familiar in future generations to anyone who saw My Fair Lady.

As if the world really were coming to an end, Halley’s comet appeared in the skies overhead, raising fears of a collision and prompting rumors of dire events yet to come.