Thunderstruck

AN INSPECTOR RETURNS

AT ONE O’CLOCK MONDAY AFTERNOON, just as the sun emerged for the first time in a week, Chief Inspector Dew and Sergeant Mitchell set out for Albion House to have a second conversation with Dr. Crippen. Upon their arrival they learned disturbing news. Crippen’s associate, William Long, told them he had last seen the doctor on Saturday leaving the office with a suitcase. He showed the detectives a letter he had received from Crippen that day, in which the doctor had written, “Will you do me the very great favour of winding up as best you can my household affairs.” Crippen had enclosed enough money to cover the previous quarter’s rent for the house on Hilldrop Crescent. Long chose not to mention Crippen’s curious order of a boy’s suit.

Dew and Mitchell secured a taximeter cab and sped to Hilldrop Crescent, through streets suffused with sunshine. The entrance to the crescent appeared as a blue-black tunnel of shade, pierced here and there by shards of golden light. The detectives were greeted by the French maid, Lecocq, who told them in a mix of French and English that Crippen and Le Neve had left and she did not expect them to return.

Dew asked if he might come in and look around the house. Lecocq understood little of what he asked but led him inside all the same. Once in the house, the two men discovered William Long’s wife, Flora, hard at work packing up Belle’s clothing, of which mountains remained.

The detectives searched again, this time more attentively. As before, they entered every room, paying special attention to the cellar. They found nothing to indicate the whereabouts of Belle Elmore, but Dew did find a five-chambered revolver, fully loaded. Mitchell found a box of cartridges and several targets made of cardboard.

The detectives made arrangements to send Lecocq home the next day and returned to New Scotland Yard. That evening Dew sent a request to officers throughout London to interview cab drivers and movers as to whether any had removed boxes or packages from No. 39 Hilldrop Crescent since January 31. He composed detailed descriptions of Crippen and Le Neve and arranged to have flyers distributed to police at ports in England and abroad, asking them to keep an eye out for the couple but not to attempt an arrest.

Though the case was growing more mysterious by the hour, Dew still was not convinced a crime had been committed.

IN BRUSSELS THE “ROBINSONS” delighted in their new freedom. The hotel’s owner noticed that they left each day at about nine-thirty, returned by one o’clock, and remained in their room until four, at which point they left again. They returned by nine each evening, had dinner, then retired for the night.

Ethel loved touring the city. They walked all over, “north and south, east and west, and in the country parts beyond,” she wrote. “Dr. Crippen showed no sign of nervousness or any desire to keep me indoors at the Hotel des Ardennes, where we put up. Never did he express a wish for me to avoid public places. Never did he evince a trace of anxiety about himself.”

They visited palaces, museums, and galleries and spent hours in the Bois de la Cambre, where they walked and listened to a band and to the songs of birds. Ethel wrote, “It all seemed very beautiful, very peaceful, and they were happy days.”

ON TUESDAY DEW ordered that a photograph of Crippen be circulated as well. He and Mitchell returned to Hilldrop Crescent and again searched the house—their third search thus far—and again found nothing. They made other inquiries in the surrounding neighborhood until well into the evening. Late that night as Dew tried to sleep, his thoughts kept returning to the house, in particular to the coal cellar. It “stuck in my mind,” he wrote. “Even in bed, what little I got of it during those hectic days, I couldn’t keep my mind from wandering back to the cellar.”

The next morning, Wednesday, July 13, another brilliant but cool day, Dew and Mitchell returned to Albion House, and there Dew confronted Crippen’s assistant, William Long. By now Dew had spoken to him twice, but each time had gotten the sense that Long was holding something back. Now Dew warned him to speak up or else.

At last Long disclosed his shopping trip of Saturday morning.

Dew returned to Scotland Yard and composed a new circular that included the possibility that Ethel Le Neve might be dressed in boy’s clothing.

Next, acting on instinct, and for want of fresh leads to pursue, Dew proposed to Sergeant Mitchell that they search Crippen’s house yet again, their fourth visit, and this time really scour the cellar.

Amid flickering candlelight, the detectives got down on their hands and knees and examined the floor brick by brick. The unusually cool temperatures outside made the chamber feel especially cold and dank. They saw nothing unusual. Dew found a small poker and used it to tap the bricks and probe the earthen gaps between them. He and Mitchell worked in silence, “too tired to say a word,” Dew wrote. The light shimmied; the poker clanged against brick.

At one gap the poker drove downward with little resistance. One of the bricks moved. Dew pulled it up. Its neighbors now loosened. He pulled up several more.

Mitchell went to the garden for a spade.