Thunderstruck

“MR. DEWHURST”

KENDALL’S MESSAGE TORE THROUGH THE ATMOSPHERE at the speed of light. Its train of waves struck the giant receiving antenna at Poldhu, and every other wireless antenna within range, and was received by Marconi’s new magnetic detector, a device operators nicknamed the “maggie.” The detector in turn activated a secondary circuit connected to a Morse inker, and immediately a tape bearing pale blue dots and dashes began to emerge. The operators relayed the message by landline to Canadian Pacific’s office in Liverpool, where officials summoned police. Liverpool detectives, in turn, sent a message to Scotland Yard, in which they repeated the contents of Kendall’s Marconigram. A messenger carried it to the office occupied by the CID’s Murder Squad.

“It was eight o’clock in the evening,” Dew said. “Almost completely worn out with the strain of work, I was chatting with a confrere in my office at the Yard when a telegram was handed to me.”

As he read it, his fatigue “instantly vanished.”

There had been thousands of leads, from all over the world. At that moment detectives in Spain and Switzerland were exploring two seemingly solid reports. Countless other supposedly good leads had dissipated like smoke. This new message, however, bore a level of authority hitherto absent. It had come from the captain of a ship at sea, owned by a large and respected company. It had been read by company officials, who presumably would not have forwarded it to police if they had harbored doubts about the captain’s credibility. One portion of the message carried a particular resonance: “Accomplice dressed as boy voice manner and build undoubtedly a girl.”

Dew read it over again. He checked a shipping schedule and made a series of telephone calls, the last to Sir Melville Macnaghten, the Criminal Investigation Department chief, at his home. Macnaghten was in the midst of dressing for dinner.

“Read it to me,” Macnaghten said. When Dew was finished, Macnaghten was quiet a moment, then said, “Better come over for a chat.”

Dew dashed down to the lobby and out to the Victoria Embankment, where he caught a cab to Macnaghten’s house. Dew instructed the driver to wait. Inside, Dew showed Kendall’s message to Sir Melville, who was now fully adorned in formal black and white. According to Dew, Macnaghten read the telegram with raised eyebrows.

Now Macnaghten looked at Dew. “What do you think?”

“I feel confident it’s them.”

“So do I. What do you suggest?”

Dew said, “I want to go after them in a fast steamer.” He told Macnaghten that a White Star liner, the Laurentic, was set to depart Liverpool the next day for Quebec. “I believe it is possible for her to overtake the Montrose and reach Canada first.” He proposed to book passage and intercept Crippen before he disembarked at Quebec.

Macnaghten smiled at the boldness of the idea but took a few moments to consider its implications. “It was a serious step to take to send off the Chief Inspector,” Macnaghten wrote. Dew was the leader of the investigation and as such was the only man in Scotland Yard who understood every element of the case and every lead thus far explored. Moreover, the Murder Squad now found itself taxed with two additional killings to investigate, one in Slough, the other a gunshot murder in Battersea. Macnaghten worried that Dew’s voyage “might well turn out to be a wildgoose chase.” If so, the loss of Dew for the seven days of the crossing would prove a costly error indeed and a significant embarrassment to the department.

A decision had to be made quickly. Macnaghten walked to his desk and began to write. “Here is your authority, Dew,” he said, “and I wish you all the luck in the world.”

They shook hands.

“That night could not fail to be one of anxiety,” Macnaghten wrote; “but the die was cast, the Rubicon was crossed. If the coup happened to come off, well and good, but, if otherwise, why, then, the case would have been hopelessly messed up, and I didn’t care to dwell on the eventualities of its future.”

DEW RETURNED TO THE waiting taxi and rode it back to Scotland Yard. He sent a telegram to the Liverpool police, requesting that they buy him a ticket for the Laurentic under a false name. He went home to pack and sleep. He kept the true nature of his mission even from his wife, telling her only that he had been called abroad “on a matter of great urgency.” The next day he took a cab to Euston station and caught the 1:40 P.M. “special” to Liverpool, scheduled expressly for passengers intending to sail aboard the Laurentic. An officer with the Liverpool police booked him passage under the name Dewhurst. Only the ship’s captain and wireless operator and a couple of officers knew his true identity. To further protect the mission’s secrecy, Dew gave it a code-name, Handcuffs. He was met at the Liverpool station by an inspector wearing a red rose in his coat.

The Laurentic departed at 6:30 P.M., on schedule. Dew knew the race would be a close one. The Montrose required eleven days to reach Quebec, the Laurentic only seven, but by now the Montrose had been under way for three days. If all went well, that is, perfectly, Dew’s ship would beat Crippen’s by a day. Given the vicissitudes of long-distance sea travel—fog, storms, mechanical failure—a single day was almost no margin at all.

Dew spent hours in the Laurentic’s wireless cabin as the ship’s Marconi operator sent off message after message to Kendall. He heard nothing to indicate receipt. “It was hopeless,” he wrote. “The answering signals simply would not come.”

MACNAGHTEN ARRIVED AT SCOTLAND Yard early Saturday morning. “I assumed an air of nonchalance which I was very far from feeling,” he wrote. He met with Superintendent Froest, Dew’s immediate boss, and asked him for his candid appraisal of the night’s decision to send Dew across the sea in pursuit. Froest thought it foolhardy, as did the other inspectors in the Murder Squad. They all had talked it over, Macnaghten wrote, “and had come to the conclusion that the probabilities were all against the very sanguine view that I had taken as to the correctness of the news conveyed in the marconigram.”

Macnaghten’s anxiety increased when a telegram arrived from Antwerp describing the father and son who had booked passage on the Montrose. These descriptions, Macnaghten wrote, “in no wise corresponded with those of Dr. Crippen and Miss Le Neve.”

Detectives continued to explore fresh leads. New York police boarded more ships. A French rail guard swore he had seen the couple on a train. A traveler on an English train was convinced he had shared a compartment with Crippen.

In Brussels a Scotland Yard detective named Guy Workman went to the Hotel des Ardennes and photographed the registration entry of two travelers identified in the book as father and son. He learned that the innkeepers had not been fooled by the boy’s clothes and had concocted a romantic explanation for why an older man would travel with a lovely young woman in disguise. The innkeeper’s wife dubbed the girl “Titine” and nicknamed the man “Old Quebec” because he often spoke of the city. To her it was clear the girl had fallen in love with a teacher, and now the two were on the run.

Such passion, such adventure. It was impossible not to wish the couple well.

AT SEA THE LAURENTIC CLOSED ON THE MONTROSE at a rate of about four nautical miles each hour.

Despite the frustration of being unable to reach Kendall by wireless, Dew began to enjoy his voyage. When he needed to relax, he could walk the deck. The captain treated him with generosity and respect, and the ship was lovely and comfortable.

He believed his identity and purpose remained a complete secret.