Thunderstruck - Erik Larson [114]
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.
ETHEL’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,