Thunderstruck - Erik Larson [115]
She led them into the sitting room.
Dew repeated that his visit “was most important” and that he would not leave until he had spoken with Crippen. He told Ethel to be “a sensible little lady” and get him.
Ethel laughed at Dew. She repeated that Crippen was not home. She offered to telephone him at his office.
Dew asked her instead to accompany them to the office.
“All right,” she said, “but you must give me time to dress properly.”
She went to the bedroom to change. She wrote, “I had no compunction in making them wait a good long time while I arranged my hair, put on a blouse, and generally made myself look presentable.”
Their visit puzzled her. “Yet I can honestly say that I was not much alarmed,” she wrote, “—only a little bewildered and more than a little annoyed.”
When she went back downstairs, she found Dew to be a changed man, suddenly affable and friendly and “inclined for conversation.” He asked her to sit down. “I would very much like to ask you a few questions,” he said.
He asked when she had come to live at Hilldrop and about Mrs. Crippen’s departure. Sergeant Mitchell took notes. Ethel told them what she knew and mentioned Crippen having received cables telling him of his wife’s illness and, later, her death.
“Did you see the cables?” Dew asked.
“No. Why should I? I do not doubt Dr. Crippen’s word.”
“Ah,” Dew said.
Ethel wrote, “He was always saying that little word, ‘ah,’ as though he knew so much more than I did.”
Again Dew asked her to accompany them to Crippen’s office. Now she resisted. She told him she was a woman “of methodical habits” and did not like having the day disrupted.
“No; I quite understand that,” Dew said, “but you see this is a matter of very special importance to Dr. Crippen. It is for his sake, you see.”
She assented.
AT ALBION HOUSE Ethel went to the upstairs workroom to get Crippen. She found him sitting at a table working on dental fittings, alongside his partner, Rylance. She touched him to get his attention and whispered, “Come out, I want to speak to you.”
Crippen asked why.
“There are two men from Scotland Yard,” Ethel said. “They want to see you on important business. For heaven’s sake, come and talk to them. They have been worrying me for about two hours.”
“From Scotland Yard?” Crippen said. “That’s very odd. What do they want?”
He was utterly calm, she wrote. She accompanied him down the stairs. The time was now, by Ethel’s recollection, about eleven-thirty A.M.
DEW WAITED. A FEW moments later Le Neve reappeared “with an insignificant little man at her side.” For Dew it was a revelatory moment. So this was the doctor he had heard so much about. Crippen was a small man, balding, with a sandy mustache. His most notable feature was his eyes, which were blue and protruded slightly, an effect amplified by his spectacles, which had thick lenses and thin wire rims. If Crippen was at all troubled by a visit from two detectives, he gave no sign of it whatsoever. He smiled and shook hands.
Dew kept it formal: “I am Chief-Inspector Dew, of Scotland Yard. This is a colleague of mine, Sergeant Mitchell. We have called to have a word with you about the death of your wife. Some of your wife’s friends have been to us concerning the stories you have told them about her death, with which they are not satisfied. I have made exhaustive inquiries and I am not satisfied, so I have come to see you to ask if you care to offer any explanation.”
Crippen said, “I suppose I had better tell the truth.”
“Yes,” Dew said, “I think that will be best.”
Crippen said, “The stories I have told about her death are untrue. As far as I know she is still alive.”
AH.
THE GIRL ON THE DOCK
FOR MARCONI THE FIRST HALF OF 1904 proved a time of disillusionment and sorrow. His father, Giuseppe, died on March 29, but Marconi was so consumed by the difficulties of his company that he did not travel to Italy for the