Thunderstruck - Erik Larson [121]
The detectives began their search, but there was nothing in particular that Dew hoped to find. “I certainly had no suspicion of murder,” he wrote.
First the detectives walked around the garden, then entered the house and went through each room, searching wardrobes, cupboards, dressing tables. They found signs that Crippen and Le Neve had been packing for a move, including filled boxes and rolled carpets. They found nothing that shed light on Belle’s current whereabouts, but they did find “plenty of evidence that Belle Elmore had a passion for clothes,” as Dew put it. “In the bedroom I found the most extraordinary assortment of women’s clothing, and enough ostrich feathers to stock a milliner’s shop. The whole would have filled a large van.”
No search, of course, would have been complete without a visit to the coal cellar. “I had no special motive in looking there on this occasion,” Dew wrote. “It was just that I wanted to make certain that I had covered the whole of the house.”
Crippen led the detectives down a short passage that ran from the kitchen to the cellar door.
ETHEL WAITED UPSTAIRS, struggling to absorb the news of Crippen’s deception. She sat in the sitting room, “quite stupefied and dazed,” she recalled. “What were these men doing? Would they never go? It grew dark, and I sat there in the gloom. My head was aching furiously.”
CRIPPEN WATCHED from the cellar doorway.
The cellar was cramped—nine feet long and six feet, three inches wide. “The place was completely dark,” Dew wrote, “I had to strike matches to see what it contained and what sort of a place it was. I discovered nothing unusual. There was a small quantity of coal and some wood which looked as though it had been cut from the garden trees.” The floor was brick, coated with a fine layer of dust.
The detectives and Crippen next went to the breakfast room off the kitchen and took seats at the table. There Dew asked his last questions and examined the jewelry Belle had left behind, including the rising sun brooch. He told Crippen, “Of course I shall have to find Mrs. Crippen to clear this matter up.”
Crippen, helpful as always, agreed and promised to do everything he could to assist. “Can you suggest anything?” Crippen asked. “Would an advertisement be any good?”
Dew liked that idea, and together he and Crippen composed a brief advertisement for placement in newspapers in America. Dew left that task to Crippen.
It was after eight when the detectives said good night and exited the house. They had found Crippen’s story, especially his fear of scandal, entirely plausible, though the fact that Crippen clearly had lied was troubling. In a deposition Dew said, “I did not absolutely think that any crime had been committed.”
He told at least one observer that for all intents and purposes the case was closed.
ETHEL FELT GREAT RELIEF that she and Crippen at last were alone, “but I am bound to say,” she wrote, “that I was angry and hurt, and that I felt in no mood for conversation. One thought only was in my head. It was, that the doctor had told me a lie. He had been untruthful to me for the first time in ten years—to me, of all people in the world, who was certainly the one to know the truth and all the truth. I had been faithful to him. I loved him. I had given up all things for him, and it hurt me frightfully that he should have deceived me.”
Crippen attempted to cheer her up. He made supper and coaxed her down to the breakfast room. She could not eat and said nothing. At ten she went up to the bedroom and sat in a chair fully dressed, too tired to get ready for bed. Soon Crippen came up.
“For mercy’s sake,” she said, “tell me whether you know where Belle Elmore is. I have a right to know.”
“I tell you truthfully that I don’t know where she is.”
Crippen told her that he had concocted the story