Thunderstruck - Erik Larson [130]
Muirhead arranged to have a test station constructed on a field owned by his brother.
But Lodge’s focus wavered. Mrs. Piper, the medium, returned to England with her daughters and stayed at his house, where he conducted a series of sittings. Impressed anew, he wrote a 153-page report on the experience for the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research. Once again Lodge found himself convinced of her gift and deeply distracted.
Germany’s hostility to Marconi continued unabated, as British fears of German invasion deepened. In 1906, in response to Germany’s growing naval power, Britain launched the most powerful battleship ever built, the HMS Dreadnought. That year a widely read novel, The Invasion of 1910 by William Le Quex, fanned British anxiety and planted the fear that Germany might already have secreted spies throughout England. Commissioned by Alfred Harmsworth, the novel appeared first in serial form in his Daily Mail and described a future invasion in which German forces crushed all resistance and occupied London—until a heroic counterattack expelled them. Harmsworth sent men dressed as German soldiers into the streets wearing sandwich boards to promote each new installment. One witness described a line of men “in spiked helmets and Prussian-blue uniforms parading moodily down Oxford Street.”
The book immediately became a bestseller in Britain, but German readers loved it too. The publisher of the German-language edition had chosen to omit the counterattack.
ON SEPTEMBER 11, 1908, Marconi was in America when he received word that Beatrice had given birth to another baby girl. Immediately he booked passage for England. During the voyage he happened to read a history of Venice, in which he spotted a name that he found appealing. The child became Degna.
The birth did little to bridge the growing distance between Marconi and his wife. They fought with increasing frequency.
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