Thunderstruck - Erik Larson [131]
The detectives made arrangements to send Lecocq home the next day and returned to New Scotland Yard. That evening Dew sent a request to officers throughout London to interview cab drivers and movers as to whether any had removed boxes or packages from No. 39 Hilldrop Crescent since January 31. He composed detailed descriptions of Crippen and Le Neve and arranged to have flyers distributed to police at ports in England and abroad, asking them to keep an eye out for the couple but not to attempt an arrest.
Though the case was growing more mysterious by the hour, Dew still was not convinced a crime had been committed.
IN BRUSSELS THE “ROBINSONS” delighted in their new freedom. The hotel’s owner noticed that they left each day at about nine-thirty, returned by one o’clock, and remained in their room until four, at which point they left again. They returned by nine each evening, had dinner, then retired for the night.
Ethel loved touring the city. They walked all over, “north and south, east and west, and in the country parts beyond,” she wrote. “Dr. Crippen showed no sign of nervousness or any desire to keep me indoors at the Hotel des Ardennes, where we put up. Never did he express a wish for me to avoid public places. Never did he evince a trace of anxiety about himself.”
They visited palaces, museums, and galleries and spent hours in the Bois de la Cambre, where they walked and listened to a band and to the songs of birds. Ethel wrote, “It all seemed very beautiful, very peaceful, and they were happy days.”
ON TUESDAY DEW ordered that a photograph of Crippen be circulated as well. He and Mitchell returned to Hilldrop Crescent and again searched the house—their third search thus far—and again found nothing. They made other inquiries in the surrounding neighborhood until well into the evening. Late that night as Dew tried to sleep, his thoughts kept returning to the house, in particular to the coal cellar. It “stuck in my mind,” he wrote. “Even in bed, what little I got of it during those hectic days, I couldn’t keep my mind from wandering back to the cellar.”
The next morning, Wednesday, July 13, another brilliant but cool day, Dew and Mitchell returned to Albion House, and there Dew confronted Crippen’s assistant, William Long. By now Dew had spoken to him twice, but each time had gotten the sense that Long was holding something back. Now Dew warned him to speak up or else.
At last Long disclosed his shopping trip of Saturday morning.
Dew returned to Scotland Yard and composed a new circular that included the possibility that Ethel Le Neve might be dressed in boy’s clothing.
Next, acting on instinct, and for want of fresh leads to pursue, Dew proposed to Sergeant Mitchell that they search Crippen’s house yet again, their fourth visit, and this time really scour the cellar.
Amid flickering candlelight, the detectives got down on their hands and knees and examined the floor brick by brick. The unusually cool temperatures outside made the chamber feel especially cold and dank. They saw nothing unusual. Dew found a small poker and used it to tap the bricks and probe the earthen gaps between them. He and Mitchell worked in silence, “too tired to say a word,” Dew wrote. The light shimmied; the poker clanged against brick.
At one gap the poker drove downward with little resistance. One of the bricks moved. Dew pulled it up. Its neighbors now loosened. He pulled up several more.
Mitchell went to the garden for a spade.
THE MERMAID
NOW AND THEN THE MARRIAGE between Beatrice and Marconi flared back to life, and in the fall of 1909 Beatrice discovered that once again she was pregnant. At the time she and little Degna were living in a house in Clifden, as remote and austere a place as Glace Bay and Poole. Perhaps she felt a need to escape, or simply wanted for once to see the look on her husband’s face when he first heard the news rather than wait for a reply by telegram, but now she plotted a surprise. She