Thunderstruck - Erik Larson [132]
Marconi, meanwhile, was reveling in the voyage and the luxuries of the ship, and in the attention lavished upon him by his fellow first-class passengers, in particular Enrico Caruso, destined to become a friend. In future years, when circumstances allowed, Marconi would stand with Caruso offstage to ease the anxiety the great tenor felt before each performance. Marconi was particularly enthralled with the young women traveling with Caruso, a group of alluring and flirtatious actresses.
Suddenly Beatrice appeared.
She had expected him to be delighted by her surprise visit, but instead, according to Degna, his welcome “was like a pail of icy water poured over her head. Returning to his bachelor habits, he was having a gay time with the ship’s passengers…. The last thing he expected or wanted to see, popping out of the sea like a mermaid, was his wife’s face.”
Beatrice fled to Marconi’s cabin, where she spent the night in tears.
The next morning Marconi apologized and urged her to come join the group. Beatrice refused. She felt awful, and believed she looked awful, and did not feel up to competing for her husband’s attention among such a glamorous crowd. She stayed in the cabin until the ship reached Liverpool.
THE MYSTERY DEEPENS
WHERE THE BRICKS HAD LAIN, Dew found a flat surface of clay. He broke into it with the spade and found that the soil underneath seemed to be loose, or at least looser than it would have been had it lain there undisturbed for a period of years. He thrust the spade in deeper. The unmistakable odor of putrefaction struck him full in the face and sent him reeling. “The stench was unbearable,” he wrote, “driving us both into the garden for fresh air.”
Outside in the brilliant cool green, Dew and Sergeant Mitchell steeled themselves. With one last full breath they reentered the cellar, where the odor now suffused the entire chamber. Dew removed two more spadefuls of earth and found what appeared to be a mass of decomposing tissue. Once again he and Mitchell were driven from the house. They gulped the fresh cool air, found brandy, and took long draughts of it before entering the cellar a third time. They uncovered more tissue and viscera, enough to convince them that the remains were those of a human being.
At five-thirty Dew called his immediate boss, Superintendent Froest, head of the Murder Squad, and told him of the discovery. Froest notified Assistant Commissioner Sir Melville Macnaghten, in charge of the entire Criminal Investigation Department. As Macnaghten left his office, he grabbed a handful of cigars, with the idea that Dew and Mitchell might need them to counter the awful stench. He and Froest set out immediately in a department motorcar. Traveling first along the Embankment, they moved through air gilded with sun-suffused haze, the Thames a lovely cobalt edged with black shadow.
DR. THOMAS MARSHALL, divisional surgeon for Scotland Yard’s “Y” Division, which encompassed Hilldrop Crescent and the surrounding district, walked over from his practice on nearby Caversham Road. His task would be to lead the postmortem examination once the remains were removed from the house.
He and Dew watched the constables dig. Lanterns had replaced candles, and the close work had begun, the constables on their knees pushing dirt away with their hands as macabre shadows played on the surrounding walls. The men concentrated on an opening at the center of the floor about four feet long by two feet wide.
What Dew saw before him evoked recollection of his discovery of Jack the Ripper’s last victim and begged comparison: This was worse. The remains bore no resemblance to a human body, and the distortion had nothing to do with decomposition. In fact, much was well preserved, surprisingly so, though why this should be the case was itself a mystery. As Dew would note in a report entitled “Particulars