Thunderstruck - Erik Larson [146]
The thing that most entranced readers was that Crippen and Le Neve knew nothing of the pursuit by Dew. To be able to watch the chase as it happened, from afar, was unprecedented, almost miraculous. J. B. Priestley wrote, “The people, who have a sure instinct in these matters, knew they had seats in a gallery five hundred miles long for a new, exciting, entirely original drama: Trapped by Wireless! There were Crippen and his mistress, arriving with a smile at the captain’s table, holding hands on the boat deck, entirely unaware of the fact that Inspector Dew…was on his way to arrest them. While they were looking at the menu, several million readers were seeing their names again in the largest type.”
Crippen had made a serious error, Priestley wrote: “he had forgotten, if he ever knew, what Marconi had done for the world, which was now rapidly shrinking. So we see two hunted creatures, say a fox and a hare, with millions of hounds baying and slavering after them.”
IN LONDON, SCOTLAND Yard and the forensic scientists of the Home Office continued to puzzle over what had killed the victim found in the cellar at No. 39 Hilldrop Crescent. Yes, the body had been mutilated, but paradoxically the state of the remains told nothing about the proximal cause of death. For all anyone knew, the victim could have died by accident or from an illness and been eviscerated after the fact.
At St. Mary’s Hospital in London, William Henry Willcox, a famed forensic chemist and senior scientific analyst for the Home Office, took delivery of the five jars of remains held at the Islington Mortuary and began a detailed examination of their contents. He was an expert on poisons and testified so often that reporters gave him a nickname, “The King’s Poisoner.” He took the first steps toward determining whether poison might have been the cause of death, a painstaking process that he expected would take another two or three weeks to complete.
In the meantime he asked the police surgeon, Dr. Marshall, to return to the mortuary and probe the mass of remains for additional organs. He most wanted the second kidney, the remainder of the liver, and more intestine. This was gruesome, taxing work. “The remains,” Dr. Marshall noted, “had greatly changed.” He succeeded in locating a portion of liver weighing 161⁄2 ounces and a length of small intestine at 131⁄2 ounces, but he could not locate the other kidney. He placed his finds in a sixth jar, along with a fresh discovery, another Hinde’s curler with hair attached. He delivered the jar to Willcox.
But poison was only one possibility. Crippen had possessed a revolver—perhaps he had shot his wife. Or bludgeoned her and removed her head to eliminate the evidence. Or stabbed her to death and then simply kept on carving.
Superintendent Froest assigned Sgt. C. Crutchett to revisit Hilldrop Crescent and talk to the occupants of neighboring houses about anything suspicious that they might have seen or heard. He began canvassing on Wednesday, July 27, and immediately heard stories that seemed to merit further investigation.
At No. 46 Brecknock Road, which overlooked the Crippens’ back garden, Crutchett interviewed a Mrs. Lena Lyons, who told him that one night at the end of January or beginning of February, while lying awake in bed, she heard “distinctly” the sound of a gunshot. It was dark at the time, though she placed the hour at about seven in the morning. Moments later a lodger, an elderly woman with the improbable name Mrs. May Pole, burst into her bedroom and said, “Did you hear a shot, Mrs. Lyons?” Mrs. Pole occupied the upstairs-rear bedroom of the house, from which she had a clear view of the Crippens’ garden. She was terrified and sat on the end of Mrs. Lyons’s bed. An instant later there was another gunshot. Mrs. Pole stayed at the end of the bed until daylight.
Another neighbor, Franziska Hachenberger, told Crutchett that early one morning at the end of January