Thunderstruck - Erik Larson [154]
Kendall watched Dew. The captain looked for some sign that Dew recognized the passenger below. The inspector said nothing. Kendall led the party to his cabin and sent for Mr. Robinson. A few moments later the man appeared, looking unconcerned and cheerful.
Kendall stood. Discreetly he put his hand in his pocket and gripped the revolver. He said, “Let me introduce you.”
Dew stepped up, still in his cap. The passenger smiled and held out his hand. Dew took it and with his free hand pulled off his cap. He said quietly, “Good morning, Dr. Crippen.”
The expression on the passenger’s face changed rapidly, Dew wrote. First came surprise, then puzzlement, then recognition. Finally, in a voice Dew described as being “calm and quiet,” Crippen now said, “Good morning, Mr. Dew.”
Once the details became public knowledge, all of Britain seemed to agree that the understated drama of this encounter had been equaled only once before, when Stanley caught up with Livingstone.
Now Dew told Crippen, “You will be arrested for the murder and mutilation of your wife, Cora Crippen, in London, on or about February last.”
DEW’S GAMBLE HAD PAID OFF. “During my long career as a detective I have experienced many big moments,” he wrote, “but at no other time have I felt such a sense of triumph and achievement.” But he also felt what he described as a “pang of pity” for the little doctor. Crippen, he wrote, “had been caught on the threshold of freedom. Only twelve hours more and he would have been safely at Quebec.”
The Canadian police handcuffed Crippen and led him to a vacant cabin. Now Kendall led Dew to cabin number five, which Crippen and Le Neve had occupied during the voyage.
Dew tapped lightly on the door, then entered. To his great satisfaction, he saw that Ethel was indeed wearing a suit of boy’s clothing.
She looked up from her book.
He said, “I am Chief Inspector Dew.”
The introduction was unnecessary. Despite his pilot’s uniform, she recognized him immediately. She gave a cry and stood, then fell unconscious as abruptly as if someone had struck the back of her head with a crowbar. Dew caught her in midswoon.
THE TABLE OF DROPS
TWO DAYS AFTER THE ARREST detectives learned for the first time of Crippen’s January purchase of five grains of hyoscine hydrobromide. Soon afterward Dr. Willcox, at St. Mary’s Hospital, confirmed that the alkaloid he had isolated was indeed hyoscine. He was able to extract two-fifths of a grain from the available remains but knew that if he had been able to analyze all of the body, the amount would have been far greater. Just a quarter grain could have been lethal. “If the fatal dose were given,” he said, “it would perhaps produce a little delirium and excitement at first; the pupils of the eyes would be paralyzed; the mouth and the throat would be dry, and then quickly the patient would become drowsy and unconscious and completely paralyzed, and death would result in a few hours.”
By now Willcox and colleagues were confident the remains were those of a woman, though this conclusion was based entirely on circumstantial evidence, namely the curlers, the bleached hair, and the fragments of a woman’s underclothing found in the excavation. The question of identity remained daunting until Dr. Pepper happened to reexamine the pieces of skin still held at the Islington Mortuary Chapel of Ease. One piece—the fragment measuring six by seven inches—had a mark on it about four inches long. Having learned from Chief Inspector Dew that Belle once underwent an abdominal operation, Pepper now took a closer look. It was possible, he decided, that the mark was a scar. He gave it to Willcox, who passed it on to the youngest member of the Home Office’s elite forensic group, Dr. Bernard Spilsbury, an expert on scars.
Investigators made another important discovery. Upon close examination, the torn pieces of pajama jacket