Thunderstruck - Erik Larson [85]
But when Crippen walked back up the stairs to the house after saying a last good-bye to the Martinettis, he found that Belle had undergone a transformation.
“Immediately after they had left my wife got into a very great rage with me, and blamed me for not having gone upstairs with Mr. Martinetti,” Crippen said, referring to Paul’s exit to use the bathroom. “She said a great many things—I do not recollect them all—she abused me, and said some pretty strong words to me; she said she had had about enough of this—that if I could not be a gentleman she would not stand it any longer, and she was going to leave me.” He quoted her as shouting, “This is the finish of it I won’t stand it any longer. I shall leave you tomorrow, and you will never hear of me again.”
So far none of this was novel. “She had said this so often that I did not take much notice of it,” Crippen said.
But now she went one step further and said something she had never said before—“that I was to arrange to cover up any scandal with our mutual friends and the Guild the best way I could.”
Belle retired to her bedroom, while Crippen retreated to his. “I did not even see her the next morning,” he said. “We retired very late, and it was the usual thing that I was the first one up and out of the house before she was ever up at all.”
THAT MORNING, TUESDAY, February 1, Crippen went to his office at Yale Tooth as usual and was, according to Ethel Le Neve, “his own calm self.” She wrote, “Surely we, who knew him so well and every expression of his face, would have noticed at once if he had shown the slightest agitation.”
At midday Crippen left Albion House and walked to the Martinettis’ flat on Shaftesbury to check on Paul. Clara greeted him at the door and told him Paul was sleeping. Crippen was pleased to learn that Paul had gotten no worse during the night. They chatted a few moments longer, then Crippen turned to leave.
Clara asked, “How’s Belle?”
“Oh, she is all right.”
“Give her my love.”
“Yes,” Crippen said, “I will.”
When he returned to Hilldrop Crescent at seven-thirty that evening, he found the house empty, save for the cats, the canaries, and the bull terrier.
Belle had gone.
The main question that now occupied him, he said, was how to avoid the scandal that would arise if the true reason for Belle’s departure ever got out.
THE FATAL OBSTACLE
ON SIGNAL HILL THE WEATHER WORSENED. Marconi listened hard for the sound of three snaps in the static mist that filled his telephone receiver, but he detected nothing. Outside, his men struggled to keep the kite aloft and stable. Each time it bobbed and dipped, its two trailing wires grew longer or shorter. Marconi still had only a vague understanding of how electromagnetic waves traveled and how the length of his antennas affected transmission and reception, but he did recognize that this constant rising and falling could not be helpful.
Trying to send signals to a wildly shifting kite was a bit like trying to catch a fish in a whirlpool.
IN POLDHU MARCONI’S OPERATORS fired chains of S’s into the sky over Cornwall. Thousands of watts of power pulsed through the spark gap. Lightning cracked, and pipes tingled. Electromagnetic waves coursed in all directions at the speed of light. Receivers at the Lizard, at Niton, and at Crookhaven instantly detected their presence. The signals were likely received aboard at least one of the increasing number of ocean liners equipped with wireless, perhaps the Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse or the Lake Champlain or one of Cunard’s grand ships, depending on their locations. But the receiver on Signal Hill remained inert.
At about twelve-thirty the receiver issued a sharp click, the sound of the tapper striking the coherer. It meant the receiver had detected waves.
The tension in the room increased. Marconi’s face bore its usual sober expression. As was so often the case, his lips conveyed distaste, as