Thunderstruck - Erik Larson [90]
“I have no idea,” Jackson said.
“Twenty pounds.” More than $2,000 today.
One night, playfully, Mrs. Jackson asked Ethel if someone had died and left her a lot of money.
No, Ethel replied with delight. “Somebody has gone to America.”
ETHEL BEGAN SPENDING NIGHTS away from Mrs. Jackson’s house. In the first week of February she was gone only one or two nights, but soon she was spending nearly every night away. She told Mrs. Jackson she was staying with friends and was helping Crippen search the house for certain papers and belongings of Belle’s, and she mentioned too that he had been teaching her how to shoot a revolver, a small nickel-plated weapon that he kept in a wardrobe in his bedroom.
Soon Ethel began giving gifts of clothing to her friends and to Mrs. Jackson. A widow with two daughters roomed at Constantine Road, and Ethel now gave the children an imitation pearl necklace, a piece of white lace, an imitation diamond tiara, two spray scent bottles, a pink waistband, two pairs of shoes with stockings to match, and four pairs of stockings—white, pink, and black—all of which became the daughters’ most-loved possessions. To her sister Nina she gave a black silk petticoat, a dress of gold Shantung silk, a black coat, “a very big cream coloured curly cape with long stole ends,” a white ostrich neck-wrapper, and two hats, one of gold silk, the other saxe blue with two pink roses.
At the time Nina said, “Fancy anyone going away and leaving such lovely clothes behind.”
Yes, Ethel agreed, “that Mrs. Crippen must have been wonderfully extravagant.”
But it was Mrs. Jackson who received the greatest windfall. She later had occasion to make a precise list:
1 outfit of mole skin trimmed in black
1 long coat, brown
1 long coat, black
1 coat and skirt, dark gray, striped
1 fur coat
1 coat, cream-colored
1 voile blouse and skirt, black
2 blouses, black (old)
2 blouses, one blue silk and lace, the other cream lace (new)
1 pair slippers
11 pairs stockings, brown, black, blue, white, pink, and black-and-white-striped
1 felt hat, brown, trimmed
1 lace hat, brown, trimmed with flowers
1 mole hat, pink, covered in sateen
1 imitation diamond 1 lizard-shaped diamond
1 harp-shaped brooch
2 hair stones, paste
3 night dresses, white (new)
1 skirt, yellow
1 outfit, heliotrope (new)
Ethel and Crippen grew more and more bold about declaring their romance to the world. Ethel wore Belle’s furs on the street and to work at Albion House, despite the proximity of the ladies of the guild, to whom Belle’s clothing was nearly as familiar and recognizable as their own. Crippen bought two tickets to one of the most important social events of the variety world, the annual banquet of the Music Hall Artists Benevolent Fund, set to take place on Sunday, February 20, at the much-loved Criterion Restaurant in Piccadilly.
“Neither of us was very anxious to go,” Ethel wrote. “The doctor had bought a couple of tickets, and naturally he wanted to use them. He asked me if I would go with him. I said that I was not very keen, as I had not danced for some years, and I had not a suitable dress.” Ethel ordered a new one, in pale pink, from Swan and Edgar, a prominent draper.
This decision to attend the ball was the couple’s most daring declaration yet and, as it happened, most unwise.
BUILT IN 1873, the Criterion combined glamour and raffishness, especially its Long Bar, for men only, where a Scotland Yard inspector