Crippen

by John Boyne

  ‘And Alexandra Harrington is a regular attendee.’

  ‘Is she one of the Harringtons?’

  ‘No. She’s one of the other Harringtons.’

  ‘Oh, better still. I’ve always preferred them anyway.’

  ‘And Sarah Kenley. Margaret Nash. All wonderful women. I’m sure they’d be delighted for you to become a member.’

  Louise had never before sponsored another lady for membership, and she had been on the lookout in recent times for a suitable candidate, the adoption of a new member being something of a status symbol in itself. It meant that within the group there was someone who would always be beholden to you, someone who, by your introducing them in the first place, became your natural inferior. And so, in time, she had brought Cora to a meeting, and she had been accepted by the other ladies. Cora introduced herself as a famous New York singer, now happily married to one of London’s finest doctors, and the rich women, coated in furs and encrusted with jewels, opened their arms en masse and welcomed her into their society, like a school of whales embracing a minnow. It had been one of the happiest evenings of Cora’s life.

  ‘We saw that Crippen fellow at the theatre, didn’t we?’ said Andrew, looking at his wife.

  ‘Yes,’ she explained. ‘That’s where all this started. Remember, we were at A Midsummer Night’s Dream and there he was, not a care in the world, despite the fact that his wife had just died only a few weeks before.’

  ‘Well, a fellow has to get over things, doesn’t he? Can’t go on mourning the poor woman for ever.’

  ‘But it’s all a bit mysterious, Andrew, don’t you see? Cora left London without a word to anyone, not even any of her friends at the Music Hall Ladies’ Guild. She went to California for a few weeks to visit a sick relative.’

  ‘That’s what Dr Crippen said anyway,’ said Margaret.

  ‘And she wrote me a letter from there,’ Louise continued, ‘stating that she would probably stay in California for a few months as this relative, whoever he or she was, was doing very badly. And then, before any of us knew it, her husband announces that she herself has died in California and he’s just received the telegram to tell him so.’

  ‘Shocking,’ said Nicholas, shaking his head and still thinking of his father. ‘That poor woman. With so much to live for. She was a pretty thing too, wasn’t she?’

  ‘Well, not really,’ Margaret Nash admitted. ‘She had broad shoulders and coarse hair. But she was a wonderful woman nevertheless. Very kind and thoughtful. An excellent wife. Dr Crippen could hardly have found a more loving companion in this world.’

  ‘So what’s the mystery then?’ Andrew asked, confused. ‘Where does Scotland Yard come into all this?’

  ‘When we saw Dr Crippen at the theatre that night,’ said Margaret, ‘he had another woman with him, don’t you remember?’

  ‘Here’s the heart of it,’ Nicholas said good-naturedly. ‘Jealousy.’

  ‘A common sort of woman,’ said Louise.

  ‘Hardly our sort,’ continued Margaret.

  ‘No name to speak of.’

  ‘I don’t remember her,’ said Andrew. ‘What did she look like?’

  ‘A small woman,’ said Margaret. ‘With dark hair. And a scar above her lip. Quite unpleasant. What’s her name, Louise? You know it, don’t you?’

  ‘Ethel LeNeve,’ said Louise. ‘If you please,’ she added, as if the possession of a name at all on Ethel’s part was something of a presumption.

  ‘That’s it, LeNeve. Apparently she used to work with Dr Crippen at that mad medicine shop he runs in Shaftesbury Avenue. Well, she was there at the theatre with him that night. Wearing her jewellery. Shameless.’

  Margaret and Louise both sat back in their chairs, as if a great jigsaw puzzle had been laid out before them, and the men nodded and thought about it, willing to amuse their wives if necessary by locating the corners for them.

  ‘So it seems to me,’ said Nicholas, ‘that you’re accusing this Crippen fellow of undue haste in finding a new lady, and her of poor taste in wearing a dead woman’s jewellery. It’s hardly something to bother Scotland Yard with, now is it?’

  ‘We’re saying,’ said Louise, unwilling to be patronized after the day she had suffered, ‘that a woman does not leave for America without telling her friends. We’re saying that she does not go there and then suddenly die when there was not a thing in the world wrong with her before. And we’re saying that she certainly does not leave her best jewellery behind for any tart or trollop to rifle through, the minute her back is turned. It just doesn’t seem likely, and I don’t believe a word of it for a moment.’

  ‘You don’t think the fellow’s done her in or something, do you?’ asked Andrew, laughing now. ‘Oh really. I don’t know what you ladies do at these meetings of yours, but it seems to me as if you are letting your imaginations—’

  ‘Tell me what they said, Louise,’ said Margaret, interrupting her husband. ‘At Scotland Yard. What did they say to you?’

  ‘I saw Inspector Dew,’ she began.

  ‘Dew?’ said Andrew. ‘I’ve heard of him. A top man, I believe.’

  ‘Well, naturally he was very courteous to me, but to be honest I don’t think he was particularly interested. Seemed to think I was worrying unnecessarily. Practically accused me of wasting his time.’

  ‘Oh Louise! And you the daughter-in-law of Lord Smythson!’

  ‘Sister-in-law,’ Andrew pointed out.

  ‘I know, it’s frightful, isn’t it? Anyway, I told him in the end. I told him that this was all far from over and soon he would want my help and that of my friends in locating Cora Crippen, and where would he be then? Standing there with egg all over his face!’

  ‘My dear, your expressions,’ laughed Nicholas.

  ‘I’m only saying what we’re all thinking,’ Louise insisted. ‘And what Margaret and I think is that he did away with Cora. And how are we supposed to allow that when she’s a friend of ours?’

  ‘For a start,’ said Andrew, ‘if he has done away with her, as you put it, then he’s hardly going to have been asking for your permission anyway. And secondly, the man’s a doctor. He helps sustain life, not take it away. He’s hardly going to get himself involved in something like that, is he? Your imaginations really are running away with you. Have you been eating cheese before going to bed? I read somewhere that that’s a common cause of hysteria among the ladies.’

  ‘Oh Andrew, you must find out though,’ said Margaret.

  ‘I? What can I do?’

  ‘Well, you have that business in Mexico next month, don’t you? The mining contract?’ Andrew thought about it. She was referring to a trip he would be making to Central America in a few weeks’ time to ensure that his company was keeping to their timetable on his mining project in Guadalajara.

  ‘Yes, I do,’ he said. ‘But I fail to see how—’

  ‘You could go to California afterwards,’ she said, ‘and find out exactly how Cora died. That’s where it’s supposed to have happened.’

  ‘Oh yes, Andrew,’ said Louise, clapping her hands together. ‘You could do that.’

  ‘But I won’t have time,’ he protested. ‘I’ll be too busy with my work.’

  ‘You can spare one day to catch a killer, can’t you?’

  ‘He’s not a killer.’

  ‘But he might be. Oh please, Andrew. Say you’ll do it.’

  He sighed and shook his head. ‘I don’t know what you expect me to find out there,’ he said eventually. ‘But if it means that much to you . . .’

  ‘Oh, you are wonderful,’ said Louise, delighted. ‘Now we’ll find out the truth for sure.’

  Having talked him into undertaking the task, they changed the subject to less morbid topics. Only as the evening progressed did Louise return to her unhappier state, remembering the news that her sister-in-law had given her earlier. Maybe I should introduce Dr Crippen to Martin, she thought to herself uncharitably. Maybe he could give him a few ideas.

  8.r />
  The Dentist

  London: 1899–1905

  Six years after moving to London, in the winter of 1899 Dr Hawley Harvey Crippen finally set up his own medical practice, working as a dentist from a small office in Holborn. It was not a full-time job; he still worked during the day at Munyon’s Homoeopathic Medicines, where he had responsibility for every detail in the business since his employer had retired, from seven o’clock in the morning until four o’clock in the afternoon, with only an hour’s break for lunch. Between four and six in the evening he would visit the Pig in the Pond pub in Chancery Lane, where he read The Times newspaper or one of his medical periodicals while eating his dinner. (There was nothing he enjoyed more than reading about the latest advances in autopsy procedures while carving the breast of a chicken or sliding his knife through a rare fillet steak.) Between six and nine he opened his surgery and treated those members of the public who needed a dentist but who could not see one during the day because of their own work commitments. Between both jobs he made a decent living. The decision to specialize in dentistry came about when it became clear that he would never have the means to study for a medical degree and work as a real doctor; at thirty-six years of age he was becoming more of a pragmatist in that respect. And so he simply decided that he would call himself a dentist instead, opening the surgery without any degree or qualification whatsoever. It was a risky strategy, but there was less chance of his being discovered when operating only on people’s mouths than if performing as a general practitioner.

  Cora and he still lived in South Crescent in Bloomsbury and had settled comfortably into a life of mutual disharmony. Mrs Crippen had spent a year working with Señor Berlosci and had noticed only a small improvement in her talents during that time. She had, however, fallen in love with him, a passion that was not returned by her vocal coach. Naturally, he had seduced her, but talk of anything further was anathema to him.

  ‘If I didn’t have you,’ she said one afternoon, lying naked on the divan in his living room while he got dressed and glanced at his watch carelessly to check the time that his next appointment would arrive, ‘I believe I would go mad. You’re everything that Hawley is not.’ She made herself all the less attractive by lying there with her legs stretched apart, her breasts sliding down to either side of her body, while the sunlight poured through the window, highlighting her every flaw.

  ‘My dear Cora,’ he said, bored by conversation. ‘You’ll catch your death of cold lying there. Cover yourself.’ He had a strange aversion to seeing women naked after he had made love to them, preferring that they dressed as quickly as possible and left. When the sexual urge had left him, he had little need for their attention any more. Cora rose and padded across the floor towards him, pressing her body up against his and kissing him gently on the lips, hoping for a stronger reaction.

  ‘When will you speak to Mr Mullins about me?’ she asked quietly, relocating her lips towards his ears and then down along his neck.

  ‘Soon, soon,’ he replied. ‘You’re not ready yet.’

  ‘But it’s been a year, Alfredo,’ she reasoned. ‘Surely it’s time by now?’ She continued to kiss him, hoping to arouse him once again, although she knew this was unlikely. Despite his lustful appetite, the ageing Italian behaved like a temperamental diva, refusing to perform more than once in an afternoon, and the curtain had already come down on the matinee.

  ‘He is a very busy man,’ Berlosci said, releasing himself from her grasp and picking up her undergarments from the floor where she had thrown them earlier and handing them to her while averting his eyes from her nudity. While making love to her, lying down on the divan or in his bed, he found Cora to be an altogether distracting partner. There were, perhaps, more parcels of flesh around the thighs than he would have liked, and her shoulders offered a certain masculine pleasure that bothered him, but all in all she was lustful and accommodating and had never refused him any favour. Standing up, however, his eyes were drawn only to her worst features. The way her breasts hung slightly askew on her frame, each a little too small when compared to her upper-body muscle . . . the porridge-like skin around her knees . . . the slight excess of body hair around the legs. She stood before him in the pose of a seductive Venus de Milo, but all he saw was a woman approaching her thirties whose body was self-destructing well before its time, due to unhealthy eating and a lack of exercise. ‘Now, please. Get dressed, Cora,’ he urged. ‘I have a client in fifteen minutes.’

  Cora breathed heavily in irritation and began to put her clothes back on. Mr Mullins was the owner of a small theatre in Shaftesbury Avenue (by coincidence, not far from where Hawley worked) and Señor Berlosci claimed that they were close friends. The man often produced variety shows and evenings devoted to particular singers and, in a moment of lust-fuelled madness some months earlier, Berlosci had promised Cora that he would arrange an audition for her. However, unknown to her, her teacher had sent so many prospective stars to Mullins over the years that the theatre owner knew it was just a tool to get these women into bed and had put a stop to it. He had informed his friend in no uncertain terms that he would only audition real talents and that if he suspected he was being used for any other purpose he would not see any more of his pupils. Because of this, Berlosci had sent only two of his students to Mullins during the previous year, both exemplary singers, and he knew that Cora epitomized the type of average hopeful whom Mullins would instantly reject.

  ‘You promised me,’ Cora said quietly, not wanting an argument but needing to make her point all the same.

  ‘And I meant it,’ he insisted. ‘I will speak to him soon. But you are not ready yet.’ He softened slightly and came towards her, reaching down and kissing her forehead like a proud father. ‘Trust me. Some day soon you will be quite ready and Mr Mullins will see you then. He will fall at your feet and shower you with garlands, as the French did with Marie de Santé or the Italians with the great Sabella Donato.’

  ‘Do you promise it, Alfredo?’ she asked, trying to look coquettish, and failing.

  ‘Promissio.’

  Watching her leave that afternoon, Señor Berlosci decided that it was time for him and Cora Crippen to part company, both as teacher and student and as lovers.

  There were usually two or three patients waiting for Dr Crippen when he arrived at his surgery in the evening, and each one had a look which combined a mixture of agonizing pain and total fear at the ordeal which lay ahead. In the twelve months he had been practising as a dentist he had come to realize that no one ever visited him when a dental problem first reared its head. Instead, they waited, praying that whatever it was would go away, and only when they had come to terms with the fact that things were only getting worse did they make the trip to see him. Mainly working-class people, they didn’t notice the lack of dental degrees on his wall and never glanced at the two framed diplomas from the Medical College of Philadelphia and the Ophthalmic Hospital of New York which had pride of place in the surgery. They came there, wanting nothing more than an end to their pain, with an infliction of as little extra pain as possible.

  On this particular evening, only two patients were waiting for Hawley when he arrived, both of whom claimed to have been there first. A woman of about fifty swore blind that she had been waiting since three o’clock that afternoon, while her companion, a boy of about fifteen, said that she had arrived only five minutes before Hawley himself and that he should be seen first. Unaccustomed to such disputes, he was forced to toss a coin for the right to be first in the dentist’s chair and the young man won, looking at the woman with such an expression of triumph that Hawley felt like reversing the outcome.

  Hawley had spent almost fifty pounds of his savings stocking the surgery with the proper dental equipment and a large lamp which hung down over the patient’s chair, aimed at the darkest recesses of their pain. Peering into the boy’s mouth, he could tell immediately what the problem was. One of the molars in the lower back six had been chipped and an abscess had formed
. The nerve was almost exposed and the remaining half of the tooth had turned black. ‘When did you chip it?’ he asked, checking the rest of his mouth for similar problems.

  ‘About a month ago,’ said the young man, Peter Milburn, afraid to tell the truth—that it had been almost six months before—in case the doctor told him off.

  ‘Right,’ said Hawley, not believing a word of it. ‘Well, it will have to come out, I’m afraid. There’s no other choice.’

  ‘I thought as much,’ said Milburn, who had already resigned himself to this. ‘Will it be painful?’ he asked in a tiny voice, like a small child.

  Hawley suppressed a laugh. ‘Don’t worry,’ he replied. ‘I’ve performed hundreds of extractions. It will be over before you know it.’

  He went across to his surgical cabinet and filled a large needle with anaesthetic, testing the spray carefully over the sink. It was not a particularly strong anaesthetic but he was unable to purchase anything stronger without a licence and so had to settle for the next best thing, which invariably brought cries of pain from his patients. He had considered tying wrist straps to the chair to stop them flailing around so much, but he had decided in the end that this would make the whole thing seem more like a medieval torture chamber than a medical procedure and had decided against it. After all, repeat business was important to him.

  Milburn flinched when he saw the needle coming towards his mouth, but Hawley assured him that he would not feel much pain from it, which was true.

  ‘Now,’ he said, when the injection was complete. ‘Let’s just wait for it to settle in a little and we’ll have that tooth out.’

  Beside the sink he kept a range of needles, forceps and pliers in a tray of sterile disinfectant. Each was of a different calibre and grading and was designed for different teeth, and he chose several different implements to lay on the white cloth which covered the empty tray beside the patient’s chair. After a few minutes Milburn assured him that the left-hand side of his mouth was reasonably numb—reasonably being the operative word—and Crippen got to work.