A QUESTION OF GUILT

'Thank you, sir. Only a chota peg.' It was seafarer's Hindustani for a small drink.

The Morse of Captain Kendall's message was received at 3.30 that Friday afternoon by Crookhaven Wireless Station on the coast of County Cork, which passed it to the Canadian Pacific office in Liverpool, which passed it to Scotland Yard, which dispatched Chief-Inspector Dew the next morning by the White Star Laurentic from Liverpool as 'Mr Dewhurst' on 'Operation Handcuffs', unbeknown even to his wife.

The life of a secret with a fortune in its pocket is short among the brigands of Fleet Street. Monday morning's papers announced that Dew had left. He was aboard the Allen Line's Sardinia to New York from Le Havre. Crippen had fled, disguised as a cleric with an effeminate son. By Tuesday the _Liverpool Courier_ laid hands on Kendall's message. Crippen was _trapped by wireless!_

The Montrose carried the marvellous instrument, which a member of Parliament had tried a fortnight earlier to make compulsory on all ships, but was defeated on the argument of expense. Crippen was under restraint. Miss Le Neve had confessed. No, he was not, and she had not. The only sure news was their sailing westwards unaware of Dew overhauling them in a liner three knots faster. It caught public imagination like a race to the moon.

The front pages had Atlantic maps, the two ships' positions marked daily. The world first learned of Father Point, near the New Brunswick port of Rimouski. ''Dr' Crippen will arrive home in ample time for the adjourned inquest on August 15,' observed _The Times_ cosily. CRIPPEN'S LIFE AT SEA DESCRIBED BY 'WIRELESS', said a special edition of the _Weekly Dispatch,_ above photographs of Crippen with his round glasses and moustache, Belle Elmore, Inspector Dew, Captain Kendall in oak-leaved cap, Ethel looking soulful, and even Charlotte the first Mrs. Crippen, short-haired and pudding-faced, who had died in fits at Salt Lake City. Mr Eddie Marr, backer of Aural Remedies, appeared at its Kingsway Office and scraped Crippen's name from the glass front door.

The world held its breath-the Laurentic was slowed by fog in the mouth of the St Lawrence. Perhaps the pursuit of Dr Crippen might reach the ears of the only couple in civilization still ignorant about it? Perhaps they would jump over the side, and ruin the fun? The Laurentic reached Quebec on Friday night. Inspector Dew was cheered from the dockside. At 8.30 on Sunday morning, in a white hat and blue suit disguised as a pilot, a lifeboat rowed by sailors took him to the newly-anchored Montrose off Father Point quarantine station.

The two men met on the boat deck, abaft the funnel. 'Good morning, Dr Crippen.' Ethel was in her cabin, reading Georgie Sheldon's _Audrey's Recompense._ She was arrested, screamed and fainted in Dew's arms.

'Murder and mutilation-oh God!' said Crippen. He was searched. He had 10 dollars, and two diamond rings sewn into his undervest. He carried visiting-cards printed, _E Robinson amp; Co. Detroit, Mich. Presented by Mr John Robinson._ One had written on the back, _I can't stand the horror I go through every night any longer, and as I see nothing bright ahead and money had come to an end, I have made up my mind to jump overboard tonight. I know I have spoiled your life, but I hope one day you can learn to forgive me. With last words of love, your H._

Ethel had a sachet of white powder. 'Doubtless poison,' reported _The Times,_ though it was a headache cure. The stewardess lent her a blouse, skirt and petticoat. The _Montrose_ blew her whistle. The press poured aboard from their pilot boat, overrunning the ship, interviewing every passenger, even if few spoke English. Ten days later, some reporters were struck by measles, which was rampant in the steerage.

'How can the man possibly have a fair trial after this cinematograph chase?' Eliot demanded furiously. 'It was completely unnecessary. Captain Kendall could have got him arrested in Quebec. The Canadian police are surely equipped with handcuffs and an extradition treaty?'

It was the Monday morning of August 19. All the newspapers printed a photograph of the gale-swept dockside at Liverpool. Crippen's plea against extradition from Quebec as an American citizen had been brushed aside. The Canadians excitedly discovered that he had lived fourteen years before in Toronto with a plump, fashionable woman, presumably now recovered from the Hilldrop Crescent cellar floor. In prison, Ethel had a dressmaker to provide a costume from the $60 found on her. Crippen so disgusted the other prisoners, he had to exercise alone. The Bishop of London sent him a book, but he never read it. Inspector Dew took a holiday at Niagara.

On the suddenly lowered baggage gangway of the Megantic at Liverpool, bowler- hatted, raincoated Dew clutched the handcuffed Crippen wearing his captor's ulster, collar up to hide his face from the booing crowd. As Strachey was writing of General Gordon, Dew had left England already famous and would soon be glorious. The Liverpool police saw no point in shading from his radiance. Their chief took a tender to the Mersey Bar and his officers swarmed aboard in port like bumboat women at Suez.

The homecomers had been reinforced by Crippen's other luncheon guest at the Holborn Restaurant, Sergeant Mitchell, dispatched in the _Lake Manitoba_ with wardresses Foster and Martin from Holloway Jail. Dew sailed home as Silas P Doyle, Crippen as Cyrus Field, Ethel as J Byrne, Mitchell as M F G Johnston, but the wardresses remained themselves.

Ethel used the passenger gangway. On the 2.23 to London, the pair had separate compartments with blinds drawn in the reserved coach next to the engine, first class. At 7 o'clock, Inspector Kane was waiting to welcome them at Euston. Groaning and hissing, straining against the wooden barriers, the crowd glimpsed three motor-cabs taking them to Bow Street police station.

''The most exciting episode in the history of police work,' they call it.' Eliot tossed the paper with the Liverpool photograph disgustedly across the breakfast table. 'Instead of two lives splintered on the anvil of public ghoulishness.' For a month, he had complained angrily about the crowds with their cameras in Hilldrop Crescent. 'The organs they dug up might be anyone's.'

Nancy sighed. 'Eliot, dear, a suspicious mind is unattractive, but even the Archangel Gabriel would purse his lips over that cellar.'

'I know more about those famous remains than people on the newspapers, who can have no possible idea what they really look like, or smell like. Remember I went to the Society of Medicine on Saturday?' Nancy nodded. 'I met one of the pathologists who's working on them at St Mary's. Bernard Spilsbury, thought a pretty sharp fellow, about my own age. I knew him at St Bartholomew's. Do you know, there's no head? No bones? And they were buried in slaked lime, which does nothing to encourage decomposition. A doctor like Crippen would have known that quicklime was a different chemical.'

'You always said what a rotten doctor he was.'

'There weren't even any sex organs. The body may not be a woman's at all. Belle could still be alive and laughing. The publicity would put her top of the bill for life.'

'Miss Le Neve wouldn't do badly either. I saw she was offered $1000 a week to appear in vaudeville in New York.'

'She'd do better in London. This country has an unhealthy preoccupation with transvestism. Look at Vesta Tilley-made a fortune on the music-halls, dressing as a man and singing 'Burlington Bertie.' Look at pantomime. As much as English institution as Christmas, and the principal boy's always a girl in tights. But Ethel will end up on the scaffold, not the stage,' he ended gloomily.

'Perhaps she'll strike a bargain? Get her charge reduced from murder, by telling the police all she knows?'

'Turn King's evidence? Slip the noose round her lover's neck with her own hands? Women don't do that sort of thing.' Eliot stared speculatively through the lace curtains of their downstairs dining-room. He ejected Crippen from his mind. 'Can you be back at the surgery by midday, Nancy? I'm lunching with my father, remember.'

'Are you going to tell him about us?'

'If you like,' he said casually.

'What about us?'

'Whatever you like.'

'He'll be dreadfully shocked we're not married.'

'Less than your father would. In ducal circles, fornication is thought an occupation as healthily natural as hunting. Only the middle class disapprove. I suppose because of their everlasting suspicion of paying full price for slightly shop-soiled goods.'

Major Beckett was waiting on the broad marble chessboard of the Imperial Club's hall floor. Eliot found his hand seized with startling enthusiasm. The major usually greeted his son far more casually than his friends.

'You know him. You've met him,' the major exclaimed. 'By jove! Living just round the corner from Hilldrop Crescent. What's he like? A fish-eyed monster, as the servants say? A smooth-tongued Bluebeard?' He stopped two clubmen. 'May I introduce my son, Dr Eliot Beckett? He is a neighbour of the Crippens, on intimate terms with Belle