out of the question. In desperation, Kemp and his helpers began constructing a very different kind of antenna. They began stringing a wire from the top of Signal Hill to an iceberg marooned in St. John’s harbor.
To Kemp’s regret, he never got the chance to test it.
MARCONI DEBATED WHAT to do next. He could wait and hope that the weather would improve or that Kemp’s iceberg antenna would work, or he could simply trust that he had indeed heard signals from Poldhu and go ahead and notify Flood Page in London.
He sent the cable. “SIGNALS ARE BEING RECEIVED,” it read. “WEATHER MAKES CONTINUOUS TESTS VERY DIFFICULT.” That night, he released a statement to
For one so aware of the “doubters” arrayed against him and of the hostility in particular of Lodge, Preece, and the electrical press, Marconi in orchestrating this transatlantic experiment and in now revealing it to the world had made errors of fundamental importance.
Once again he had failed to provide an independent witness to observe and confirm his tests. Moreover, in choosing to listen for the signals with a telephone receiver instead of recording their receipt automatically with his usual Morse inker, he had eliminated the one bit of physical evidence—the tapes from the inker—that could have corroborated his account. He had to have recognized that his claims of so wondrous an accomplishment, deemed impossible by the world’s greatest scientists, would pique skepticism and draw scrutiny, but apparently he believed that his own credibility would be sufficient to put all doubts to rest. This belief was a miscalculation that would prove costly.
THAT SUNDAY, DECEMBER 15, the governor of Newfoundland, Sir Cavendish Boyle, held a celebratory lunch for Marconi at which, as Kemp recalled, the governor served champagne that had been retrieved from a shipwreck after years underwater. The
Over the next few days the stock prices of the transatlantic cable companies began to fall. Within a week the Anglo-American Telegraph Co. saw its preferred stock drop seven points and its common stock four. Shares of Eastern Telegraph Co. lost five and a half.
AMBROSE FLEMING LEARNED of Marconi’s feat only by reading a newspaper. He wrote later that he had been “left in ignorance of this success” until he opened the December 16 edition of the
He had been left out of the whole affair, yet it was he who had designed and configured the power system at Poldhu and who during his many grueling trips to the station had made it all work.
He was hurt and angry.
JOSEPHINE HOLMAN PROFESSED to be delighted. In an interview she revealed that she had known all along about Marconi’s plan to span the Atlantic. “It has been a terrible state secret with me for more than a year,” she said. She omitted the fact that during that year she had seen him only rarely. She hoped that she would see more of him, now that his great goal had been achieved, and that he might even pay a visit at last to Indianapolis to meet her family.
“I would rather marry that kind of man than a king,” she said, and pronounced herself “the happiest woman in the world.”
Several days later her grandmother hosted an engagement party at her home in Woodruff Place in Indianapolis—without Marconi. Josephine now lived in New York with her mother but had come down for a six-week visit. The party occurred at its end, during a spell of deep cold that raised fears of what the newspapers called a “coal famine.” After the party, she set out to return to New York to rejoin her mother and, most important, to be reunited with her fiance, who was headed there now, booked to stay at his favorite hotel, the Hoffman House.
It seemed a delightful prospect: Christmas in New York, with her husband-to-be, now more famous than ever.
TO THE BALL
WHEN ETHEL LE NEVE ARRIVED at work on the morning of Wednesday, February 2, 1910, she found a packet on her desk with a note on top that caused a soaring of spirit. Written in Crippen’s hand, the text was simple and direct: “B.E. has gone to America.” The note asked Ethel to deliver the packet to Melinda May, secretary of the Music Hall Ladies’ Guild.
“Shall be in later,” Crippen wrote, “when we can arrange for a pleasant little evening.”
So Belle was gone. “I was, of course, immensely excited at this disappearance of Dr. Crippen’s mysterious wife,” Ethel wrote. “I knew well enough that they had been on bad terms together. I knew that she had often threatened to go away and leave him. I knew also that she had a secret affection for Mr. Bruce Miller, who lived in New York.” Ethel assumed that Belle had at last made good on her threat and had run off to join the ex-prizefighter. If true, if really true, it meant that Crippen now would be free to seek divorce and, despite the strictures of British law, likely would prevail. It was, as she put it, “amazing news.”
Ethel took the packet down the hall to the offices of the guild, which was due to meet that day, then returned to Yale Tooth to await her lover. She had many questions.
At noon he still had not appeared. She believed he was conducting business at nearby Craven House, on Kingsway. She busied herself with the work of the office, though Crippen’s news made it hard for her to concentrate.
Crippen did not come back until four o’clock that afternoon. “He was not in a mood then for a long conversation on the subject,” she recalled, “and his reticence I readily understood.” But she had to speak with him.
“Has Belle Elmore really gone away?”
“Yes,” Crippen said. “She has left me.”
“Did you see her go?”
“No. I found her gone when I got home last night.”
“Do you think she will come back?”
Crippen shook his head. “No,” he said, “I don’t.”
On this score Ethel needed reassurance: “Did she take any luggage with her?”
“I don’t know what luggage she had, because I did not see her go. I daresay she took what she wanted. She always said that the things I gave her were not good enough, so I suppose she thinks she can get better elsewhere.”
Though Crippen seemed downcast, Ethel offered neither condolence nor sympathy. “I could not pretend to commiserate with him,” she wrote. “He had led me into the secret of his unhappy married life, and now that his wife had disappeared it seemed to me best for him, perhaps also best for her.”
Now Crippen surprised her. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a handful of jewels that Belle had left behind. “Look here,” he said. “You had better have those.” He held them out. “These are good, and I should like to know you had some good jewelry. They will be useful when we are dining out, and you will please me if you will accept them.”
“If you really wish it,” Ethel said, “I will have one or two. Pick out what you like. You know my tastes.”
He chose several diamond rings; a more elaborate ring with four diamonds and a ruby; and a brooch in a pattern that evoked a rising sun, with a diamond at its center and pearls radiating outward in zigzag fashion.
