The jewels were lovely, and Ethel believed them to be of the finest quality, for Crippen, as she put it, “was a real expert in diamonds.” Previously he had shown her how to judge a diamond by color and clarity, and how to tell at a glance whether a diamond had been set in New York or London.

She suggested he pawn the remaining jewels—a dozen rings and a large brooch inlaid with rows of diamonds in the shape of a tiara. The idea of doing so had not struck Crippen, but now he told Ethel it was a good plan. He walked to a pawnshop on the same street as his office, Mssrs. Jay & Attenborough.

He showed a clerk named Ernest Stuart three diamond rings. After examining them closely, Stuart agreed to lend Crippen ?80. Crippen returned a few days later with the rest of the jewels, and got another ?115 pounds, for a total of ?195—nearly $20,000 today.

That night Ethel Le Neve slept in Crippen’s bed at Hilldrop Crescent for the first time.

FOR THE LADIES of the guild, the news was equally amazing. The packet delivered to the guild office that morning contained two letters—one for Melinda May, and one for the guild’s executive committee. It also contained the guild’s ledger and checkbook, which Belle in her role as treasurer had kept at home.

The letters were dated that same day, February 2, and were from Belle Elmore. A notation after the closing of May’s letter indicated it had been prepared by Crippen at Belle’s request.

“Dear Miss May,” it began, “Illness of a near relative has called me to America on only a few hours’ notice, so I must ask you to bring my resignation as treasurer before the meeting to-day, so that a new treasurer can be elected at once. You will appreciate my haste when I tell you that I have not been to bed all night packing, and getting ready to go. I shall hope to see you again a few months later, but I cannot spare a moment to call on you before I go. I wish you everything nice till I return to London again.”

The letter to the executive committee repeated the news and noted the enclosure of the checkbook and ledger. It urged the committee to suspend the usual rules and appoint a new treasurer immediately. “I hope some months later to be with you again, and in meantime wish the Guild every success and ask my good friends and pals to accept my sincere and loving wishes for their own personal welfare.”

The news of Belle’s departure and the selection of her replacement consumed most of that day’s meeting, though no one thought to walk the short distance to Crippen’s office to ask for a fuller explanation.

A FEW DAYS LATER—MOST LIKELY it was Saturday, February 5—Ethel and Crippen arranged to spend an evening together at the theater. “He thought it would cheer us both up,” Ethel said, though she herself needed no cheering. She reveled in her new status. No longer would she have to endure the sight of Crippen going off with his wife to some evening function, when rightfully it should have been she, Ethel, who accompanied him.

They were both in the office, Saturday being a workday, when Crippen remembered that he had forgotten to leave out food for his pets—the seven canaries, two cats, and bull terrier. He could not get away to feed them, but the prospect of leaving them so long without food troubled him.

Lest this problem destroy the evening and their first opportunity to go out together in public without fear of discovery, Ethel volunteered to go to Hilldrop Crescent and feed the animals. Crippen offered his keys. She left after lunch.

Ethel entered the house through the side door and found herself alone in the place for the first time. She had seen little of it so far, only the kitchen, the parlor, the bathroom, and of course Crippen’s bedroom. She made her way to the kitchen, where she found most of the pets. She went to the pantry, near the door to the coal cellar, to get some milk for the cats, but as she did so, one of the cats, a beautiful white Persian—Belle’s favorite—escaped and dashed upstairs. Ethel gave chase.

The cat led her throughout the house. “The faster I ran the faster went the cat,” she recalled. At last she cornered it and brought it back downstairs to the kitchen.

Her tour had taken her through rooms she had never seen before, giving her a new sense of what life had been like for Crippen—nothing “uncanny,” as she put it, just a sense of loneliness and what she termed a “strange untidiness.”

“Rich gowns lay about the bedrooms, creased and tumbled in disorder,” Ethel wrote. “Lengths of silk which had never been made into frocks were piled up, and on the pegs was a regular wardrobe, like part of a dressmaker’s show-room.” There were piles of clothes and “cheap stuff” that appeared never to have been worn or used. “I was struck,” she wrote, “by this extraordinary litter.” That Belle had left so much jewelry and clothing behind, even a number of gorgeous and expensive furs, seemed to Ethel a measure of how thoroughly her marriage to Crippen had failed. “I did not question the fact that she had walked straight out of the house, abandoning her old home life, and relinquishing everything it had contained.”

What did surprise Ethel was the decor, especially in light of Belle’s obvious attention to her own appearance. The house had been furnished “in a higgledy-piggledy way,” Ethel wrote. “There was scarcely anything which matched. The only thing in the house which I liked was the ebony piano. All the other things had been picked up at sales by the doctor and his wife, and were of the most miscellaneous description. There was a tremendous number of trumpery knickknacks, cheap vases, china dogs, and occasional tables. There were lots of pictures—small oil and water-colour paintings by unknown artists—with bows of velvet on them to add to their beauty.”

The air was stale, the rooms dark. Overall a sense of loneliness and gloom suffused the place. “From the first,” Ethel said, “I took a dislike to the house.”

THAT MONDAY CRIPPEN stopped in at the Martinettis’ flat on Shaftesbury Avenue. Clara asked, “What is all this about Belle? She has gone to America and you said nothing about it.”

“We were busy packing the whole night the cable came,” Crippen said.

Clara asked why Belle had not sent her a message; Crippen replied they had been too busy getting Belle ready for departure.

“Packing and crying?” Clara asked.

“No,” Crippen said, “we have got over all that.”

The next week he told Clara that he had received disturbing news from Belle, by telegram. She was ill, a pulmonary ailment. Nothing to worry about, but troubling all the same.

WITH EACH DAY that Belle did not return, Ethel Le Neve found her confidence growing. She began wearing the jewelry Crippen had given her and allowed herself to be seen with him on the street, at the theater, and at restaurants. Her landlady, Mrs. Jackson, noticed that Ethel seemed to be in fine spirits almost all the time, noticed too that she had begun wearing new clothes and jewelry, including a brooch with a central diamond and radiating beams of pearls, and a trio of bracelets, though one of the bracelets, set with amethyst stones, seemed far too big for Ethel’s tiny wrist. Ethel also showed off two new gold watches. One evening, beaming, she showed Mrs. Jackson a diamond solitaire ring and called it her “proper engagement ring.” A few nights later Ethel displayed yet another ring. She flashed the diamond in the light. “Do you know what this cost?” she exclaimed.

“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

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