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 might find himself in amiable conversation with a former convict. In its dining rooms painters, writers, judges, and barristers gathered for lunch and dinner. Later, after the theaters of the Strand and Shaftesbury Avenue closed for the night, the city’s population of actors, comedians, and magicians thronged the “Cri” and its bar and its Grand Hall and its East Room and West.
Crippen wore an evening coat, Ethel wore her new dress, and as a further touch, she pinned to her bodice the rising sun brooch that Belle had left behind. Men watched her and admired the way her dress set off her slender figure. The ladies of the guild watched too, but what most caught their attention was the brooch. They knew it well—it had been a favorite of Belle’s. Louise Smythson saw it. Clara Martinetti saw it, and later noted that the typist “wore it without any attempt at concealment.” Annie Stratton saw it, as did her husband, Eugene, who sang in blackface with Pony Moore’s minstrels. Lil Hawthorne, attending with her husband and manager John Nash, sat opposite Crippen and the typist, and they too noticed the brooch. John Nash said, “it impressed me.” Maud Burroughs saw it: “I know [Belle] was very particular whenever she went away to have all her jewelry, except what she took with her, placed in a safe deposit, and this is why it struck me as so strange that the typist was seen wearing a brooch of hers.”
The atmosphere shimmered with hostility. Crippen sat between Clara Martinetti and Ethel. The two women did not speak, but at one point their eyes met. Mrs. Martinetti nodded. She recalled that Ethel seemed “very quiet.” John Nash said, “I noticed that Crippen and the girl were drinking very freely of wine.”
Mrs. Louise Smythson approached Crippen and asked for Belle’s address in America and said how strange it was that Belle had not yet written, to anyone.
“She is away up the mountains in the wilds of California,” he said.
“Has she no settled address?”
“No,” Crippen said, but then offered to forward anything that Smythson wanted to send.
For the moment, Mrs. Smythson let the matter drop.
“AFTER THIS,” ETHEL WROTE, “I noticed that the members of the Music Hall Ladies Guild were showing marked curiosity in my movements.” Her sense of being spied upon and gossiped about became acute. She could not help but run into the ladies of the guild when she entered and left the building and walked the hall to Crippen’s office. Nothing was said directly, but much was communicated by glance and rigid cordiality, deadly for its iciness. “Often when I went along the street with Dr. Crippen,” she wrote, “I remarked people staring at me in a curious way.”
It made her uncomfortable. She wished the ladies could just accept the fact of her relationship with Crippen and be done with it.
But she had made the mistake of allowing the affair to become public: This was the England of Edward VII, but it was also the England that served as the setting for
On March 12 Crippen took a cab to Mrs. Jackson’s house on Constantine Road and thanked her for all she had done for his “little girl,” but now, he said, he was taking her away. They loaded all her things into a cab, then went to a nearby public house to celebrate. Even Mrs. Jackson’s husband came along, though he did not approve of Crippen and did not consider Le Neve’s recent behavior at all ladylike. Crippen bought champagne. They all drank.
Then Crippen took Ethel home.
“I DON’T BELIEVE IT”
