importance far greater than he appears to imagine. It is a case in which members of the public are driven to take extreme measures in order to obtain information to which they are justly entitled.”
He wrote, “The Professor complains that, during his lecture on the 4th inst., the Marconi instruments were disturbed by outside interference, and desires to know the names of those who perpetrated the ‘outrage.’ His suggestions of public opprobrium, legal proceedings, and personal violence may, of course, be dismissed as mere crackling of thorns beneath the pot. Personally, I have no hesitation in admitting my complicity as an accessory before the fact, the original suggestion having been made by Dr. Horace Manders.”
He countered Fleming’s charge of hooliganism by asking, “If this be described as ‘scientific hooliganism’ and the like, what epithets must we apply to the action of those who, having publicly made certain specific claims, resent being taken at their word?
“We have been led to believe that Marconi messages are proof against interference. The recent Marconi ‘triumphs’ have all been in that direction. Professor Fleming himself has vouched for the reliability and efficacy of the Marconi syntony. The object of the lecture was to demonstrate this.” He wrote that he and Manders merely had put Fleming’s claims to the test. “If all we had heard were true, he would never have known what was going on. Efforts at interference would have been effort wasted. But when we come to actual fact, we find that a simple untuned radiator upsets the ‘tuned’ Marconi receivers—”
Here he twisted the knife.
“—and Professor Fleming’s letter proves it.”
Immediately the press leaped into the fray. If Fleming simply had kept the cap on his inkwell, the whole matter likely would have remained dormant. As the
He accused Fleming of giving two lectures that afternoon. “The first was by Professor Fleming the scientist, and was everything that a scientific lecture ought to be; the second was by Professor Fleming, the expert adviser to the Marconi Company.”
THAT DECEMBER MARCONI declined to renew Fleming’s contract.
AH
CHIEF INSPECTOR DEW BEGAN HIS INQUIRY by paying a visit to the Music Hall Ladies’ Guild at Albion House, accompanied by an assistant, Det. Sgt. Arthur Mitchell. They were careful to keep their presence from being discovered by Crippen, whose office—“curiously enough”—was in the same building.
Over the next six days the detectives interviewed Melinda May, the Burroughses, and the Martinettis and talked again with John Nash and his wife, Lil. Dew heard about the rising sun brooch, and examined the correspondence that had taken place between Crippen and various members of the guild in the months since Belle’s alleged disappearance. He learned that Belle had been “a great favorite with all whom she came in contact with.” He collected details about her relationship with Crippen. Maud Burroughs described Belle “as always having her own way with her husband and going about just as she liked, which he apparently was content to submit to.”
Dew wrote a sixteen-page report on his findings and turned it in to Froest on July 6, 1910. Dew had doubts about whether further inquiry would turn up anything criminal. On the first page he wrote, “The story told by Mr. and Mrs. Nash and others is a somewhat singular one, although having regard to the Bohemian character of the persons concerned, is capable of explanation.”
Still, the story did contain contradictions that Dew considered “most extraordinary.” His recommendation: “without adopting the suggestion made by her friends as to foul play, I do think that the time has now arrived when ‘Doctor’ Crippen should be seen by us, and asked to give an explanation as to when, and how, Mrs. Crippen left this country, and the circumstances under which she died…. This course, I venture to think, may result in him giving such explanation as would clear up the whole matter and avoid elaborate enquiries being made in the United States.”
Superintendent Froest agreed.
On Friday morning, July 8, at ten o’clock, Chief Inspector Dew and Sergeant Mitchell walked up the front steps to No. 39 Hilldrop Crescent. The knocker on the door was new; the house seemed prosperous and well kept.
A GIRL IN HER LATE TEENS answered the door. Dew asked, “Is Dr. Crippen at home?”
The girl was French and spoke little English but managed to invite Dew and Mitchell into the front hall. A few moments later a woman appeared whom Dew judged to be between twenty-five and thirty years old. “She was not pretty,” Dew recalled, “but there was something quite attractive about her, and she was neatly and quietly dressed.”
He noticed that she was wearing a diamond brooch and knew at once it must be the rising sun brooch he had heard so much about.
“Is Dr. Crippen in?” Dew asked again.
He was not, the woman said. She explained that he had gone to his office at Albion House, in New Oxford Street.
“Who are you?” Dew asked.
“I am the housekeeper.”
Dew said, “You are Miss Le Neve, are you not?”
Her cheeks turned a faint rose, he noticed. “Yes, that’s right.”
“Unfortunate the doctor is out,” he said. “I want to see him rather urgently. I am Chief Inspector Dew of Scotland Yard. Would it be asking too much for you to take us down to Albion House? I am anxious not to lose any time.”
He of course knew exactly where Albion House was but did not want to give Le Neve an opportunity to telephone Crippen and warn him that two detectives were on the way. Le Neve went upstairs and returned with her coat. Dew noticed she had removed the brooch.
A few moments later they were aboard the electric tram on Camden Road. They rode it to Hampstead Road, where they caught a cab for the remainder of the journey through Bloomsbury to Albion House.
ETHEL’S RECOLLECTION OF THIS encounter differed from Dew’s. Hers made no mention of the brooch or her initial claim to be the housekeeper but added a plume of detail that illuminated the moment and the personalities involved.
She was helping straighten up the house, “making beds and so on,” when she heard the knocker on the front door. It surprised her because tradesmen always used the side door. She listened at the top of the stairs as the French maid opened the door and a man asked, “Is Dr. Crippen at home?”
The maid did not understand the question. “Yes,” she said.
“What a stupid creature that is!” Ethel whispered to herself, then came down the stairs and saw that two
