Thunderstruck

which to discard. As the New York Times noted, “Many meek looking men with glasses have been looked on with suspicion, and the number of people who have been shadowed by amateur detectives anxious to gain the police reward of $1,250 is beyond count.”

And then came this, from the French city of Bourges:

On the night of Wednesday, July 13, a lovely young woman registered at the Hotel France. She wore an elegant dress and carried herself in a refined manner. She was about twenty-five years old, brunette, and of slight build. Overall she had “a prepossessing appearance.” The name she gave was Jeanne Maze. She claimed to be French, though no one at the hotel believed it.

Upon receiving her key, she went directly to her room.

One hour later hotel staff heard three gunshots. They hunted for the source and eventually came to the woman’s room, which they found locked. Using a spare key, they entered. The woman was sprawled across the bed. A note lay on a nearby table.

“I request that my identity be not sought. The cause of my suicide is known to me alone. I ask to be allowed to rest tranquilly in my tomb.

“I am a foreigner. I leave 100 francs to defray my funeral expenses.

“Life to me, alas! appeared unsmiling.”

The local police investigated but learned nothing of the woman’s identity and let the matter rest. Clearly she was a victim of failed romance. Only when they received Dew’s circular did they realize the young woman could be—had to be—the fugitive typist, Ethel Le Neve.

They found the resemblance uncanny.

A MESSAGE FROM THE SEA

ON BOARD THE MONTROSE CAPTAIN Kendall continued his investigation to test his theory about the secret identities of the Robinsons, and he did so with enthusiasm and subtlety. He read over the descriptions conveyed to the ship by Scotland Yard when it had been moored in London, and he examined the photographs of Le Neve and Crippen published in the continental Daily Mail. The man in the photograph had a mustache and spectacles—Robinson did not. Using chalk, Kendall erased both the mustache and the rims around Crippen’s lenses, and found the likeness a close one. In talking with Robinson on deck Kendall noticed marks on either side of his nose, where the frames of spectacles would have rested. He noticed too that Robinson’s supposed son filled out his clothing in a decidedly feminine way. Once, a gust of wind raised the back of the boy’s jacket, and Kendall saw that the rear seam of the pants was held together with large safety pins.

Kendall invited the Robinsons to join him at his table for dinner and found that the boy’s table manners “were most lady-like.” The boy plucked fruit from his plate in a dainty fashion, using only two fingers instead of the full- fisted approach that a lot of men deployed. His father cracked nuts for him, gave him half his salad, and generally attended to him with the kind of solicitude men reserved for women.

During dinner Kendall told stories meant to make Robinson laugh out loud, to gauge whether in fact he had false teeth as mentioned in the police circular. “This ruse was successful,” Kendall noted.

The next morning, Thursday, the second day of the voyage, Kendall engaged Robinson in a conversation about seasickness. He remarked that neither Robinson nor his son seemed to exhibit any symptoms at all. Kendall hoped through this conversation to determine whether Robinson possessed a knowledge of medicine, and indeed found that Robinson immediately began deploying medical terminology to describe certain remedies. “I was then fully convinced that he was a medical man,” Kendall wrote.

Other fragments of damning evidence accumulated. Kendall overheard Robinson speaking French to a pair of other passengers. According to the police circular, Dr. Crippen spoke French. One afternoon Kendall spotted the Robinsons strolling ahead of him and called out, “Mr. Robinson!” But the man took no notice. Kendall tried again, and again Robinson was oblivious, until his son nudged him to get his attention. The father turned with a smile and apologized for not hearing, explaining that the cold weather had made him deaf. (In fact, Crippen by now had developed a hearing deficit and was known at times to use a hearing aid in the shape of a tiny funnel, of brass, which resides today in a display case at the Museum of London.)

Early in the morning of the third day, Friday, July 22, the Montrose left the English Channel and passed the giant Marconi station at Poldhu. Kendall knew that if he was going to alert the police, he would have to do it by evening or pass beyond the transmission range of the ship’s Marconi apparatus.

Kendall composed a message for his superiors at the Canadian Pacific office at Liverpool and sent for his wireless operator, Llewellyn Jones of the Marconi company. At three that afternoon, Greenwich mean time, when the ship was about 130 miles west of the Lizard, Jones began tapping a sequence of dots and dashes destined to become one of the most famous messages in the history of marine wireless.

Have strong suspicions that Crippen London Cellar Murderer and accomplice are amongst saloon passengers. Moustache taken off growing beard. Accomplice dressed as boy voice manner and build undoubtedly a girl. Both traveling as Mr. and Master Robinson. Kendall.

Kendall received nothing in reply; he had no idea whether his message reached Liverpool or not. He kept the Robinsons under close observation.

“MR. DEWHURST”

KENDALL’S MESSAGE TORE THROUGH THE ATMOSPHERE at the speed of light. Its train of waves struck the giant receiving antenna at Poldhu, and every other wireless antenna within range, and was received by Marconi’s new magnetic detector, a device operators nicknamed the “maggie.” The detector in turn activated a secondary circuit connected to a Morse inker, and immediately a tape bearing pale blue dots and dashes began to emerge. The operators relayed the message by landline to Canadian Pacific’s office in Liverpool, where officials summoned police. Liverpool detectives, in turn, sent a message to Scotland Yard, in which they repeated the contents of Kendall’s Marconigram. A messenger carried it to the office occupied by the CID’s Murder Squad.

“It was eight o’clock in the evening,” Dew said. “Almost completely worn out with the strain of work, I was chatting with a confrere in my office at the Yard when a telegram was handed to me.”

As he read it, his fatigue “instantly vanished.”

There had been thousands of leads, from all over the world. At that moment detectives in Spain and Switzerland were exploring two seemingly solid reports. Countless other supposedly good leads had dissipated like smoke. This new message, however, bore a level of authority hitherto absent. It had come from the captain of a ship at sea, owned by a large and respected company. It had been read by company officials, who presumably would not have forwarded it to police if they had harbored doubts about the captain’s credibility. One portion of the message carried a particular resonance: “Accomplice dressed as boy voice manner and build undoubtedly a girl.”

Dew read it over again. He checked a shipping schedule and made a series of telephone calls, the last to Sir Melville Macnaghten, the Criminal Investigation Department chief, at his home. Macnaghten was in the midst of dressing for dinner.

“Read it to me,” Macnaghten said. When Dew was finished, Macnaghten was quiet a moment, then said, “Better come over for a chat.”

Dew dashed down to the lobby and out to the Victoria Embankment, where he caught a cab to Macnaghten’s house. Dew instructed the driver to wait. Inside, Dew showed Kendall’s message to Sir Melville, who was now fully adorned in formal black and white. According to Dew, Macnaghten read the telegram with raised eyebrows.

Now Macnaghten looked at Dew. “What do you think?”

“I feel confident it’s them.”

“So do I. What do you suggest?”

Dew said, “I want to go after them in a fast steamer.” He told Macnaghten that a White Star liner, the Laurentic, was set to depart Liverpool the next day for Quebec. “I believe it is possible for