‘And Dr Crippen. What is he like?’
‘He’s a quiet sort of a man,’ said Louise. ‘Works as a dentist part of the time and in a pharmacy the rest of it. Sometimes you’d think he wouldn’t say boo to a goose, but there’s evil behind those eyes, Inspector. I can sense it.’
Dew smiled. He was accustomed to people running away with their stories in their imagination and attributing every unsolved crime on the streets of London to those they considered a bad lot. ‘And did they get along?’ he asked. ‘Were they happy?’
‘Not entirely,’ said Louise. ‘Although, really, Cora was the kindest, most gentle woman in the world. It would take a monster not to get along with her. Hawley Crippen was a lucky man, if you ask me.’
He nodded and made a few notes in his journal. In his heart he doubted there was anything to it, but nevertheless he thought he might just pay a visit to the doctor. ‘Can you give me their address?’ he asked.
‘Thirty-nine Hilldrop Crescent, Camden,’ said Louise.
He wrote this down and stood up, ushering them towards the door. ‘Well, I’ll pay a little call on Dr Crippen,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll get to the bottom of the matter. I’m sure there’s nothing to it.’
‘Well, we certainly hope there’s nothing to it,’ said Margaret Nash, although in truth she was quite enjoying the drama. ‘I would hate to think of something bad happening to such a lovely woman.’
‘You will keep us informed, Inspector, won’t you?’ asked Louise, walking down the stairs, irritated that he was not going to see them out.
‘Yes, of course. Give your addresses to PC Milburn at the front desk and I’ll let you know what happens.’
Louise and Margaret returned to the lobby and gave their details to the constable. ‘I’m usually at home alone on Mondays between four and six,’ Louise whispered in his ear.
Upstairs in his office, Inspector Walter Dew looked in his diary. He was pretty busy throughout the next week, but he had promised to look into the matter and he would not disappoint them. He turned the page to the following week, saw a free morning and scribbled the details down quickly:
‘Dr Crippen. Thirty-nine Hilldrop Crescent. Missing wife. Supposedly dead. Pay a visit.’
10.
On Board the Montrose
The Atlantic Ocean: Friday, 22 July 1910
The sun broke early on Friday morning on board the Montrose, but Mr John Robinson slept late in his bunk. Edmund had woken around eight o’clock and had gone to breakfast, finding the dining hall filled with passengers for the first time since their voyage had begun. The majority of his fellow travellers had grown accustomed to the movement of the ship over the previous few days and appetites had returned in strength. All around him he could see the faces of first-class passengers, the colour back in their fat cheeks, filling their starving bellies with food as if a famine had just ended and supplies had been delivered for the first time in weeks. Not wishing to engage in conversation, he searched the room for a place where he might sit alone but he could not see a spare table. There were at least ten people queuing at the buffet, however, so he walked towards it, hoping that a seat might present itself by the time he had been served.
Catching sight of his reflection in the mirrored wall behind the food stands, it struck Edmund how easy it was to make the transformation from female to male, particularly when one was as small and slim as he was. People believed what was presented to them and rarely challenged it, which was how the deception had worked so convincingly thus far.
Their first conversation on the subject had taken place in Antwerp, on the afternoon that Hawley had bought the tickets which would gain them passage on the Montrose and, ultimately, bring them to their new lives together in Canada. He returned to their hotel room in the late afternoon, armed with several parcels, and laid them out on the bed with a look of anxiety on his face, barely able to look at his lover as he prepared his explanation. Ethel was accustomed to his mood swings by now; ever since his wife’s death she felt that he had grown increasingly tortured by the memory of her. The fact that their own relationship had begun before Cora went to California seemed to weigh on his mind to the point where Ethel believed he actually blamed himself for her leaving. In their adultery lay the failure of the marriage, as opposed to Cora’s unreasonable behaviour.
‘What’s all this?’ she asked, turning around from the dressing table where she had been trying on a pearl necklace belonging to Cora which she had never worn before. Perhaps it was the light, but she didn’t like the way it looked on her; the pearls were far too white, compared to the paleness of her own neck. Cora had enjoyed a darker complexion, which matched her moods. Ethel threw them aside with little ceremony. ‘Hawley, you haven’t been buying me presents again, surely? You’re spoiling me. And we should be saving our money.’
‘Not quite, my dear,’ he replied, reaching over and giving her a gentle kiss on the forehead. ‘Just a few things for the voyage, that’s all.’
‘But our bags are quite full already,’ she said, standing up and going over to examine his purchases happily. Although she had never had a relationship with a man before, she was sure that no one alive was as attentive and thoughtful as Doctor Hawley Harvey Crippen. If there was one thing he knew how to do, it was how to make a girl feel valued. She poured out the contents of the bags on the bed and stared at them in surprise. ‘I don’t understand,’ she muttered, turning to stare at him, bewildered. ‘Is someone else joining us?’
Across the blanket lay a couple of pairs of boy’s breeches, along with some shirts, a pair of braces, some boots, a cap and a black wig. They all appeared to be in Ethel’s size but were clearly designed for a boy rather than for a girl.
‘I should explain,’ said Hawley, his face growing a little red with embarrassment.
‘I think you should.’
Hawley sat down on a chair and held Ethel’s hand as she sat on the corner of the bed opposite him. ‘I think we need to be very careful,’ he said, beginning the speech he had prepared earlier, not knowing whether she would believe him or not. ‘You see, I have a friend who travelled to America last year with his fiancée, and a scandal was created on board when it was discovered that they were sharing a cabin in an unmarried state. They were shunned for the entire voyage. Almost two weeks. I’m worried that it would be the same with us. I thought it would be better if no one knew our true feelings for each other.’
Ethel stared at him in amazement. ‘Hawley, you can’t be serious,’ she said.
‘I’m perfectly serious,’ he replied. ‘You see, what I thought was that, if you were to dress as a boy, then—’
‘A boy?’
‘Just hear me out, Ethel. If you were to dress as a boy, then no one would give any serious thought to the question of our sharing a cabin. No one would care.’
Ethel held her breath; she could scarcely believe what she was hearing. She turned around and looked at the clothes he had bought for her and she couldn’t help but laugh. ‘Hawley, you’re such a prude!’ she said. ‘This is 1910, for heaven’s sake. Not 1810. No one cares about such things today, surely.’
‘Of course they do. Don’t be so naïve.’
‘And if they do,’ she added with determination, ‘what of it? We’re in love, aren’t we?’
‘Of course we are.’
‘And we’re adults?’
‘Yes, but—’
‘And we plan to be married when we reach Canada, don’t we?’
‘As soon as is humanly possible.’
‘Then I ask you, Hawley, what business is it of anyone else how we choose to arrange our lives in the mean time? If we want to spend the voyage hanging out of the crow’s nest, huddled up in a lifeboat, or howling at the moon, what does it matter to others as long as we have paid the fare?’
Hawley stood up and walked across to the window, pulling back the curtain a little with his fingers and looking down on the streets of Antwerp below. The market was closing for t
he day and he could make out a group of boys watching a grocery stall in earnest, waiting for the owner to turn his back so that they could each steal an apple. Their intent was obvious; he wondered why the stall owner failed to notice them. If it was mine, he thought to himself, I would keep a whip under the stall to dissuade thieves. ‘Ethel,’ he said in a quiet voice, ‘I wouldn’t ask you to do this if I didn’t believe it was completely necessary. I’ve been married twice before, you know that.’
‘Of course I do, but I don’t see what that—’
‘Both marriages failed. Oh, I know that Charlotte died and Cora left me for another man, but I was miserable with both ladies and that’s the truth of it. With you, things are different. I believe we have a chance of true happiness. For the first time in my life, real affection and love. And the moment we set foot on that boat tomorrow, we begin our new lives. Away from Europe. Just you and me. And I want every moment to be perfect. This trip across the ocean is our pre-honeymoon, don’t you see? If we have to put up with the comments of the other passengers or if we end up being snubbed by our peers, then what kind of voyage will it be? Eleven days of misery. And that’s no way to begin our lives together. And what if the scandal follows us to Canada and we find it hard to make new friends there? I ask you, do we deserve that? Please, Ethel. For me. Just consider it.’
She shook her head slowly, not as a refusal but out of amazement at his ideas, and turned once again to look at the clothes, picking up a pair of the breeches he had purchased and holding them against her legs to measure the size. She examined her reflection in the mirror; they seemed like a perfect fit. She took the wig off the bed and, piling her own hair up on her head, placed it on top, settling it gently at the sides. She looked in the glass again and wasn’t sure whether she should laugh or not. ‘It would take some adjusting,’ she said. ‘I might need to cut my own hair underneath it.’
‘But it will work. You agree to it?’
‘People will see through it,’ she said, exasperated.
‘People believe what they are told. No one expects a grown woman to dress as a teenage boy. Why would they? It will work, believe me.’
She sighed dramatically. ‘And who shall we say we are?’ she asked. ‘What pretence shall we give?’
‘I’ve thought about that too,’ he said. ‘It will be a game for us. I will say that my name is Mr John Robinson and you’re—’
‘Mr John—?’
‘You’re my son, Edmund.’
‘Your son,’ she said in a matter-of-fact tone. ‘Hawley, this isn’t some strange fantasy you’ve cooked up, is it? Because if it is, I can tell you now that—’
‘It’s a deception, that’s all, and it might even prove an entertaining one for us. Please, Ethel. I truly believe that this will be the sensible way for us to escape from here and begin again.’
She considered it. It was the most ridiculous thing she had ever heard and she failed to understand why he was so determined about it. Of course, his point was a valid one. If their fellow passengers in first class discovered an unmarried man and woman sharing a cabin, they would naturally cause a scandal; but, unlike Hawley, Ethel did not particularly care. She was not a woman overly concerned with the opinions of others.
‘And when we reach Canada,’ she said, ‘we can stop pretending? We can go back to being plain old Hawley and Ethel?’
‘I promise it.’
She turned and looked at herself in the mirror once again. ‘I make quite a good boy, really, don’t I?’ she asked.
Three days later, and she had not only grown accustomed to wearing her new outfit, but had begun to enjoy it. She felt a sense of great adventure and freedom pretending to be someone that she was not. Of course, problems had arisen along the way. Her basic prettiness, her wide eyes, her sharp cheekbones, her full lips, had made her into quite an attractive boy, and that had inspired the attentions of Victoria Drake who, she noticed happily, was not in the dining hall this morning. But everything about being Edmund Robinson, rather than Ethel LeNeve, offered a sense of danger and challenge which she had never felt before. She could walk differently, speak differently, act differently and think differently. She had boarded in Antwerp as a boy but, if nothing else, she believed that the trip across the Atlantic would make her a man.
Having helped himself to breakfast, the self-created Edmund Robinson stared around the hall, which still appeared to be filled to capacity. Running along the wall, however, was a row of tables set for two people and he saw an empty one at the very end, so he made his way towards it quickly, sitting down just as another passenger pulled out the opposite seat. He looked up to see the dark, scowling face of Tom DuMarqué as he planted himself at the other side of the table, his tray almost overloaded with food. He had the sense that Tom had been waiting for him.
‘Tom,’ he said, irritated to see him, for he had wanted to eat in peace this morning. ‘How nice.’
‘Edmund,’ the other replied with a curt nod. ‘You don’t mind if I sit here, do you?’
‘Not at all,’ he replied, shaking his head. ‘Please yourself.’
Tom sat down with a sudden heaviness and breathed in quickly, placing a hand under the table as if he was in pain.
‘Are you all right?’ asked Edmund, observing the scowl which had crossed his face.
‘Fine,’ he grunted.
‘It’s just that you look as if you’ve hurt yourself.’
‘I’m fine,’ he insisted, raising his hand back up and laying his breakfast out across the table: cereal, juice, toast, a plate of ham and eggs, two pastries and a cup of coffee—while Edmund stared at it with a smile. He himself usually preferred to eat nothing more adventurous than tea and toast in the morning, but today he had thrown caution to the wind and had taken a plate of scrambled eggs as well.
‘Hungry, are you?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’
Although they had sat opposite each other at dinner the previous evening and had chatted amiably enough, Edmund could sense that there was little love lost between them. He had observed the longing glances that the boy had thrown in the direction of Victoria Drake and was more than aware that Tom could see the same looks being thrown from Victoria towards himself. It amused him a little but; although there was no possibility of the young girl succeeding in her flirtations, he suspected there was even less chance for Tom with the object of his own affections. Although he was a good-looking boy and his rude, worldly manner might have made him all the more attractive to some, he was little more than a child—and was not, he suspected, where Victoria’s realm of interest lay.
‘I was waiting for you, actually,’ said Tom after a few silent minutes had passed, confirming Edmund’s suspicion.
‘Waiting for me?’ he asked, looking up in surprise as his companion scoffed his breakfast. ‘Really?’
‘Yes. I wanted to talk to you.’
‘All right.’
‘About Victoria Drake.’
‘Ah,’ said Edmund, nodding his head.
‘I’m giving you fair warning, Robinson,’ the youngster said in a low voice.
‘Fair warning of what?’
‘Of what will happen if you don’t keep your filthy hands off her, that’s what. I’m giving it to you now and I won’t give it again.’
Edmund smiled and put his cup down. Forthrightness was one thing. Passion was another. But threats were something else entirely, and he was damned if he would put up with them, even if they were groundless.
‘Now just a moment—’ he began, before being cut off.
‘Just you listen to me, Robinson,’ Tom hissed. ‘I don’t know what your game is, but I don’t like it. I don’t like how you follow her around all the time and try and get in with her.’
‘How I—?’
‘I saw that girl first and, given half a chance, I’ll get her too. I’m twice the man you are, even if you do have a few years on me. So you’ll just stop chasing after her if you know what’s good for you.’
&
nbsp; ‘Me chasing after her?’ Edmund repeated with a laugh. ‘That’s rich. It’s her who won’t leave me alone, you idiot. She’s been after me ever since we met on the first day.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. A girl like that? She’d never chase after a scrawny thing like you. You’re far from being a man, if you ask me.’
Further than you realize, Edmund thought.
‘Skinny arms, weedy voice, you ain’t even had to shave yet, have you? And don’t call me an idiot or I’ll take you outside and throw you overboard. Let the sharks finish you off.’
‘Look, Tom,’ said Edmund, putting his knife and fork down, exasperated that he was obliged to continue this conversation at all. ‘It’s no use speaking to me about this. If you have any interest in Victoria, then I suggest you—’
‘I’m not interested in your suggestions,’ said the boy, picking up his butter knife now and leaning forward. The knife-point was only a few inches away from Edmund’s heart and he looked down at it nervously. ‘You don’t know anything about me,’ said Tom. ‘You don’t know what I’m capable of. Where I grew up, I had to fight to survive. Don’t think because my uncle struts around like the King of France, that makes me the Dauphin. I know how to get what I want and I’ll tell you this, you piece of shit, I’ll get that Victoria or crush you along the way, do you understand me? No one gets in the way of a DuMarqué. I come from a long line of fighters. My father died in the Boer War. My ancestors have killed for centuries. One was a highwayman. Another worked for Robespierre in the French Revolution, so I know a little about chopping the heads off the privileged. There has never been a coward among us.’
Edmund stared at him in horror. He may have been only fifteen years old, but there was a wildness behind those dark eyes that made him believe every word he was saying. The knife continued to point in his direction and it was held perfectly still; there was not a trace of nervousness in Tom’s demeanour. For two pennies, he thought, the maniac would stab him right there and then. Slowly Tom turned the knife around so that it was facing himself, and Edmund watched as the boy ran the blade along the inside of his palm, a thin line of blood appearing as he did so, while Tom did not twitch or betray any symptom of pain whatsoever.