Thunderstruck by Erik Larson
“I warned him,” Kendall wrote, “that it must be kept absolutely quiet, as it was too good a thing to lose, so we made a lot of them, and kept them smiling.”
SUICIDE
THE WORLD SEEMED GALVANIZED.
In Chicago police arrested a man named Albert Rickward, despite the fact that he was English and only twenty-nine years old, two decades younger than Crippen. They searched him and found English notes with a value in American currency of about $2,000. This increased their suspicions. They held him for hours as they interrogated him and searched his luggage, which he had left at the train station. Rickward was furious. Eventually the police let him go, without apology.
In Marseille a shipping agent notified police that he had spotted Crippen and Le Neve boarding a steamer bound for Antwerp. French detectives and the British consul raced to the wharf but found the ship had just departed.
In Halifax, Nova Scotia, police intercepted a steamer, the Uranium, just as it arrived. They kept everyone on board while they searched it from bow to stern. They found no one of interest.
From Brussels came the report that the owner of a café outside the city had noticed two customers who exactly fit the description of the fugitives. One of them, the café keeper reported, was a woman dressed as a man. He was sure of it.
In fact, this last report was likely correct, but it was impossible to know which reports to take seriously, 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 presu
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 her to overtake the Montrose and reach Canada first.” He proposed to book passage and intercept Crippen before he disembarked at Quebec.
Macnaghten smiled at the boldness of the idea but took a few moments to consider its implications. “It was a serious step to take to send off the Chief Inspector,” Macnaghten wrote. Dew was the leader of the investigation and as such was the only man in Scotland Yard who understood every element of the case and every lead thus far explored. Moreover, the Murder Squad now found itself taxed with two additional killings to investigate, one in Slough, the other a gunshot murder in Battersea. Macnaghten worried that Dew’s voyage “might well turn out to be a wildgoose chase.” If so, the loss of Dew for the seven days of the crossing would prove a costly error indeed and a significant embarrassment to the department.
A decision had to be made quickly. Macnaghten walked to his desk and began to write. “Here is your authority, Dew,” he said, “and I wish you all the luck in the world.”
They shook hands.
“That night could not fail to be one of anxiety,” Macnaghten wrote; “but the die was cast, the Rubicon was crossed. If the coup happened to come off, well and good, but, if otherwise, why, then, the case would have been hopelessly messed up, and I didn’t care to dwell on the eventualities of its future.”
DEW RETURNED TO THE waiting taxi and rode it back to Scotland Yard. He sent a telegram to the Liverpool police, requesting that they buy him a ticket for the Laurentic under a false name. He went home to pack and sleep. He kept the true nature of his mission even from his wife, telling her only that he had been called abroad “on a matter of great urgency.” The next day he took a cab to Euston station and caught the 1:40 P.M. “special” to Liverpool, scheduled expressly for passengers intending to sail aboard the Laurentic. An officer with the Liverpool police booked him passage under the name Dewhurst. Only the ship’s captain and wireless operator and a couple of officers knew his true identity. To further protect the mission’s secrecy, Dew gave it a code-name, Handcuffs. He was met at the Liverpool station by an inspector wearing a red rose in his coat.
The Laurentic departed at 6:30 P.M., on schedule. Dew knew the race would be a close one. The Montrose required eleven days to reach Quebec, the Laurentic only seven, but by now the Montrose had been under way for three days. If all went well, that is, perfectly, Dew’s ship would beat Crippen’s by a day. Given the vicissitudes of long-distance sea travel—fog, storms, mechanical failure—a single day was almost no margin at all.
Dew spent hours in the Laurentic’s wireless cabin as the ship’s Marconi operator sent off message after message to Kendall. He heard nothing to indicate receipt. “It was hopeless,” he wrote. “The answering signals simply would not come.”
MACNAGHTEN ARRIVED AT SCOTLAND Yard early Saturday morning. “I assumed an air of nonchalance which I was very far from feeling,” he wrote. He met with Superintendent Froest, Dew’s immediate boss, and asked him for his candid appraisal of the night’s decision to send Dew across the sea in pursuit. Froest thought it foolhardy, as did the other inspectors in the Murder Squad. They all had talked it over, Macnaghten wrote, “and had come to the conclusion that the probabilities were all against the very sanguine view that I had taken as to the correctness of the news conveyed in the marconigram.”
Macnaghten’s anxiety increased when a telegram arrived from Antwerp describing the father and son who had booked passage on the Montrose. These descriptions, Macnaghten wrote, “in no wise corresponded with those of Dr. Crippen and Miss Le Neve.”
Detectives continued to explore fresh leads. New York police boarded more ships. A French rail guard swore he had seen the couple on a train. A traveler on an English train was convinced he had shared a compartment with Crippen.
In Brussels a Scotland Yard detective named Guy Workman went to the Hotel des Ardennes and photographed the registration entry of two travelers identified in the book as father and son. He learned that the innkeepers had not been fooled by the boy’s clothes and had concocted a romantic explanation for why an older man would travel with a lovely young woman in disguise. The innkeeper’s wife dubbed the girl “Titine” and nicknamed the man “Old Quebec” because he often spoke of the city. To her it was clear the girl had fallen in love with a teacher, and now the two were on the run.
Such passion, such adventure. It was impossible not to wish the couple well.
AT SEA THE LAURENTIC CLOSED ON THE MONTROSE at a rate of about four nautical miles each hour.
Despite the frustration of being unable to reach Kendall by wireless, Dew began to enjoy his voyage. When he needed to relax, he could walk the deck. The captain treated him with generosity and respect, and the ship was lovely and comfortable.
He believed his identity and purpose remained a complete secret.
AN INTERCEPTED SIGNAL
FOR TWENTY-FOUR HOURS KENDALL heard nothing to indicate that Scotland Yard had received his message. He and his officers maintained their watch on the Robinsons and became more confident than ever that the two were indeed the fugitives Crippen and Le Neve—though none of them could quite imagine Crippen doing what the police claimed. He was polite and gentle and always solicitous of the needs of his companion.
Kendall did all he could to make sure the couple stayed relaxed and happy and unaware that their true identities had been discovered.
FOR CRIPPEN AND ETHEL, the hours passed sweetly. Compared to life before the departure of Belle Elmore, this was heaven. No one stared, and there were no furtive meetings in secret rooms. They felt free to love each other at last.
“The doctor was as calm as ever, and spent as much time in reading as myself,” Ethel wrote. “He was very friendly with Captain Kendall, and at meal times many amusing stories were told over the table, which kept us in a good humor. All the officers were very courteous to us, and used often to ask me how I was getting on.”
She imagined the letter she would write to her sister Nina once settled in America. “Oh! Such a letter! I had been saving up all my little adventures in Rotterdam and Brussels. How she would laugh at my boyish escapade. How she would marvel at my impudence!”
ON SUNDAY NIGHT, July 24, the Montrose’s Marconi operator, Jones, intercepted a message from a London newspaper meant for someone aboard another ship, the White Star Laurentic. The contents were intriguing enough that Jones passed the message along to Captain Kendall.
It asked: “What is Inspector Dew doing? Are passengers excited over chase? Rush reply.”
Only then did Kendall realize that his own message had gotten through and—far more amazing—that Scotland Yard was pursuing his ship across the Atlantic.
He understood, too, that the story was now public knowledge.
CAG
ABOARD THE LAURENTIC FELLOW PASSENGERS knew Chief Inspector Dew only as Mr. Dewhurst, and on the Montrose Crippen and Le Neve remained the Robinsons, but suddenly millions of readers around the world now knew, or at least suspected, their real identities. On Sunday Scotland Yard released a brief statement:
“It is believed that ‘Dr’ Crippen and Miss Le Neve are now on board a vessel bound for Canada. Chief Inspector Dew has left Liverpool for Canada, and hopes to overtake the fugitives and arrest them on arrival.”
It took only a bit more effort by reporters to learn the names of the ships involved and the contents of Kendall’s initial message. Marconi operators on other ships had intercepted it and passed it on. Aboard inbound liners the news moved from passenger to passenger. Some ships may even have reported the telegram in their onboard newspapers. Foreign correspondents based in London passed the news by cable to their editors in New York, Berlin, Stockholm, and New Delhi, and soon the front pages of newspapers around the world bloomed with maps of the Atlantic showing the supposed relative positions of the Montrose and the Laurentic.
The story consumed the editors of the Daily Mail, who offered a reward of £100—about $10,000 today—for information about Crippen and Le Neve. On Tuesday the paper reported, “At noon to-day the Laurentic will be only 253 knots (285 miles) behind the Montrose.” The article predicted that Dew would try to intercept the ship at Father Point in the St. Lawrence River, where pilots boarded large ships to guide them to Quebec. One article speculated that Crippen would realize, eventually, that he had been discovered—“that he will not before long have gauged the fact that the cracking, snapping, in the ‘wireless’ cabin means that messages about him are flying to and fro across the hundreds of miles of sea. All on board will assume that nothing is amiss, and even those who know most will pretend an ignorance of the fact that the air is quivering with wireless messages transmitted, perhaps, by intervening ships. It will be a voyage which no one aboard will be likely to forget.”