Crippen: A Novel of Murder

by John Boyne

  ‘Seventeen. A fine age,’ said Matthieu. ‘You must be pleased to have found a companion on board in Miss Drake, then?’ he asked, nodding across at Victoria, who glared at him furiously.

  ‘I am a single man,’ the captain said formally, a quick flicker of a frown crossing his face. Half hearing the other conversation, he remembered seeing Edmund and Victoria disappear back to their cabins together earlier and he suspected licentious behaviour.

  ‘You’ve never been married? Not even a widower?’

  ‘All the passengers I have met seem very friendly,’ said Edmund, not wishing to single out Victoria especially.

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘My wife’s back in Antwerp. About to have a baby,’ said Billy Carter.

  ‘I’ve always found widowers to be very charming.’

  ‘Some are not as friendly as others,’ said Victoria.

  ‘You’re very quiet, Mr Robinson,’ said Matthieu Zéla. ‘Enjoying your meal?’

  ‘How lovely for you,’ said Martha Hayes. ‘Is it your first?’

  ‘I can be pretty friendly, you know,’ said Tom, his hand lowering beneath the table to squeeze Victoria’s knee.

  ‘Delicious,’ said Mr Robinson, carving his chicken expertly, separating the legs and breast with ease.

  ‘Of course a widow is a different matter entirely. Some of them can be very crude. It’s because they finally have control of the finances, you see. I expect some widows have tried to capture your attentions on board, Captain, haven’t they?’

  ‘First of many, I hope!’

  ‘Get your hands off me right now, you little shit, or I’ll cut off your balls with my knife,’ Victoria whispered, and Tom removed his hand immediately, swallowing nervously but finding himself incredibly turned on.

  ‘Where are you from, Mr Robinson, originally? Were you based in Antwerp?’

  ‘I perform my duties on board, Mrs Drake. Nothing else,’ said the captain with a dry laugh. This kind of questioning of his personal life was one of the reasons he hated these meals so much.

  ‘I thought we might have a game of bowls in the morning, Victoria,’ Edmund suggested, keen to mend fences with her and noticing the angry look on her face, unaware that it was actually caused by the unwanted attentions of Tom DuMarqué.

  ‘And will you be home in time for the birth?’

  ‘What a charming idea. Victoria would enjoy that, wouldn’t you, dear?’

  ‘No,’ said Mr Robinson. ‘I’ve been based in London for many years. I’m from America originally.’ Edmund shot him a look, unsure just how honest he should be with this group.

  ‘Oh yes. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Victoria, unwilling to commit herself. Regretting it now are you? she wondered.

  ‘What part of America?’

  ‘Is there any dancing later on, Captain? If so, I would so enjoy it if you would accompany me.’

  The captain tapped his glass quickly with his knife, producing a clear ring that brought them all to silence.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he said to the table as a whole. ‘I give you the Montrose. And to a safe voyage.’

  ‘A safe voyage,’ they all intoned, before taking a drink.

  ‘When I lived in Paris,’ said Tom DuMarqué, breaking the sudden silence which followed the toast, ‘people said I would come to nothing, on account of my getting in trouble all the time for stealing and breaking and entering. But when I go to America,’ he added, glaring at Edmund whom he had already identified as his natural enemy, ‘I’m going to end up in Hollywood and be a film star.’

  ‘Gracious!’ said Mrs Drake, unsure which element of that sentence scandalized her more, his criminal background or his intended career. Victoria merely snorted, as if the very idea was preposterous.

  ‘A what?’ asked Mr Robinson, looking across at the boy.

  ‘A film star,’ he repeated. ‘It’s all the rage now, you know. They’re setting up studios in Los Angeles and anyone can go there and be in the pictures. You must have seen some of them.’

  ‘Perhaps one or two,’ he said, trying to remember. ‘I’ve visited the nick-elodeon once or twice. But surely there’s not a living to be made in it, is there?’

  ‘More than a living,’ said Tom with certainty. ‘They say a fellow who gets in at the start of it could make a million dollars before he dies.’

  ‘What nonsense,’ said Victoria.

  ‘They won’t take off,’ said Billy Carter. ‘You’ll never beat the music halls. They’re the most fun there is. That’s where I met my wife, you know,’ he added. ‘She was a chorus girl there.’

  ‘A chorus girl?’ asked Mrs Drake. ‘How shocking!’

  ‘Women like that,’ said Mr Robinson in a quiet voice, ‘are nothing but trouble. They parade themselves around like cheap whores, hoping to trap some fellow, and then, once they’ve got him, they bleed him dry. If I had my way, they’d close down every music hall in the land.’

  The table descended into silence; his words had been spoken in an inappropriate tone and Mrs Drake could see how his knuckles whitened as he gripped his knife and fork.

  ‘Well, not my Delilah,’ said Billy Carter finally to break the tension. ‘They broke the mould when they made her.’

  Captain Kendall pushed his plate aside and signalled the steward to begin clearing the table, even though several of his companions were still eating. Pulling out his pocket watch, he flicked it open and exclaimed loudly, ‘Oh my, the time!’

  ‘Captain, you’re not leaving us already, surely?’ asked Mrs Drake, disappointed.

  ‘Duty calls, dear lady,’ he said, happy to be obsequious now that he was making his leave, ‘duty calls. Mr Carter, you’ll take care of our guests, I presume?’

  ‘Of course, sir.’

  ‘Good. Then I’ll be on deck if I’m required.’

  A thin balcony ran around the navigating room and it was the captain’s custom to smoke a cigar there before retiring for the evening. He stood in a darkened spot where he would not be noticed, save for the bright red spark of his cigar. It was peaceful there and he could hear nothing except the muted sound of music from the steerage deck some distance away and the harmony of the waves as the Montrose crashed through them. About to turn in for the night, he noticed two passengers emerging from below deck, where he had dined earlier, and he watched as they huddled into the shadows, looking around themselves nervously.

  ‘Let’s go back to the cabin,’ said Mr Robinson in a hushed tone. ‘We can speak there.’

  ‘In a moment,’ said Edmund. ‘I just need a breath of fresh air.’

  Captain Kendall was going to signal them that he was aloft, for Mr Robinson had proved himself his favourite of the passengers so far. Not cursed with the crudity of Mrs Drake, nor the distance of her daughter, nor the colourful gallantry of Mr Zéla, nor the adolescent pinings of his nephew, nor the simpering nature of Miss Hayes, nor the cocky arrogance of Mr Carter, he was about the only one to whom he would have spoken in private. Had Edmund not been present, he might have even invited him to join him in a cigar, a replacement for Mr Sorenson.

  ‘Are you really playing bowls with that girl tomorrow?’ asked Mr Robinson.

  ‘I didn’t want her to be upset,’ replied Edmund. ‘I’m sure she’s a pleasant enough sort underneath it all. Just a little self-centred.’

  ‘She will try to seduce you again,’ he said. ‘Count on it.’

  I knew it, thought Captain Kendall, strangely pleased that the implication was that the boy had rejected her advances.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Edmund. ‘She’ll be too busy fighting off that DuMarqué boy. Did you see the way he was looking at her? I thought he was going to eat her alive. And he’s only a child.’

  ‘I barely saw him,’ said Mr Robinson, pulling Edmund closer to him. ‘My eyes, as ever, were locked on you.’

  Silence lingered between them for a moment as they stared into each other’s eyes. Captain Kendall
leaned further forward, squinting in the darkness to make out what was going on. As he watched, his eyes grew wider and it was all that he could do not to let out a shout. Mr Robinson and Edmund were engaged in a passionate kiss, their lips locked, their hands pressed tight against each other’s backs. He stared and could not believe what he was witnessing. It was too shocking, too outrageous, too—

  Mr Robinson ran his hands through Edmund’s hair and without warning it came loose, falling to the deck in a bundle. Captain Kendall gasped and thought he would be sick. What the—? he asked himself, before narrowing his eyes and noticing that what he had seen as the boy’s hair was in fact a wig and that beneath it lay a tight pack of brunette curls.

  ‘My hair,’ Edmund whispered, reaching down to retrieve it. As he did so, the light caught his face in outline, and Captain Kendall saw the delicate profile and real hair for the first time. Edmund gave a quick glance around to ensure that no one had seen and replaced the wig on his head carefully. ‘Let’s go below,’ he said, and they disappeared down the stairs towards the first-class cabins.

  ‘A woman!’ said Captain Kendall out loud, his face pale, amazed by what he had witnessed. ‘Edmund Robinson is a woman!’

  6.

  The Second Mistake

  New York; London: 1893–1899

  At first, the crowds of people in New York City intimidated Dr Hawley Harvey Crippen and he longed to return either to the less metropolitan world of Detroit or to the peace and quiet of Ann Arbor. He had been engaged by DeWitt Lansing Medical Suppliers as their sales representative in Manhattan and spent his mornings trawling from doctor’s surgery to doctor’s surgery, keeping appointments with men often younger than himself, trying to interest them in purchasing the latest tools or medicines for their practices. It was depressing work for him as he had never wanted to be the salesman, but to be the doctor instead. Their attitudes made him feel small; his clients glanced at their watches impatiently and cut him off in mid-sentence. Despite himself, he kept his anger inside and scraped a living. His afternoons were spent at DeWitt Lansing’s warehouse near the South Street Seaport, where he filled whatever orders he had managed to obtain during the day and dispatched them. He received a small basic salary and earned a fifteen per cent commission on all sales. It was enough to cover the rent on a tiny one-room apartment in the East 50s; it was damp and depressing and the children from upstairs cried constantly. He could, in fact, have afforded something a little better but, rather than spend the money, he decided to save it for a real release from this life and had managed to amass almost six hundred dollars in a short period of time, and he hid it under one of the floorboards in his room.

  The afternoon of 18 June 1893 found him standing outside the doors of Dr Richard Morton, a general practitioner located on the corner of Bleeker Street and the Avenue of the Americas. Dr Morton was a regular client; Hawley’s predecessor at DeWitt Lansing, one James Allvoy, had booked his thrice-yearly appointments in the diary before leaving the firm for a career in the circus, where he was to be a lion-tamer. This was Hawley’s first visit to the surgery, but he was aware that there was a good commission to be earned here if he played his cards right.

  A middle-aged woman opened the door, and he offered her his most obsequious smile. ‘Hawley Crippen,’ he said, doffing his hat. ‘From DeWitt Lansing Medical Suppliers. Here to see Dr Morton.’

  ‘Have you an appointment?’ she asked, blocking the entrance with her bulk. He nodded and explained that he was the new representative for the firm, and with a sigh, as if it was inconveniencing her tremendously, she allowed him in and showed him into a small waiting room, where three patients were already sitting. ‘I’ll tell the doctor you’re here,’ she said, ‘but he has to see all this lot yet, so there might be a wait.’

  ‘Perfectly fine,’ said Hawley, waiting until she had left before pulling a face and glancing at his watch anxiously. It was one o’clock already and he had one final appointment at two thirty before he needed to go to the warehouse. He couldn’t afford to be late for either and he glanced at the three patients gathered in the waiting room, wondering whether he could figure out their symptoms by simply looking at them. An old man stared at the ground with a miserable expression on his face; his wheezing breath could be heard from across the room. Asthmatic, Hawley reasoned. New prescription, five minutes at most. A young woman kept herself bundled together in the shade beside the curtains, trying not to be noticed by anyone. Single, pregnant woman. Ten minutes. A teenage boy with his arm in a sling, looking bored and shooting looks across at the young woman when he thought she wasn’t looking. Probably just needed the cast removed. Fifteen minutes. All going well, that should take him to about one thirty. It would take about forty-five minutes to go through the new Autumn range, which would leave him just enough time to make it to his final appointment of the day if he hurried. He gave a sigh of relief and watched the door anxiously.

  In the end, it was almost 2 p.m. before Dr Morton summoned him into his office, and Hawley was already perspiring with a combination of heat and anxiety. To his disappointment, the surgery appeared to be surprisingly well stocked already, the shelves and cabinets filled with supplies, some of which he did not immediately recognize. Dr Morton looked at him suspiciously and offered no apologies for his tardiness. After seeing the three patients from the waiting room he had taken a break for some lunch, and Hawley could smell the roast beef and pickle on his breath as he sat down beside him, a little too close to him for comfort. I must remember to show him our latest remedies for halitosis, he thought to himself.

  ‘I haven’t seen you before, have I?’ Dr Morton asked. ‘What happened to that other fellow who used to come here? Short chap. Bad skin. Always scratching himself.’

  ‘Mr Allvoy?’ said Hawley. ‘He found a new position. I will be taking the orders for DeWitt Lansing from now on. Hawley Crippen.’ He decided not to tell the doctor exactly what exotic career path Mr Allvoy had chosen.

  ‘New position indeed,’ he snorted. ‘In my day a fellow took a job and stayed in it for life, working his way up. Nowadays it seems the young men only stick with things for a few years at a time. That’s the life of a hobo, not a working man.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said Hawley, opening his folder and bag of wares, unwilling to be drawn into a conversation about the decline and fall of contemporary youth. The first rule of a salesman’s life, he knew, was not to argue with the client. ‘Now, Dr Morton,’ he began with affected cheerfulness, ‘I have a very exciting range of products to show you today, beginning with a revolutionary new—’

  ‘Before you start, young man,’ the other said, raising a thick, wrinkled hand to silence him, ‘it’s probably worth my saying that Jenson’s been here and I’ve been doing a lot of business with him recently, so orders will be down. No point arguing about it. Let’s have that out in the open from the get-go.’

  ‘Jenson?’ Hawley asked, on hearing the name of DeWitt Lansing’s most serious competitor among the medical suppliers of New York. ‘But you’ve been one of our clients for so many years.’

  ‘And I still am, my boy, I still am,’ he insisted. ‘It’s just that he’s been able to undercut you on some products and I’ve bought them from him. Others I know you do cheaper, so I’m happy to take a look at them, but the chances are I’ll be splitting my business between you both from now on.’

  Hawley swallowed and tried to keep calm. He spied a surgical knife on a side table and considered making a grab for it and losing it between Morton’s eyes. There was nothing he could do if the doctor wanted to use two different suppliers, but he knew that it would reduce his commission. He worked through his order book, demonstrating some of the new products which he had brought with him, describing others, and the doctor took some and informed him that Jenson was supplying him with some of the others at a third off. By the time he had finished, Hawley could barely contain his anger. The order was less than half what he had expected and it was already half past two, by which ti
me he should have been visiting Dr Albert Cuttle on the corner of Sixteenth Street and Fifth Avenue.

  ‘Your face is bright red,’ Dr Morton observed as Hawley gathered his things together silently. ‘Are you sick? Want me to give you the once-over?’

  ‘Not at all,’ he replied. ‘I’m a little disappointed, however, that you didn’t afford us an opportunity to improve our terms with you before using a different supplier, that’s all. After all, we have a long-standing relationship.’

  ‘I’ve only just met you,’ said Dr Morton with a smile, unwilling to be chastised in his own surgery.

  ‘You have a long-standing relationship with my firm,’ Hawley insisted. ‘At my last surgery in Detroit, we honoured such arrangements.’

  ‘Your last surgery?’ he asked, surprised. ‘But you’re a representative, surely. Not a doctor.’

  ‘Actually I am a doctor,’ Hawley replied irritably. ‘I simply haven’t yet found a position in New York suitable to my talents. The good people at DeWitt Lansing recognized an opportunity in the meantime.’

  ‘Well, what sort of a doctor are you?’ asked Morton, not believing a word of it and irritated that this young upstart should speak to him like this; after all, it was his decision how he spent his money. ‘What medical school did you attend?’

  Hawley licked his lips, regretting having said anything. ‘I hold a diploma from the Medical College of Philadelphia,’ he said. ‘And another as an eye and ear specialist from the Ophthalmic Hospital of New York.’

  Dr Morton thought about it. ‘Correspondence courses?’ he asked. Hawley nodded slightly. ‘Then, sir, you are not a doctor,’ said Dr Morton with a satisfied smile. ‘It takes many years of study, full time, at a recognized medical institution to earn the title. One cannot simply fill in a few forms and send off for a certificate. That may be how people join the priesthood today, but not the medical profession.’

  ‘I am Dr Hawley Harvey Crippen,’ came the angry reply.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, man, you’re nothing of the sort.’ He pointed a bony finger at Hawley and wagged it in his face. ‘Make no mistake, if I was to hear of a fellow such as yourself practising medicine in this city without a degree, I would have no choice but to inform the authorities. There are laws about such things, you know.’