Crippen: A Novel of Murder

by John Boyne

  ‘We are leaving, Cora,’ said Louise. ‘And I think this is a disgraceful way to behave in front of respectable people. I’ve never had to listen to profanity like that in my life.’

  ‘As if I could care less what you think, you jumped-up tart,’ said Cora, changing tack. ‘For God’s sake, I remember you when you were pulling pints down the Cock and Three Bells and dropping your knickers for anyone with a few shillings in their pockets.’

  ‘Nicholas! My coat! Now!’

  ‘That’s right. Run away from it. You all run away from the truth. Well, you can all just get out, then, get the hell out, the lot of you,’ she screamed.

  The Smythsons wrenched open the front door and stormed through it, Louise pushing Nicholas forcibly down the steps.

  ‘And you can forget your membership of the Music Hall Ladies’ Guild,’ Louise said as she stood in the street, trying to pull her coat on but putting her right arm into the left sleeve by mistake and becoming confused. ‘Consider it revoked.’

  ‘Go on, you old tart,’ Cora shouted. ‘There’s probably an old drunk in a gutter somewhere willing to shell out for you. You can earn the money for your cab home.’

  She turned back into the living room, wiping a trail of spittle away from her chin, and spied her husband standing there, trembling visibly. ‘And what are you still doing here?’ she asked, going over and hitting him viciously across the head. ‘Go on. Get out. Get out!’ She continued to slap him and punch him until he too was out through the front door and down in the street, looking back at her in dismay. ‘And don’t come back,’ she shouted. ‘I’m finished with you.’

  She slammed the door shut and collapsed on the floor. She hated her life. She hated her husband. She hated London. But everything would change now. She had probably lost all her friends. Well, it didn’t matter. Tomorrow morning, she determined, she would get up and pack her bags and leave Hawley for ever. Get out of London and move to somewhere where her talents would finally be appreciated. She marched up the stairs to bed and lay there, unable to sleep for quite some time through her trembling anger.

  She had placed a glass of water beside the bed because she always woke in the middle of the night in need of a drink. She was not to know that she would not live to see the morning.

  * * *

  At three o’clock in the morning a light drizzle was falling over London and he was dressed in the same long coat and hat that he had worn the afternoon he had purchased the poison. Since then he had bought some gloves to match his outfit in case this moment ever arose; in truth, he could hardly believe that he was going to go through with it now; it had seemed like a strange but necessary notion when he had planned it originally, but to actually see it through? That was something else. Until the moment came, he wasn’t even sure that he would. But his heart was in the job ahead. Too much had happened to change his mind. Matters had gone too far. The beatings, the screaming matches, the humiliation. And, having found true love for the first time, he didn’t want to lose it now. How could they ever be together while that woman stood in their way? There was only one option. He had to get rid of her.

  Something about his aspect as he walked slowly towards 39 Hilldrop Crescent made even the late-night dogs in the street stop their barking and stand still, watching him, as if his demeanour told them that they would do wrong to provoke him with their noise. He was determined; there was no question about that. He felt in his pockets; the left-hand one contained the bottle and a handkerchief; in the right were three solid, sharp knives to finish the deed. His heart beat fast within his chest but somehow he wasn’t afraid. Despite a religious upbringing, he didn’t fear God and he wasn’t worried about retribution. Cora Crippen, he reasoned, was a demon in her own right and had no business remaining on this earth. The happiness of two people depended on her death. Her life brought only sadness and misery to those who surrounded her. Surely, therefore, he was doing a worthwhile thing removing her from the world.

  He paused only briefly outside the house and that was to check that the lights were all off inside. The keys were already in his hand, and at first he inserted the wrong one in the lock, struggling with it before finding the one that fitted correctly and opening the door. He held it ajar for a moment without going inside, listening for any sound from within, but there was none to be heard so he stepped in and closed the door gently behind him. He considered taking his coat off and hanging it up in the hallway—after all, this could take some time—but decided against it. The less noise he made right now, the better.

  He walked slowly up the stairs, able to hear the sound of his own breathing as he did so, convinced that it would wake the house, and he stopped outside the bedroom door. Taking the bottle out of his pocket, he took the lid off, making sure not to breathe in too deeply as he held it firmly in his grip. Then, placing a gloved hand on the handle of the door, he opened it slowly and stood in the darkness, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the dark and staring at the figure within.

  Cora was lying in bed, the sheets half pushed off her to reveal her upper body, tossing and turning and murmuring something in her sleep. The drama of the earlier part of the evening had given her difficulty in sleeping at first, and she had only drifted off half an hour before and was still in a fretful doze.

  A sliver of moonlight was coming in through the slightly parted curtains and its arc ended on the pale, ghostly skin of Cora’s right elbow. This was it, the last moment when he could turn around and change his mind. Creeping forward, he saw the glass of water beside the bed, half empty, and he poured the entire contents of the bottle into it. Replacing it on the night table, he returned to the doorway and coughed out loud, in order to disturb her sleep.

  Her eyes opened slowly and she rubbed at them before raising herself up in the bed and, squinting, looked towards the figure in the doorway.

  ‘Hawley?’ she asked in a sleepy voice. ‘Is that you?’ His reply was a mere grunt, a clearing of the throat, and before she could focus her eyes on him, he walked away, hiding on the landing, out of sight. ‘Don’t make so much noise, you fool,’ she grunted, her last words. ‘I’m trying to sleep.’

  Before settling back on the pillows, she reached across for the glass of water and swallowed its contents in one go. He heard her suddenly wheeze for air, the stop-start sounds as she tried to breathe and failed, and he turned back into the bedroom while she clawed at her throat in pain. Her eyes opened wide as she saw him standing over her and she shook her head, amazed and confused by his presence, while the life slowly drained out of her. Emotionless, he watched as she fell back against the pillows and gave a few more fitful gasps before lying still, her eyes open and staring at the ceiling, a small trickle of water running from the side of her mouth down her right cheek. He gasped in amazement that it was actually over—that she was finally dead—and he felt great strength emerge from within. Nervous, amazed at his own audacity, he reached down and, taking a deep breath, placed his hands beneath her body, lifting her up.

  She was heavier than he had ever imagined she would be, and it was a struggle getting her down the stairs. On more than one occasion he thought he was going to slip and drop her and watch her tumble to the ground, where she might break her neck; for a moment he considered throwing her. After all, she was already dead and he could do her no more harm. He reconsidered, however, thinking that the noise of her falling body might wake the neighbours, who could come to investigate. The stairs were narrow, and by the time he reached the downstairs floor he was perspiring heavily and had to put her carefully on the ground in order to recover his breath.

  Stepping over to the cellar door, he opened it and peered down, searching for the switch for the single light bulb that showed the way down to the basement. It didn’t offer much light, so he found some candles in the living room and brought them downstairs first, standing them at the back of the cellar, and lit them, creating a circle of light around the area where he was planning on working. Returning to the ground floor, he picked
Cora up once again and felt the muscles in his arms cry out in pain as he negotiated the stone steps to the cellar and finally reached the chosen place. He dumped her there in a corner and took a moment to recover his breath.

  Removing his jacket, gloves and hat, he took out a small chisel from his pocket and began prising the stone slabs up from their base. There was a layer of sand beneath them and then a grid of wooden slats which led down to a cement base below. In between, however, was an empty area about three inches thick. He lifted up enough panels until he had what he considered to be enough room, and then he returned to the body of Cora Crippen.

  He laid her down flat on the ground over the now cleared area and wondered where to begin. He amazed himself by feeling no sense of horror, just urgency. He removed several knives from his pocket and laid them out on the ground. As he did so, a slight murmur seemed to emerge from her mouth and he stared at her in fright. Had he imagined it? Her lips seemed to move and whisper something, so, without giving it any thought, he reached for the sharpest of the knives and slit her throat open, watching in surprise as an empty wound sprang out, before suddenly filling with blood which poured down either side of her neck. A sucking noise came from her epiglottis as her body appeared to make a final desperate bid for air, but it ended quickly. He held her there for several minutes until her throat had bled dry and then he began the task he dreaded most, the necessary task, the only way to get rid of the body once and for all.

  He gathered piles of newspapers from the other side of the cellar and left them at a little distance from the body, ready to wrap around their gruesome contents, and then set about amputating her arms and legs. It was a difficult task as the bones and muscles at the hip and shoulder were tougher than he expected them to be. They took some sharp cutting and a strong arm. Nevertheless, within about an hour Cora Crippen’s torso lay there with her limbs in a pile at her side. To his surprise, after the first arm separated, the grotesqueness of the situation no longer bothered him and he worked industriously, rather than with any sense of dread.

  Next to go was the head. The throat had already been slit, so a few wellchosen deep stabs around the neck separated it from the body quite easily and he set it aside for the moment. The ground under the body was covered in blood but it was seeping quite easily through the gaps in the flooring and collecting in a pool on the cement below. The cellar floor was perfectly flat, so it settled there, leaving only a thin, dark-red covering behind.

  He separated the arms and legs and the elbow and knee joints and then sliced off the hands and feet, wrapping each part in a parcel of newspapers before placing them carefully in the ground. Soon afterwards, there was only the matter of the torso. He sliced through it in an ‘X’ fashion and pulled back the skin, revealing the viscera of the body. Using a serrated-edged knife, he cut out the major organs—heart, liver, kidneys—and laid each of them in its own neat package, which also went underground. The rib cage came next, and it had to be broken and squashed in as otherwise it took up too much space. All that was left then was what remained of the torso, which he carved into four equal pieces, wrapped up carefully, and buried. Finally, he took a bag of sand from the other side of the cellar and poured it over the packages, covering the bloodstained newspapers thoroughly before replacing the panels and stepping heavily on them to press them back into place. Within a few hours of arriving at 39 Hilldrop Crescent, the greater part of Cora Crippen was safely buried in the cellar, which itself looked as if it had hardly been touched at all.

  He blew out the candles and took them away, then switched off the single light and closed the cellar, eventually locking the front door of 39 Hill-drop Crescent behind him.

  He took the head in a bag with him.

  ‘Well, that’s that,’ he muttered as he walked away down the street.

  17.

  Ships That Pass in the Morning

  The Atlantic Ocean: Wednesday, 27 July–Saturday, 30 July 1910

  It was estimated that the Laurentic would pass the Montrose at eleven o’clock on the morning of 27 July, and every soul on board Captain Taylor’s ship was hoping to catch a glimpse of the infamous Dr Crippen. From the moment Inspector Walter Dew had set foot on the Laurentic, four days earlier, the ship’s passengers had been obsessed with the unfolding drama and they found that the manhunt was by far the most entertaining element of their voyage. Their reaction to it, however, was split along gender, age and class lines. Men in the first-class cabins had placed wagers on the exact day and time that the ships would pass each other, betting thousands of pounds on the outcome. The women had cautioned their troublesome children that, if they did not behave, they would be sent over to Dr Crippen on the other ship for punishment the moment he was in sight. The children in steerage played horrific games in which they pretended to carve one another up and bury the pieces in the lifeboats. Rachel Bailey, a young newly-wed travelling on her honeymoon to a new life in Canada, where her husband Conor was to take up a post as a teacher, was among the most intrigued of all and seemed to take a sadistic delight in questioning Inspector Dew whenever she saw him.

  ‘It was you who found the dead body, was it not?’ she asked, her eyes wide as she took his hand and dragged him down on to a deckchair, continuing to hold it so he could not escape.

  ‘Indeed,’ he admitted. ‘Although it was hardly a body any more when I came across it.’

  She gasped and put her other hand to her mouth. Her innocent air, combined with her absolute need to know the grizzly details of Dr Crippen’s crime, amused and shocked him in equal parts, but he had grown fond of her, much fonder than he was of the older and more salacious passengers, because she had the knack of making him feel important.

  ‘How brave you must be! But that poor woman,’ she added. ‘Do you suppose they were happy once, Inspector?’

  ‘Happy?’

  ‘The Crippens. I mean, they married, so they must have loved each other at one time.’

  He considered it. ‘The two do not necessarily go hand in hand,’ he said. ‘Although in your case I’m sure that’s not so.’

  ‘Of course it isn’t,’ she said. ‘I would never have married had I not been in love. After all, my parents wanted me to marry another man two years ago and I refused point-blank. He was the son of a merchant banker and my father thought it would be good for his business to join the two families, but I couldn’t do it. After all, the fellow was only five feet tall and had warts on his face. How could I marry him?’

  ‘How indeed,’ Dew said, smiling a little, for he had seen her new husband and he was a tall, dashing lad with perfectly clear skin, who was keeping a daily diary of life aboard ship. ‘You were right to wait.’

  ‘But didn’t you want to run away?’ she asked.

  ‘Run away? From what?’

  ‘From the cellar. When you found her. Was it not too disgusting for words?’

  ‘It wasn’t pleasant,’ he admitted. ‘But I am a trained officer,’ he explained, enjoying the air of bravery he gave off. ‘I’ve been with Scotland Yard for many years. There’s precious little can shock me these days, my dear.’

  ‘And the blood,’ she asked. ‘There must have been a lot of blood.’

  ‘Most of it had congealed into the sand. It smelled foul, of course. But really, Mrs Bailey, this is hardly an appropriate topic for discussion. You won’t sleep tonight.’

  ‘I must admit that the very idea of it shocks me,’ she told him, deciding not to add that it excited her too. ‘But imagine if Conor grew tired of me and cut me up into little pieces and buried me in the cellar. I’d never forgive him.’

  ‘I’m sure there’s no chance of that happening,’ he said, suddenly concerned that a spate of copycat dissections would break out in London, if not the world, and he would be called upon to solve them all. ‘I’m sure you’re quite safe.’

  She wasn’t so sure. Along with several of her fellow-passengers, she was finding it hard to sleep, the closer they got to the Montrose. One fellow, a s
ixty-year-old civil servant, went directly to the captain to protest their route.

  ‘Look here,’ he said, his face choking in a kind of withered frown. ‘This isn’t good enough. The ship has a set route to take and we’re veering off it to catch this Crippen fellow. That’s hardly right, is it?’

  ‘I’m afraid we don’t have any choice, Mr Bellows,’ Captain Taylor explained. ‘We’re acting under direct orders from Scotland Yard. And we’re not veering very far off the route, just a little. We’ll still make Canada on time. You have my word for that.’

  ‘But it’s hardly safe, is it?’ he asked. ‘We’re just a group of passengers travelling somewhere. We can’t be expected to go around capturing crazed killers. We’re being dragged into something entirely against our will.’

  ‘Only one crazed killer, sir,’ the captain corrected him. ‘And he may not even be crazed.’

  ‘He killed his wife, didn’t he? Chopped her up into little bits and ate her heart, I heard.’

  Captain Taylor opened his eyes wide in surprise. He had grown accustomed to hearing exaggerations concerning what Dr Crippen had done, but the cannibalism story seemed to be one that was gaining hold. ‘I don’t think he did that,’ he said doubtfully. ‘But even if he had, all the more reason to capture him, wouldn’t you agree?’

  ‘No, I do not agree,’ Bellows insisted. ‘The fellow’s a devious psychopath. He must be captured, by all means, but I do not like the idea of this ship taking it upon herself to do the capturing. There’s every chance the fellow will turn around and kill the lot of us.’

  ‘There are over sixteen hundred people on board the Laurentic,’ said Taylor. ‘It would be most difficult for him to accomplish that.’

  ‘You say that now,’ the other said. ‘You have no idea what the man is capable of.’