He unpinned the rising sun brooch, unclasped the gold chain of a lozenge-shaped diamond pendant from the fleshy, blue-tinged base of her neck, slipped off her gold wrist-watch, pulled the two diamond rings from her right hand and the ruby from her left, placed them among the photographs. Her broad gold wedding ring would not budge with determined tugs. He noticed a sticky thick smear of vomit on the carpet, noting to mop it with the kitchen dishcloth later.
Crippen hung his frock-coat over the back of a chair. He pulled Belle by her feet across the carpet into the bare-boarded hall. The clocks chimed half-past. It was only an hour since the Martinettis had left. Gripping her ankles, he pulled her up the stairs, her head bouncing from step to step, tortoiseshell combs spilling from her hair. He was sweating. He tugged her across the lino into the bathroom. Grunting, he bundled her into the bath. There was a gurgle, and faeces oozed through her flaccid anal sphincter. He wrinkled his nose, turned on the cold tap, used the rose-patterned pitcher from the marble-topped washstand to swill it down the plughole. He went downstairs, felt for his leather-covered case of instruments behind the books, and stuck Gray's Anatomy under his arm.
Belle filled the bath, breasts slid sideways, her stomach slack rolls of fat, her face blue. Crippen loosened his cufflinks and turned up his sleeves. As he moved her head, long muscle-scalpel in hand, she made a low groan. He jerked up, shocked. Was she still alive? He decided it was a post-mortem effect. He dug the scalpel into her neck to the left of her windpipe, trying to sever the tendinous end of the sternomastoid muscle from the top of the breastbone.
He pulled the knife out. It was ridiculously blunt. He inspected the edge, noticed his razor-strop on its hook below the window, and honed it for some minutes. He was delighted to find that it cut flesh like the tenderest chicken. He severed the big carotid arteries and jugular veins, blood stickying his fingers as he slit through her windpipe and gullet. He must decide the next step. He opened Gray's Anatomy on the cork-seated white bathroom chair, seeking the section Osteology, bloodying the pages as he turned them.
Crippen's anatomical knowledge was skimpy, but principles learned in the dissecting room remain in the mind, like the principles of Christianity to the theological student long left the seminary. He found the subsection _Vertebrae Cervicales_ under _Columna Vertebralis._ He dug the knife through the skin and fat of the neck, severing the elastic ligaments which join one vertebral bone and the next, like the segments of ox-tail in a stew. As he lifted Belle's head into the air, something clattered against the enamel of the bath. A circular metal Hinde's curler, with three or four inches of bleached brown hair twined in it. Belle had overlooked unclipping it with the others when she dressed. He wondered if the Martinettis had noticed it.
Reaching for a pair of long pointed scissors from the instrument case he cut the curler free, clanging to the bottom of the bath, where the headless body had trapped pools of blood. He decided to take the hair off, snipping into the rose-patterned wash-basin until the head was as bare as a nun's. He would burn the hair in the kitchen stove, with his shirt and _Gray. _Hair did not rot. The teeth, too could be an obstacle. He could extract them and drop them into the bin at Albion House, unnoticeable among the day's crop.
Osteotomy forceps, like a stout pair of nail-clippers, severed the ribs. As though pulling apart the picked carcass of a chicken to boil for soup, he tugged the severed gullet and windpipe from the hollow of the corpse. He cut the flat muscle of the diaphragm which separated chest from belly. He slit the guts from the filmy, blood-gorged, fatty mesentry, which secured them to the trunk like a string of sausages in a paper bag. He had blood to the elbows, and leaning over the bath was backbreaking. He freed the sloppy, brownish, gleaming liver, the kidneys dangling from their springy arteries, the spleen like a huge red mushroom, the bag of Belle's stomach still containing her roast pork, her potatoes in their jackets and her blancmange, the brandy stinking like an uncorked bottle.
He severed the top of the rectum, where it joined the big pipe of the gut. Gripping the joined organs by the gullet and windpipe, he pulled them with a glug and a squelch from the husk. He wondered what to do with them. He dropped them between Belle's legs. He rinsed hands and forearms under the cold tap. From the hook on the door hung his green-striped flannel pyjama jacket, forgotten that morning after shaving. He wrapped it round the organs like pastry round the meat of a Cornish pastie. He remembered Belle's womb. It would never do, leaving that._
He clutched it in the basin of her pelvis. Her bladder squirted the last of the urine between her legs. With one cut, he had her womb and most of her vagina. Her ovaries had gone to another knife, seventeen years before. The clocks chimed four. Completing the job could wait until tomorrow. It was cold, Belle would not go 'off' any sooner than a joint freshly bought from the butcher's. Would the neighbours be curious over the bathroom light? They were familiar with the gas burning in the smallest room next door. He had forgotten the wedding-ring on her third finger. Reaching for the scalpel, he adroitly severed the finger through the little joint at its base, pulled off the ring and tossed the digit into the empty body.
14
No. 39 Hilldrop Crescent was equidistant from the church in Oseney Crescent across Brecknock Road, and another at the angle of Camden and Caledonian Road. With the laziness of London clocks, each chimed in succession, not synchrony. Crippen woke as usual while they were announcing seven. He was so late to bed, he had set the double-belled American alarm clock for seven-thirty, and he fumbled to press off the switch.
It was over a half-hour till sunrise. He felt for a vesta and lit the bedside candle. He was in clean pyjamas, one of the three identical green-striped pairs Belle had bought at the winter sale of Jones Brothers, Shirtmakers, Holloway. He lay still on the narrow brass bed in the cold small room with pink dog-roses twining up the wall-paper. Was it a dream?
He reached for his round, gold-rimmed glasses, stood up, stretched, crossed the lino to the bathroom. He lit the gas. It was clearly not a dream. Belle's clipped head stared at him from between her feet, the pile of entrails peeped glisteningly from the wrapping of pyjama jacket. His problem was where to shave. He collected his razor, turned off the gas, and descended to the kitchen.
By seven-thirty he was dressed, his steaming cup of Camp coffee wedged among last night's dirty crockery on the kitchen table. He felt Belle was as usual asleep under the bright pink coverlet of her bed with pink bows on the corners. As far as the world would know, she was. By his usual homecoming time she would be going to America. It was fascinating, living her life for her.
He bolted the tradesman's entrance and locked the front door behind him. No one would call. Mrs. Harrison visited only when invited. As they used condensed milk the milkman knocked only on Sunday, the baker left a loaf on the side step Wednesdays and Saturdays. He took his usual way to Caledonian Road Underground station, skirting the Cattle Market. He arrived before nine at Aural Remedies at Craven House in Kingsway. Miss Ena Balham, thirtyish, in black serge, with pince-nez and a faint moustache, was behind her big, square black typewriter.
'Did you say "White rabbits"?' Crippen looked mystified. 'It's February the first,' she chided him.
He took her inch-thick sheaf of newly opened letters. Aural Remedies was a correspondence clinic. People with bad ears responded to advertisements in Tit-Bits or _John Bull_-enclosing postal order with stamped addressed envelope-and Crippen dispatched the remedies. He flicked through them silently, pencilling code-numbers for which letter Miss Balham should write, or which bottle of ear-drops dispatch.