'Why shouldn't it be?' asked Eliot in surprise. 'To catch cold on a boat and die of catarrhal pneumonia six weeks later is tragic, but perfectly reasonable. The patient even has spells feeling much better as the temperature falls-exactly as Mrs Crippen wrote to her husband. The disease may clear in one part of the lung, you see, only to break out afresh in another. I have seen many cases, and I can tell you that none recovered.'
To Eliot's irritation, she stayed unconvinced. 'I heard of it yesterday fortnight. I had this telegram. It was sent from Victoria Station.'
From her crocodile handbag came a buff form stuck with paper strips. Eliot read-
BELLE DIED YESTERDAY AT SIX O'CLOCK PLEASE TELEPHONE ANNIE SHALL BE AWAY A WEEK PETER.
'Annie is Mrs Stratton, one of our committee. Like Mrs Smythson and Mrs Davis and Miss Way, we're most concerned. We called at Albion House directly after Easter last week, to offer our condolences and ask where poor Belle died. Dr Crippen said in Los Angeles, with his own relations. We asked the address because we wanted to send a letter of sympathy and an everlasting wreath. He said it wasn't necessary. None of Belle's friends in America would ever have heard of the Music Hall Ladies' Guild. Really!'
Eliot felt that Crippen's gravest offence.
'Anyway, he gave us his son Otto's address in Los Angeles-you knew the doctor was twice married?' Eliot nodded. The woman was stealing time from his patients. 'He said his son was with Belle when she died. Naturally I asked about the funeral. Would you believe what he said? She wasn't buried. She was cremated. He was having the ashes sent over. He said we could 'have a little ceremony then'. Cremated! It's unnatural.'
'They're very go-ahead in these matters in America.'
Her voice accelerated under the steam of her indignation. 'I asked him what ship Belle went by. He said it was the French line, something like _La Tourenne _or _La Touvйe. _The doctor speaks French of course. So I went down to the offices of the French Atlantic Shipping Line in the City. Oh, yes, they had a liner sailing from New York to Havre called _La Touraine._ But it hadn't arrived on February the second. That was the day Belle left. And it went straight into dry-dock for repairs,' she ended triumphantly.
'But Dr. Crippen is always vague, and must have been dreadfully agitated,' Eliot told her impatiently. 'He simply got the ship's name wrong.'
Clara leant over the table. 'That telegram was sent as Dr Crippen left for Dieppe with his lady typist, Miss Le Neve.'
Eliot nearly laughed. 'To save your embarrassment, I know all about Miss Le Neve.'
'I don't think you do, Dr Beckett. At our Benevolent Fund Ball in February-after Belle had left, before there was the slightest suggestion that she was ill-the doctor appeared with Miss Le Neve. She was wearing one of Belle's dresses, magenta silk, I recognized it beyond doubt. She had Belle's fox fur. Belle's muff. Belle's earrings. And Belle's brooch she was so fond of, the one with the rising sun. She wore it the evening you and the nice American lady came to dinner. And Belle's gold watch. A ring with four diamonds and a ruby, Belle's I swear. And a wedding-band.'
Eliot rose. Any woman felt outraged at a friend who was ousted by another prettier and younger than them both. He put his arm round her shoulders. 'It's easy to think terrible things when someone you love dies far away in the lawless wilds of California. But we are men and women of the world, Mrs Martinetti. Surely the theatrical profession well knows the temptation of a pretty girl to an older man? To use his wife's ornaments to decorate her is appalling bad taste, but nothing worse.'
'She's moved in with him,' she exclaimed accusingly.
'A man must have a housekeeper. After twenty years of married life, you can hardly expect Dr Crippen to "batch" it, surely? Weren't Mrs Crippen and Miss Le Neve perfectly friendly? It's only natural the doctor should turn to her for condolence.' Eliot opened the consulting-room door. 'Why, you'll be suggesting the good little doctor murdered his wife.'
'No, I'm not suggesting that.' He felt she made her reply unnecessarily thoughtfully.
'A gossip, a malicious gossip,' he pronounced to Nancy that evening.
Eliot sprawled on the sofa in Camden Road, Norfolk jacket off, in his red socks, reading _The Times._ The sunny day brought an evening cold enough for a fire. They now had two rooms in the big house-always empty except for the visitor who arrived unexpectedly, stayed secretly and left hurriedly.
'What misery is occasioned by people who stir the mud in the murky little puddles of others' lives,' he commented.
'And what pleasure.' Nancy was at the table, writing an order for Allen and Hanbury's, the surgical suppliers across at Bethnal Green.
'I have the utmost compassion for people with stunted bodies, but not with small minds,' Eliot observed into the pages of his newspaper. 'Belle was a nymphomaniac,' he revealed.
'What's that?'
'Morbid uncontrollable sexual desire in the female. The deranged women furiously embrace every man they can get at. It's been a well recognized condition for over a century. Dr Crippen had to dose her with hyoscine. That's the usual drug, it's either a sedative or a strait-jacket. They get in awful trouble with the law otherwise.' He turned the page. 'Crippen's was a happy release.'
'I'm not so sure. I've seen a woman crazy with grief across the body of her husband, killed in an East Side knife-fight. Yet everyone in the neighbourhood heard her screams, night after night, when he beat her up.'
'Dr Crippen is like a divalent atom, with two combining powers. He chose to link himself with a pair of elements as different as the violently explosive fluorine and the totally inert platignum.'
'What's Miss Le Neve like?'
'I believe she's a very good typist.'
15
Three weeks later, on the morning of Wednesday, April 27, 1910, King Edward VII arrived at Dover from Calais in the royal yacht Alexandra. He had journeyed by train across France from Biarritz, with his usual pause in Paris. Biarritz saw the English king a week or two every spring. He ate, drank, smoked cigars, played baccarat, strolled the promenade in the Atlantic breezes which sprayed the sea along the rocky coast, drove into the Pyrenees in his Mercedes, the royal motor-engineer Mr Stamper sitting next to the chauffeur, poised to jump out for the breakdowns.
The machinery of State meanwhile clanked round the King. Mr Asquith had kissed hands on appointment as Prime Minister in the Hotel de Palais. The King's suggestion that a British cabinet meeting be held the following week at the Hotel Crillon in Paris, was thought placing the convenience of the Monarch too noticeably above the proprieties of the Constitution.
King Edward returned among rumours of Mr Asquith's demand he create sufficient new Liberal peers to swamp the House of Lords, and bring it to the prime minister's bidding. A royal threat was enough. The House of Lords would fight for their right to throw out budgets, but not at the price of being overwhelmed by a pack of upstart bounders. He returned also to a buzz about his health.
The King went to the opera, he saw Lord Kitchener and the pictures at the Royal Academy, he went to the opera again, he went to Sandringham and to Mrs Keppel's house in Grosvenor Street. On Thursday, May 5, he failed to welcome Queen Alexandra back from her Mediterranean cruise, and Buckingham Palace announced that he was suffering a severe cold.
The next morning, the King's doctors declared that he gave rise to anxiety. His horse _Witch of the Air_ won the 4.15 at Kempton Park. They sent for the Queen. The Queen with sublime understanding sent for Mrs Keppel. At six o'clock, the doctors proclaimed his condition critical. Saturday morning's _Times _appeared with thick black lines separating all its columns.