'What wood was that, doctor?'
'Birnam. No "h".'
The reporter nodded, busy with his notebook. 'But wouldn't you agree with everyone doctor, the Crippen case has shown how the law has new weapons?'
'Wireless simply caught the imagination of the feckless public like a new show at the fairground.'
'Against Marconi, are you, doctor?' asked the reporter encouragingly.
'I'm against no one except-if I may be frank-your editors and proprietors, who hope to see fortunes and titles sprout from fields so assiduously spread with manure.'
'How about a photo?' He indicated a cloth-capped youth beside him with a glass of gin-and-water and a camera.
'As you like,' Eliot agreed off-handedly.
Eliot learned in the _Magpie and Stump_ a principle which twenty years later assisted him to worldly success-never address the most insignificant representative of the press without care, caution and cunning. He sent Laura the parlourmaid for a copy of the _Bugle_ before breakfast. She returned with eyes sparkling excitedly. 'You're all over the front page, sir, photograph and everything.'
Eliot stood before the freshly-lit fire in the dining-room. CRIPPEN'S FRIEND, said the headline. 'THE STUPID BRITISH PUBLIC,' he was quoted below.
_The most amazing statement of Crippen Week was made outside the Old Bailey by Dr Eliot Beckett, self-appointed 'People's Doctor' of Holloway,_ it began.
Eliot ran his eye through the column. From his censure of Inspector Dew, he might have attacked Wellington the morning after Waterloo. From his acquaintance with Crippen, he might have played surgical assistant disembowelling Belle and second gravedigger in the cellar.
_Dr Beckett, who pretends to be the people's friend, gives free treatment in a greengrocer's shop round the corner from Hilldrop Crescent,_ Eliot read. _'Very strange treatment! Mouldy bread!! The _Bugle_ asked the King's physician, Dr Bernard Dawson of the London Hospital, if mouldy bread ever did anyone any good. 'None whatever,' said the King's doctor. 'It seems a cranky notion to me.'
Perhaps Dr Beckett is obliging the neighbours, by getting rid of their old loaves?
Dr Beckett stood for Parliament in the election as Labour candidate for Holloway-at which he dismally failed-while despising those he urged to vote for him. Perhaps he wants a seat in Parliament at all costs? The doctor is moons away from the working man he claims to represent. He does not lack money. He enjoys with a wealthy American lady the same relationship our readers will have read about elsewhere in Holloway._
Eliot handed the paper silently to Nancy, who came downstairs in her nurse's uniform. She read it calmly. 'Is it libellous?'
'Only infuriating, I'm afraid. Robert Knox had to tolerate the same sort of thing at Edinburgh in the 1820s. He taught anatomy, and after the Burke and Hare murders the newspapers whipped up feeling against him. He was as upright as I am, and traded with body-snatchers only for the sake of his students, just like any other surgeon.'
'You're taking it very calmly.'
'How else can I? If I wrote complaining, they'd make me look a bigger fool than ever.'
'How do they find all this about us?'
'The patients. Perhaps our servants. In Holloway, you can learn a lot about a man for sixpence.'
Laura threw open the door without knocking. 'Oh sir-' She looked frightened. 'The baker's boy's just said that something terrible's happening down at the surgery, sir. They're breaking the windows, sir.'
Eliot jumped up. He told Nancy to stay in the house, seized his hat and muffler, and strode in the bright autumn morning to the corner of Brecknock Road. He stopped. A crowd of men and women were shouting and gesticulating in the street outside the surgery. Two policemen separated them from the smashed-in shopfront, urging everyone to move along. Heads stuck from windows. The pavements were choked with those who preferred to be spectators rather than perpetrators, and some fifty excited children.
Eliot strode on angrily. The mob outside were the same who had sat inside, the slaughtermen, market porters and their families. They had come from the pubs, Eliot knew, and in a mood of mindless bellicosity. He wondered how many were literate enough to spell out the front page of _the Bugle. _He supposed its story had run round the neighbourhood, gaining strength as it passed from mouth to mouth, like the germs men were continually breathing over each other.
'I'm Dr Beckett.' A third policeman was regarding the affray from the corner. 'That's my premises they're damaging.' The policeman held out an arm. 'Shouldn't go down there, if I were you, sir.'
'I'm not frightened of people who attack nothing more dangerous than plate-glass.'
A grey-haired woman in a shawl pointed at Eliot from the edge of the crowd. 'There 'e is! That's the doctor. That's 'im. Friend o' Crippen.'
Eliot found himself suddenly the centre of a jeering, jostling circle. 'Mouldy bread!' they shouted at him. 'Murderer!' screamed another woman. 'Crippen! Crippen!' yelled the rest. It was the fashionable malediction. Eliot remembered Belle on the stage at the Metropolitan.
'None 'o that,' the policeman directed, adding urgently, 'Run along, sir, while the going's good.'
'I refuse to be intimidated by a mob.'
'Go on, sir! Crippen's a strong word.'
Eliot felt a flick against his cheek. He raised his fingertips. Someone had spat at him. 'Contempt is impossible from the contemptible,' he snapped. He turned and strode away, pursued by boos.
He had sat almost quarter of an hour glaring into the fire, legs stretched, arms folded, unspeaking, Nancy on the arm of his chair.
'I'm never going back to the surgery,' he announced.
She said in her practical way, 'Then you'd better get the window boarded up, or you'll have the place looted.'
'They can help themselves to as much mouldy bread as they please.' He added despondently, 'It doesn't work, anyway. The Bugle was right.'
There was a timid tap, Laura reappeared, looking more frightened than ever. A policeman was at the door. Eliot found an inspector, in cape and shako. He warned gravely that the inflamed people of Holloway would find Eliot's address, fill the street outside, break his own windows. The inspector advised him to lie low somewhere. There was the safety of the American lady to consider. He's been reading the Bugle too, Eliot thought.
'Lie low? For how long?' Eliot asked.
'Just till they've hanged Crippen,' the inspector assured him blandly.
Eliot returned to the dining room. 'We're moving this morning.'
'Where to?'
'The Savoy.'
'But we can't!' Nancy objected.
'Why not?'
'We're not married,' she pointed out.
'Oh, very well! We'll get married. We'll use a registry office. They're quite fashionable.'
She put her arms around him. 'Oh, Eliot! You are so romantic.'
He smiled. 'I suppose your father would have loved a show in New York?'
'He's reconciled that his daughter's an oddity. He bears me no rancour. I'm just a business bid which failed, I guess.' She kissed him. 'You're really as romantic as Romeo, aren't you, dearest? But you always want to seem absolutely different from everyone else.'
'From now on, I'm going to be absolutely the same as everyone else. But I'm going to be better at it.'
Eliot took a Savoy suite with two bedrooms. Guests however wealthy were not permitted by the management to sleep there with ladies other than their wives, or who allowed themselves to be passed as such. At 2.15 the following afternoon, the Old Bailey jury retired. Twenty-seven minutes later, they returned. Barely a minute afterwards, everyone stood except the judge. His elderly clerk, in his best morning coat, laid on his Lordship's wig a square of black silk. The judge reminded the prisoner that he had cruelly poisoned his wife, concealed his crime, mutilated her body, disposed piecemeal of her remains, possessed himself of her property and fled from justice. On the ghastly and wicked nature of the crime, the judge would not dwell. He assured its convicted perpetrator that he had no hope of escaping its consequences and recommended making peace with Almighty God.