Doctor Crippen: The Infamous London Cellar Murder of 1910 (5 page)

    I will willingly go to my house with you to see if I can find any letters which may throw any light on the matter, and I invite you to look round the house, and do whatever you like in the house.
    This is all I can tell you.
    Any notes that I have changed through any one in this building were in connection with my business.
    This statement has been read over to me. It is quite correct, and has been made by me quite voluntarily, and without any promise or threat having been held out to me.

This lengthy statement took around six hours to compile, partly due to the fact that it was taken between Crippen’s consultations and tooth-pulling appointments. By lunchtime barely the introductory part of the statement had been taken, so Dew and Mitchell asked Crippen to join them for lunch at a small Italian restaurant close to Albion House. Crippen polished off a beefsteak ‘with the relish of a man who hadn’t a care in the world’.
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After lunch they returned to the office, where Crippen finished his statement. It was read back to him and he signed each page.

Crippen’s statement contains a number of assertions that only appear in the statement and are not corroborated by any other source. Nevertheless, they have been accepted as fact and repeated time and again in books and articles on the case. There is only Crippen’s word that Cora threatened to leave him, that they were no longer sleeping together, that she had aspirations to be an opera singer for which he paid for her training, that she may have been intimate with Bruce Miller and the biggest lie of all, that his statement was all true.

Dew made it clear that at this time the question of arresting Dr Crippen had not entered his mind. He had only interviewed Crippen in order to get his explanation about what had happened to his wife, but he was not entirely satisfied with the story, saying, ‘I cannot say that for a moment I considered his statement a reasonable one. I did not absolutely think that any crime had been committed. I was not satisfied with his statement.’

Despite his doubts, Dew was struck by Crippen’s conduct and would often comment on his cool and collected manner:

His replies came freely. There was no hesitation. From his manner one could only have assumed that he was a much maligned man eager only to clear the matter up by telling the whole truth.
    I was impressed by the man’s demeanour. It was impossible to be otherwise. Much can sometimes be learned by an experienced police officer during the making of such a statement.
    From Dr Hawley Harvey Crippen’s manner on this, our first meeting, I learned nothing at all.
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With hindsight, Dew thought that Crippen must have been expecting a call from the police at some time and that he had thought out his story in advance of that eventuality. Dew considered Crippen’s statement had been ‘an ingenious story. Half of it was true and half of it was false.’
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Contradicting himself, Dew admitted that he had learnt one thing about Crippen: he was an ‘accomplished liar’,
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as his statement had been so different from the story he told Cora’s friends. But, as Dew pointed out, ‘you can’t charge a man with being a liar. My job was to find out if he was telling the truth now. Somehow I did not think he was.’
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Dew and Mitchell also took a statement from Ethel Le Neve. Like Crippen, there was nothing suspicious about her manner, although she was slightly embarrassed about admitting the nature of her relationship with her employer:

I am a single woman, 27 years of age, and a Shorthand Typist.
    Since the latter end of February I have been living at 39 Hilldrop Crescent with Mr Crippen as his wife.
    I have been on intimate terms with Mr Crippen for between 2 and 3 years, but I have known him for 10 years. I made his acquaintance by being in the same employ as he.
    I knew Mrs Crippen, and have visited at Hilldrop Crescent. She treated me as a friend.
    In the early part of February I received a note from Mr Crippen saying Mrs Crippen had gone to America, and asking me to hand over a packet he enclosed, to Miss May.
    About 4 p.m. same day he came to our business place, Albion House, and told me his wife had gone to America. He said she had packed up and gone.
    I had been in the habit, for the past 2 or 3 years, of going about with him, and continued doing so.
    About a week after he had told me she had gone to America I went to Hilldrop Crescent to put the place straight, as there were no servants kept, but at night I went to my lodgings; and I did this daily for about a fortnight. The place appeared to be all right, and quite as usual.
    He took me to the Benevolent Fund Dinner, and lent me a diamond brooch to wear, and later on he told me I could keep it.
    After this he told me she had caught a chill on board the ship and had got pneumonia, and afterwards he told me she was dead.
    He told me he could not go to the funeral as it was too far and she would have been buried before he could get there.
    Before he ever told me this I had been away with him for 5 or 6 days at Dieppe, and stayed at a hotel with him in the name of Mr and Mrs Crippen, but I cannot tell you the name of the place.
    When we came back he took me to Hilldrop Crescent, and I remained there with him, occupying the same bedroom.
    The same night, or the night after, he told me that Belle was dead. I was very much astonished, but I don’t think I said anything to him about it. I have not had any conversation with him about it since.
    He gave me some furs of his wife’s to wear, and I have been living with him ever since as his wife, and have given up my lodgings at Constantine Road, and taken up my abode at Hilldrop Crescent.
    My father and mother do not know what I am doing, and think I am housekeeper at Hilldrop Crescent.
    When Dr Crippen told me his wife had gone to America I don’t remember if he told me she was coming back or not.
    I cannot remember if he went into mourning.

Dew might have been more suspicious after taking Le Neve’s statement, for he observed that, ‘Miss Le Neve has not told me she thoroughly believed what Dr Crippen has told her.’ Nevertheless, Dew did not think she knew anything herself, as ‘there was nothing in Miss Le Neve’s manner which gave rise to anything in the nature of suspicions’.
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Ethel may have said that Cora Crippen had treated her like a friend, but years before Cora had told Maud Burroughs, ‘I don’t like the girl typist Peter has in his office.’ She had asked Crippen to get rid of Ethel but he refused, saying she was indispensable to the business.

The manageress of Munyon’s Remedies, Marion Curnow, later stated that on the day Crippen was interviewed by the police he called in on her with regard to two envelopes he had asked her to store in her safe at the beginning of March. They were marked ‘Dr Crippen’ and ‘Dr Crippen, personal’. Crippen said to Curnow, ‘If any one should ask you, know nothing’, or ‘say nothing’, adding ‘and if anything happens to me please give what you have there to Miss Le Neve.’ Curnow replied, ‘All right.’ The envelopes contained deposit notes with the Charing Cross Bank for £600 and insurance receipts worth £300. In the other envelope was a watch and brooch.

Dew wanted to make a search of 39 Hilldrop Crescent, ‘to see if we could find any papers which would throw any light on her movements’. Crippen consented to the request, saying that Dew was welcome to search the house any time he liked. There was no time like the present, so all four of them went to Hilldrop Crescent. On the way there Dew had much to contemplate:

I was trying to get the hang of a case which was becoming more difficult at every turn.
    I certainly had no suspicion of murder. You don’t jump to the conclusion that murder has been committed merely because a wife has disappeared and a husband has told lies about it.
    But he had lied. I couldn’t get this fact out of my mind, and I was determined, if humanly possible, to find out why he had gone to such lengths to throw dust into the eyes of Belle Elmore’s friends.
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Crippen was being perfectly courteous as his house was searched. Dew and Mitchell went through all the rooms, many of which were still adorned by pictures of Cora. Dew observed that, ‘The rooms were in good order as a dwelling house would be … there was nothing in the house to attract attention.’ They then went out to the garden, and finally the coal cellar, whose evenly laid brick floor was covered with dust that did not appear to have been disturbed for years. Dew had no particular reason for looking in the cellar at that time other than wanting to make an examination of the whole house. It was reached from a passage which led from the kitchen to the back door. There was no access from the outside to the cellar except for a coal-hole. Crippen and Le Neve stood watching in the doorway while Dew and Mitchell poked around. Mitchell then searched through the rafters of the house but found nothing. Everything appeared to be in order except for some rolled up carpets and packed boxes, but this could be explained as Crippen had given notice that he was going to move soon.

After searching the house, Crippen and Dew went to the breakfast room. Dew asked about the jewellery Cora had left behind and Crippen produced three rings and a rising sun brooch. Crippen was apparently being very helpful and asked what he could do to help find Cora. Would advertising be a good idea? Dew thought it would, and Crippen said he would place adverts in several American newspapers. He took a piece of paper and, with Dew’s help, composed the following message:

‘Mackamotzki’
Will Belle Elmore communicate with H.H.C. or
Authorities at once.
Serious trouble through your absence. $25 reward
Anyone communicating whereabouts to…

Dew and Mitchell finally left Hilldrop Crescent at eight o’clock after the inspector told Crippen, ‘Of course I shall have to find Mrs Crippen to clear this matter up.’ It was the last time Dew was to see Dr Crippen and Ethel Le Neve for some months.

Dr Crippen himself worried very little about the secret of the cellar.

Ethel Le Neve,
Thomson’s Weekly News

…there is sometimes nothing more horrifying than a revelation of what may be going on behind the discreet curtains of an outwardly respectable suburban house.

John Rowland,
Poisoner in the Dock

When the young Walter Dew had joylessly hunted for Jack the Ripper he suffered with insomnia, and now it returned, possibly hinting that he was again working on something out of the ordinary:

I was dog tired, yet sleep I could not. My mind refused to rest. The events of the day kept cropping up.
    What was behind it all? There was something, I now felt sure. Crippen had a secret which he was cunningly trying to hide. There would be no rest for me until I had found out.
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The day after interviewing Crippen, Dew circulated a description of Cora Crippen as a missing person throughout the Metropolitan Police district. On Monday 11 July Dew and Mitchell returned to Albion House to see Crippen, but neither he nor Le Neve was there. Dr Rylance had received a hand-written letter from Crippen that read ‘I now find that in order to escape trouble I shall be obliged to absent myself for a time.’

Dew and Mitchell then went to 39 Hilldrop Crescent and were admitted by the French maid and Flora Long, the wife of one of Crippen’s employees, William Long. The detectives searched the property again, and this time they made some startling discoveries. In the wardrobe of the first floor bedroom Dew found a fully loaded revolver, while Mitchell discovered a box containing forty-five cartridges that fitted the gun. Dew did not know how long Crippen had possessed the gun, but it did not look new. According to Dew it was not there during his initial search when Crippen was present. He came to the dramatic conclusion that Crippen had the gun in his pocket at the time, and would have used it had anything been found.
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Dew, who was a keen gardener when off duty, then dug up the garden and re-examined every room in the house and the coal cellar but found nothing suspicious.

Inspector Dew ascertained that on 9 July, some twelve hours after his initial visit, Crippen had left Hilldrop Crescent followed by Le Neve around an hour afterwards. They had both gone to Albion House as usual. Neither of them had any luggage besides Le Neve’s reticule bag. Later in the morning Crippen gave William Long two pounds and asked him to buy a boy’s suit, tie and braces, a brown bowler hat and size five boots. Long had asked Crippen if he was in any trouble. ‘Only a little scandal,’ replied Crippen, who was looking pale and ill that morning. Crippen visited a neighbouring office and exchanged a cheque for gold to the value of £37. At around 1 p.m. Crippen and Le Neve left the office unseen, leaving behind them Crippen’s suit of clothes and Le Neve’s hat.

Crippen’s disappearance suggested only one thing to Dew:

My quarry had gone, but the manner of his going pointed to guilt.
    My view was that a completely innocent man with nothing to fear would have seen the thing through. A man of Crippen’s calibre would certainly have done so. I had already seen enough of him to know that he was not the type to do anything foolishly rash.
    Here was the real clue.
    His decision was a sudden one. Of that I felt convinced. A fair deduction seemed to be that he had been scared by the events of Friday.
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Valentine Lecocq had received a letter from Crippen saying,

Valentine,
    Do not be alarmed (
N’ayent pas de peur
) if we do not return until late as we shall go to the Theatre this evening (
nous vaison au Theatre ce soir
)

H. H. Crippen

She had no friends in London and was sent back to France. When interviewed by the French newspaper
Le
Matin
she said that she believed that Crippen and Le Neve were man and wife because Le Neve always wore a wedding ring. Her employers ‘were always laughing and happy’. Le Neve did all the cooking, Lecocq did the housework while Dr Crippen would often go to the cellar to chop wood.
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Valentine Lecocq was not the only person who thought Crippen and Le Neve were married. Ethel had told her old school friend Lydia Rose in the second week of March ‘you will be surprised to hear I was married last Saturday’. Her letter was signed ‘Eth Crippen’. She had been sporting an engagement ring since the previous December. Rose was introduced to Crippen, whom she found ‘a very fascinating man, with such a characteristic face that when one had once seen it they would never forget it’.
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Crippen had told Dr Rylance that he had married Le Neve after Cora’s death and invited the dentist to tea ‘with him and his wife’.