Richard Gordon: A QUESTION OF GUILT

'That's the stomach, with one kidney and the heart-fatty, obviously of a plump person-and part of the liver. The next contains a pair of female woollen combinations, found under the cellar floor with a female undervest. The next, small gut, more liver and some hair. The last more gut, some muscle and two lungs. When you savoured the Crippen's hospitality you may have observed this garment airing on a clothes-horse.'

Spilsbury untied the cover of the last bottle, removing with forceps a long strip of green and white flannel. 'The most damning specimen of the case. A piece of pyjamas, found with the organs. Note the curious arrangement of green lines. Exactly like those we know Mrs Crippen bought from the admirable Jones Brothers of Holloway, on January 5, 1909, for seventeen-and-ninepence, cash on delivery by the firm's cart.' His forceps reached for a metal clip with a six-inch tuft. 'A Hinde's curler, as used by Mrs. Crippen.

'Eliot nodded. 'I recognize the hair.'

'Luckily, hair is one of the last anatomical structures to decompose.' He dropped it back. 'If you remain unconvinced, Beckett, I can show you a strip of lower abdominal skin, with a longitudinal midline scar from umbilicus to pubis. The ovarotomy operation Mrs Crippen underwent at New York in 1893. Doubtless, the defence will try passing it off as a fold in the skin. But it's a scar, right enough, pure fibrous tissue without the sebaceous glands one would find in skin. I have examined it under the microscope, which I shall bring with me to the Old Bailey and invite the jury to see for themselves.'

'Isn't that rather _coup de thйвtre?' _murmured Eliot, feeling that the pathologist fitted the crime.

'Not at all. I am responsible for my own opinion, which has been formed on my own scientific knowledge. I can demonstrate to the jury exactly how I formed it.' He retied the jar. Eliot supposed that Spilsbury's professional attention to Crippen would make his reputation, like Bernard Dawson's to King Edward VII in his own inevitably final days.

'You believe that the hyoscine which killed Belle Elmore was administered inadvertently?' Spilsbury locked the cupboard.

'With good reason. Crippen confided in me that he was giving her hyoscine in homoeopathic doses to dampen her sexual demands.'

'The half grain I found in the body was hardly a homoeopathic dose,' Spilsbury said mockingly. 'It would slay a prize-fighter. Crippen was lying to you, as to everyone else. You know they slept in separate rooms?'

'So do our kings and queens, but we never lack heirs to the throne.'

'I don't think you can compare the arrangements in Buckingham Palace with those in Hilldrop Crescent. Well, if you feel strongly he's innocent, you'd better pass your notions on to Tobin.'

Eliot nodded. A A Tobin was the King's Counsel briefed to defend Crippen, a barrister on the northern circuit whose oratory customarily mingled with the sea fogs of Newcastle. 'I wanted to interest Marshall Hall, but he's abroad on holiday. Anyway, I couldn't get further than Crippen's solicitor. Is Arthur Newton good? I heard he organized the defence of Oscar Wilde.'

'He seems to specialize in that sort of thing. He defended Lord Arthur Somerset over the male brothel in Cleveland Street, and got six weeks himself for spiriting away the three telegraph boys involved. I hear he's up to his ears in racing debts, and I suppose wants to boost his reputation. Horatio Bottomley-you know, he edits the despicable _John Bull_-is putting up the cash for Crippen's defence. As an advertising stunt, of course.'

'Who's on the other side?'

'Richard Muir will be leading for the Crown. A red-faced Scot, with the forensic subtlety of a whirring claymore. The judge is Lord Alverstone.'

'Who's he?'

Spilsbury looked shocked. 'The Lord Chief Justice.'

'Murderers are remembered, their judges never.'

Spilsbury was moving towards the laboratory door. 'Perhaps you're right, Beckett, and Crippen never did mean to kill his wife with hyoscine.' Eliot looked surprised at the admission. 'He intended to shoot her. Dew found a revolver and 45 rounds of ammunition in the breakfast room next to the cellar. But perhaps Crippen was concerned over the noise disturbing the neighbours. Everyone says he was such a considerate man.'

'Hasn't it occurred to you that she could have swallowed the hyoscine entirely by accident?' Eliot was becoming irritated with Spilsbury's sarcasm.

'The henbane plant which contains hyoscine is sometimes eaten in mistake for parsnips,' he replied authoritively.

'Which in January are not in season.'

Eliot wrote three times to Mr A A Tobin, KC at his chambers in the Middle Temple. He had no reply. He supposed despondently that every post brought a hundred letters of lunatic notions for freeing his client. The week before the trial he marched in himself, but the barrister's clerk's peevishness withstood even Eliot's determination. He strode back to the Strand disappointed and angry, though reflecting that a man's lawyers, like his surgeons, required to operate without assistance from interested passers-by.

Crippen was to stand trial alone. Eliot attended the fourth day in Court No 1 at the Old Bailey. It was Friday, October 21, and Spilsbury had usefully provided a ticket. He watched the show in the company of two theatrical knights-Tree the tragidian and Hare the comedian-and Miss Phyllis Dare, the Belle of Mayfair, who was gallantly invited by His Lordship the judge to sit beside him on the bench.

The court had oak panelling and atrocious acoustics. Below the Royal Arms and Sword of Justice sat also the Lord Mayor of London, the Lord Mayor-elect of London, the Recorder of London, two London Aldermen, the Sheriff of London and his undersheriffs. Mrs Martinetti was in a row below with other flashily feathered vultures from the Music Hall Ladies' Guild. Eliot felt a shock at seeing Crippen suddenly appear five yards away, in the witness-box beside the jury. He looked more cheerful than six months previously, when dressed in mourning for his wife. Eliot decided against some small, encouraging gesture towards the prisoner, lest Lord Alverstone ordered his own removal instantly to the cells.

Wigged and gowned, red-faced and square-jawed, eyebrows like iron filings, Mr Muir was cross-examining.

'On the early morning of February 1, you were left alone in your house with your wife?'

'Yes.'

'She was alive?'

'She was.'

'Do you know of any person in the world who has seen her alive since?'

'I do not.'

'Do you know of any person in the world who has ever had a letter from her since?'

'I do not.'

'Do you know any person in the world who can prove any fact showing that she ever left that house alive?'

'Absolutely not.'

Had Crippen asked at the York Road cabstand whether lady and luggage had left while he was at business? Had he asked the neighbours? The tradesmen? At the shipping offices? Anywhere at all? Advertised in American papers? Eliot stared disbelievingly while Crippen agreed in his mild, vague way of doing no such things, as though in a railway lost property office describing the mislaying of his umbrella.

Why did he flee in July? Because of suspicion, Crippen explained. Suspicion of what? Suspicion of being concerned with his wife's disappearance. On what charge? He apologized for knowing nothing of the law, but he was a reader of romances to a great extent, and had an idea that he might be arrested and held on suspicion until she was found.

'You stayed with Le Neve disguised as your son in a hotel in Antwerp?'

'Yes.'

'You stayed indoors all day?'

'Oh, no. We went to the Zoological Gardens.'

The man's behaving as though charged with riding a bicycle without a lamp or having no dog licence, Eliot thought irritably and dejectedly. His quaint Gemьltlichkeit had worsened. Now it was pathological euphoria. Or perhaps he was colour-blind to the myriad hues between right and wrong? Did he risk his neck as a pure moralist, who saw sin and virtue only as black and white? The skin with the scar was being shown him, on an enamel plate from which people ate their dinners. Crippen gave it a mild look through his gold-rimmed glasses. He did not recognise it as Belle's. The court adjourned for lunch.