Crippen: A Novel of Murder Read online

  ‘I think I may return to my cabin,’ said Martha Hayes when they were all reunited. She had barely got a word in edgeways while Mrs Drake had been talking to Mr Robinson, and she had no desire to stay any longer in order to be ignored. Decorum insisted that she take her leave politely, however.

  ‘Lovely to have met you, Miss Hayes,’ said Mr Robinson, doffing his hat.

  ‘And you,’ she acknowledged. ‘And thank you again for saving my hat. Mrs Drake,’ she added with a curt nod. ‘Miss Drake.’

  ‘Goodbye, Miss Hayes,’ said Mrs Drake in a loud voice, watching her walk away and shaking her head in amazement. ‘The things some people wear when they travel,’ she said with a gentle laugh, before turning back to Mr Robinson. ‘The poor girl probably can’t afford anything better, I expect. But a delightful manner, wouldn’t you agree, Mr Robinson? Very homely.’

  ‘I think perhaps Edmund and I should also return to our cabin,’ he said.

  ‘Already? But the sun is just beginning to come out. I thought perhaps you might take a turn around the deck with me. Stake out our territory, so to speak. I’d love to learn a little more about you.’

  ‘And you will, no doubt,’ he said, taking Edmund by the arm. ‘We have many days ahead of us, I fear.’

  ‘You fear?’ she asked, surprised.

  ‘I’m not the world’s best sailor,’ he explained. ‘I think I may rest for a little while.’

  ‘Ah. Find your sea legs, you mean. Well, certainly, Mr Robinson. I’ll look forward to seeing you later then. In the meantime Victoria and I will discover what entertainments are laid on for the first-class passengers.’

  ‘Excellent. Until later then,’ he said, walking away. ‘What a woman,’ he whispered to Edmund when they were out of earshot. ‘She could talk for England. Don’t leave me alone with her again. I might end up throwing her overboard.’

  ‘I’ll look out for you if you’ll keep the daughter away from me,’ Edmund replied. ‘Stuck up—well, I can’t say the word. Are you really a bad traveller?’ he asked after a moment.

  ‘Not at all. I just wanted to go back to the cabin, that’s all. With you.’

  Edmund smiled. ‘You only had to say as much,’ he said, reaching into his pocket for the key.

  Billy Carter had spent the previous hour in the barber’s saloon, a small cabin on one of the lower decks of the ship which was not as elaborate as its official title made it sound. Usually, Jean Dupuis, the French-Canadian barber who had spent the last ten years travelling back and forth across the Atlantic Ocean without ever setting foot on either of its book-ended continents, was to be found there alone, comfortably close to a bottle of vodka. There were those sailors on board who worried about letting a man, half blood, half alcohol, get close to their ears with a sharp pair of scissors, but none had yet reported any accidents and so M. Dupuis had maintained his position and his free accommodation for a decade unchallenged. Carter was forced to wait for the barber’s reappearance, however, as the older man was up on deck, sober as a judge, nervously awaiting the arrival of his supplies for the voyage ahead.

  ‘A haircut already?’ he asked, stepping into the cabin and stopping in surprise to see the young first officer standing there, hands in pockets, looking around at his belongings. ‘We’re not even out of port yet. Can’t it wait a few hours?’

  ‘Captain Kendall insisted,’ replied Carter. ‘He said my hair was too long and ordered me down here sharpish.’

  Dupuis narrowed his eyes and cocked his head slightly, as if judging for himself whether the younger man’s hairstyle was in fact an affront to taste. ‘It’s not so long that it can’t wait a day or two,’ he suggested. ‘Only I wanted to arrange my things before we set sail.’ By ‘things’, he meant the crate of vodka which had arrived for him and which he liked to secrete in various parts of his cabin, working his way around the room methodically as the voyage continued, making sure that the draining of the last bottle would coincide with their arrival on the other side of the Atlantic. He knew better than to binge, as it would only lead to days of sobriety.

  ‘The captain insisted,’ Carter repeated in a tone which suggested that he was not leaving without submitting himself to the clippers. ‘Sorry,’ he added.

  ‘All right, all right,’ Dupuis sighed, directing him towards the chair in front of the mirror. ‘Take a seat then if it means that much to you.’

  Carter sat down and looked at his face in the mirror while the barber wrapped a towel round his neck and rifled through a cigar box filled with scissors and combs for a particular one. ‘I think the old man’s already taken a dislike to me,’ he said to fill the empty air. ‘So I thought it best to do exactly as he says. Otherwise I wouldn’t insist on doing this right now.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ said Dupuis, who merely wanted to cut his hair as requested and then get him out of there. ‘I don’t know you though, do I? Are you new?’

  ‘Billy Carter. I’m acting first officer.’

  ‘First officer?’ He stopped in surprise and looked at Carter’s reflection in the mirror. ‘What happened to Mr Sorenson?’

  ‘Sick. Appendix. Hospital,’ he said in quick, staccato tones. Dupuis made a tut-tutting sound and reached forward, grasping a clump of the younger man’s curls between his thick, cigarette-stained fingers.

  ‘The captain won’t like that,’ he said.

  ‘He seemed . . . irritated by it,’ Carter admitted.

  ‘Well, they’re thick as thieves, those two,’ said Dupuis. ‘Always together.’ He clipped away quickly without appearing to be watching what he was doing as curls fell to the floor.

  ‘Just a trim,’ said Carter nervously, realizing that he had not yet been asked what style he wanted, but his hair was already being snipped away.

  ‘A trim, yes,’ the barber said. ‘A Kendall trim. I think I know what the old man likes.’

  Carter tried to relax in the chair and allow the barber to get on with his work. He thought of his wife back home and began calculating the dates in his head for the thousandth time that day. All going well, they would reach Quebec by about the last day of July, 1st August at the latest. The Montrose herself was not scheduled to make the return trip for another week after that, but the Canadian Pacific fleet company had promised him that morning that he could return to Europe on board one of their sister ships, scheduled to leave Quebec on the 3rd of August, meaning there was a good chance he would be home again within a month, by the middle of August. The baby was due a few weeks after that, so there was no chance he would miss the birth. Had that seemed even remotely likely, he would have refused this commission, regardless of the consequences.

  ‘What’s he like then?’ he asked after a few silent minutes had passed, frowning as great clumps of his brown curly hair fell to the floor around his feet, revealing more of his boyish face than he was accustomed to seeing. ‘The captain, I mean. You’ve sailed with him before, right?’

  ‘I don’t know him very well,’ replied Dupuis, who had learned a long time ago to listen to any gossip which the sailors brought to him but, like a priest confessor, to reveal nothing that could come back to haunt him. ‘I know he runs a tight ship, believes in order and discipline, and is a martyr to punctuality. They say he doesn’t believe in God but keeps a copy of William Bligh’s memoirs in his cabin and reads it every night as his Bible. When he sits in this chair, he barely says five words to me.’

  ‘Captain Bligh?’ said Carter, raising an eyebrow in surprise. ‘Crikey, that’s all I need. Thank God this is the twentieth century, that’s all I can say. I’m not in favour of the rum and keel-hauling school of sailing myself. Do the job and get paid for it, that’s my motto. Nothing more, nothing less. Captain Bligh!’ he repeated in a quiet voice. ‘Well, I never did.’

  ‘There,’ said the barber, finishing off and stepping back to admire his handiwork. ‘How’s that? Quick and easy.’

  Carter nodded and stood up, slipping a few coins into the man’s hand as he stepped outside again
, stroking the back of his head curiously now, intrigued to feel the slightly bumpy scalp which had been revealed. A breeze blowing through the deck felt chilly against the back of his head and he muttered, ‘God save us!’ under his breath impatiently. Looking around, he realized that he would have to make a serious effort over the next twenty-four hours to understand the structure of this ship; the last thing he needed was to get lost while walking around. She was designed in a similar way to the Zealous and the Ontario, the sister ships on which he had served, but she was a little more modern than either of them, and many of the architectural oddities employed in their construction had been ironed out by the time the Montrose came to be built. Technologically, she was more advanced as well, having been the first ship in the fleet to install a Marconi telegraph machine, which enabled them to communicate with, and receive messages from, land.

  Usually he could instinctively tell the way to the deck with his eyes shut, simply by the swaying of the boat and the smell of the sea; he had honed his senses over the years to such a sharpened point that his brain acted as his own navigator. Something about this ship, however, gave him pause for thought. The gleaming woodwork contrasted with the darkened hallways, and the creaking of the vessel seemed to numb his wits to the point where he found himself distrustful of his own abilities. Finally, stepping through the first-class deck, he could see the stairwell in the distance and the shaft of light pouring down which would lead him back to the main deck. Coming towards him was a man in his late forties with what appeared to be a teenage boy following directly behind. Immediately he remembered that he was not wearing his cap, or keeping it tucked discreetly under his arm as Kendall had instructed, and he bit his lip. He decided to return to his own cabin and retrieve it without delay.

  ‘Afternoon, gents,’ he said, pausing in the hallway to greet the two passengers, the older of whom looked a little irritated at being addressed. ‘Ready for the trip, then?’

  ‘Yes, thank you,’ Mr Robinson replied, seeing the door of Cabin A4 only a few feet away, a holy grail which it seemed almost impossible to attain without conversing with half the Christian world first.

  ‘Billy Carter, first officer of the Montrose,’ he said with a nod of his head. ‘Any problems or queries on board, feel free to ask me or any of my men. Looks like a nice day’s sailing,’ he added in a pleasant tone. ‘Water’s quite steady, isn’t it?’

  ‘I’m just going for a lie down,’ said Mr Robinson, pressing past him. ‘You’ll forgive me if—’

  ‘No problem, sir,’ said Carter, stepping out of his way. ‘Feeling it a bit, are you? Not to worry. You’ll soon find your sea legs. Everyone does. How about you, young man? Been to sea before, have you?’

  ‘Only once,’ said Edmund. ‘A shorter voyage. Never for as long a trip as this.’

  ‘By the time I was your age I’d already spent two or three years at sea. Couldn’t get enough of it myself. But I was sick as a dog at the start too, so don’t mind if you are. It’ll pass.’

  ‘I think I’ll be fine,’ said Edmund, feeling somewhat patronized.

  ‘Right you are.’

  Mr Robinson turned the key in the lock of his cabin and stepped inside, closing his eyes briefly, relieved at the peace and quiet which seemed to lie within. He turned around, prepared to call Edmund inside in a sharp tone if necessary, but the young sailor was passing out of sight now and his companion was stepping into the cabin.

  ‘Finally . . .’ said Mr Robinson in an exhausted voice. ‘Do you suppose everyone on board is determined to speak to us? Those people on deck. That sailor.’

  ‘He’s the first officer,’ said Edmund in a distant voice, looking back towards the corridor as he shut the door behind him. ‘We should feel honoured.’

  Mr Robinson snorted. ‘Nonsense,’ he said irritably. He took his hat off and hung it on a hook on the wall. Staring through the small porthole at the sea, he felt his headache growing stronger. He massaged his temples lightly and closed his eyes, feeling tense inside and nervous of discovery. To his relief, however, Edmund stepped up behind him and wrapped his arms around his chest from behind, pressing their bodies together. Mr Robinson turned around gratefully.

  ‘Is this too difficult for you?’ he asked, pulling apart slightly and looking down at the boy’s elaborate outfit which they had purchased in Antwerp the day before. ‘Do you think I’ve made a farce of you?’

  ‘On the contrary,’ said Edmund, reaching down and opening his tunic slightly, loosening the tight binding beneath. ‘I’ve quite enjoyed it, really. It’s rather daring, pretending to be something one is not.’

  ‘Not for me, it isn’t. Do you think we got away with it?’

  ‘You have to relax,’ said Edmund, unbuttoning Mr Robinson’s jacket and dropping it on the floor. ‘Everything is going to be fine. I’m sure of it.’ He leaned forward and their lips met, tenderly at first, then with more force, their bodies pressing tightly against each other as they slipped awkwardly down on to the lower bunk.

  ‘My only one,’ said Mr Robinson, between kisses, his breath and consciousness almost taken away by the force of his passion. ‘My only one.’

  2.

  Youth

  Michigan: 1862–1883

  When Mr Josiah Crippen and his wife Dolores arrived at the Holy Cross Church in Ann Arbor, Michigan, to witness the wedding of their son, Samuel, to his second cousin, Jezebel Quirk, they were in two, very different, frames of mind. Josiah smiled all the way through the ceremony because he was completely drunk, while Dolores pursed her lips together so hard they became numb, for in her mind the idea of her precious boy becoming devoted to any woman other than herself was an outrage. She had brought him up to revere and idolize her and (although she was quite unaware of it) she had only succeeded in making him despise her for her coldness. However, in his new wife he had found a loving and beautiful girl, and within a year Jezebel had given birth to a son, whom they named Hawley Harvey Crippen.

  The year between their wedding and their parenthood was the only happy year of the Crippens’ life together for, once she was with child, Jezebel’s character changed entirely, as she set aside her earlier, fun-loving ways and adopted a more puritan lifestyle. Where she had once enjoyed accompanying Samuel to a dance, she now considered such evenings improper and encouraging of licentiousness. Where she had once been known to invite their neighbours, the Tennetts, around for an evening of cards, she now thought such entertainments immoral and broke off her relationship with the otherwise harmless couple. Having never previously shown any sign of moral fervour in her life, Jezebel Crippen found that pregnancy delivered her not only of a new child but also of a new best friend: Jesus. And He didn’t like her having any fun.

  Hawley was, from the start, a quiet child. He had no brothers or sisters, owing to the fact that his mother’s labour was so arduous and lengthy that she became a traitor to her own name after the birth and refused thereafter to allow her husband even to sleep in the same bed as her, let alone engage in acts of love.

  ‘You’ve defiled me often enough, Samuel Crippen,’ she said during those early months when he believed that deft persuasion on his part would enable him to make her change her mind, just as his father before him believed he had done when breaking down the defences of Dolores Hartford. ‘I will never allow a man to touch me in that filthy way again.’

  ‘But my dear,’ he protested. ‘Our marriage vows!’

  ‘I have only one true husband now, Samuel. And His name is Jesus. I cannot betray Him.’

  Samuel was eventually forced to realize that she was not going to relent and that, thanks to her Messiah, for him a life of celibacy beckoned. He would have railed against the cruelty of her decision but was fortunate enough to learn of the existence of a brothel, some ten miles outside Ann Arbor, where he could pursue his romantic interests with less emotional involvement, a prospect which suited him just fine.

  As a boy, Hawley was encouraged by his mother to enjoy his solitude; they w
ould spend long hours sitting on their porch, staring at the sky together while she directed his thoughts in the direction of the Lord. She believed that where there was just the two of them there was less occasion for sin. Her one purpose in life became ensuring that he arrived successfully into the kingdom of heaven, even if she had to put him there herself ahead of schedule.

  ‘God’s glorious sky,’ she would say, smiling the smile of the mentally disturbed as her eyes fixed on each rolling group of clouds and the quick bursts of sunlight blinking through from behind. ‘Give thanks, Hawley, to the good Lord for such a wonderful day as this.’