London: 1899–1905
Six years after moving to London, in the winter of 1899 Dr Hawley Harvey Crippen finally set up his own medical practice, working as a dentist from a small office in Holborn. It was not a full-time job; he still worked during the day at Munyon’s Homoeopathic Medicines, where he had responsibility for every detail in the business since his employer had retired, from seven o’clock in the morning until four o’clock in the afternoon, with only an hour’s break for lunch. Between four and six in the evening he would visit the Pig in the Pond pub in Chancery Lane, where he read The Times newspaper or one of his medical periodicals while eating his dinner. (There was nothing he enjoyed more than reading about the latest advances in autopsy procedures while carving the breast of a chicken or sliding his knife through a rare fillet steak.) Between six and nine he opened his surgery and treated those members of the public who needed a dentist but who could not see one during the day because of their own work commitments. Between both jobs he made a decent living. The decision to specialize in dentistry came about when it became clear that he would never have the means to study for a medical degree and work as a real doctor; at thirty-six years of age he was becoming more of a pragmatist in that respect. And so he simply decided that he would call himself a dentist instead, opening the surgery without any degree or qualification whatsoever. It was a risky strategy, but there was less chance of his being discovered when operating only on people’s mouths than if performing as a general practitioner.
Cora and he still lived in South Crescent in Bloomsbury and had settled comfortably into a life of mutual disharmony. Mrs Crippen had spent a year working with Señor Berlosci and had noticed only a small improvement in her talents during that time. She had, however, fallen in love with him, a passion that was not returned by her vocal coach. Naturally, he had seduced her, but talk of anything further was anathema to him.
‘If I didn’t have you,’ she said one afternoon, lying naked on the divan in his living room while he got dressed and glanced at his watch carelessly to check the time that his next appointment would arrive, ‘I believe I would go mad. You’re everything that Hawley is not.’ She made herself all the less attractive by lying there with her legs stretched apart, her breasts sliding down to either side of her body, while the sunlight poured through the window, highlighting her every flaw.
‘My dear Cora,’ he said, bored by conversation. ‘You’ll catch your death of cold lying there. Cover yourself.’ He had a strange aversion to seeing women naked after he had made love to them, preferring that they dressed as quickly as possible and left. When the sexual urge had left him, he had little need for their attention any more. Cora rose and padded across the floor towards him, pressing her body up against his and kissing him gently on the lips, hoping for a stronger reaction.
‘When will you speak to Mr Mullins about me?’ she asked quietly, relocating her lips towards his ears and then down along his neck.
‘Soon, soon,’ he replied. ‘You’re not ready yet.’
‘But it’s been a year, Alfredo,’ she reasoned. ‘Surely it’s time by now?’ She continued to kiss him, hoping to arouse him once again, although she knew this was unlikely. Despite his lustful appetite, the ageing Italian behaved like a temperamental diva, refusing to perform more than once in an afternoon, and the curtain had already come down on the matinee.
‘He is a very busy man,’ Berlosci said, releasing himself from her grasp and picking up her undergarments from the floor where she had thrown them earlier and handing them to her while averting his eyes from her nudity. While making love to her, lying down on the divan or in his bed, he found Cora to be an altogether distracting partner. There were, perhaps, more parcels of flesh around the thighs than he would have liked, and her shoulders offered a certain masculine pleasure that bothered him, but all in all she was lustful and accommodating and had never refused him any favour. Standing up, however, his eyes were drawn only to her worst features. The way her breasts hung slightly askew on her frame, each a little too small when compared to her upper-body muscle . . . the porridge-like skin around her knees . . . the slight excess of body hair around the legs. She stood before him in the pose of a seductive Venus de Milo, but all he saw was a woman approaching her thirties whose body was self-destructing well before its time, due to unhealthy eating and a lack of exercise. ‘Now, please. Get dressed, Cora,’ he urged. ‘I have a client in fifteen minutes.’
Cora breathed heavily in irritation and began to put her clothes back on. Mr Mullins was the owner of a small theatre in Shaftesbury Avenue (by coincidence, not far from where Hawley worked) and Señor Berlosci claimed that they were close friends. The man often produced variety shows and evenings devoted to particular singers and, in a moment of lust-fuelled madness some months earlier, Berlosci had promised Cora that he would arrange an audition for her. However, unknown to her, her teacher had sent so many prospective stars to Mullins over the years that the theatre owner knew it was just a tool to get these women into bed and had put a stop to it. He had informed his friend in no uncertain terms that he would only audition real talents and that if he suspected he was being used for any other purpose he would not see any more of his pupils. Because of this, Berlosci had sent only two of his students to Mullins during the previous year, both exemplary singers, and he knew that Cora epitomized the type of average hopeful whom Mullins would instantly reject.
‘You promised me,’ Cora said quietly, not wanting an argument but needing to make her point all the same.
‘And I meant it,’ he insisted. ‘I will speak to him soon. But you are not ready yet.’ He softened slightly and came towards her, reaching down and kissing her forehead like a proud father. ‘Trust me. Some day soon you will be quite ready and Mr Mullins will see you then. He will fall at your feet and shower you with garlands, as the French did with Marie de Santé or the Italians with the great Sabella Donato.’
‘Do you promise it, Alfredo?’ she asked, trying to look coquettish, and failing.
‘Promissio.’
Watching her leave that afternoon, Señor Berlosci decided that it was time for him and Cora Crippen to part company, both as teacher and student and as lovers.
There were usually two or three patients waiting for Dr Crippen when he arrived at his surgery in the evening, and each one had a look which combined a mixture of agonizing pain and total fear at the ordeal which lay ahead. In the twelve months he had been practising as a dentist he had come to realize that no one ever visited him when a dental problem first reared its head. Instead, they waited, praying that whatever it was would go away, and only when they had come to terms with the fact that things were only getting worse did they make the trip to see him. Mainly working-class people, they didn’t notice the lack of dental degrees on his wall and never glanced at the two framed diplomas from the Medical College of Philadelphia and the Ophthalmic Hospital of New York which had pride of place in the surgery. They came there, wanting nothing more than an end to their pain, with an infliction of as little extra pain as possible.
On this particular evening, only two patients were waiting for Hawley when he arrived, both of whom claimed to have been there first. A woman of about fifty swore blind that she had been waiting since three o’clock that afternoon, while her companion, a boy of about fifteen, said that she had arrived only five minutes before Hawley himself and that he should be seen first. Unaccustomed to such disputes, he was forced to toss a coin for the right to be first in the dentist’s chair and the young man won, looking at the woman with such an expression of triumph that Hawley felt like reversing the outcome.
Hawley had spent almost fifty pounds of his savings stocking the surgery with the proper dental equipment and a large lamp which hung down over the patient’s chair, aimed at the darkest recesses of their pain. Peering into the boy’s mouth, he could tell immediately what the problem was. One of the molars in the lower back six had been chipped and an abscess had formed. The nerve was almost exposed and the remaining half of the tooth had turned black. ‘When did you chip it?’ he asked, checking the rest of his mouth for similar problems.
‘About a month ago,’ said the young man, Peter Milburn, afraid to tell the truth—that it had been almost six months before—in case the doctor told him off.
‘Right,’ said Hawley, not believing a word of it. ‘Well, it will have to come out, I’m afraid. There’s no other choice.’
‘I thought as much,’ said Milburn, who had already resigned himself to this. ‘Will it be painful?’ he asked in a tiny voice, like a small child.
Hawley suppressed a laugh. ‘Don’t worry,’ he replied. ‘I’ve performed hundreds of extractions. It will be over before you know it.’
He went across to his surgical cabinet and filled a large needle with anaesthetic, testing the spray carefully over the sink. It was not a particularly strong anaesthetic but he was unable to purchase anything stronger without a licence and so had to settle for the next best thing, which invariably brought cries of pain from his patients. He had considered tying wrist straps to the chair to stop them flailing around so much, but he had decided in the end that this would make the whole thing seem more like a medieval torture chamber than a medical procedure and had decided against it. After all, repeat business was important to him.
Milburn flinched when he saw the needle coming towards his mouth, but Hawley assured him that he would not feel much pain from it, which was true.
‘Now,’ he said, when the injection was complete. ‘Let’s just wait for it to settle in a little and we’ll have that tooth out.’
Beside the sink he kept a range of needles, forceps and pliers in a tray of sterile disinfectant. Each was of a different calibre and grading and was designed for different teeth, and he chose several different implements to lay on the white cloth which covered the empty tray beside the patient’s chair. After a few minutes Milburn assured him that the left-hand side of his mouth was reasonably numb—reasonably being the operative word—and Crippen got to work.
To begin with, he took a sharp-pointed No. 6 needle with a narrow silver blade at the top and inserted it into the tip of the abscess, which immediately burst and leaked its fluid into Milburn’s mouth. The second the blade touched the blister, the boy jumped as if struck by electricity and Hawley sat back, accustomed to this reaction. ‘I have to drain the abscess first,’ he explained. ‘I’m sorry, this will be a little painful but it won’t take long. You have to be patient.’
Milburn, who was not by nature a coward and already had aspirations towards joining the police force, nodded in resignation and sat back, his fists clenched together tightly on the armrests, his fingernails pressed deeply into the palms of his hands to counteract the pain over which he had no control. He closed his eyes when Hawley put the blade in his mouth again, but it was difficult to remain still while the doctor scraped out the abscess.
‘Can’t you give me some more anaesthetic?’ he pleaded after washing out his mouth for the eighth time, his body trembling from the pain.
Hawley shook his head. ‘That’s the strongest one that I’m allowed to use,’ he lied. ‘It’s just that the abscess is so far developed that it’s bound to be painful. But it’s nearly clear now, which means I can remove the tooth.’
Milburn nodded and sat back again. A thin line of perspiration had broken out across his forehead and he was trying to mentally remove himself from the proceedings by staring into the light and performing an act of self-hypnosis. The abscess now cleaned out, Hawley reached for one of the forceps and, urging the young man to open his mouth wider, clamped it around the dark remaining half-tooth, took a firm hold of it and, gently at first, levered it from side to side, attempting to urge it from its moorings. A cry of pain issued from the boy’s mouth as throbbing and pressure combined to send jolts of pain through his body. His ears became more alert to the sound of the pliers wrestling the creaking tooth back and forth and, had Hawley not been standing over him with a knee on his chest as he pulled, he might have jumped up and run from the surgery in fright. A sharp crack sent Hawley tripping slightly backwards, pliers in hand, part of the tooth in its grasp as blood poured out of Milburn’s mouth. He gave a yell of surprise and jolted forward in the seat, but the sudden pain of the tooth’s removal was as nothing compared to his relief when he saw that the operation was over. He lay back, surprised that his mouth was still aching, and swore to himself that he would never wait so long again before going to the dentist.
Hawley told him to wash out his mouth several times at the sink and he placed some gauze where the tooth had been in order to stem the flow of blood and, when it had finally stopped, the doctor returned to his position and looked inside, frowning.
‘Bad news, I’m afraid, Master Milburn,’ he said, making the young man’s heart flutter in terror. ‘It’s as I thought. The tooth was so bad that it cracked as I pulled it. The root is still planted in the gum and I’ll have to remove it surgically.’
‘Oh no,’ Milburn sighed to himself, wondering whether it would be monstrous to start crying. ‘Surely not. Can’t it just stay there?’
‘If it did, your whole jaw would become infected and you would end up having to have all your teeth removed within a month.’
Milburn nodded stoically and resigned himself to more pain. Surely, he reasoned, there could not be much left to endure. ‘Go on then,’ he said, lying back and closing his eyes.
‘Unfortunately, no more of the tooth is left above the gum to pull, so I am going to have to cut open the gum and extract it from the inside. Not very pleasant, I’m afraid.’
Milburn stared at him and felt himself begin to laugh hysterically. Was this really a dentist who stood before him or some type of sadistic murderer, intent on producing as much blood and pain as possible? Still, he had little choice but to let the man finish the job he had started, and he lay back, his palms indented now with the sharpness of his fingernails, as Hawley took a sharper blade and, ignoring the boy’s screams, sliced the gum open in a criss-cross shape, like a hot cross bun, thus exposing the root of the damaged molar. ‘There she is,’ he exclaimed in delight, using two implements now to push back both sides of the gum so that he could see the offending object. ‘What a beauty!’ It was difficult to remove with so much blood pouring into the cavity, but he quickly reached inside with the narrowest forceps he possessed and, quite oblivious to the squirming and screaming of the boy beneath him, reached in and took a firm hold of it, pulling it loose with his right hand while his left rested on the boy’s chest, pressing him down into the chair lest he try to escape. With the sound of air being sucked into a vacuum, the remainder of the tooth came free and he stood back triumphantly, the forceps and his hand covered in blood while Peter Milburn held a palm to the side of his face in agony, one of the worst experiences of his life finally behind him, although he would never quite forget it. He sat up and tried to get out of the chair but his legs were weak beneath him and he was aware that a river of blood was pouring from his mouth.
‘Look at that,’ said Hawley, rotating the forceps in the light and admiring the tooth like a proud father. ‘Rotten to the core. A thing of beauty in itself.’ He glanced at the boy and nodded towards the sink. ‘You’d better wash your mouth out,’ he said. ‘Then sit back down and I’ll stitch you up.’
‘Stitch me—?’
‘Well, I can’t leave you like that, now can I?’ Hawley asked, grinning from ear to ear. ‘The blood won’t clot until I close the wound. A few stitches, and you’ll be right as rain.’
Milburn almost fainted and in his mind started to run through all the terrible things he had ever done in his life, wondering whether this was God’s retribution called back on him now. As a child he had bullied his younger brother mercilessly and exposed himself to every girl in his classroom for an apple. He had recently been the driving force behind a rift between his widowed mother and a gentleman she had fallen in love with, a perfectly decent gentleman but one who had threatened the boy’s home life and the selfish attentions he demanded. Two weeks before, he had stolen twelve pence from the cash box on his uncle’s fruit stall where he worked after school and, having got away with it, had resolved to take similar amounts at irregular intervals until he could afford a new bicycle. Perhaps all these misdeeds were coming back to haunt him now, he thought as he leant back in the chair, his mind suddenly filling with an image of himself in his coffin, and he lay there while Hawley completed eight expertly applied sutures to close up the hole which he had left in his mouth. The anaesthetic had practically worn off by now, and Milburn screamed throughout the whole procedure, blood-curdling screams, the screams of the demented and the hysterical; but Hawley hardly heard a note of them, so intent was he on his work, so proud of his abilities, so much in love with the art of medicine that for him the music of pain was nothing more than a melody to work by. Finally he placed more gauze in the boy’s mouth and told him to bite down on it for ten minutes; when he removed it, it was soaked in blood, making him feel even more faint, but when he washed out his mouth the blood had indeed clotted and the procedure was finally over.
‘You’ll have to come back to me in a week’s time,’ Hawley said, ‘so I can remove the stitches.’ Milburn stared at him in horror. ‘Don’t worry,’ he continued, laughing. ‘That will only take about thirty seconds and you won’t feel a thing.’
Handing over the two shillings which the operation had cost, the boy reeled out of the room and into the waiting area where, horrified by what she perceived to be the sounds of the young man’s murder in the ghastly chamber beyond, Hawley’s other prospective patient, the fifty-year-old woman, had fled into the night, determined to live with her pain rather than subject herself to the passions of a sadist.
Hawley didn’t care. The hour he had spent correcting Peter Milburn’s mouth, the use of the needles and forceps, pliers and stitches had excited him considerably and he wanted nothing more than to close the surgery now and return home; and this, having washed the used implements and replaced them in the disinfectant for the following night’s use, he did.
Cora was already in bed when he returned home, for her activities with Señor Berlosci that afternoon had exhausted her, and she barely glanced in his direction as he came in. It had been almost eight months since they had been intimate together, but tonight he had practically run down High Holborn and across Tottenham Court Road in order to return to his wife. She was surprised by the speed with which he removed his jacket, shirt and trousers—he normally waited until she was asleep before joining her in the marital bed—but when he came towards her and slipped under the covers, nuzzling his head against her breasts, it was all she could do to keep her dinner down.
‘Hawley!’ she exclaimed. ‘What on earth do you think you’re doing?’
He looked up at her as if that should have been obvious. ‘Do not deny me, Cora,’ he pleaded, although in truth he felt little attraction for this woman he had married six years before. She would merely provide him with some comfort now. He pressed himself against her and she felt his desire and pushed him away.
‘Get off me,’ she shrieked. ‘Filthy man!’
‘But Cora—’
‘I mean it, Hawley. How dare you?’
He stared at her, his lust descending with each passing second, and he felt a sense of loneliness as never before.
‘Honestly,’ she muttered, rolling over and away from him, nervously hoping that he would not continue to display his emotions to her any longer that night.
He did not, rolling in the opposite direction, embarrassed and humiliated. It was several hours more before he fell asleep and, when he did, his dreams were filled with the memory of Peter Milburn’s torturous evening. When he awoke, he was surprised to find himself as damp as a pubescent teenager and was forced to steal from the bed quietly before his wife awoke to clean away the signs of his dream, his desire fuelled by his memory of the pain and screaming he had inflicted earlier that night.
* * *
Business at Munyon’s Homoeopathic Medicines was improving but the health of its owner, Mr James Munyon, was failing more and more every day. He had become increasingly forgetful and unable to work through the entire day without feeling exhausted by the end of it. Finally, on the advice of his own doctor, he agreed to retire, leaving Hawley to run the shop alone. It was almost a month before anyone responded to the ‘Help Wanted’ sign the younger man placed in the window. Several unsuitable applicants offered themselves for the job, but he rejected them quickly and began to worry that he would never find a suitable assistant. He had almost forgotten about the search when the bell above the door gave a jingle to announce the presence of a young woman in the shop. Hawley looked up from the accounts he was studying, but his new customer had her back to him and was examining a display of herbal medications in the corner of the store by the window, picking up a jar and carefully reading the instructions on the side. He looked back down at the invoices and receipts spread out before him, but within a moment he glanced up again for something about her drew him instantly. She was not very tall, no more than about five foot seven inches, and with her back to him had an almost boyish figure: slim, narrow-hipped and healthy. Her hair was dark and cut short just above the shoulder. As he watched her, she sensed his eyes on her back and turned a little to the left so that he could observe her pale skin and the sharpness of her cheekbones in profile. He looked down at once, not allowing himself to glance up again even when he heard her walking towards him. Only when she gave a small cough to announce her presence did he tear himself away from his figures and stare at her as if he had not even heard another person come through the door.
‘Good afternoon,’ he said quietly, taking her features in at a glance. She was quite young and very pretty in a slightly androgynous way, as if God had been unable to decide whether to make her a surprisingly masculine girl or an unusually pretty boy. Somehow, however, even in His confusion He had managed to create something extraordinary. A small scar running from under her nose to her lip was the only noticeable flaw, but Hawley felt a sudden desire to touch it. ‘How can I help you?’ he asked, resisting.
‘I saw your sign,’ she said in a firm voice which suggested that it was taking some courage on her part to speak to him.
‘My sign?’
‘The sign in the window. The “Help Wanted” sign. I wished to enquire about it.’
‘Ah,’ said Hawley, putting his pen down and sitting back a little. ‘Of course. The position.’
‘Indeed.’
He nodded at her, unsure what to say next. He had interviewed several people for this job and he always wanted to appear authoritative but friendly, get things off to the right start. This was exactly where things had gone wrong with Helen Aldershot. Mr Munyon had hired her and, determined to make a good impression, Hawley had been too nice to her. By the time he needed to assert his authority it was already too late and she was walking all over him.
‘To whom should I speak?’ the woman asked after an uncomfortable silence had descended on them.
‘Speak? About what?’
‘About the position.’
‘Oh, the position,’ he repeated, as if this was an entirely new conversation. ‘I do beg your pardon, miss,’ he added after a moment. ‘You’re actually the first applicant I’ve seen in quite some time, so I was trying to think where I should begin.’ He frowned at once, unsure whether he should have told her this. After all, it would not do to appear desperate. ‘Let me find a fresh sheet of paper and take your details,’ he said finally, flustered and rooting in his desk before finding one. ‘Your name,’ he said. ‘That’s the best place to start.’
‘Ethel LeNeve,’ she replied. ‘L-e-N-e-v-e,’ she added, spelling it out. ‘Capital L, capital N.’
‘Miss LeNeve,’ he repeated, writing it down. ‘And that would be Miss or Mrs?’
‘Miss.’
‘Miss LeNeve. And your address?’
She gave it to him and he knew the street she was referring to, for he walked past it every evening on his way to his surgery. ‘Quiet little place,’ he told her. ‘Very pleasant.’
‘You know it then?’
‘I run a small dental practice in the evenings in Holborn. I must walk past your home every day. You live with your parents, I assume?’
Ethel shook her head. ‘I live alone,’ she said; and this surprised him, for a single woman of twenty (which was her age) to be living alone could constitute a scandal. ‘My parents are dead,’ she explained. ‘But they left me their small flat. A widow lives downstairs and I sometimes act as her companion. She’s a nice lady, but she sometimes mistakes me for her son.’
‘Her son?’ he asked, surprised.
‘Her mind isn’t what it used to be. But she has a heart of gold and treats me very kindly.’
Hawley nodded, pleased that there was no suggestion of any impropriety and wondering whether the widow should be introduced to Mr Munyon. They could enjoy their senility together, mistaking each other for a lamp-post or a stick of celery. ‘Well, Miss LeNeve,’ he began. ‘The position is one of general assistant and typist. Can you type?’
‘Typing is one of my skills,’ she said with a sweet smile. ‘Forty words per minute at the last count.’
‘Well that’s fortunate,’ he said. ‘If I try to type fast, I inevitably mis-spell a word and have to begin again. I can go through reams of paper like that. Naturally, in a pharmacy it’s very important that we do not make mistakes with what we type on our prescriptions. We don’t want to end up killing anyone.’
‘Naturally,’ she said, looking around. ‘But can you tell me, exactly what type of pharmacy this is? I’m afraid I don’t know very much about . . . homoeopathic medicine,’ she said, struggling with the word a little.
Hawley relaxed now, enjoying her comfortable presence, and he began the speech he had used on more than one occasion, explaining the birth of homoeopathy in Japan thousands of years before and its gradual reintroduction into western culture, its uses and benefits. He stopped short of expressing his own lack of belief in its healing powers, for that was something he had admitted to no one, not even to his wife; and Ethel seemed intrigued by all he said. She stared at him, listening to every word and watching his lips as he spoke. By the end, she was hooked.
‘That’s fascinating,’ she said. ‘I never knew there could be so many alternatives to visiting the doctor. To be honest with you, I’m always rather afraid to do so. Sometimes I wonder whether they know what they’re doing at all. If you think about it, anyone could set themselves up in a practice and claim they have a medical degree and then kill half their patients by mistake. Or by design.’
Hawley gave a narrow smile and realized that he had not yet introduced himself. ‘I’m a doctor myself, actually, Miss LeNeve,’ he explained.
‘Oh!’
‘Hawley Harvey Crippen,’ he said, extending his hand. ‘Doctor Crippen, that is. I should have introduced myself earlier.’
‘I do apologize,’ she said, blushing a little. ‘I didn’t mean you, of course. It’s just that one hears so many stories about—’
‘Don’t give it another thought, miss,’ he said, raising a hand. ‘It’s perfectly fine. You’re quite right, in fact. There are a lot of charlatans around on the streets of London these days and it can be hard to know who to believe. I myself, however, received my degrees from two medical colleges, one in Philadelphia and one in New York, so you need have no worries about me in that regard.’
‘From America,’ she exclaimed breathlessly.
‘Indeed,’ he said. He had taken to renaming his diplomas as degrees these days; it made things simpler, he believed.
‘So you’re an American. I’ve always wanted to go there.’
‘Really. I always wanted to leave,’ he said, which was untrue but seemed witty to him. She smiled. Another silence descended but it was broken by the jingle of the bell as the door opened again and Hawley looked around, his face falling when he saw his wife striding towards him, her handbag clutched tightly in her hands in front of her, her eyes like thunder. ‘My dear,’ he began, before she interrupted him.
‘Don’t “my dear” me,’ she snapped. ‘Have you spoken to those Anderson fellows yet?’
He closed his eyes, his heart sinking as he remembered. ‘I forgot,’ he admitted, unable to think up a suitable excuse.
‘You forgot? You forgot?’ she cried, her voice rising. ‘For heaven’s sake, you useless creature. They’re supposed to arrive tomorrow morning first thing, and they told me they would not come if you did not provide the inventory in advance. What use are you exactly? Can you tell me that? I give you the simplest task to perform and instead you just—’
‘My dear, may I introduce Miss LeNeve,’ Hawley interrupted her quickly, embarrassed by her coarseness and hoping to contain her a little by pointing out that at present they were not alone in South Crescent, where her tirades could run until she grew tired or became hungry, but were in a place of business, with strangers present. Cora looked quickly at Ethel, sizing her up in a glance.
‘Charmed,’ she said in a cold voice.
Ethel swallowed and said nothing.
‘Miss LeNeve is applying for a position,’ he explained. ‘Miss Aldershot’s old position.’
‘Ha!’ said Cora. ‘You don’t want to work for him,’ she added, nodding in the direction of her husband. ‘He’s as useless as a sack full of rotten potatoes. If you take my advice, dear, you’ll continue down the road and see whether more suitable employment can be found elsewhere.’
‘Cora, really,’ said Hawley, laughing a little as if to suggest that she was only joking, which she was clearly not.
‘Hawley, the Andersons!’ she insisted, not interested at all in the life and career of Ethel LeNeve. ‘What’s to be done about them?’
‘I have the list in my coat pocket,’ he said. ‘I’ll go round to their offices immediately after I shut the shop.’
‘Oh, don’t bother. Just give it to me and I’ll take it around now. They might be closed later. Honestly, Hawley. I don’t know why I bother sometimes. I really don’t. If a stagehand in the theatre behaved with as much stupidity as you, they’d be dismissed immediately as an incompetent.’
‘Yes, dear,’ said Hawley, retrieving the list she wanted and handing it to her. She glanced at it to make sure it was the right one and seemed almost disappointed that it was; anything else and she could have attacked him again.
‘You take my advice, Miss LeNeve,’ she said, turning around and offering a parting shot. ‘Find a different employer. Lord knows I wish I could find a different husband.’ And with that she stormed out again, slamming the door behind her so hard that they both jumped in shock.
Ethel turned slowly to look at Hawley, embarrassed for him, wishing that the scene had never taken place.
‘My wife,’ he said with a gentle laugh, as if that explained everything. ‘She’s under a little pressure at the moment. We’re moving house tomorrow, you see, and the removal men needed the inventory. Otherwise they won’t . . . they won’t . . .’ He lost track of his train of thought, wishing she would just leave him alone now to feel miserable.
‘How lovely,’ she said in a cheerful voice, aware of his embarrassment. ‘And where are you moving to, might I ask?’
He looked up at her, encouraged by her kindness. ‘Hilldrop Crescent,’ he said, ‘in Camden. We’ve been living in Bloomsbury for some time, but we were only able to afford the top floor of a house, so it will be nice to have a home to ourselves. We’re very excited by it.’
‘And so you should be,’ she said. ‘It’s only natural that your wife’s spirits would be high under the circumstances.’
Hawley nodded and knew instantly that he had found a new friend. And perhaps a typist too. ‘So, Miss LeNeve,’ he began.
‘Please call me Ethel,’ she said.
‘Ethel, then. You’re still interested in the position?’