Thunderstruck

by Erik Larson

He was overruled. The bells had always rung. They would continue to ring. It was, after all, the law, and this was, after all, England.

Crippen was in love with Ethel Le Neve and promised her that one day he would make her his legal wife. She was, he believed, the woman who should have shared his bed all along. Belle’s departure would be a blessing, for desertion was one of the very few grounds that British law accepted as cause for divorce.