Story of a Murder – Hallie Rubenhold

in conversation with Madeleine Pelling

25 October, 2025 at 3:00 pm

Story of a Murder: The Wives, The Mistress and Doctor Crippen

In 1910, music-hall performer Belle Elmore vanished causing alarm among her female friends, the entertainers of the Music Hall Ladies’ Guild who demanded an immediate investigation. They provoked the unearthing of a gruesome secret and a fevered manhunt for the prime suspect: Belle’s husband, medical fraudster, Dr Hawley Harvey Crippen.

In this epic examination of one of the most infamous murders of the twentieth century, Hallie Rubenhold gives voice to those who have never properly been heard – the women. Featuring a carnival cast of eccentric entertainers, glamorous lawyers, zealous detectives, medics and liars, Story of a Murder is meticulously researched and multi-layered.

Social historian Hallie Rubenhold is the bestselling, prize-winning author of The Five, the Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper.

“Fascinating. It’s about time Belle became the hero of her own story.’” Val McDermid

Dr Madeleine Pelling is an award-winning cultural historian, broadcaster and author of Writing on the Wall: Graffiti, Rebellion and the Making of Eighteenth-Century