by Meira Chand
There were times when she could not escape, when Reggie was insistent in his need for her, when he was drunk. Then her whole being closed to him. Reggie, she sensed, was pleased with this change in their intimacy, the new frigidity in herself. It fitted his conventions of a wife better; she had found her place, he saw nothing sick about her. And suddenly now, upon the verandah, she wondered in confusion if she had not really been sick before. The feelings Reggie had unleashed within her were those no well-bred woman might feel. Everybody knew that. Why was she not happy to be free of them, to feel at last the decorous distaste society demanded? She looked down at her hands on the wet verandah and thought of the madness that had once possessed her. Perhaps, indeed, instead of being ill she was only getting better. Perhaps she should be glad, a monster had left her body. She shivered in the damp and sneezed. If only they could leave.
But there were still more months before this happened, months of illness, boredom and frustration in which each grew more listless, like weary insects under glass, imprisoned in a vacuum. A terrible depression seized Reggie once his liver cleared. He continued to take his strange remedy in large doses every day. Amy got over her first troubled shock. He had not only survived, he was better. It seemed he knew what he was doing. She learned from Reggie that the taking of arsenic was not without its following as eccentric fashions went. It was not uncommon in England, where it was secretly used as a stimulant. And any doctor could tell of its use in a variety of illnesses. For Reggie its convenience ranged further. It helped his liver and the bladder complaint, it helped ward off malaria and treated those cursed and intimate diseases men were exposed to in a life of any full-bloodedness. It was marvellous stuff, said Reggie, not a household should be without some. When Amy was low again with malaria, he suggested she try arsenic. At first she refused, frightened. He leafed through a battered old medical book of tropical diseases to prove to her its use in malaria in conjunction with quinine. He gave it to her sparingly, a drop or two in plenty of water. She smelled and tasted nothing, and was surprised to find it helped more than quinine. But afterwards she felt depressed, apprehensive of its use. In spite of knowledge and assurance, Reggie was no doctor. What worked for him might kill her. She refused to take another dose.
Reggie became more and more morose. He poured out his first drink after breakfast. He raged at the climate and his work, he quarrelled with the Resident. A terrible change came over him. He turned against the Foreign Service. He said he and Amy would only rot for years in backwaters worse than Sungei Ujong; their own Resident was an example. He would find a new life in business. He discussed the situation with the Resident, who knew too well the character needed to survive places like Sungei Ujong. He accepted Reggie’s resignation and advised him to go to Singapore and look for something there. If nothing turned up he could buy tickets home. But things were not easy in England, the Resident demurred.
The thought that they might return to England revived the life in Amy and stirred her to domestic action. She started with the packing. She tied her hair in a different way. She painted some greater moth orchids to remind her later of the jungle. When Reggie returned, bright and cheerful, she ran to greet him eagerly. He sat her down and explained his good luck.
‘It all happened at the bar of the Singapore Club. There was this fellow Cooper-Hewitt there, on leave from Yokohama. Good kind of chap, full of tales of the place overtaking Shanghai as the Paris of the East. It seems they’ve need of a secretary there, at the Yokohama United Club. Cooper-Hewitt said I was the sort they wanted. He was on the club’s committee. He telegraphed my application himself. He thought I’d be accepted. And if not, according to him there’s no place like Yokohama for opportunity or fortune.’
Reggie stood in new clothes of sophistication against the backdrop of the jungle. The verandah creaked beneath his agitation, a storm gathered in the sky. Amy stared at him. She had heard of Yokohama, a name so strange she closed her ears to it whenever it was mentioned. It was further than the end of the world, further still than China. She had an image of it clinging to the perimeter of the Earth, nearly falling off. She looked up at Reggie’s towering form in growing realization.
‘Oh Reggie, it’s not possible. Please do let us go home. How can we go on to more strange lands and all their horrid deprivations?’ She gave a moan of sudden pain. The deadness in her cracked; she began to sob and could not stop. Reggie tried to cheer her up.
‘Yokohama is nothing like Sungei Ujong. There are shops full of things from home, fashions from Paris and a social life like nowhere else. And of course, there is money. I can see it waiting in a pile for us, if we will only claim it. We’ll be rich, Amy. We can always go home. Is it not braver first to push forward?’ His voice was soft, his eyes feverish; there was no distracting him. He looked at Amy tenderly and put his arms about her. ‘At least we shall leave Sungei Ujong. No fate could be worse than remaining.’ And with this fact Amy had to agree, using it like a compass to navigate the future. Reggie stroked her hair.
‘Poor little Kitten. I’ve put you through so much here. I promise I’ll make it up to you when we get to Yokohama.’ He took her chin in his hand and kissed her tearful face.
‘You know I’ll do anything for you, go anywhere you want. Have I not already come so far?’ she cried, grateful for his love. ‘Perhaps Yokohama will not be so bad.’ She held him to her tightly.
But there was already one more difference in their lives, she had not yet told Reggie. She had confided in the Resident’s wife, who said it must be so. Amy’s feelings were of terror and an excitement that spilt into disbelief. She did not know if she even wanted the child already within her.
3
Yokohama, 5 January 1897
The Japan Weekly Mail summary of news:
A considerable drop in the market price of commodities marks the close of the year 1896 in Japan.
The Empress Dowager is indisposed.
The Orient liner Orotawa has sunk at Tilbury whilst coaling.
Cinderella, an original burlesque, drew a crowded house at the Public Hall and was excellently performed by local amateurs.
Due to the smallpox and cholera epidemics Kobe and Yokohama have been declared infected ports.
FIRST DAY OF TRIAL
‘I call Dr Charles,’ Robert Russell announced.
Dr Charles mounted the witness stand; he did not glance at Amy. A shaft of winter sun parted the dusty, brown curtains, to fall upon him. Hand upon the Bible, he repeated well-worn words, his voice boomed and his girth swelled with responsibility. For such a large man his features were small, lost in the fleshy hillocks of his face; his sideburns drooped like the cheek flaps of a bulldog. He was anxious to tell all he knew. His bulk faced the jury and so escaped any confrontation with Amy Redmore. She looked at him in distaste. He had counselled colds and eaten dinner at her table, but his manner always held disapproval; he had the complacency of porridge. It was Reggie he liked, Reggie who upheld the club and its gentlemanly rituals, whose lapses could be shrugged away, man to man. Yet Reggie had never confided in Dr Charles, he had consulted Dr Baeltz and Dr Monroe in Tokyo about his other complaint. Dr Charles, he had said, was not a man to whom one admitted having Venus’s disease.
There appeared an almost conspiratorial air between Dr Charles and Robert Russell, as if they were merely acting out something long rehearsed. ‘And did he tell you much about his own habits, or were you led to infer for yourself what they were?’ hinted Mr Russell. In the back of the room somebody coughed, bare and hoarse as a crow. People turned at such presumption at a vital moment. Old Mrs Thomas issued a salty ‘ssh’ from beneath her black silk bonnet.
‘I was left to infer for myself. He mentioned having been in Singapore and Sarawak, of having lived there, being invalided home to England. I thought he had possibly malarial fever. He talked about living in the jungle and taking immense doses of quinine.’ Dr Charles shifted his weight and looked around the court.
‘Did he
mention to you about taking arsenic?’
‘No, never.’
‘During attendance on him prior to October last what did he complain of?’
‘He was given to occasional attacks of the liver. He complained of his old liver bothering him. I prescribed a liver tonic at these times.’
‘Were you aware he suffered from stricture of the bladder and had for many years?’
‘No, I knew nothing. He had never complained of or consulted me for stricture. Since his death I have learned he consulted both Dr Monroe and Dr Baeltz in Tokyo for stricture.’
‘When did you first come to know?’
‘On the night Mr Redmore died. Between ten and eleven that Thursday night Mrs Redmore told me, “Doctor, there is something I wish to tell you that I suppose I should have told you before. Reggie suffered from stricture and he was in the habit of taking arsenic to relieve it. He asked me to get him a small bottle of arsenic and some sugar of lead.” I merely said, “It would have simplified matters if you had told me so before.” I do not know anything further.’
They were like two old courteous birds settling in for a long caged confinement together. The examination would be lengthy, Jack Easely had said when preparing his defence. He sat alone with only a junior assistant, involved with his notes. When he looked up his gaze was that of an uneasy sailor testing the wind for navigation. The honest arrangement of his thoughts was openly upon his broad, bland face. He was a good-looking man, but he did not have that touch of arrogance Amy demanded in a handsome man. He should have been a missionary, not a lawyer, and pedalled the interior of Japan on a bicycle with a Bible; instead he was her defence. His standing in the community and his integrity were legend. There were few more upright, unmoralizing men; she respected, liked and trusted him. Yet one look at Robert Russell made her wish for a reversal of the two men’s roles.
Dr Charles continued to reconstruct the bare medical bones of Reggie’s last week. The jury listened attentively, five men instead of twelve. Mr. Cooper-Hewitt, roguish as a horse dealer, crossed his arms upon his chest, eyes severe above full, weak lips. Mr Ewart fidgeted, small and soft as a butter ball, his features slippery with perspiration and the need to meet with approval. Mr Figdor controlled his flatulence with a quick pursing of the lips. Mr Read concentrated next to Mr Sharp. The empty seats in the jury box gaped like missing teeth. When called upon to answer their names, the jurors had disintegrated. Nobody wanted responsibility in the Redmore Trial. They fled Yokohama, pleaded deafness or mutely took their fines. There was a sudden flutter of medical certificates impossible to ignore. Judge Bowman, sewn up with responsibility and frustration, had proceeded with the trial. Jack Easely said it was unheard of. Five men were invalid for a verdict and he would protest in London. Yokohama did not hear him.
Amy listened to the patterns of lithe tongues build the fabric of the trial. The archaic theatre creaking into action appeared short in mercy and heavy in malice. She was helpless to respond. She would not be examined. Mr Russell could not then trap her with his labyrinthine reasoning, Jack Easely decided. But hearing Robert Russell’s opening speech she clenched her fists in anger. His voice was elaborate with implication, his eyes shot through in a queer way, like an animal’s before blood. In everyday life he was withdrawn, cold and dry as a winter twig. What unnatural germination had she started in his soul? His voice from that morning came back to her.
‘At the inquest the prisoner stated that the deceased was in the habit of taking large doses of arsenic daily. There are many inconsistencies in her statement. Dr Charles will tell you he did not prescribe arsenic for the deceased. Nor did Dr Monroe or Dr Baeltz of Tokyo. Then I call your attention to this statement by the prisoner. “He always kept a small bottle of arsenic on the dining room sideboard.” Is it credible that a bottle of arsenic be kept on a sideboard accessible to children, distinguishable though it may be from cod liver oil?’ The court tittered. Mr Russell allowed himself a smile. ‘Then there is the quantity she says her husband took. A one-ounce bottle, she found, barely lasted him five doses. That is really an enormous quantity – over ninety drops a dose when the ordinary maximum is five. She never told the doctor attending that these medicines had been handed to her husband.’
There was scorn in Mr Russell’s voice. He leaned forward as he spoke like a stringy old fighting cock, summing up his adversaries. The faces before her seemed to dissolve in a perverse way, to take on the masks of evil birds, until the court was a restless aviary with row upon row of shifting creatures, their sharp eyes and malicious beaks directed at her flesh. They shifted and waited. She drew back in her seat until it was up against her bone.
‘You are asked to decide whether the deceased died from arsenic, and whether the arsenic of which he died was administered to him by the prisoner. It is not necessary to prove affirmatively that the prisoner was actuated by malice. If you find she wilfully administered poison to him and that he died in consequence the law will imply malice though no enmity is proved.’ Robert Russell’s voice echoed about the room.
She saw suddenly now she was not noticed. The fear she felt to be alive on her face was alive to herself alone. She was like the ball in a tennis game, essential only to exhibit the skill of the players. Her guilt or innocence was secondary to the game now played before her. She no longer possessed herself or her life. It was visible to her as to everyone else in scattered, sordid details, like a pile of malodorous clothes picked up for identification between two outstretched fingers. She listened, and it was as if she stood before a mirror and viewed herself from the other side. Dr Charles and Robert Russell continued to throw an obedient ball of words between them.
‘Do you remember on Saturday, 10 October having an interview with the prisoner?’ Robert Russell inquired.
‘Yes, at the boathouse of the Yacht Club. It was the day of the regatta, a rainy day, not good at all.’ Dr Charles nodded at the remembrance of splashed flannels and muddy shoes.
‘Did you prescribe for her then?’
‘Yes, I prescribed half an ounce of Fowler’s Solution of Arsenic, four to five drops in water after meals. This is a normal medicinal dose of no danger, and a standard remedy for the malaria from which Mrs Redmore suffered. No doctor of repute would prescribe more than that dosage,’ Dr Charles said firmly.
‘That is Exhibit C.A. Is this the prescription? What is it written on?’
‘It is written on a piece I tore off the back of my regatta programme.’
‘Did you prescribe the same on previous occasions?’
‘Yes.’
‘Will you state the conversation with the accused at the boathouse?’
‘I think I said, “You do not look so well. Your trip to Miyanoshita has not done you much good.” She said, “No, it was beastly weather, raining all the while.” She said, “By the way, doctor, I want you to give me that arsenic prescription again that you have given me before.”’
‘Have you ever heard of arsenic and sugar of lead being used for stricture?’
‘No, never,’ snorted Dr Charles.
Robert Russell nodded, satisfied, and sat down with a smile like tight string.
Jack Easely cleared his throat. His voice was tolerant as he began his cross-examination.
‘Is it not true that stricture and jaundice are among the secondary symptoms of both acute and chronic arsenic poisoning?’
‘Yes, that is so.’
‘Is it possible then, that when you told Mr Redmore on 15 October that he might have a bad attack of jaundice, that he was suffering from arsenic poisoning?’
‘Yes, it is possible, but in my opinion not probable.’ Dr Charles was reluctant.
‘You spoke of prescribing for Mrs Redmore’s own ailments prior to 10 October. When she went to Miyanoshita on 28 September was she not suffering from malaria generally?’
‘Yes, malaria generally, slight fever and neuralgia. She had contracted malaria in the Straits.’
‘And was it not you who r
ecommended she try arsenic again?’
‘Yes. I said, “Why not go on with the arsenic you have taken before?”’
‘She expressed a dislike for the arsenic and said it depressed her, did she not?’
‘Yes. She said she would first try a change of air at Miyanoshita.’
‘When you met her at the Club on regatta day, the day on which you prescribed for her, did she not say in reply to your telling her she did not look well, “My trip has done me no good. I shall have to take the arsenic after all”? I am putting to you whether the suggestion did not come from her in that way.’ Jack Easely leaned forward on his toes, his face suddenly intent.
‘She said she wanted some of the old arsenic; the quinine was not doing her any good.’ Dr Charles pursed his lips stubbornly.
Judge Bowman, like a large bird in a precarious nest, bent forward from above, scanning the scene below him, squinting over his spectacles. ‘She did not say so, then? She may have said so?’
Jack Easely looked firmly at Dr Charles. ‘My point is this. The impression left on the minds of the jury by my learned colleague was that the suggestion of getting the arsenic came from Mrs Redmore without any previous conversation at all. I want to make it plain that she asked for it in the course of normal conversation, upon the previous suggestion of Dr Charles.’
‘Yes, she asked for it in the natural course of conversation. She asked me to give her the old arsenic.’ Dr Charles frowned, his voice low.
Judge Bowman leaned forward again. His wig swung to one side, revealing an ear. ‘I can’t hear a word, and I’m sure the jury can’t. Will you please speak up?’ Dr Charles repeated his answer.
‘There was nothing to lead you to suppose she wanted the arsenic for any other purpose?’ Jack Easely continued.
‘None whatsoever.’
‘Have you ever, Dr Charles, met patients who were addicted to the habit of taking large doses of arsenic?’
