by Meira Chand
‘You were unassisted in your post-mortem work, I believe?’ Jack Easely asked.
‘Entirely.’ Dr Dixon nodded.
‘If you had not been so utterly exhausted by your work, as you told the court earlier today in previous examination, would you have proceeded to determine the amount of lead in the body, which you have failed to do?’
‘Yes, I would have collected and determined the quantity and the arsenic too, and tested it afterwards.’
‘If not weary of your work?’ Jack Easely pressed.
‘Yes, I would have carried the case further if I had the curiosity, but I had unpleasant matters about my laboratory and my colleagues had to be considered.’
They battled on to establish that the deposits of lead and white arsenic were the causes of death, not the Fowler’s Solution Amy had been seen to buy.
‘The deceased died on Thursday, 22 October. Severe stomach irritation first manifested itself on Monday 19 October. Is it possible that white arsenic was taken on the 19th when this condition appeared?’ Jack Easely asked.
‘It is possible.’
‘In that case, the white arsenic specks discovered in the post-mortem could have remained unabsorbed until the time of his death?’ Mr Easely questioned.
Judge Bowman looked down with raised eyebrows. ‘If this white arsenic was taken on the 19th, might death not have resulted until the 22nd?’ he asked for himself.
‘Death might not have resulted until it did.’ Dr Dixon nodded in confirmation.
He was pleased to be led at last by Mr Easely to his evidence given in the inquest, to prove the case for eccentricity. In his profession he saw the oddest exceptions to the rules.
‘There are peoples who have made their fortunes by arsenic, fire-eaters and arsenic-eaters, who swallow the arsenic and have the power of receiving it. And the case of the Styrian peasants is well authenticated. They take dry white arsenic in large amounts to benefit their respiratory powers and for the pleasurable effect upon the sensations. They can take from four to five grains of white arsenic in a lump.’
‘Is there any reason why one who is not a Styrian should not be able to accustom himself to swallow the same dose?’ Mr Easely inquired.
‘No, not that I am aware of, except for want of knowledge,’ Dr Dixon replied. Jack Easely nodded in satisfaction.
Amy felt more hopeful today. The months since Reggie’s death seemed to her longer than her life. They kept her now at the Consulate, in a tolerable room, not in the jail like a common criminal. A warder sat in the corridor, the children came most days. Time seemed starkly divided. By day was the endless public scourging, in the dark the pain of a private torture that never let her sleep. In her dreams Yokohama appeared as ripe and overblown as the soft-fleshed fruit of the loquat tree in the garden of her home. A flesh so fragile it must be picked and eaten before it was pocked to ugly brown sores by the birds that settled on it. They oozed those sores the summer through and the maggots quickly claimed them. At other times, as she lay on the narrow bed, Yokohama dried to a landscape of dusty old bones. A sour wind blew about the Bluff. She awoke in a sweat to strands of grey light in the room and wondered which was real, the Yokohama she had known or the dreams that consumed her nights. She remembered again that first ride upon the Bluff with Mrs Easely; she remembered Mount Fuji, intractable and waiting. Yokohama seemed then a fantasy, evolved that they might flirt, like sunlight on a lake, mercurial as fire, of no more substance than a shadow. Beneath the light, beneath the sweet air, there was always the stench of death. They had taken no notice of it. Upon the Bluff fantasy was the condition of life, the contagion of their spirits.
Next, Dr Monroe took the stand and confirmed for Robert Russell a conversation he had had with Reggie in the spring of 1893, when Amy had returned for a time to Somerset.
‘Mr Redmore confessed to me he had taken arsenic on account of his complaint. He stated to me that it relieved the pain of stricture of the urinary tract for which he had come to consult me.’
Whatever the motive of Robert Russell in establishing this fact for the prosecution, Jack Easely was quick to follow through in a volley of neat smashes.
‘Did you treat him for anything else?’ He asked at once in cross-examination.
‘Am I obliged to answer, my lord?’ Dr Monroe looked up at Judge Bowman in annoyance.
‘Yes, I think so. I suppose so.’ Judge Bowman was hesitant, disliking the question as much as Dr Monroe, nervous of what might follow. Jack Easely stood his ground. Dr Monroe stretched his neck within his collar.
‘He consulted me about an attack of gonorrhoea.’ It was not the kind of confidence one made public about a gentleman one knew. Dr Monroe clenched his teeth.
The court was silent, Amy blushed, Jack Easely cleared his throat. The atmosphere stretched tight as skin upon a drum. People looked up, their voyeuristic thoughts piled about Amy until she felt naked and exposed. There were more men than Reggie who suffered from excursions into Yokohama’s pleasure quarter. Nor was she alone in the reaping of unwanted gifts passed casually and callously on. Although known widely as a good sport, Reggie never laid claim to being a good man. But a lack of virtue in Reggie was not counted as a fault. For his sex there were many words to describe the failing, each condoning in discretion or humour all that was damned in her.
In comparison she had been called flighty, she had been called shallow, she had even been called a prostitute. She lowered her eyes and remembered what the newspapers had said about her. ‘Mrs Redmore is not what the world calls a “good woman”.’ “Mrs Redmore does not belong to that class of woman – let us hope they are largely in the majority – whose moral fibre is proof against the disintegrating influence of the major lex ….’ And this from a publication that stood up for all it thought she was denied. What was said by some others she had put out of her mind. Certainly, in their terms, she was not good. Yet she was no different from so many. Mabel Rice, Enid Desmond and Lettice Dunn sat before her in court, hands clasped demurely, virtue for today tied tighter than their corsets. They watched her – even Mabel – as if she were different. She twisted her rings and looked down at her lap.
Jack Easely continued with Dr Monroe. ‘When he told you he found relief from the pain of stricture with arsenic, had you any reason to disbelieve him?’
‘No, it was not in my experience, but I knew that arsenic was par excellence the specific for neuralgia. I believe it might relieve the pain of stricture.’
The presence of stricture might cause pain in urination?’
‘Undoubtedly,’ Dr Monroe confirmed.
‘Is pain in urination not also a symptom of arsenic poisoning?’
‘Yes.’ Dr Monroe nodded again.
‘Might pain, then, if actually proceeding from arsenic poisoning, be easily mistaken for that produced by stricture of the urinary tract?’
‘Undoubtedly.’
‘Is this really so?’ Judge Bowman interrupted with an annoyed frown.
Jack Easely nodded to him. ‘Yes. So if the deceased took arsenic habitually over many years to relieve the pain of stricture, he might unwittingly be inducing the very pain he was taking arsenic in the hope of stopping?’
‘He might do. Increasing it, he might be bringing pain about,’ Dr Monroe answered in sudden interest.
‘And finding no alleviation he would be apt to take larger doses in the hope of stopping it?’ Jack Easely pressed on.
‘Oh yes. It is a possibility, certainly,’ Dr Monroe agreed.
There was a stir throughout the court. Robert Russell was grim, his face hard as statuary. Jack Easely turned to glance at Amy. She returned a slight smile at this success, but knew as well as he that whatever they won this round might be destroyed in the next. What defence could she offer for Dicky Huckle? All Yokohama waited to hear.
6
Yokohama, 1892–93
It seemed, since she had taken up with Mabel Rice, that Mrs Easely had dropped away. This was no loss, though
t Amy, remembering Mrs Easely’s missionary look. She was quick to discover Yokohama divided into coteries and cliques. The missionaries, the professionals and the Consular Corps kept themselves apart, sailing like superior fish through a pond of murky water. Beyond them only money talked, wheat divided from the chaff down an endless painful scale.
Reggie was delighted. He escaped most of this. He had entry through his position at the club to the best circles. Consuls and wealthy merchants slapped his back, exchanged shady jokes or a whisky at the bar. They invited him home. In a town where many had first arrived as drifters, the Foreign Service as pedigree was not called upon in vain. Upon this passport the Redmores trod without difficulty the knotty terrain of Yokohama.
From the beginning Reggie was a success. Apart from running the place he was never without a joke and could soothe a quarrel at the card tables. He held his drink well and the tales he told captured everyone’s attention. Nobody disliked him. This was an achievement in the small cosmos of Yokohama. Visitors came and went, return tickets to Paris, London or San Francisco tucked securely in their wallets, but the men of Yokohama might stay thirty years on the balcony of the club, watching the liners come and go. When they turned back into the high-ceilinged rooms it was to forestall a vague and nagging pain. Committees and presidents disagreed, but a manager was indispensable to the welfare of any club.
And Reggie was happy. Drink had never been so plentiful or so near at hand. The day passed in an amber-tinged haze. He lived permanently amongst friends in impressive, airy, panelled rooms. From the wide balconies the view of the bay with its warships and junks, its yachts and liners, was always with him. And the sound of the midday cannon boomed to accent his happiest hour as the men piled in for tiffin. There broke about him then a great talk of banking and business, of silk and tea, and when this abated a concern about horses and yachts and events at the Negishi Race Club. With each steamer in harbour the club’s population swelled and diversified. Sea captains swung into the bar and played at the billiard tables, men on leave from China, Manila and Singapore brought news of fortunes and disaster. And in the hours between tiffin and the evening throng Reggie was happy in the quiet, empty rooms as the breeze blew in and rustled the papers or a ship honked out in the bay. At night there were the endless social events upon which the town fed and thrived – dinners, balls and card parties. To these Amy could not go until after the birth of the baby, upon the advice of Dr Charles. But amongst so many friends Reggie never felt alone. And when these entertainments ended, there were always men to accompany him to Mother Jesus’s famous Number Nine, behind the gates of the pleasure quarter. Reggie found no cause for complaint. He was happy in Yokohama.
By contrast, in her first months upon the Bluff Amy saw little of Yokohama’s social whirl. Her pregnancy was troublesome, she was confined to bed or to rest upon a velvet chaise by Dr Charles, who attended her. Frequent flare-ups of malaria weakened and depressed her. Mabel, who had never had children, nor, with God’s help, intended any for the future, thought the whole procedure repugnant, but found courage enough to visit each day.
Mrs Easely also visited, full of maternal advice and an attitude to childbirth different from Mabel’s. Mrs Easely’s own two sons were already married and settled in England. Amy took courage and a comfort from her that Mabel could never supply. She openly voiced to Mrs Easely her fears that she would not survive the ordeal.
‘Nonsense,’ Mrs Easely laughed. ‘Dr Charles and Mrs Davis, the midwife, have safely delivered every mother in this Settlement for the last thirty years.’
Amy knitted and sewed for the baby. The growing activity of the child within her and the physical lines of the pile of small garments, waiting for their mysterious occupant, filled her with suppressed excitement and bursts of violent love. It was difficult to imagine the change the child would bring to her life. But until that time the weeks spread out before her, long and dull. Reggie, intent upon establishing himself in the club and Yokohama, rarely tiffined at home, returning late and tired each evening. Amy embroidered and knitted and read the books Mabel brought from the Ladies’ Reading Room. At other times she painted the flowers about her as she had in Sungei Ujong. Mabel brought her pots of rare orchids to draw from her own conservatory, or blooms from the nurseries on the Bluff.
During those hours the world dissolved for Amy. She was lost in a solitary place filled with silences that seemed to reach down deep into her body. She emerged from these journeys of colour and wash to find the world still waited for her. Mabel raised an eyebrow but cultivated patience and even accepted a sketch. There was something arresting about Amy’s flowers, but they lacked for Mabel the delicate charm she expected in accomplishment. There was, she thought disapprovingly, a lack of restraint in Amy’s enthusiasms. She was devoid of the calculation Mabel found important in life. There was a hint of wildness behind the petals of Amy’s orchids. There was an excessiveness which Mabel found disquieting.
For Amy, in her dark, narrow house upon the Bluff, shut up except for a brief walk, Mabel’s visits brought vigour to her day. She waited for the dramas Mabel ably related. The doings of wicked Yokohama, its pleasures, pains and clandestine excitements passed third-hand to Amy through the sharp mirror of Mabel Rice. The Yokohama she came to know was not the town the tourist saw or the one righteous residents knew. It was another place, flowing like a secret river at the base of the solid Bluff. In time it was impossible for Amy to believe she had not seen all that Mabel had, was not witness to the same events or the same sensations. Her view of Yokohama was like the reflection of a window in a tiny mirror. And to such a captive audience Mabel grew reckless, spinning with growing wit and malice the panorama of Yokohama; a panorama as brilliant, unknown and sensuous as had been the jungle for Amy in Sungei Ujong. That too had been a world Amy observed only from a distance, living within it in imagination from the safety of her home. So now, through Mabel Rice, Amy lived her first months in Yokohama, within it yet apart.
They watched the snow blow that winter in flurries upon the Bluff and the windows of Amy’s house, filling the dark rooms with reflective, white light. Sometimes Amy ventured, swathed in rugs in a rikisha, to Mabel’s house. In the pink satin of Mabel’s boudoir or the warm, sun-filled conservatory, pressed close by exotic plants and by endless refilled teacups, Mabel continued to fashion the wickedness of Yokohama upon the innocence of Amy Redmore. There was nothing she did not know and nothing Amy did not absorb like rain upon dry earth.
‘They’re all past sinning or have never had the opportunity, that’s their trouble,’ Mabel said of Yokohama’s virtuous wives. ‘You should have heard them this morning in the Ladies’ Reading Room. Tittle-tattle, tittle-tattle, they’re all drier than a bowl of prunes. They talked of nothing but Tilly Manley.’
Amy fingered the petal of an orchid in Mabel’s conservatory and settled more comfortably into her chair, waiting to hear of Tilly Manley, the wife of an officer of the American Mail route, whose flighty progress she followed through Mabel.
‘She refuses to live any longer at the Club Hotel and has removed herself to the Grand. It seemed the American Mail docked a day ahead of time. On arriving at the Grand Hotel George Manley was told his wife was out. He went up to her room to find her there in the arms of who else but Jack Austin. My amah has it all on the assurance of Tilly’s own amah.’
‘What will happen?’ Amy asked.
‘Oh, innocent! Surely by now you know Tilly. She will persuade George yet again that she is persecuted by unwanted attentions because he leaves her so much alone. Poor George will feel it all his fault.’ Mabel yawned. ‘Tomorrow Douglas is taking me skating. Enid and Lettice and Dicky Huckle have promised to join us there. I have sent a note to Guy le Ferrier; they say he skates marvellously.’ Each winter, on a frozen paddy near the beach of Honmoku, the fashionable skated in fur hoods and muffs to the amazement of the locals, who squatted in thin peasant clothes to watch from nearby fields. Amy had heard about Douglas Roseber
ry and had recovered from her shock. It was one thing to listen to the wickedness of others, another to discover Mabel did the same. It had been on a seat in the Bluff Gardens on a fine morning a few weeks before that Mabel had imparted this confidence to Amy. Until then Amy had not realized Mabel had a lover.
‘And Patrick knows?’ she asked.
‘But of course Patrick knows.’ Mabel was amused. ‘The arrangement is of mutual consent. I’m always discreet. Patrick has a little establishment of his own, out at Nogeyama. Not many people know about that. And if I’m to put up with it gracefully, you can be sure I need something in return.’ Mabel’s expression was suddenly hard in a way Amy had not seen. ‘I assure you,’ she laughed, ‘Patrick is a remarkable man. He’s marvellous about Douglas; they are the best of friends. Douglas even rides for Patrick’s stable.’ Amy looked at her, amazed.
She remembered Patrick Rice’s amiable, uncommunicative face, his smooth grey hair and knowing eyes, and wondered if she had made a mistake. She was not sure she knew what Mabel meant by ‘an establishment’. She felt suddenly far more out of her depth than ever in Sungei Ujong. There had been only the jungle to comprehend there, its dangers untraversable. Here, it appeared, beyond dinner tables, bridge parties and legation balls lay an enclosed and fetid terrain. It lay beneath the surface of things, contagious as disease. Mabel studied Amy’s shock and moved nearer the seat.
‘All we women of spirit, my innocent, have our ami particulier,’ whispered Mabel, her eyes narrow and amused.
‘But Mrs Easely….’
‘Mrs Easely?’ Mabel laughed in disbelief. ‘I said any woman of spirit. Don’t you know in Tokyo how the foreign community gossip and deride us? They’re tied to such conventions there; they can never enjoy themselves as we do in Yokohama.’ In the breeze Mabel adjusted her hat and smiled at a group of small children trailed by amahs and perambulators.
