by Meira Chand
‘Reggie would not have it. He did not wish you to know. He was a man who believed he could treat himself. He had taken arsenic for many years.’ She heard the unevenness in her voice. Dr Charles looked at her coldly. She did not sound convincing even to herself.
‘I knew nothing of a stricture, he never complained of symptoms. He gave no indication of the debility nor that he had any disregard for my opinion.’ He clipped his words and moved towards the door.
Panic filled her. ‘A few days ago Reggie asked me to get him a bottle of Fowler’s Solution of Arsenic and a bottle of sugar of lead that he used as a liniment when his pain was bad,’ she said, holding down her desperation. Dr Charles turned back from the door to look silently at her.
‘I don’t know where these things are. I can’t find them. I’ll look again tomorrow,’ she added. Dr Charles raised an eyebrow and turned into the hall. She watched the front door close behind him.
It was true. She had searched that evening and found not a single bottle of Fowler’s. Reggie had finished the stuff, and after he was admitted to the hospital she had ordered Rachel and Asa to clean and disinfect the room in readiness for his return. They had thrown out the empty bottles, tomorrow she would tell them to search the rubbish pile. Dr Charles did not believe her; she wondered if he ever would. And she sensed the conjecture that must already be growing from Mr Cooper-Hewitt’s tongue. Yokohama, ever restless for diversity would turn without conscience to a cannabilistic meal. Dicky would be back tomorrow from Kobe; he would tell her what to do.
*
‘What have you done, Amy? What have you done?’ was all Dicky seemed to say when at last he returned. He paced the drawing room, spacing his steps erratically. He picked his chin in agitation.
‘I’ve done nothing. Nothing,’ she repeated, twisting her rings. She got up from where she sat and poured them both a brandy. ‘Help me, Dicky, please. You’re also involved,’ she reminded him.
‘Do you think I’m unaware of that?’ he returned bitterly. ‘If there’s an inquest – and I’m sure there will be – it may lead to God knows what if they wish to believe it’s a murder. And as a motive, those letters of mine will be all over Yokohama. They’ll be read out in court, printed in newspapers. I shall not only be a laughing-stock, but an accomplice to murder. I’m ruined.’ He sat down abruptly in a convenient chair.
‘That’s nonsense,’ she said. ‘You know it’s not murder.’
‘It’s not what it is, but how it looks that matters at the moment,’ Dicky said. ‘How could you be so careless? If it was just the business with the arsenic, you could be got out of that, I’m sure. But you’ve given the town a motive, with ample proof into the bargain. I’m finished with the bank. Oh, God.’ He dropped his head into his hands.
‘We must think,’ he said at last.
Amy nodded. It was what she had hoped he might do.
‘Tell me more about this hare-brained lark of yours, about this Annie Luke,’ he said. She had told Dicky everything in her distress, she had kept nothing back. He knew now that Annie Luke’s visit was only a fiction. He knew now of her compromise with Reggie, of her liaison with Guy le Ferrier and also with Matthew Armitage. She had, she felt, no choice but to enlighten him if he was to help her. He had looked at her in disgust.
‘Could this Annie Luke, do you think, possibly kill Reggie?’ Dicky asked after a moment.
‘What do you mean?’ she replied.
‘You yourself have already set the tone of mystery in public about this woman. There is no knowing why she wished to see Reggie and what, had she had access to him, she may have tried to do.’ Dicky’s voice began to rise in a positive way.
Amy looked at him, bewildered.
‘We need evidence of intent,’ Dicky decided. ‘If so much that is untrue is now being construed by the minute against us, I see no reason why we should not throw our own fictitious spanner into the works. We shall play Yokohama at its own game.’
‘But how would we get this evidence?’ Amy questioned.
‘Why, you shall write it, just as you have written up the rest of Annie Luke. You will come forward with your own bundle of letters. They will come to you anonymously, full of threat and malice,’ Dicky advised.
‘You must help me. You must tell me what to say,’ Amy agreed. They sat down side by side on the sofa and began to think again.
‘Something of his must come to you from her, to prove her contact with him,’ Dicky reasoned.
‘A letter?’ Amy suggested. ‘There is Reggie’s last chit written to me from the club after he saw Dr Charles and his illness began.’
‘Splendid,’ said Dicky, getting suddenly into the rhythm of the thing. ‘Tear it up like my own letters, then stitch it together.’
‘Oh, how could I do that?’ she said.
‘Well then, stick it together with paste,’ he said. You’ll say it came to you anonymously before Reggie died. And then we’ll need, some threatening notes to you, and in the end Annie Luke shall sail away after killing Reggie, undetected,’ Dicky decided. ‘You must alter your writing,’ he warned. ‘Why don’t you copy that little minx Jessie’s just as an extra complication? You say Rachel caught her copying your handwriting, for what reason we do not know. You need have no conscience. And if that letter to you from Reggie is torn and put together, too, it may cast doubt upon her. She deserves a bit of something for all the mischief she has caused,’ Dicky said.
But Amy was not so sure, thinking back to that terrible night only a week before. She was not convinced of anything Dicky was suggesting. Only desperation moved her to agree with him.
He saw her hesitation. ‘It’s a matter of self-preservation, Amy. Make the letters out in Jessie’s writing as near as you are able. They should be suitably idiotic. They must come from her mind, not yours. She has had no scruples about implicating you, you must have none either. I’ll back you up. I shall say I have seen a strange woman about Yokohama to complicate things.’ Already importance filled out Dicky’s voice, and hope pulled at Amy’s face.
*
Jessie Flack lay in the dark of Miss Brittain’s house. It was an attic room, the rafters sloped steeply towards her, and if she sat up without caution she bumped her head. The inquest was over. There had been an open verdict; it did not look well for Mrs Redmore. People said she would now be charged with her husband’s murder. It was as Jessie had suspected; there would be a trial. It was difficult to say how Mrs Redmore ever thought to get away with such a crime.
Jessie had sat through the inquest, listening to it all. She had given her evidence, swallowing down her nervousness, speaking out clearly to all she was asked. People had been kind. Miss Brittain had bought her a pair of new gloves, and Mrs Phelps had given a motherly talk about her duty to God and Yokohama and gone with her to the court. People everywhere knew her name as well as that of anyone of importance. The Redmore Affair was on everyone’s lips, every detail privately discussed, if not yet publicly disclosed. Most people had already decided their verdict.
The moon shone through a gap in the curtains that Jessie had closed with a wooden peg, and showed up the dire need to whitewash the rafters. But Miss Brittain’s was clean and reeked of carbolic, the smell even infused Miss Brittain herself. Jessie could not sleep. She had not slept well for weeks, ever since that night. God had punished Mr Redmore, yet she found with his death nothing was ended but went on in her as before. She had lost weight and fainted frequently, dark circles framed her eyes. Miss Brittain had declared she must see a doctor. Her sleep was full of fiends. Worst of all was when her own cry echoed again in her ears from that night.
She pulled herself up on an elbow and poured out a glass of water, it was already two o’clock. Water pipes clanked below in the house, a dog barked, there was a creak of bedsprings in the next room. Mr Phelps had refused to hand over Mr Huckle’s letters to the authorities until after the verdict of the inquest. He said he was not obliged, unless there was a trial. He had even gone to see
Mrs Redmore, to tell her he would return the letters if the inquest ended satisfactorily. Jessie could not understand his attitude; his lack of enthusiasm disappointed her. But now there was to be a trial people would see what Mrs Redmore was; nothing could protect her now. Jessie coughed in satisfaction.
The inquest had been full of unexpected things, like that woman, Annie Luke. There had also been much medical jargon, and talk of different kinds of arsenic. There was the arsenic in bottles that Mrs Redmore had procured to feed her husband, and there was arsenic in glutinous specks of white powder stuck to Mr Redmore’s guts. The doctors declared that this proved the arsenic was taken also in a powder form Mrs Redmore was not seen to buy. If she had bought one type she could buy another, Jessie thought impatiently. One doctor had the audacity to declare that a single dose of that powder, taken even several days before Mr Redmore’s death, could alone have brought about his end. It was absurd; even the coroner had expressed surprise. And at that juncture there had flooded back to Jessie the occasion when Mr Redmore had asked her to give him his medicine. She remembered that envelope of powder, all of which, in her agitation, had slipped into the glass. For a moment her heart had almost stopped beating, until she recalled that the medicine she had administered to Mr Redmore was a harmless substance for the problem of gas. She remembered again that repulsive sound that had gurgled up from his innards unasked, as soon as he swallowed the stuff. It was nothing more than a calmative for his ravaged guts. The relief was so great she had broken out in cold sweat, there in her seat at the inquest.
Jessie Flack turned on her side. A shaft of moonlight slit the bed, severing her upon it. As she moved, it seemed as if she loosened the memory of that awful night and again the sound of her own strange cry echoed in her head. She placed her hands upon her ears. It seemed as if she would be forced to listen until it drove her mad.
15
Yokohama, 29 January 1897
The Japan Weekly Mail summary of news:
Telegrams of condolence upon the death of the Empress Dowager continue to be received by the Imperial Household Department from foreign countries.
Pope Leo XIII is suffering from an attack of influenza. His condition causes anxiety.
The mausoleum of the late Empress Dowager will be named Nochitsukiowa Ushitora-no-Misasagi.
Flying from the plague, 325,000 inhabitants of Bombay have left the city.
A hitch has occurred in the reduction of telegraph rates to Japan caused by the Japanese authorities refusing to sanction collection of payment by the Great Northern Telegram Company in effective francs. The Chinese have agreed to the collection. The difficulty the Japanese have raised is very unfortunate. Their decision is likely to raise grumbling in China.
His Imperial Highness the Crown Prince, indisposed through cold, will remain at Numadzu and will not attend the funeral services of the Empress Dowager.
NINETEENTH DAY OF TRIAL
Mr Easely’s speech for the defence was passionate and eloquent; the emaciation of his features, ravage of an honourable struggle, inflamed his cause auspiciously. The court was charged with sympathy for Mr Easely and his plight. The very anxiety of his expression seemed to ensure the truth. The room was crammed with well-known faces, others packed the walls. At his bench Mr Russell folded his lips, like an insect upon a fly. He observed the scene with relish.
Mr Easely recalled a number of witnesses, bringing up for view again a multitude of threads to place at particular angles against a bitter light. He built up a picture sealed in its frame through which nothing could obtrude.
‘Do you propose to re-examine any more witnesses?’ Judge Bowman sneezed, then questioned as he settled to the day. He was groggy with a cold. Soon it would be over, the atmosphere in the court room was jagged as a blade. There was that holding of collective breath inevitable as a verdict neared.
‘Then you are now summing up your case?’ he inquired.
‘Yes, my lord,’ said Mr Easely, turning to the jury and clearing his throat.
‘Gentlemen of the jury,’ he addressed them. ‘Just three months has elapsed since the opening of the inquest into the death of Mr Redmore, husband of the prisoner, with whose murder she is now charged. Perhaps the long delay is not to be regretted. Men’s minds have been greatly prejudiced by the sensational evidence given at the inquest. I rejoice to think there has been time for further consideration and that you are in a better position now than perhaps you would have been then to sit in judgement rather than condemnation.
‘Gentlemen, the prisoner has been subjected during the long period of her incarceration to terrible mental and physical strain. What she has gone through few will know, and fewer still, I hope, experience. Nothing but the conscience of innocence could possibly have enabled her to bear it. Nevertheless, gentlemen, I am not here to ask for your sympathy on her behalf. I am here to ask for justice and that alone.
‘Gentlemen, there are only two questions to be decided to my mind in this case. Firstly, did the deceased die of arsenical poisoning exhibited in the form of Fowler’s Solution of Arsenic? Secondly, was the arsenic administered by the prisoner knowingly and with intent to take her husband’s life? Directly there is doubt in your mind as to the answer of either of those questions, the prisoner is entitled to be acquitted and released.’ He hammered forth her innocence in point after murky point.
‘There are certain facts that have been established in this case. The finding of white arsenic at post-mortem is one. Its mere presence is proof that it was administered to the deceased and indication of the likelihood of its having caused death. The symptoms observed by the medical experts were all consistent with a dose of white arsenic being given to or taken by the deceased within four to five days of his death. Five hundred and seventy-two grains of lead, if taken by the deceased, would have more than sufficed to cause death; and lead was found at post-mortem. There is evidence that a portion of the poison was procured and taken by the deceased in the absence of his wife. There is no evidence whatsoever to connect the prisoner with the purchase or possession of white arsenic. That a considerable quantity of Fowler’s Solution of Arsenic came into the house is certain, but the medical evidence is that causes of death by Fowler’s Solution are of rare occurrence.
‘The case for the prosecution rests entirely upon circumstantial evidence, and where that is so it is necessary to find a motive for the crime charged. And if you find an entire absence of motive or an insufficient motive, and also that the deceased was sending for poison not through his wife, and that he was doctoring himself and had been accustomed to take arsenic for the last sixteen years of his life, and that he took or was given white arsenic which and which alone would have produced all the symptoms noticed by his medical attendant, and which cannot by any means be traced to the prisoner, how is the conclusion arrived at that the prisoner must have murdered her husband?
‘It is proved that the deceased spoke openly of taking arsenic and in large quantities. His wife had been accustomed all her married life to see him take it and to hear him talk of it. There is nothing surprising therefore in her obtaining it for him.’ He grew angry in his argument, facing the jury bitterly.
‘And I pass now, gentlemen, to the question of the Annie Luke letters.’ Jack Easely picked up his notes. ‘It is not of vital importance in this case to ascertain who wrote those letters, provided you are satisfied Mrs Redmore did not. I say they were probably written by Jessica Flack. You have heard the evidence, and if they are read with that theory in mind there is little or no mystery about them. And as to the correspondence between the prisoner and Mr Huckle, it is obvious these have been introduced also by Jessica Flack in evidence for the purpose of showing that a motive existed in the mind of the accused for murdering her husband.
‘And, gentlemen, why should she wish to murder her husband? No woman with such a propensity to gratify her vanity by captivating the senses of the opposite sex ever had such great opportunities allowed her, ever had such a complacen
t husband. Mr Huckle has already given evidence in that direction with reference to her other male friends. All were admitted a greater degree of intimacy with the wife than is generally considered allowable. Why should she wish to rid herself of a husband who gave her every facility for amusing herself with flirtations, which in the case of Mr Huckle, at all events, were carried far beyond a passionless liaison? The prisoner had and took the most freedom to do as she pleased. With regard to her moral standards – and if it comes to that, those of her husband also – perhaps the less said the better. I am not here to defend either on that score. But in spite of that, the attachment between the spouses seems to have remained unbroken and affectionate. There appears to have been great forbearance on both sides. Mr Huckle could not marry the prisoner, and she knew it. And why should she want to marry him? He was simply one of a series. She was about to purchase a house and about to purchase a position for her husband in a mercantile firm in Yokohama. Why kill him, then? She was obtaining Mr Huckle’s sympathy under false pretences for her own temporary amusement. As such, the letters between the prisoner and Mr Huckle show no motive for the crime.
‘It is not for me to account for the death. That is a secret which may never be known. What the prisoner did, she did openly. She showed more anxiety, more concern about the symptoms of her husband’s illness than the medical attendant did, and so far from attempting any concealment, it may be said that every day and all day during his illness, in all that it is proved she said or did, if she were murdering him she never ceased to call attention to the fact or to invite detection by the manner in which she set about it and by the evidence which she made and accumulated against herself.
‘It is a bold man who will fathom the depths of human depravity, but perfection, even in depravity, is not rapidly attained. There is a certain progress in guilt. There can be no sudden transition from tolerance or even the weakest affection for a particular object to removing one who offered no obstruction to the prisoner’s wishes or purposes.
