The Painted Cage (6 page)

‘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.

The
Japan
Weekly
Mail
summary of news:

‘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 recommended 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?’

‘Never,’ Dr Charles said emphatically.

‘So you have no experience?’ Mr Easely confirmed.

‘No.’

Amy felt the resentment of the room at Dr Charles’s discomfort, the contraction of curiosity. Old Mrs Thomas closed her mouth as if upon unripe fruit, Mr Porter moved uneasily. Lettice Dunn exchanged a sarcastic shrug with Tilly Marley.

She saw then that Mabel Rice had come into court, a beautiful, flaming bird in the midst of funereal silks and thoughts. She was grateful for the smile Mabel flashed as she accepted a seat a man jumped to vacate. Amy felt
herself reflected to the court in the mirror of Mabel’s presence. Everyone knew they were friends. No one ignored Mabel Rice. But, once seated, Mabel was hidden behind Mrs Thomas’s bonnet. Amy was alone again.

Dr Dixon was called to give evidence of the
post-mortem.
Soon there began the solitary bleat of his voice, like that of a crusty old ewe. And, listening, Amy heard a story as unfamiliar as the distortions of her own face in a fairground room of mirrors. Nobody wanted the truth.