Painted Cage , livre ebook

Marshall Cavendish International - Chand Meira

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170 pages

English

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Marriage at twenty to an older man takes Amy Redmore from the cool green fields of Somerset to Japan, where Reggie is to take up the post of Secretary for the Yokohama United Club. Already she has learned some disturbing things about her new husband. He has a mistress by the name of Annie Luke, and a child from that liaison. Secondly he is an arsenic addict and habitually takes massive doses - more than enough to kill a normal man. But the real trouble begins with their new life on the Bluff, where the British all live in segregated splendour. Reggie is out all day with his work at the Club and at night he is lost to Yokohama's social whirl and the temptations of the town's notorious pleasure quarter. Amy, with her freshly awakened sense of independence finds new friends, and, more significantly, enemies - people who when the time comes will brand her publicly as an adulteress and a murderess.

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Graphic novel

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Publié par	Marshall Cavendish International
Date de parution	22 novembre 2018
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9789814841320
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	2 Mo

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Extrait

Meira Chand 1986
First published in 1986 by Century Hutchinson Ltd
This new edition published by Marshall Cavendish Editions in 2019
An imprint of Marshall Cavendish International

All rights reserved
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. Requests for permission should be addressed to the Publisher, Marshall Cavendish International (Asia) Private Limited, 1 New Industrial Road, Singapore 536196. Tel: (65) 6213 9300. E-mail: genref@sg.marshallcavendish.com
Website: www.marshallcavendish.com/genref
The publisher makes no representation or warranties with respect to the contents of this book, and specifically disclaims any implied warranties or merchantability or fitness for any particular purpose, and shall in no event be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damage, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages.
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National Library Board, Singapore Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
Name(s): Chand, Meira.
Title: The painted cage / Meira Chand.
Description: New edition. | Singapore : Marshall Cavendish Editions, 2019. Identifier(s): OCN 1057244415 | eISBN 978 981 4841 32 0
Subject(s): LCSH: Murder--Japan--Fiction. | Japan--Social life and customs--Fiction
Classification: DDC 823.914--dc23
Printed in Singapore
The story of Amy Redmore is a purely imaginative interpretation of the life and trial of Edith Carew, a British resident of Yokohama from 1891 to 1897. As such, this novel makes no claims to solving the enduring controversy about the verdict of the trial, or to present Edith Carew in any biographical way. Facts and personalities were no more than a springboard for the leap into fiction.
1
Y OKOHAMA, 5 J ANUARY 1897
The clerk of the court, Mr Moss, stood up.
The indictment is as follows: Robert Charles Russell, the Crown Prosecutor in Japan for our Lady Queen, presents and charges that Amy Jane Redmore on the twenty-second day of October in the year of our Lord 1896 feloniously wilfully and of her malice aforesight did kill and murder Reginald Percy Redmore against the peace of our Lady, the Queen, her crown and dignity.
I am not guilty, the prisoner said in a clear voice.
Then she sat down.
They had come at nine-thirty that morning for her, two warders with a rikisha . The day was bright and cold. A wind from the sea cut across the Bluff, there was no warmth in the sun. They set off in procession slowly, one warder in front, the other behind. It was easier to run than walk with a rikisha . Amy watched the stress upon the runner s shoulders beneath his short cotton coat. He shivered in the wind, his feet bare in rough straw sandals. He was a thin fellow with a consumptive cough, yet he might live longer than she. The brutal simplicity of his life now seemed a thing to envy. Amy smoothed down a pleat of her skirt, her clothes were those of mourning. The oilskin hood of the rikisha was up, she could not see much of the road. People stopped and stared. She had no wish to see their faces. The Native Town was quiet, the deadness of the New Year holidays still thick upon the trade, but in the Foreign Settlement all was life; a ship with the mail was soon to dock and called loudly from the bay. Amy Redmore was pulled slowly down to the post office end of Main Street.
She concentrated on her face, so that it might be as a Japanese face, a smooth wall before emotion. This was how she must be throughout the next weeks, devoid of expression. Cruel eyes would search her now, they would knead her for cracks from which to squeeze out the soft, naked grubs of truth. Their truth. She drew back in the darkness of the hood then, under the rickety oilskin ribs that reminded her of bat s wings.
Outside the British Consulate a crowd stood about in serious conversation. Such a lack of hilarity was unusual for Yokohama; gravity was the aftermath of earthquakes or typhoons. On this Tuesday morning at five minutes to ten talk stopped as Amy Redmore vacated her rikisha . Her face was calm, she took no notice of these first eyes that sought already to sum her up, in voyeurism or condemnation. She looked down at her hands and composed her face to show only determination. Inside the Consulate the court room was small and filled to overflowing. All standing room was taken, the entrance hall was blocked. The room had normally little light or air and the thick brown curtains, dusty as moles, made the place oppressive. Smells of old paper and righteousness seeped beneath the odour of bodies. Wood gleamed with the polish of years, cool as sentences witnessed. There was hardly a face Amy did not know, but now they were all strangers. This must be a play, she thought, or a dream to wake from; there was that sense of waiting for a curtain to rise, on fantasy or reality.
Jack Easely, her defence lawyer, came and spoke encouragement. Robert Russell hurried in and out in wig and gown, full of the importance of the prosecution and a piety lent by the Crown. Soon Judge Bowman, in red robes lined with ermine, strode in with Mr Moss. The mouths and eyes before Amy stilled. What they had been waiting for now begun. She felt she might already be dead, that this was some eternal post-mortem in hell that would never end. She watched as Mr Moss stood up and prepared to read the indictment.
Afterwards there was a rustle of silk, a cough, a whisper as people settled. The sun caught a monocle, a gold watch chain and the bald head of old Mr Porter. The women were turned out in a subdued kind of splendour, mostly in mauves and greys, clinging to those twilight shades. Amy Redmore had never seen them so determined to prove sobriety, even Lettice Dunn in navy blue with a demure lace collar. The morals of Yokohama would now be on view as far away as London. She was like the leak in a foolproof pot through which the sour stench of the brew was smelled. Their upturned faces recoiled from her. They were out, one and all, to save their own skins and the Great British Reputation. And those who were her keepers, strutting about in the robes and wigs of archaic fantasy, they had long wished to clean up the morals of Yokohama s younger set. They would make an example of her to stretch across the world. In spite of a plethora of missionaries, God felt far from Yokohama. Robert Russell s voice now filled the court like a slit of cold light in a corridor.
The prisoner married the deceased in 1888. The deceased was then in government service in the Straits Settlements. In 1890 he resigned his appointment on account of ill health and came to Yokohama where he was appointed secretary of the Yokohama United Club, a post he held until the time of his death. Since their arrival here two children have been born to them, a boy and a girl. In March last year Jessica Mary Flack came out from England as nursery governess to take charge of the children. Of these people the household consisted. The servants were: Rachel Greer, a Eurasian girl who was Mrs Redmore s lady s maid. Hanayue Asa, a Japanese girl and housemaid. Ah Kwong, a young Chinese boy. Yazana, the cook; a coolie of no name; a betto or groom, Kuroyanagi Junyu; and a small boy, also of no name, who assisted in the stable.
From the time of their arrival in Yokohama, Dr Charles was their family doctor and regular medical attendant until the time of Mr Redmore s death on 22 October last. Dr Charles looked upon him as a healthy man, perhaps given to too much good living and sometimes also given to drinking more than was good for him - but on occasions only.
But on occasions only. Oh, the lies, the lies. Already they had begun.
2
S OMERSET AND S UNGEI U JONG , 1888-90
Amy s father, and Reggie later, called her by a pet name. Both chose the image of a small, inquiring animal. Kitten was Reggie s name for her, and Little Squirrel her father had called her as a child. Not a squirrel, said her mother sharply, hiding her fear in a hint of scorn. Not a squirrel but an actress. Or a chameleon who took on the colour about, changing with each shaft of light, each reflection and each day. She observed Amy with brooding anxiety in her level eyes. She saw something in her that should not have been there, something to be disapproved of, something to be curbed. Amy had a compressed and sensual energy; her face did not hide, it reflected, throwing up the perplexities of emotion into violet eyes.
There was nothing of fashionable beauty sculptured in her face, her features were pert, determined as her wilful hair, resentful of imprisonment. Her beauty was vitality and an awareness of her own unspoken essence; she was a woman whom men observed. Her lips followed her face in its full snubbed curve. She was restless, she was bright.
The Sidleys were known in Somerset, born and dying in untroubled succession in the same great rambling house upon their large estate; Cranage, it was called. Mr Sidley was a puritan given to the gravity of local politics, a famous eccentric in the area who refused to take a gun to game, so pacifist were his principles. Mrs Sidley solicited prudence and good causes. She was a stern-faced woman who played the piano and would have rendered occasionally the gaiety of a waltz, if not for her husband s frown.
There was rigidity in the house. It waited about the tall, silent