Читать книгу Murder on the Verandah: Love and Betrayal in British Malaya - Eric Lawlor - Страница 12

There was no rest, however, for William Proudlock. Back in KL, his problems had begun to compound. Throughout that summer he soldiered on, running VI, drinking at the club occasionally, turning up at St Mary’s – to see him, people said, one would think nothing had happened: that there had never been a murder; that Ethel had gone to England on holiday; that William Steward had never existed.

Proudlock was unlikely to have been that self-deluding. And even if he were, it could not have been for long because on 10 October, Bennett Shaw, VI’s headmaster, returned from leave. Intending, perhaps, to tell him of Steward’s death, Proudlock had gone to the station to meet him, but Shaw, it turned out, was aware of the murder, having read of it in the British papers (the London press dubbed it ‘the murder on the verandah’). Doubtless he was appalled – not only because he liked the Proudlocks, but because of the opportunity it gave England’s moralists to revive a familiar charge: without Mrs Grundy to keep an eye on them, the British abroad lived lives of depravity and dissolution.

Ten days later, the school marked Shaw’s return by honouring him with a concert. The Mail, lavish with its praise as usual, declared the event a huge success. The paper particularly enjoyed a suite of English folk songs with piano accompaniment. Only in passing is it mentioned that the pianist was William Proudlock. Poor man. He can only have played with heavy heart. In the week and half since Shaw’s return, the headmaster and he had had a chat during which Shaw explained that his presence at the school had become an embarrassment. Playing ‘Greensleeves’ that night, Proudlock knew his days were numbered. On 24 October, VI made it official; Proudlock had resigned his post, it was announced, and would be returning to England in the very near future.

Before he went anywhere, however, he had to endure yet another ordeal: a charge of libel brought against him by his former friend, Detective-Inspector Wyatt. The action had its origins in a letter Proudlock wrote to a London weekly called M.A.P. (Mostly About People), in which he castigated the Selangor government for what he said was the highly irregular manner in which his wife’s trial had been conducted.

Though Proudlock’s writing style is brisk and forthright, the letter clearly was composed in haste. Several words are misspelled, the Bible is misquoted, and his signature – hurried and careless; hardly more than a scrawl – looks as if it were penned by a child. (In the excerpts that follow, the spelling has been corrected.) Proudlock begins with an explanation. He was writing to the magazine, he said, to call ‘the attention of the British public to the state of things in [Malaya] which I feel sure every rightminded Britisher will heartily condemn. The press out here has apparently been unable to induce the authorities to abandon trial by assessors in favour of trial by jury and so, off my own bat, I am going to see what I can do in the way of moving the authorities at Home.’ He was not optimistic, he said. The London government knew little of the state of things in the FMS, so little that ‘one feels inclined to say with Elijah “Either they are talking or peradventure they sleep and must be awaked.”’ (The quotation, from the first book of Kings, chapter 18, verse 27, reads: ‘And it came to pass at noon, that Elijah mocked them, and said, Cry aloud: for he is a god; either he is talking, or he is pursuing, or he is in a journey, or peradventure he sleepeth, and must be awaked.’)

Proudlock claimed that two men refused to sign the petition praying for a pardon for his wife, one giving as his reason that all women are unchaste, the other that all women are liars. ‘These men might have been assessors,’ he wrote. ‘In Scotland (recently), it was necessary to employ a jury in a case about a pearl necklace, but out here in a case where the life of a human being is at stake, we can manage with two assessors who are allowed to mix with their fellow men while the trial is proceeding.’

Then, ‘for the benefit of any poor devil who may be called upon to suffer the awful agony of mind my poor young wife went through’, Proudlock lists a number of irregularities any one of which today would almost certainly result in a mistrial.

1. The assessors were not only friends, they were business associates which meant, he said, that, for all practical purposes, there was only one assessor at the trial.

2. During the six-day hearing, the assessors, instead of being sequestered, mixed freely, not only with members of the public, but with police officers and lawyers, and witnesses for the prosecution. This, Proudlock said, was highly improper and raised questions about their objectivity. (The chief secretary of the FMS would later defend the assessors. Their behaviour ‘had the appearance of wrong,’ he said, ‘but I cannot think they were discussing the case. I have no hesitation in describing both of them as imbued with a high sense of honour.’)

3. While his wife was being tried for murder, the chief commissioner of police had approached a man in the Selangor Club and had offered to bet him ‘five, ten or anything he liked that she (Mrs Proudlock) would be strung up’. (The chief commissioner would later receive a reprimand, the government arguing that demoting him would ‘only add to the further public washing of excessively soiled linen’.)

Proudlock claimed as well – and this was the charge that Wyatt said questioned his integrity and resulted in his suing for gross and malicious libel – that the detective-inspector had beaten Proudlock’s servants because they refused to incriminate his wife.

‘I feel sure’, Proudlock finished, ‘that all who read this will agree that things out here are far too slack and that no person – white, black or yellow – be tried by less than twelve sound men even if they have to be imported from England.’

At 10.30 a.m. on 31 October, the trial began with H. N. Ferrers, Wyatt’s counsel, describing Steward’s murder as ‘the most painful episode in the annals of crime in this country’. It was also, he said significantly, a case that everyone hoped had been closed. To the charge of libel, Ferrers now seemed to be adding another: with these frivolous accusations, William Proudlock was opening old wounds and prolonging Malaya’s agony.

Ferrers then proceeded to paint the defendant as a radical – something he clearly was not. When Proudlock wrote to M.A.P., he said, he was a man on a mission, a man whose purpose was ‘to reform the very state of things as they existed in KL’. Proudlock was not present to hear himself characterized like this. For thirty minutes, the trial had proceeded without him – in itself irregular, one would have thought. All apologies, he arrived in court half an hour late.

Ferrers said Wyatt denied ever having assaulted the defendant’s cook and ‘boy’. The charge was not just without foundation; it was unfair. The detective was a friend of Mrs Proudlock’s and had demonstrated as much by waiting seven days before imprisoning her and then going ‘to considerable pains to assure her comparative comfort’.

According to Proudlock, Ferrers said, the ‘boy’ was asked if he had seen his master practising with the revolver on the day of the murder, and when he said he had not – that he’d only heard the shots – Wyatt is alleged to have struck him six times in the face.

Ferrers said the charge against Wyatt was intended as a preemptive strike. Mrs Proudlock’s lawyers knew there had been intimacy and improper communication between her and Steward, and that were the matter to be pursued, her servants were likely to incriminate her. That’s why the charge of beating had been concocted – to deprive any fresh evidence of its value by suggesting it had been coerced.

Mrs Proudlock had abandoned her appeal, Ferrers suggested, not as she had said because the strain would prove too much for her, but because she and her lawyers knew that the evidence against her was overwhelming and that ‘the only chance of getting the lady off was by means of appealing to public sentiment’. This was done by representing her ‘as a poor, persecuted, young and modest woman’.

On the witness stand, Proudlock claimed that Wyatt had asked his ‘boy’ if he had ever carried notes between Ethel and Steward, and that Wyatt became angry when the boy said he hadn’t.

Proudlock also testified that Wyatt, asked by E. A. S. Wagner, Ethel’s lawyer, if he had struck the servants, admitted that he had, saying: ‘I had to straighten them up a bit. Cookie, the old fool, couldn’t tell whether the lights were on or not.’

Wyatt then seemed to regret his candour, telling Wagner that were he ever to repeat this, the detective would bring a dozen witnesses to testify that he had not touched either of them. ‘Do you think I am such a fool as to put my neck in a noose for a damn China man?’

Proudlock told the court that he’d written to M.A.P. because he had a duty to his wife. ‘I believe that many things out here are slack, and I wanted to bring the things I knew about to the notice of the British public.’

Cross-examined by Ferrers, Proudlock denied being married when he and Ethel were wed in 1907. He had arrived in Malaya in 1901, he said, and for a time afterwards had lived with a Chinese woman – the mother of one of his pupils. Asked if he had continued seeing this woman after marrying Ethel, he admitted that he had.

While living with him, he said, the Chinese woman had had some jewellery stolen. He estimated its value at $1,500.

FERRERS: Wasn’t it speculated that you had stolen it?

PROUDLOCK: That speculation was false.

FERRERS: After the jewellery was lost, weren’t diamonds seen in your possession?

PROUDLOCK: Yes, but they were not part of the jewellery stolen.

Proudlock said the story that he was the thief had been put about by a European who later sent him a letter in which he withdrew the charge. While VI’s acting headmaster, he had been responsible for large sums of money, and no one – with the exception of the letter-writer – had ever accused him of being dishonest.

Bennett Shaw, who had worked with Proudlock for ten years and may have known him better than anyone, said the defendant had never told him anything but the truth. Proudlock’s reputation for probity was a matter of record, he said; he considered him an honourable and upright man.

Shaw was not alone in that opinion. On 24 April 1907, the school’s masters and boys hosted an entertainment at which Proudlock was the guest of honour. The programme consisted of ‘musical items’ and scenes from The Merchant of Venice, ‘but the chief interest of the evening’, said the Mail, ‘centred on the speeches and presentations made to Mr Proudlock in view of his forthcoming marriage and departure on leave’. It was an emotional two hours. In speech after speech, Proudlock was praised for his commitment and dedication, his boundless energy, and his enormous decency. The school owed him a huge debt of gratitude, he was told, and there was no one – teacher or pupil – who did not hold him in the highest regard.

After being presented with three ‘purses of gold’ – one each from the students, the old boys, and the staff – Proudlock said his five years at the school had been so pleasant and so interesting, he was looking forward to resuming his duties in January. Shaw wound up the proceedings by wishing him ‘a good holiday and all happiness in his matrimonial venture’. He then called for three cheers for Mr Proudlock and his future bride ‘which were given with great enthusiasm’.

On the stand, Wyatt denied telling Wagner he had beaten the servants. Wagner, he said, had invented the conversation. As for his treatment of Mrs Proudlock, he said his consideration sprang from an awareness of the grief and trouble she was going through.

In a summation that lasted almost four hours – at one point Mr Justice Innes had to plead with him to hurry up – T. H. T. Rogers, Proudlock’s counsel, said his client was convinced that, had his wife been tried by a jury, she would never have been convicted. ‘Twelve manly men would never have stood by and seen a defenceless woman accused as she was.’ Proudlock saw trial by assessors as inherently unfair and had written to M.A.P. in the hope that public pressure would convince the Home Office to abolish it.

Rogers referred to Mrs Proudlock as ‘a defenceless woman suffering the deepest agony, charged with murder and separated from her defenceless child and with little evidence to support the charges. The conviction stood and would be a stigma that would keep to her during the rest of her life … The world was a cold, censorious place and nothing delighted the general public better, apparently, than something disastrous happening to one of their more unfortunate neighbours.’

On 11 November Mr Justice Innes found for the plaintiff. Proudlock, he said, had imperilled the reputation and the future of an officer. ‘That officer now leaves the court with his reputation unsullied and with a claim to enjoy the same confidence from his superiors as before.’ Proudlock was ordered to pay $300 and costs.

Even though he found for Wyatt, Innes admitted to admiring Proudlock. He gave his evidence, Innes said, ‘in a straightforward and manly way and with self-control under trying conditions. The attacks upon his character entirely failed to weaken his credibility.’ He seems as well to have felt some sympathy for him, going so far as to suggest extenuating circumstances. Before writing to M.A.P., Innes said, Proudlock had had to endure ‘the unspeakable horror of knowing that his wife’s reputation was besmirched by the vilest rumours which he described in his evidence as filthy lies’.

Less than three weeks later, William Proudlock left KL to join his wife in England. His departure was a sad one. He loved the city and believed that he had given it much. It had been his intention to spend his life there, and though he spoke of coming back, he must have known that this was now impossible. Proudlock departed the capital of the Federated Malay States on 21 November 1911. He never returned.

Of the two photographs of William Proudlock I have been able to find one is especially revealing. It’s a picture of him with members of VI’s First Eleven, one of the football teams he played for. A small, slight man, he had a compact head (an acorn comes to mind) and his hair is shorn almost to the scalp. There is a suggestion of the monk about him; it is easy to imagine him wearing a cowl. Seated in the middle of the group, he seems to sprawl slightly, as if to give an impression of indifference. But it is only an impression. Proudlock’s arms are folded so tightly across his chest, he might have been trying to staunch a wound. And his eyes: they engage the camera directly, but there’s a wariness about them. Hard as he tries to look insouciant, Proudlock has the air of a man all too conscious that he doesn’t measure up.

This must have caused him much distress because measuring up – mixing with others on equal terms; being accepted – was very important to him. While in KL, he worked tirelessly to make a good impression, though he would doubtless have denied it. In addition to after-hours tutoring, the piano recitals and the musical at-homes, he was a gymnastics instructor, coached the choir at St Mary’s, was president of the Selangor State Band and a lieutenant in the fire brigade. (In a competition for firemen in August 1909, Proudlock’s team won the Cape Hill Cup for best over-all performance, and the Selangor Government Cup for its skill in the four-men engine drill. Proudlock also took first place in the ladder competition, completing a complicated set of manoeuvres in a record time of 38 seconds.) And there was more: he belonged to the Malay State Volunteer Rifles – a group Winstedt considered to be very coarse. ‘I can enjoy a witty story of the smoking-room type,’ he said. ‘But I have never been able to discover why volunteer canteens must be regaled by cold indecencies that should upset the gorge even of Dan the lavatory-man.’

The son of a millwright, Proudlock was born on 18 April 1880, and received his education, not at Eton like some in Malaya, but at a state school in Whittlesford, Cambridgeshire. In KL, where social credentials mattered, Proudlock had none to speak of, but that was of no account, he told himself. (There are times when he strikes one as very naive.) He would prove himself in other ways. All those good deeds would redeem him. (He was an inveterate volunteer. When the Casuals, another football team, was founded in April 1910, Proudlock agreed to act not just as secretary, but as treasurer as well.)

During his trial for libel, Rogers referred to his client as a manly man. Proudlock would have been very proud. In Malaya in the early 1900s, to describe a man as manly – the tautology aside – was the ultimate compliment. The term had its origins in Muscular Christianity, a movement born in the 1850s whose aim was to re-invigorate British manhood. Muscular Christianity – its adherents preferred to be called manly Christians – emerged at a time when many believed that England had lost its way. Industrialization had made the country complacent and self-indulgent, people said; the masculine, Anglo-Saxon values of the rural gentry – values that had served England well in the past – were in eclipse.

In manly Christianity’s major texts – Westward Ho! and Tom Brown’s Schooldays are the most important – Charles Kingsley and Thomas Hughes proposed redeeming Britain by merging vigour with virtue. Men were encouraged to engage in athletics, the belief being that prowess on the playing field – in some way that was never fully explained – produced not just physical health, but spiritual health as well. As Victorian England saw him, the manly Christian was one who feared God and thought nothing of a 10-mile walk before sitting down to breakfast.

Manly Christianity proved hugely influential. It engendered the games culture that came to dominate the public schools where it also bred anti-intellectualism. (The boy who knew Virgil by heart ran a poor second to one who had earned his Flannels.) It informed as well the New Imperialism of the late 1890s, Joseph Chamberlain’s call to Britain to go forth and civilize the barbarian. (The scout movement was founded in 1908 when the New Imperialism was at its height.)

Manly Christianity did not remain Christian for very long. While the public schools were full of vigour, they were rarely full of virtue. (In some, cheating, especially at exams, was endemic.) And while the New Imperialism spoke much of raising up those who dwelt in darkness, an altogether more immediate concern was raising a profit. As Cecil Rhodes once put it, imperialism was philanthropy plus a 5 per cent dividend on investment.

By 1911, Muscular Christianity as a spiritual force was running out of steam. Even its terms had been secluarized. Now the manly Christian was merely a manly man but, even reduced like this, he had much to recommend him. He was resolute; he was resourceful; he was chivalrous; he loved adventure – all qualities Proudlock embodied.