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Murder on the Verandah: Love and Betrayal in British Malaya. Eric Lawlor
Читать онлайн.Название Murder on the Verandah: Love and Betrayal in British Malaya
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isbn 9780007525881
Автор произведения Eric Lawlor
Издательство HarperCollins
Murder on the Verandah
ERIC LAWLOR
Love and Betrayal in British Malaya
Flamingo
An Imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London SE1 9GF
Flamingo is a registered trade mark of
HarperCollins Publishers Limited
Published by Flamingo 2000
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 1999
Copyright © Eric Lawlor 1999
The Author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
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Source ISBN: 9780006550655
Ebook Edition © MARCH 2015 ISBN: 9780007525881
Version: 2015-03-26
For Gully
‘Coelum non animum mutant qui trans mare currunt’
‘The sky, but not the heart, they change who speed across the sea’
FROM HORACE, TRANSLATED BY H. DARNLEY NAYLOR
Table of Contents
1 ‘Blood, blood. I’ve shot a man’
2 To Hang by the Neck Till She Be Dead
8 Miss Aero and the Inimitable Denny
On 23 April 1911, Ethel Proudlock, as was her custom on Sundays, attended Evensong at St Mary’s Church in Kuala Lumpur. She was well known at St Mary’s. From time to time she helped with jumble sales and had recently joined the choir. After the service, a friend invited Ethel to join her for dinner, but she declined. Her husband was going out for the evening, she said; it would give her a chance to write some letters. Then, after checking that the hymnals were in order, she walked home and killed her lover.
Claiming self-defence, she told police that William Steward had turned up unexpectedly that evening and tried to rape her. None of this was true. Steward was there because Mrs Proudlock had invited him, and he died – shot five times at point-blank range – after telling her he was ending their affair.
The Proudlock case, the basis of ‘The Letter’, the most famous of Somerset Maugham’s short stories, galvanized British Malaya. Some Britons insisted she was innocent, but the evidence against her was overwhelming and, after a trial lasting nearly a week, Ethel Proudlock was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to die. Preparations to hang her were well advanced when the Sultan of Selangor intervened. Citing her youth and the