Advocate's Devil

Walter Woon

Description

Dennis Chiang is a stranger in his homeland. Just returned to the Straits Settlements after spending half his life in England, the young lawyer is thrown into the swirling brew that is colonial society in 1930s Singapore: a society of tuans and towkays, Babas and babus, where race is everything and even love cannot be wholly colour-blind. Juggling his career and personal responsibilities, Chiang encounters a life full of courtroom dramas, cultural prejudices and even communist intrigue. Never far away is Chiang's mentor, the unflappable D'Almeida, who in public is a calm, efficient lawyer, but he possesses a shrewd investigative streak and uses unorthodox methods that result in his young protege Chiang being caught up in a succession of captivating adventures. The Advocate's Devil is the first of two books featuring the character Dennis Chiang.

Informations

• Publié par: MarshallCavendishM
• Date de parution: 02 février 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9789814435796
• Langue: English

Extrait

THE ADVOCATE S DEVIL

Text 2002 Walter Woon
First published 2002 by Times Books International
Reprinted 2003 by Times Books International
2010 Marshall Cavendish International (Asia) Private Limited
This edition published 2010 by
Marshall Cavendish Editions
An imprint of Marshall Cavendish International
1 New Industrial Road, Singapore 536196
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National Library Board Singapore Cataloguing in Publication Data
Woon, Walter C. M.
The advocate s devil / Walter Woon. - Singapore: Marshall Cavendish Editions, 2010.
p. cm.
eISBN-13 : 978 981 4435 79 6
1. Lawyers - Singapore - Fiction. 2. Singapore - History - 1867-1942 - Fiction. I. Title.
PR9570.S53
S823 - dc22

OCN613300884
Printed in Singapore by Times Printers Pte Ltd
To my parents Woon Eng Chwee and Lee Peck Har, and to the memory of my grandparents Woon Chow Tat and Cheang Seok Cheng Neo.
CONTENTS
The Body in Question
The Widows Tale
A Prince Among Men
Evelyn
The Advocate s Devil
Nurse s Orders
The Red Cell
Crossroads
Glossary
The Body In Question
MADELINE. There s no mistake about it. That s her name in the papers all right. And that photo. Still as beautiful as I remember her. What has it been now? More than sixty years since the last time we met? Half a century? I can still recall the day clearly. It was the day she lost her husband.
It was 1937, some time in July. I can fix the date with some accuracy, because it was just after I started reading in chambers. Business was slack just about then, and we pupils were left much to ourselves. The three of us were lounging in chambers - myself, George (he was plain old George then, the Sir came many, many years later) and Ralph. They used to call us The Unholy Trinity.
Anyway, we were sitting around watching the pigeons dive-bomb the GPO. The little feathered fiends would fly round for a bit, then let loose before perching under the cool granite eaves. We watched the missiles with absorbed interest. We had a bet going. Each of us marked a circle in chalk on the five-foot way. Every direct hit in a circle meant a free drink at the Griffin Club, courtesy of the loser. George was having a bad time. My circle and Ralph s were plastered with little grey splotches. George s lay gleaming white in the sun, while he cursed each and every miss. It was a revelation. I hadn t realised that George was fluent in so many languages.
George had just let loose with another blistering string of oaths when the door opened and in trundled Moraiss, the chief clerk. Ralph and I buried our noses in Archbold on Pleadings . George, caught in midstream, shut his mouth with an audible snap. Moraiss cast a baleful eye over us. He was short - not more than five feet - and had skin the colour and texture of parchment. When he spoke it was like the wind rustling through dry leaves. Moraiss didn t approve of us.
Mr d Almeida wants you, he said, fixing me with his basilisk glare.
Right-ho, I replied with an outward show of nonchalance. An interview with the All-Highest, no less. What little treats, I wondered, had he in store for me. Swallowing my trepidation, I fell into step behind Moraiss as he shuffled out of the room. It may have been my imagination, but I always fancied that Moraiss left the smell of mildewed books wherever he went. I followed him through the dim musty corridors, by scent as much as by sight.
We came at length into a panelled anteroom. The room was stacked high with books from floor to ceiling. Ancient tomes, grey with age, ready to flake into dust at the merest glance. My eyes skipped from spine to aged spine: Moore s Privy Council Appeals , Leicester s Reports , the Straits Law Journal , an original set of Kyshe s Reports . Books that were ancient when my father was young. The pungent, unmistakable smell of antiquity pervaded the room. What a fitting den for old Moraiss, who had quietly mummified in this dry forgotten corner of the world.
At the far end was a solid teak door, beyond which lay the Holy of Holies. There in majestic repose sat Clarence d Almeida OBE, senior partner of the august firm of d Almeida d Almeida, Advocates and Solicitors. Though he was nominally my pupil master, I had hardly seen Mr d Almeida in the two months that I had been with the firm. Hardly is the wrong word. I hadn t seen him at all. When I joined the firm he was involved in the celebrated Opium Murders case, which shook several stuffed shirts out of office. I got the job because my father (of whom I have very little memory) had been a junior partner in the firm way back, so it was almost literally off the boat and into the office for me.
We pupils had been taken in hand from the start by Cuthbert d Almeida, a perspiring butterball of a man, who bustled around the office exuding jollity and sweat in equal proportions. Cuthbert was Clarence s brother, but one would never have guessed. He was round, jovial and ubiquitous; a complete contrast to his brother. Cuthbert to us was always Cuthbert; his brother was Mr d Almeida, with the Mr such an integral part of the name that we almost forgot that he had a Christian name.
Of Number One we saw nothing. To us Mr d Almeida was just a brooding presence behind the door, with little time for mere mortals and none certainly for the likes of pupils. We all lived in awe of the great d Almeida, whose advocacy swayed judges and juries throughout the Straits Settlements and the Malay States, and who had never been known to let a client hang.
Moraiss rapped ponderously on the door. Cued by an unheard summons he opened it and I stepped through.
The occupant of the high-backed leather chair was facing away from me when I entered, talking to a lady whose slender form was framed in the window. She stood gazing out at the waterfront, the light outlining her with a faint halo. After the gloom of the inner office the brightness from the high glass window was dazzling, and I screwed my eyes up involuntarily against the glare. The man in the chair spun around to face me. I had of course seen photographs, but the reality was to me quite startling. In my mind I had built up a picture of a Zeus hurling thunderbolts of rhetoric at a spellbound jury. The photographs in the old bound newspapers, yellow and fuzzy with age, were of a slim, black-haired man. I pictured him as tall, for some unaccountable reason. I wasn t prepared for the wizened gnome who gazed at me over a pair of old-fashioned horn-rimmed spectacles. He was about sixty, slight of build and conservative in dress. I suppose that I should have expected an older man; his brother Cuthbert was after all in his fifties. Unprepossessing though he may have seemed on first impressions, his eyes nevertheless gleamed and shone with a penetrating intensity and breathless fire.
Ah, Mr Chiang, I presume, the gnome said to me interrogatively. The words were barked out in a staccato tattoo.
Take a seat, take a seat. He gestured towards a leather armchair in the corner.
We have a little mission for you, he continued in his rapid-fire tone, before I even had a chance to seat myself. At this point the lady in the window turned around.
Dennis! she exclaimed, in a voice that tinkled with fairy bells.
Madeline! I gasped, poised in the most undignified manner with my bottom lowered halfway into the chair. For a moment my mind ceased to work, stupefied by the unexpected vision. Then a hundred memories coursed into my consciousness, a torrent of bittersweet reminiscences.
I had been an aimless undergraduate when Madeline Strachan had suddenly materialised in my life. She had come up to spend a few months with her uncle, a semi-fossilised don at one of the smaller Cambridge colleges. We were introduced because we both had something in common. Her father had been in the Straits Settlements for many years and had gone native to the extent of having married a Chinese woman, who happened to be a second cousin twice-removed of my father s, or something of the sort. Anyway, the connection was deemed close enough to justify my invitation to tea. And there she was. I was instantly smitten. Smitten isn t the word - decapitated, more like.
Madeline was one of those fortunate alliances of East and West, a handsome delicate creature who inherited the best features from both her parents. She was pursued by every male undergraduate from a dozen colleges; and I was at the head of the pack, baying with the rest. I actively sought her, and she seemed to enjoy my company. I found that I was with her more and mo