Shanghai Secrets
Page 34
He resorted to quackery, and in that way he is getting his living today at the expense of trusting fools who are unacquainted with the fact that the medical system with which he has thrown in his lot has become long since a hissing and a byword among reputable citizens. He became an apostle of the Abrams system and established the clinic of electronic medicine at Adyar House.
—Truth, 29 April 1928
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Dr. Henri Le Fevre turned out to be George Frederick Hewer, who had been struck off the list of members of the British Medical Association. He was not French, though he spoke the language quite well. When captured he confessed to being the man whose voice was on the recording left by Alexandra Romanova, though he denied any part in her murder. With no evidence that he had done anything other than misdiagnose Rowland Sinclair, and attempt to deprive him of his liberty, he was eventually released without charge.
After it was revealed that he had been retained by Gilbert Carmel to ensure Rowland Sinclair’s stay at Ward Road Gaol was particularly unbearable, John Whitely was investigated for corruption, but in the end no action was taken.
The junior lawyer “Murray” who had been assigned the defence of Rowland Sinclair in Carmel’s absence was shown not to exist. Carmel and Smith was a firm made up of Gilbert Carmel and his faithful secretary.
Gilbert Carmel was charged with, and eventually convicted of, the murders of Alexandra Romanova and Bertram Middleton, and the attempted murder of Rowland Sinclair, as well as a litany of lesser offences. All charges against Rowland Sinclair were dropped.
With his sister’s killer caught, Sergei Romanov came out of hiding and began to bathe regularly once again. He allowed Rowland Sinclair to replace his violin and returned to teaching the instrument to the children of wealthy Shanghailanders. Occasionally he worked for Wing and Singh Private Investigations.
Alexandra Romanova’s son, Mikhail, was sent to school in the United States as his mother had wished. The expenses of his education were met by Rowland Sinclair.
Emily “Mickey” Hahn continued her unconventional relationship with Shao Xunmei, supporting herself by writing for North China Daily News and the New Yorker. By 1936 she had achieved her ambition of becoming an opium addict. After the fall of Shanghai in the 1937, Hahn signed a document declaring herself Xunmei’s second wife under Chinese Law and, in doing, saved his printing press from confiscation. She eventually left Shanghai in 1939, but her experiences in China became the foundation of a long and brilliant career which saw her author more than fifty books of fiction, history, memoir, and reportages as well as innumerable articles.
When he’d recovered enough to do so, Rowland accepted Shao Xunmei’s invitation to dine with the Celestial Hound Society, a group of Chinese artists and art-lovers who favoured the Parisian school. Thereafter the Australians encountered Xunmei often in Mickey Hahn’s flat on Kiangse Road, where they would discuss poetry and politics, art and gossip. It was probably a sign of Milton’s esteem for the Chinese poet that he did not attempt to steal his verse.
Du Yuesheng (Big-Eared Du) continued to wield power both official and illicit in Shanghai until the Japanese invasion of 1937. He offered to fight the Japanese by scuttling his fleet of ships in the Yangtze River to prevent their advance, but eventually fled to exile in Hong Kong. He returned to Shanghai after the war, but his influence had waned with its citizens, who felt he had abandoned the city.
Intermittently during the remainder of their time in China, one or the other of the Australians would see Chao Kung, fleetingly, though he did not approach them again. Born Ignacz Trebitsch to an Orthodox Jewish family in Hungary, Kung had operated as a double agent in the Great War. He worked his way into the extreme right-wing militarist fringe groups in Germany and Europe before betraying them by selling their information to the secret services of various governments. In China he worked for a number of warlords before, yet again, transferring his loyalties in 1937 to the Empire of Japan.
Despite his loyalty to the Nazis, John Rabe became a hero during the 1937 Japanese occupation of Nanking, during which he worked tirelessly to establish the Nanking Safety Zone. He sheltered approximately 200,000 Chinese citizens from slaughter during the massacre.
Sir Victor Sassoon, the 3rd Baronet of Bombay, lived in Shanghai until 1941, when the war forced him to leave. After the Chinese Communist Revolution in 1949, he divested his assets in China and retired to Nassau in the Bahamas.
Danny Dong’s cousins eventually called at the Cathay to collect their grandmother. It was with significant relief that Clyde handed over the chest he had watched over. Even so, the Australians accompanied the remains back to the village outside Nanking in which Mrs. Dong had been born and in which she would be finally interred amongst her ancestors. There they enjoyed the humble hospitality of her grateful grandchildren, toasted Danny Dong with hot rice wine, and saw a little of what Mickey Hahn called “the real China.”
The Sinclair stockpile was sold to a British consortium of wool buyers. The rumours of international trade sanctions against the Japanese for the illegal invasion of Manchuria never eventuated. The member countries of the League of Nations had important trading links with Japan and were consequently unable to agree on the precise nature of sanctions. Australia actively pursued a policy of appeasement, and while it did enter into a trade war with Japan in 1936, the restrictions had nothing to do with Japanese activities in China.
Wilfred Sinclair never sent his brother to trade wool again.
Alexandra Romanova’s body was eventually released and laid to rest in Shanghai. Her funeral was attended by only handful of mourners, including her brother, her son, and four Australians. Whoever she once was, she died a taxi girl, far from the land and the past she loved. But there were tears for her in China.
About the Author
Photo by Edmund Blenkins
Award-winning author Sulari Gentill set out to study astrophysics, ended up graduating in law, and later abandoned her legal career to write books instead of contracts. When the mood takes her, she paints, although she maintains that she does so only well enough to know that she should write. She grows French black truffles on a farm in the foothills of the Snowy Mountains of New South Wales, which she shares with her young family and several animals.
Sulari is the author of the award-winning Rowland Sinclair Mysteries, a series of historical crime novels set in 1930s Australia about Rowland Sinclair, the gentleman artist cum amateur detective. The eighth in the series, A Dangerous Language, was published in the United States by Poisoned Pen Press in June 2020.
Under the name S. D. Gentill, Sulari also writes fantasy adventure, including The Hero Trilogy: Chasing Odysseus, Trying War, and The Blood of Wolves.
Her widely praised standalone novel After She Wrote Him has been chosen as a “Target Recommends” book for 2020 and Apple’s Best Book of the Month for April 2020.