In 1911, Ethel Proudlock, a married British woman living in Kuala Lumpur (then in British Malaya), shot dead a local manager called William Steward in the grounds of her bungalow. Proudlock claimed that Steward had tried to rape her; yet she was found guilty of his murder , and sentenced to hang. Her life was only saved by a pardon from the regional sultan five months later.  The “Proudlock case” became an expatriate society scandal and an unedifying exposé of colonial tensions in the area . It was rumoured that Proudlock, home alone in a low-necked tea gown on the night of the killing, had been having an affair with Steward, and – though likely mixed-race herself – killed him after discovering he was seeing a Chinese woman too.  Another novelist might have turned this sorry tale into a pacy courtroom thriller.…