The Sealed Letter

  Helen is open-mouthed. "You mean—when the creature claimed I deluded myself into thinking that every man I met was in love with me?"

  "Mmm. Hawkins believes this could work to your advantage, if he were to reshape your defence somewhat along those lines."

  Helen lets herself lean back into the sofa's padded embrace. "I'm entirely bewildered."

  "Please don't take offence, Mrs. Codrington. Desperate times, desperate measures, eh?"

  She stares him down.

  "Hawkins says, what if he were to present you as an unhappy woman whose fancy has a tendency to run away with her? A woman who in fact has never gone further than the mildest coquetting, but who in her dreams is entangled in the most lurid intrigues?"

  "Few, this is bilge, and offensive to boot."

  The elderly solicitor holds up his hand. "Of course, but have the goodness to hear me out. In this way your gaddings about in Malta, your so-called confession to Mrs. Watson, even your appointments book and your letter to Anderson could all be explained away as mere ... fantasy."

  "Madness," she corrects him.

  "There's a recent precedent," he tells her with dry enthusiasm. "A Mrs. Robinson: her husband's counsel produced a very frank diary in which she recorded her adultery with a hydropathic physician—but her side claimed that she'd made it all up, being afflicted with erotomania brought on by measures to prevent conception! The jurymen preferred to believe her unbalanced rather than immoral, so Mr. Robinson was denied his divorce."

  "What cretins!"

  Few shrugs. "Englishmen are reluctant to knock ladies off their pedestals."

  "If Hawkins proves me mentally unhinged," Helen snaps, "am I right in thinking my husband could have me confined in a private asylum for the rest of my days?"

  "Oh, come, the chance of such an eventuality—"

  "Why risk it? And why humiliate me still further?" The words burst out of her. "I'd rather every paper in the country called me a harlot than a pathetic lunatic who only imagines that men desire her."

  The look Few gives her is long and chilly. "That's your prerogative, Mrs. Codrington."

  "Besides, I was under the impression that in order to block this divorce, you don't need to prove that I'm blameless, but only that Harry's somehow culpable."

  "That's true."

  "Well, then!"

  "That's become exceedingly difficult in the absence of our chief witness." Few tugs at his collar. "I wish you'd never brought your unreliable friend to my office in the first place."

  "Believe me," growls Helen, "I feel the same way."

  "By the by. A solicitor of my acquaintance has heard a rumour that Miss Faithfull's still in London."

  She blinks at him.

  "In male disguise, if you can believe it."

  "I can't," says Helen with disdain. That's just the kind of thing they like to invent about strong-minded women. Going uncorseted is one thing, but trousers? "For all her strong views on certain subjects, Mr. Few, she's an utterly conventional woman."

  After the solicitor has left, Helen sits up by the dying fire, eating some old ham she found in the pantry. (Mrs. Nichols, unsurprisingly, has not returned to the house after her performance in court, and her room is bare.) Tomorrow, Helen supposes, she'll have to start sending a corner boy to fetch her meals from an inn. And do something with the rotting silver fish in the bowl. How fast a life comes undone. When the trial is over she must hire a new maid-of-all-work, but more urgently, she must get hold of some clean linen. How has she been reduced to this?

  She goes up to bed, and sits reading The Small House at Allingham to bore herself to sleep.

  Evidence

  (proof; knowledge on which to base belief;

  oral testimony, writings and tangible

  objects admissible in a court of law)

  Each person in a dwelling should, if possible, have a room as sacred from intrusion as the house is to the family.

  Anonymous,

  How to Behave (1865)

  That Monday evening, Harry and William stand smoking in an alley outside Bird's chambers, as the sun's yolk trickles down between the roofs of Gray's Inn. Harry sucks the harsh tobacco deep into his lungs. "How the years fall away."

  "Hm?"

  "When we were boys. You taught me how to fill a pipe when I was just eleven, I believe. Mama was incensed."

  His brother grins. "Cigarettes are so much easier."

  "Oh Will," says Harry, releasing a long plume of smoke, "this has been the longest day of my fifty-six years."

  "I dare say it went well, though, as such things are reckoned?"

  "Well, yes, inasmuch as the most appalling proofs of my cuckoldry were exposed to the public view," says Harry grimly. Cuckoldry's an old-fashioned word; what name should his shame go by, nowadays? "That's the perversity of the process," he goes on. "To be quit of Helen, I'm obliged to offer myself as a laughing stock to every newspaper reader in Britain."

  William claps him on the shoulder. "When a tar needs an amputation, what does the surgeon tell him?"

  "Sharp and sore's soonest 'oer," quotes Harry, managing a half-grin. They smoke on in silence. "I'm awfully grateful you could be here," he remarks.

  William waves that away. "You've had to rely on strangers too much already."

  Harry registers the implicit criticism.

  "By the way. This Mrs. Watson of yours. Do you place full credit in her stories?"

  "What, the dress, and the confession, and all that weeping at each other's feet?" Harry scratches his whiskers. "I don't—not Helen's style—and I have the distinct impression Bird and Bovill don't either."

  "Well, perhaps the good lady was stretching a point," murmurs William. "Fibbing in the service of a greater truth, as it were. Is she, ah, happy in her home?"

  Harry's eyebrows contract. "Perfectly."

  "Oh, I'm not insinuating anything on your side, dear fellow," says William with a chuckle. "It's just that she seems very warm in your defence. These older, childless females..."

  "She lacks occupation, that's all; she's taken me up as a cause."

  "Better than joining that crew on Langham Place, I suppose! They don't seem to grasp that women have a business already: marriage. Spinsters should be considered as so many bankrupts who've failed at it," remarks William.

  The very thought of Fido Faithfull makes Harry's heartburn flare up. "Tomorrow Bovill's main task is to clear my name of the charge of rape." He speaks the word aloud to try to harden his ears to it. "How long is this whole wretched business going to drag on?"

  "Difficult to say." William speaks lightly, as if speculating about a cricket match. "The lower orders have a custom known as besom divorce, I believe. Delightfully simple: if you don't like each other, after a year, you simply set a broom aslant in your door, then jump backwards over it."

  Harry manages a smile.

  "But I dare say court cases are always long in proportion to the names involved."

  "The names?" repeats Harry, with a huge yawn. Funny how tiring it is to sit as still as a gargoyle all day in a crowded room.

  "Well, if you were a brickie who'd staved his wife's head in, say, they'd have found you guilty in half an hour." William chuckles. "And remember these lawmen charge by the day: they'll spin it out as long as your pocketbook will bear."

  Yes, of course; until the moment the decree absolute is in his hands, Harry's liable for every penny his wife spends, whether on bonbons or on dresses (stained, about the size of the upper phalange of a finger) or on defaming her husband. Harry's funding every word spoken in court, on both sides; it's like some absurd command performance. But if he wins, at least Helen will become liable for the fees of her expensive lawyers...

  "Actually," remarks William, "what struck me today wasn't so much the long-windedness, as the dirty-mindedness. All those over-educated fellows vying with each other to invent euphemisms for the act in question."

  Harry nods.

  "Did you ever go to the Judge and
Jury, opposite Covent Garden?"

  "What is it, an inn?"

  "A sort of mock court," William tells him, "where you're entertained with some gross indecencies over your cigar and rum."

  Harry fixes him with a look. "Can you imagine me in such an establishment?"

  William grins. "I suppose not, Brother Temperance."

  "Besides, on today's evidence, the institution hardly needs to be parodied," he mutters.

  They smoke for another minute in silence, then go into the chambers.

  Bird looks up to acknowledge each of them with a nod.

  Bovill is in full flow. "I still believe she could be charged with contempt, as she so clearly decamped in order to evade the subpoena."

  "But what I can't follow—forgive my stupidity, gentlemen," says Mrs. Watson, "is why we need to find the creature at all. Shouldn't we rather rejoice that her failure to testify to those audacious slurs on the admiral's character proves her a coward as well as a liar?"

  The solicitor sighs, absent-mindedly crumpling his lapel. "Any jury is a microcosm of the public, madam, and the public is not logical. Rumours and allegations linger like bad odours."

  "Or rather," contributes Bovill, "they stick like mud in a carpet, until they're beaten out!"

  "There's a wild one going round at the Rag Club," mentions William, "that my brother's smuggled this Faithfull woman out of the country—or worse."

  Harry stares at him, injured that he hasn't heard this before.

  Bird shakes his head. "The paradox is that unless Mrs. Codrington's counsel produce their missing witness, we can't actually disprove her affidavit."

  "It's patently absurd," Harry bursts out. "If you knew Miss Faithfull—she's simply not the kind of woman one would dream—" Remembering the presence of Mrs. Watson, who's another of those women whom no man would attempt to molest, he decides to drop that line of argument. "I swear, I never went into that room when my wife and Miss Faithfull were sleeping there, except on a couple of occasions, to see to the fire."

  "What on earth for?"

  All heads turn to the general.

  "I mean to say," says William, addressing his brother, "that's the maid's job, isn't it?"

  Harry feels his cheeks heat up. "I had acceded to separate rooms, at Helen's request, but I didn't take that to mean I wasn't allowed to address a few remarks to her, on domestic affairs."

  "Ah, so the fire was an excuse," Bird murmurs.

  "I might have sat on the edge of their bed once or twice, in the course of conversation," snaps Harry. "But I defy Fido—Miss Faithfull," he corrects himself awkwardly, "to look me in the eye and say I ever tried to lay a hand on her."

  "Could she have formed a personal grudge against you, Admiral?" asks Bovill.

  "On what basis? When she was living with our family, I considered her a friend." It sounds weak, to his own ears; yet again, he's coming across as an idiot.

  "Ah, but she was little more than a girl in those days," remarks Bovill. "Perhaps, now that she's become a strong-minded reformeress, she disapproves of our sex on principle?"

  "Gentlemen, forgive my interrupting, but I believe you're in danger of overlooking the obvious," says Mrs. Watson. "From all I've heard, and my own encounter with this person, she is Mrs. Codrington's gull. Her tool. Perhaps the appalling story of the, ah, attempt, is entirely your wife's invention, Admiral, and Miss Faithfull only parrots it."

  Harry stares at her.

  "None knows better than I, after all," says Mrs. Watson, eyes on the carpet, "how Helen can take advantage of the strongest sentiments of female friendship."

  "I believe she's hit on the truth," Harry murmurs to his brother.

  "Well, whatever the woman's convoluted motives," says Bovill irritably, "if we can only find her and drag her into the witness box, I'll make mincemeat of her."

  "We don't need an address to send her a message; wherever she may be, she'll be reading the English papers," observes the solicitor. "Is there anything we could offer her by way of a lure?" After a second, "Or a threat?"

  "I've already called her a panderess," Bovill points out. "What arrows are left in our quiver?"

  "Apprentices beaten and starved, at this famous press of hers?" suggests William facetiously. "Men-friends? Some by-blow, fostered back in Surrey?—begging your pardon, Mrs. Watson."

  "No need," she murmurs. "I hardly know how to put this, gentlemen, but—"

  "Go on," Bird tells her.

  Mrs. Watson puts her hand to her cheek. "First I must exonerate myself from any imputation of coarseness ... Due to pastoral duties and extensive travel, I have more experience of the underbelly of society than perhaps a gentlewoman ought."

  "Speak freely, do," says Harry, hiding his irritation.

  "Well. Let me just intimate," looking down at her hands, "that a sinister construction could be put on the behaviour of a woman who, night after night, for months, usurps a husband's place in his wife's bed."

  Nobody says a word. Harry feels a painful jab in his chest. He takes a breath. "You don't mean—"

  Mrs. Watson's fingers are over her face. "Don't make me say a word more."

  It's his brother who breaks the silence. "By Jove, you're on to something, Mrs. Watson. That might just fly."

  Bovill is nodding eagerly. "I could certainly drop a few hints along those lines, intimating that I'll shout it to the four winds if Miss Faithfull doesn't come to court at once."

  "This is ridiculous," says Harry, almost to himself.

  "The knack will be, to say it without saying it; anything explicit could rebound in our faces," the barrister goes on. "Admiral, are you by any chance familiar with the story of 'The Purloined Letter'?"

  Harry scowls at him. "I'm not a lover of fiction."

  "Very instructive, Mr. Poe's stories, from the legal point of view. A government minister, aiming to gain power over a certain royal personage, has stolen a letter from her," Bovill tells them all. "The thing is, he doesn't show it to her husband and destroy her honour, because his—the minister's—power lies in the possession and not the use of the letter—rather, in its permanent potential for use."

  "But I never thought of such bizarre possibilities." The words explode from Harry. "Are we to believe, or to expect an Englishjury to believe, that as well as indulging in relations with two different men, my wife would—" His throat locks.

  William shrugs. "Really bad women can move from vice to vice, like butterflies in a flowerbed."

  "She was brought up in India and Italy," Bird points out. He pats Harry's wrist. "But don't torment yourself, Admiral: no one in this room is claiming that any such debaucheries really occurred."

  His chest refuses to unknot.

  "Why don't you let Bovill hint tomorrow that you might have had such suspicions—so the Wednesday newspapers, by repeating it, will scare Miss Faithfull into taking the first boat back to London to defend herself?"

  There's to be no end to the shame poured on Harry's head, then; no end to the lewd laughter prompted by the name Codrington, which his ancestors—all descended from a spear-carrier of Henry the Fifth's—passed down to him unstained. When Sir Edward was accused of exceeding his orders in starting the battle of Navarino, Harry remembers, he'd sat down calmly to draw up a narrative of proceedings that would clear his name. The truth was shield enough for all those bluff generations. Sir Edward's son has the misfortune to live in modern times, when, it seems, it takes lies to set one free.

  After a long moment, he nods. "If you all think it worth trying."

  "Very good," says the solicitor soothingly.

  Bovill is musing aloud. "If someone had only written something down at the time Miss Faithfull was living at Eccleston Square ... It wouldn't even need to be read aloud: the very fact of such suspicions having been consigned to paper would tell against her. I don't suppose you kept a diary, Admiral?" he asks in a curious tone, head on one side.

  "I never have, apart from a ship's log."

  "Or a letter t
o some trusted associate on the subject of your wife and her bosom friend?" suggests Mrs. Watson. "If you'd even confided your fears in me, in Malta..."

  "You can't testify twice, madam," Bird reminds her quietly.

  Harry's finally catching on. He knows what answer the faces turned towards him require. "Well, I dare say it's possible I did jot something down at the time, and have forgotten. I could look through my papers," he concedes, his stomach leaden.

  "Anything at all," says Bird. "A brief memorandum, for instance, signed and dated and sealed ... I'm sure it would have been sealed, as you wouldn't have wanted a servant to read it."

  "Of course, the admiral might very properly have consigned such a document to the trusted hands of, say, his brother," says Bovill with a twinkle.

  "Mm, that would be much the best," says Bird, "as the general, unlike the admiral, could appear as a witness and testify to the circumstances of its composition."

  "Certainly," says William.

  "If I wrote anything down, I very well might have given such a thing to my brother," says Harry woodenly.

  Mrs. Watson rewards him with a dazzling smile.

  ***

  In his bedroom at the Rag Club, Harry takes a few pages of notepaper from the back of his writing box. "These are rather yellow. Could they pass for seven years old?"

  "They say Vice-Admiral Henry J. Codrington, though," William points out. "You were only a captain in '57, weren't you?"

  Harry grunts at his own stupidity and screws up the pages.

  "Plain paper will do. Here's some in the drawer."

  To put the task off for a moment, Harry pours more brandy for his brother.

  "Have another tot yourself, won't you?"

  He shakes his head. "It doesn't suit my constitution. Clouds my head." Silence fills the room, like stale air. "I don't like dragging you into this,Will..."

  "Stuff and nonsense. Besides," his brother adds, pragmatic, "I won't be testifying to anything but the fact of receiving a sealed envelope from your hands, which will be perfectly true."

  "The perjury's all mine, then," says Harry grimly.