The Sealed Letter (29 page)

"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.

"Buck up. You won't be in the witness box. Just write this memorandum whatsit, and Bovill will see to the rest."

"These sleights of hand revolt me. What Father would have thought—" Harry breaks off, his voice shaking.

"Oh, to the devil with our sainted father." William's red about the cheekbones; it must be the brandy. "You've always carried him about like some idol, a figure of awe and reproach. But to my mind, his career would have benefitted from a sprinkling of diplomacy."

"You can spout such things—his heir, his favourite?"

"That old theme?" His brother rolls his eyes. "I tell you, he loved us all the same. The morning he got your letter after Acre, he wept, Jane says, wept into his porridge, out of pride in his young chip-off-the-old-block. I'm sure he's looking down from a better place, now, hoping you win your divorce, even at the cost of a little sleight of hand."

Harry sits, mulling all this over, while William drains his glass. Could his brother be right? He doubts it; his conscience is in a queasy state.

He takes a piece of plain stationery and smooths it out on the desk. "Something we hadn't considered yet," he murmurs. "Will an English jury understand a glancing allusion to this sort of vice?"

"Oh, the more up-to-snuff men will be delighted to explain it to the others, when they're locked up in their room," says William with a snort of amusement. "Anyone who's read Baudelaire, or—what's that old poem about the two lords' wives that still goes the rounds?
They ask no joys beyond each other's smock..."

Harry winces, and returns his gaze to the blank page. "It's all nonsense, though."

"No doubt," William assures him. "My own dear wife insists on sleeping with her friends, whenever they visit."

"What I mean is, Fido—the woman—did stir up some trouble at one time, took Helen's side. I'd go so far as
alienation of affections,
even, if we're to use legal jargon," Harry makes himself say. This is like picking a scab, but he can't stop. "These all-engrossing passions of theirs can be damned inconvenient, can even come between man and wife, I don't deny that. But to go beyond, and fancy a monster behind every bush—"

"Yes, yes. It's after midnight," William reminds him, tapping the page.

"I'll begin in a moment." He stares at the paper, the subtle nap of it. "I know I've been mistaken before. After all, I thought Helen quite used up by motherhood," he says, hot-faced. "She seemed—to be frank, Will, she was as unresponsive to me as a dead fish."

A grimace from his brother.

"I assumed that all she wanted from men was flattery—and how wrong I was! Which makes me wonder, now, if it's theoretically—if it's within the realm of possibility that I might have been so blind as to miss other horrors going on under my very nose, in the very next room..."

"Enough! You may sit up all night trying to spook yourself," says William, standing up and stretching, "but I want my bed."

Harry stares at the page till his eyes unfocus. "What shall I put?"

"Bovill says in all likelihood it won't even be read," William tells him. "Just make a start and some suitably stern expressions will come to you. Goodnight."

Harry puts the pen down and wipes his sweating hands.

"What's the matter now?"

"It's my first attempt at forgery, after all," he says, trying for a jocular tone.

"It's not forgery when you're signing your own name," William tells him, making for the door.

***

On the second day of the petitioner's case, Bovill wears an air of mild cheer. "I will now dispose of the respondent's countercharges—libels, rather—against the good name of the petitioner. Specifically, her claim that
if
the adultery occurred, her husband conduced to it by neglect and cruelty. Now, a foreigner with a less than perfect grasp of the subtleties of British law might call this a strange defence from a woman who maintains her complete innocence." His tone's neutral, but he waits for the laugh. "But leaving that rather obvious point aside, let us consider how the petitioner is said to have mistreated his wife so badly that she was obliged to flee into another gentleman's arms. Oh, excuse me," he tells the jury, "I mean, of course, into the arms of not less than two other gentlemen."

This causes waves of mirth.

Harry's eyelids keep sagging. How embarrassing it would be if he were to doze off during proceedings of such importance to him. But he barely slept last night, in his narrow bed at the club, and when he did he was tormented by dreams of Helen. Not the snappish woman he shared a house with until just two weeks ago, but a dancing Helen in the glittering gauzes of an odalisque.

"Two of our witnesses—Mrs. Nichols and Mrs. Watson—have attested to the petitioner's exemplary treatment of his wife," Bovill reminds the jury. "He found her extravagance, her tantrums, and her flightiness distressing, but he bore with them all. Far from neglecting her, he maintained perfect trust in her honour while she was flitting all over the island with various officers. Even before their departure for Malta in 1857, when she demanded a separate bedroom, he had at no point insisted on his marital rights. What husband in this courtroom—in the country!—could match such forbearance?"

I sound like a doormat,
thinks Harry, head down.
Or a eunuch.

His barrister's tone turns outraged. "The respondent's counsel may accuse the petitioner, with the grim hindsight a courtroom offers, of uxoriousness—but what is that but husbandly love so perfect it borders on excess? They may even argue that he must have guessed the true role that Mildmay and Anderson played in his wife's life—but the truth is that this veteran of Her Majesty's wars is of such an upright character that he can barely comprehend duplicity in his fellow man, let alone in the softer sex."

Harry wants to groan aloud. Some myopic Quixote; a feeble-minded Christian soldier. Is it really vital to his case to strip him of every vestige of manliness?

"Beset by official cares, reluctant to suspect any real ill of the mother of his children," Bovill goes on, "the petitioner nonetheless did share his concerns with others, notably the Watsons but also—very properly—his wife's widowed father, Mr. Christopher Webb Smith. If I may read the crucial sentence from a letter that venerable merchant of Florence sent his son-in-law in November of 1863, that is, last year—" Bovill clears his throat.

I can only express my hope that my daughter will alter her conduct and avoid disgracing her husband, children, and family, in time to save herself from ruin.

"The jury should note," says Bovill, holding up one finger, "that Mr. Smith, like the admiral, showed no awareness that Helen Codrington was
already ruined.
Thus the petitioner, like his father-in-law, was deeply troubled, but did in no sense condone, connive—in the popular phrase
turn a blind eye—
rather, he was blinded by the highest sentiments of familial affection. Only on the couple's return to London in August of this year did the petitioner, now released from the cares of his post, have leisure to consider his wife's behaviour more closely. It was the unhappy accident of their child's illness, which prompted the admiral to send his wife a telegram at Miss Faithfull's house on September the sixteenth—a telegram her response revealed to him that she never received—which caused him to face the dreadful possibility that she had in actual fact been unfaithful to him."

Where were Helen and Anderson the night of the telegram? Harry wonders. In some dubious hotel, while Nell lay white-hot and straining for breath at Eccleston Square? Even after all the evidence is presented, so much of his wife's hidden life will remain opaque to him.

Bovill consults his notes. "I will now address the most outrageous countercharge, that of cruelty, and in particular the claim, in Mr. Few's affidavit, that in October 1856 the admiral attempted the virtue of Miss Emily Faithfull. In that lady's conspicuous absence, I propose to my learned friend that it would be better for all concerned if that particular claim were withdrawn forthwith."

Harry's ears prick up at this. If the charge is withdrawn, there'll be no need for anyone to mention the memorandum he sealed up, with shaking hands, at half-past twelve last night.

Hawkins rises, suave as ever. "I thank my learned friend for the suggestion, but I decline. I would be delighted if he were to drop any of the even more disgusting charges made against my own client."

This little bit of repartee amuses the audience.
Damn these lawmen,
Harry thinks:
it's all a game to them.

Bovill resumes mildly. "Well, then. In that case—my client has asked me not only to deny the charge in the most unequivocal terms, but also to make the jury fully aware of the poisonous role Miss Faithfull has played in his marriage as far back as that same year, 1856. The petitioner had by then harboured her at Eccleston Square, in the bosom of his family, at his personal expense, for over two years. And how did she repay him? On his return from the Crimea, the petitioner found that his wife's passionate feelings for this person were causing her to shrink away from her husband."

Hawkins, on his feet, blinking.
"Causing?
What proof of causality does my learned friend intend to offer us?"

"Very well: let me say instead that the friendship and the withdrawal were simultaneous and proportional," says Bovill crisply. "The respondent generally slept with her friend, claiming that Miss Faithfull was subject to asthma and needed aid in the night." He pauses significantly, as if to let those words ring hollow. "When the marriage reached a point of crisis the following year, and my client called in his brother and Mrs. Codrington's parents for advice, they fully concurred with him that Miss Faithfull should be dismissed from the house."

This causes a stir. Harry chews his lip.

"At which point, he entrusted to paper his thoughts on her role in the crisis, and his reasons for banishing her—which document was sealed up and placed by him in the hands of his brother."

There's a moment's silence. Then Hawkins rears up again. "I know nothing of such a document, and nor does the respondent. I object to any statement being made respecting its contents, unless it can be proved that the respondent was present and was cognizant."

"She was not cognizant," says Bovill silkily, "but the document has every bearing on the issue of her character."

"What is its nature, may I ask? Is it a statement of facts?"

Harry's sweating into his shirt, as if he's on deck in tropical waters.

Bovill hesitates. "At this time—"

"Is it addressed to his brother?"

"It is not addressed to General Codrington."

"To what party is it addressed, then?" demands Hawkins.

"To no particular party except perhaps to the petitioner himself. But in that it is not a record of events, so much as reflections, feelings—suspicions, even," says Bovill, producing the word with a sinister gentleness "—perhaps it can best be described simply as a letter."

Hawkins holds his opponent's gaze for a long moment. "Is this sealed letter in court?"

"It is," says Bovill.

A frisson goes through the packed chamber. Harry's hands are wet; he clamps them between his legs.

"I mention it to illuminate the testimony of my final witness: I now call General William Codrington."

After a few preliminary questions about Harry's treatment of his wife—"considerate in every way," William says, more than once—Bovill asks about the marital crisis of 1857. "The sealed letter: do you have it in your custody?"

William pulls out of his pocket a white folded paper, heavy with black wax. Harry flinches at the sight of it.

Bovill pauses, and makes no move to take it. "Do you recognize the seal?"

"It's my brother's. Admiral Codrington's."

"Has it been opened or tampered with?"

"No, it remains in the state in which he entrusted it to me."

Every eye in this courtroom is trying to bore through the paper,
Harry thinks. He risks a glance over his shoulder at the staring faces. Their vulgarity, their desperate greed. There's a lady at the back with a black lace veil, like those mantillas the Catholics wear on Malta.
Wait a moment.

"Do you know its contents?" Bovill is asking the general.

"I don't."

Could it be?
He moves his neck to get a better look at the veiled lady. There: a strand of red hair, below the hem of the lace.

"What did the petitioner give you to understand that it contained?"

William answers with a guarded discomfort. "An explanation of his reasons for ordering Miss Emily Faithfull to leave his house."

Helen.
It has to be. Has she sat here all morning, and yesterday too? The gall of her! Yes, he might have guessed that a woman who pores over intriguing messages from strangers in the
Telegraph
could hardly resist watching her own terrible story re-enacted. Like Hamlet among the players.

"May I ask, my Lord," demands Hawkins, on his feet again, "whether the petitioner's counsel mean to open this document about which they've been making such a deep and dark mystery?"

Harry, rigid, turns his eyes back to the white square of paper, the black wax that bears the Codrington arms. Everything depends on the next few moments.

"I will leave it to my learned friend to have the seal broken or not as he pleases," says Bovill with a courteous gesture.