The Sealed Letter (14 page)

"What, watching? Oh no, sir. I have four horses, I'm a cabman," he says, and it's the first time his face has shown any enthusiasm. "I'm just doing Mrs. Watson a favour on account of my mother being in service in her family. On the twentieth of September," he goes on, sober again, "no movements observed all morning."

What an impeccable blank this domestic record is: like a strip of paper dolls. It occurs to Harry that perhaps Mrs. Watson should have sent a maid instead, to worm her way into Helen's trust, but he supposes that would take too long. Time was, in Malta, Mrs. Watson herself had been Helen's confidante, her—what's the phrase women like?—
bosom friend.
Such strange reversals, everywhere Harry turns.

"On the twenty-first, after lunch, one of the female children was seen—"

"Yes, yes, Nan went to the British Museum with Mrs. Lawless yesterday. Get on to the cab," Harry says eagerly. "Yesterday afternoon I happened to see my wife go outside and get into a hansom."

Crocker looks peeved: the client's overstepping his bounds. "That's correct, sir. The party remained in the vehicle for approximately ten minutes, then went back into the house."

"She seemed agitated, when she got down. Didn't you think?"

Crocker purses his lips.

"From where I was standing at the window, at least," says Harry, "I conceived the impression..."

"Impressions are one thing, sir. Facts quite another."

"Yes," says Harry, abashed. Then something occurs to him. "If you were watching from the other side of the street—you must have seen his face?"

"Whose face would that be?"

"The passenger's!"

"The person in the cab was a female," Crocker explains. "A lady, I should say."

Harry stares at him. "What kind of lady?"

"Somewhat stout. Hair cut above the shoulders."

"Oh. Never mind her, she's a friend of my wife's," says Harry.

And then dark thoughts swarm across his mind like clouds staining the sun. If it was only Fido—why didn't she come into the house? Whatever could have been the subject of such an intense conversation?

She knows,
he thinks, shutting his eyes.
Women tell each other everything.

And then something else occurs to him. When his telegram about Nell's illness was delivered to Fido's house last week, surely, if Helen wasn't there, Fido should have forwarded it to Eccleston Square? The fact that Harry received nothing from Taviton Street that night can mean only one of two things: that Helen was indeed there, staying to dine with the Faithfulls—or that she was elsewhere, and Fido was in on the fraud.

Is it possible? A pandering woman, who in her cool collusion is almost more disgusting than the one who gives way to desire. Can Fido Faithfull really be conspiring so malevolently against a man who once gave her the protection of his home?

The she-devil!

The enquiry agent shuts his notebook with a snap. "That's all for now, sir."

Harry's sunk in gloom. It depresses him even more to realize that he was hoping for some meaty bit of evidence. "There's nothing to the point in all this, Crocker, is there?"

An uneasy shrug.

"I don't mean to cast any aspersions on your work—"

"Thank you, sir."

"All I'm trying to ascertain is whether the trivial, daily movements you report contain in them any evidence to back a charge of..." Harry doesn't want to say the word aloud in a public house.

"That's out of my sphere," Crocker assures him. "Say, I may see a certain party and a certain other party of the contrary sex enter a house together, and I note it down carefully with circumstances appertaining? Though 999 out of a thousand may call that a sign of the parties being up to no good at all, as to whether it's proof that would satisfy a jury, sir, I couldn't dare to say." Tapping his nose, one two, as if he's learned the gesture from a play.

Harry's pulse hammers in his head. "You're telling me that you saw my wife go into a house with a man? What house?"

"Oh no, sir, these are hypotheticals. I'm just explaining the limits of my employment. Though I can't say as how I like it."

Harry stares. It hasn't occurred to him to wonder whether such a man enjoys his work, any more than to ask it of a barber or footman.

"I told Mrs. Watson," says Crocker confidentially, "it seems rather mean, watching a lady's movements on the sly, but she says go on with you, it's an honourable occupation, being as how it's for the sake of freeing a worthy gentleman from the yoke of matrimonial bondage to a—" Crocker hesitates. "Bondage, at any rate."

Harry nods, speechless.

"Also that it's a matter of bringing truth to light, as it were, which can never be wrong. Airing out a stink."

Bile rises in the back of Harry's throat.

Surely there was a time when he'd have been cheered by proof—if only the negative kind—that Helen was true to him? But the mind, it seems, is a warren of occluded passageways. He hadn't thought he suspected his wife of anything worse than coquetry—but it seems now as if, all along, in some dark mental cloister, he's been condemning her.

The fact is, he doesn't want Helen, now, on any terms. How has it come to this, he wonders, that the girl who made him weep by presenting him with the most beautiful babies,
the most charming wife in the Navy
as one admiral of the fleet dubbed her—that all Harry wants now is to cast her off like a monkey from his back, and be justified in the eyes of the world?

***

The chambers in Lincoln's Inn are small, oppressive. Mr. Bird's desk is thick with piles of tape-tied papers. The leather chair is comfortable, but Harry shifts from side to side. "Of course, no evidence has been uncovered, nothing of substance at any rate," he repeats.

"That's all right," murmurs Bird. "Early days yet." The solicitor—an old acquaintance of the Watsons'—has bushy salt-and-pepper whiskers, and is hung all around with watch chains and seals.

"It was really just a matter of her not replying to the telegram, the night our daughter was ill." Even to himself, he's sounding delusional, a jealous old husband out of a pantomime.

The solicitor makes a tent of his black-haired fingers and speaks soothingly. "Proof of adultery is generally constructed of many isolated facts, Admiral—each of which could seem insubstantial on its own."

"My wife may still be innocent," Harry insists. The word seems an incongruous choice.
Virtuous,
in the technical sense?
Faithful?

A muffled snort from Mrs. Watson.

"Unlikely," says Bird. "In my experience the injured party's suspicions can generally be trusted."

Mrs. Watson bursts out in musical tones. "We've watched over your marriage as over an invalid clinging to life, Admiral, but the nadir is eventually reached when all hope must be surrendered."

"Now," asks the solicitor, "any idea of the identity of the other?" Harry blinks at him.

"The other party; the co-respondent, as we say?"

"I have no notion." Something seems expected of him by the ring of faces. "In Malta, over the past few years," Harry says unwillingly, "my wife did have a friend—a regular escort—"

"Oh yes?"

"A colonel, David Anderson by name—" his mind flits around the golden-haired officer "—not that his presence caused me any real concern. A very clubbable sort, with a harmless manner, that's the only way I can put it." Now Harry's not sounding paranoid anymore, but gullible. He shakes his head as if banishing a wasp. "But that was in Malta. Here in London ... well, I'm at a loss to think of a single name."

"That's all right."

"All I can guess is that she's meeting him—whoever the other party is—with the connivance of an old friend of hers, a Miss Emily Faithfull."

"Proprietress of that female printing press?" Bird nods, making notes. Mrs. Watson speaks up. "Ifit's not taking too much upon myself, Admiral—I must tell Mr. Bird that my husband and I left Valetta before the arrival of this Colonel Anderson, but there was during our time a Lieutenant Mildmay, of the third battalion of the Rifle Brigade—"

"Mildmay," Bird mutters, scribbling it down.

Mildmay?
thinks Harry, remembering pleasant chats with the fellow about meteorological patterns.
This is ridiculous.

"And I wouldn't be very much surprised if there were other
spiantati.
"

The solicitor looks up, puzzled.

"Cast-offs," translates the reverend in a whisper.

Harry studies the grain of the desk.

"If and when this Crocker comes up with the goods, Admiral," asks Bird—"I'm assuming, from your doing me the honour of this visit, that you do want some action to be taken?"

"Of course," he says, rubbing his beard where it itches. "Need you ask?"

"It may shock you to learn in how many grand London mansions adultery—even on the distaff side—is an open secret," says Bird with an air of satisfaction. "Sometimes husbands simply cease to communicate with their spouses except by way of the servants."

"Then I don't know how they can bear their lives."

Reverend Watson reaches out one knobbly hand and pats Harry on the knee.

"You could always come to some discreet arrangement—send her abroad,
for reasons of health,
don't you know." Bird taps his nose the same way Crocker did in the public house, and Harry feels a surge of dislike. "Or perhaps you'd like me to negotiate a private separation?"

"I believe, in the case where I were presented with convincing evidence, I would—" He tries again, more firmly. "I want a divorce."

The word comes out as sharp as a fishbone, and he expects it to shake the Watsons. But the reverend only nods, and Mrs. Watson wears a ghostly, radiant smile.
She's never liked Helen,
Harry realizes,
not from the start.
Not that it matters. He needs allies, and their motives are irrelevant.

Bird is unruffled. "Is it that you wish to marry again, if I may ask?"

This hasn't occurred to Harry.

"The Church, alas, turns an obdurate eye," begins Reverend Watson faintly, "but a civil ceremony..."

"You'd like a son, perhaps?" suggests the solicitor.

"No," says Harry, decisive. William's sons will carry on the Codrington name and keep up the estate; Harry's girls are quite enough for him.

Bird presses the point. "Then why, exactly—"

I want to be rid of the whore.
The words, even in the silence of his head, heat Harry's face. "To end it," he says haltingly, instead. "To draw a line."

"So you can steel yourself to face the public scrutiny of a trial? I feel it my duty to caution you that your domestic troubles will be closely dissected," says Bird, "not only in court but all over again in the press—with the attendant risks to other parties, such as your daughters."

The prospect makes him swallow hard.

"If you're at all familiar with the admiral's record in his sovereign's service," Mrs. Watson is telling the solicitor rather frostily, "you'll know that nothing daunts him."

"Very good," says Bird, leaning back and crossing his legs.

The atmosphere in the chambers eases; Harry feels as if he's passed some test.

"Certainly, the Matrimonial Causes Act has made the business infinitely easier," Bird concedes. "Currently, petitions for divorce stand at an average of two hundred and twenty-five per annum, of which approximately one hundred and fifty are granted."

Harry's head is buzzing with these figures.

"Plenty of military men in that list, by the by," comments Bird. "Foreign service is evidently hard on marriage, whether the wife goes or stays behind."

Harry reflects on the fact that he left Helen in London when he was at sea, but he brought her to Malta. Was it there that the real damage was done? Between one squabble and another, a chilly breakfast and a late dinner?

"Is Mrs. Codrington likely to defend herself, in your view, Admiral?"

"Defend herself, in open court?" gasps Mrs. Watson.

"You mistake me, madam," says Bird with a touch of irritation, "I only mean, is she likely to have her counsel deny the charge?"

Harry shrugs, then says "I should have thought so. She doesn't ... she never turns away from a fight."

"My reason for enquiring is that an undefended petition costs only about forty pounds, whereas to argue a case can go up to five hundred or so."

Harry doesn't have the money to hand, but it can be raised: he nods mutely. This interview is one of the most peculiarly mortifying he's ever had.

"Now," says Bird with enthusiasm, "let's consider your case, Admiral. The burden of proof will lie on you. Hard evidence must be put forward that Mrs. Codrington has been guilty with one or more partners."

"Would several, a whole series, be best?" Mrs. Watson is asking with a zest that makes Harry's gorge rise. "Because I really think that Lieutenant Mildmay, for one—"

"That all depends," says Bird, his lips pursed. "It'll blacken her nicely—but we mustn't give her counsel room to argue that for years on end, the admiral turned a blind eye."

Something else is troubling Harry. He clears his throat. "By hard evidence ... Must I actually catch her
in medias res?"

"Oh no, that won't do at all," says Bird, tut-tutting as he readjusts one of the piles of papers in front of him. "If the good lady will excuse my frankness," with a nod to Mrs. Watson, "I'm afraid that even if you, sir, walked in on your wife and another, unclothed on a bed together, it wouldn't be the slightest bit to the purpose."

Harry stares at him.

"One peculiarity of the law, you see, is that the petitioner and the respondent are assumed to be biased, and so mayn't speak for themselves. Everything must be testified to by other witnesses."

He scratches his side-whiskers. "So I can do nothing?"

"Far from it, Admiral, you'll be our chief fount of information. Every detail of your marriage you recall, however private or apparently irrelevant, must be laid on the table."

The solicitor has the smug air of a torturer, it seems to Harry. "Very well," he says, very low. "Whatever's necessary."