The Sealed Letter (25 page)

When she manages to turn her attention back to Bovill, he's describing their way of life in Malta. "The respondent's behaviour became increasingly erratic: in private, moody, flippant, and self-aggrandizing; in public, spendthrift, loquacious, and coquettish." The barrister's tone darkens. "In the year i860 she began to be seen constantly in the company of Lieutenant Mildmay—who we learn from Bombay has refused, on advisement, to submit to an examination."

The cur!
To think Mildmay once sobbed into her lap, kissed her ankle. How hard would it have been for him, at the safe distance of a few thousand miles, to answer
No, not so, nothing of the sort, an impeccable lady?

"I look forward to my learned friend's explanation," remarks Bovill with a lifted eyebrow.

My learned friend,
that must mean Hawkins. It's as bad as the House of Commons.

"In the meantime I will leave it to the jury's discernment to deduce why Mildmay, this former confidential friend of the respondent's, might be unwilling to enlighten the court with regard to his relations with her."

A few gruff laughs from men in the crowd. Helen stiffens: two women on the bench in front are looking over their shoulders at her. One mutters something to the other. Helen worries her lip, wishes her veil were thicker. She's not the only lady wearing one, but the others all seem too old or dowdy to be
the notorious Mrs. Codrington,
as the
Spectator
called her on Saturday. Yes, for lack of anyone to talk to at Eccleston Square she's been reading the papers again, with a painful hunger.

"The petitioner, being an early riser, had to be in bed by midnight," Bovill explains, "whereas Mrs. Codrington would insist on staying at parties to dance, only coming home in the Admiralty gondola at two, three, or even four o'clock, escorted by an officer—usually either Lieutenant Mildmay, or the co-respondent named in this case, Colonel David Anderson."

The barrister holds up what Helen takes for a toy. When it turns out to be a scale model of the gondola, she almost laughs aloud. It's the kind of ingenious little device her daughters love. The audience cranes to see the jury examine the roofed-in cabin. This is verging on a sideshow: what magic will the mountebank produce from his pocket next?

A little dark man steps into the box as the first witness and swears his oath. Helen's sure she's never seen him before, but he turns out to be one of the boatmen.

"Signor Scichma, how long is the passage across the harbour at Valetta, from the town centre to Admiralty House?" asks Bovill.

"One quarter of one hour, sir," articulates the Italian. He sounds coached, to Helen.

"Does the door have a pane of glass?" Bovill holds up the model again, tapping the cabin.

"
Si,
but nobody see inside if the light out in there."

"In the cabin."

"Si."

"In English, if you please. Your answer is yes?"

"Yes, sir."

"On the nights when Colonel Anderson or Lieutenant Mildmay happened to be in the cabin with Mrs. Codrington, was the light on inside, generally?"

"No, no. Only a light in the bow of the boat."

"Did you notice anything else in particular, on those nights?"

An obedient nod. "The gondola get, how you say it, out of trim."

A gasp of satisfaction goes up from the audience, and Judge Wilde raps his gavel, but lightly.

Behind her veil, Helen's face is hot and tight. How can she ever have thought of a gondola as a romantic setting? This beetle's-eye perspective on her past turns everything to mud.

"Can you explain what you mean, Signor Scichma?" asks Bovill.

"It sway on one side, so we have trouble rowing," says the boatman, with an expressive movement of his hand.

"It swayed such that it was evident the two persons inside were sitting close together on the same bench, rather than on opposite benches?"

"I object, my Lord." Her barrister, Hawkins, has risen to his full height, suddenly fiery. "Unwarranted conclusions!"

Judge Wilde scratches one white, rampant eyebrow. "Mr. Bovill, if you'd care to rephrase your question?"

"Certainly, my Lord. Signor Scichma, what did you believe was the cause?"

"Just how you said. The two of them sit together."

Helen rolls her eyes; these are merely word games.

"It make me think of bad things," the boatman adds, like a schoolboy currying favour with the master. "I laugh with the other men about it."

Helen can hardly believe her future's going to hinge on the movement of a boat in a choppy harbour.

Hawkins rises elegantly to cross-examine the witness about what he derides as this "tale of a tub." Apart from insisting that it's in a boat's nature to sway, he seems to Helen to achieve nothing in particular.

Here comes the second witness, and Helen's stomach knots, because she knows him all too well: George Duff, that loathsome footman with the greasy hair. How did she put up with him for five whole years?

Duff's grudge gives him fluency. "Well, sometimes on landing, he'd wish her good night, Mildmay would, but sometimes he'd go with her into Admiralty House."

"And remain there?" Bovill prompts.

"Yes, sir, for twenty minutes. Or an hour even," Duff adds, less plausibly. "In a little sitting room that had a sofa in it. With the lights out."

Lying hound,
thinks Helen. The lights were hardly ever out.

The woman sitting in front of Helen squeezes her companion's arm with glee. Helen has noticed that a lot of these females have come along in pairs, for mutual encouragement.

"Where would the petitioner be, while this was going on?" asks Bovill.

"Retired for the night, sir. Or sitting up writing in his office, not to be disturbed."

"Did you ever go into this sitting room while your mistress was there with Mildmay?"

"No, sir," says Duff with mild regret, shaking his hair out of his eyes, "but once I went into the passage leading into it—"

"When was this?"

"Late in i860. Or perhaps early in 1861," he says, eyes flicking from side to side. "I saw Mildmay standing with his arm round her neck." He mimes it, slinging his arm lecherously around an invisible woman.

Helen's troubled by a sudden sense of the warm weight of Alex Mildmay's arm. He was a sweet fellow—or at least she thought so till today, when she learned that he wouldn't so much as sign his name to save her. These men! Do they all hate women, or is it some knack they have of putting the past behind them as if on the other side of a thick pane of glass?

"And what did you do?" Bovill asks.

"I went away to the servants' quarters," says Duff virtuously.

On and on he testifies. Sounds on the dark staircase at Admiralty House; whisperings and rustling of dresses, exclamations, and the drawing of breath. A scrap of fabric found on the stairs after a visit by Colonel Anderson that Duff claims matched a certain rip in Mrs. Codrington's bodice that he noticed another day. This is beginning to sound like the kind of smut gentlemen keep in a locked bookcase, thinks Helen. Bovill produces a little model of the staircase, which prompts some satiric applause. Who makes these models, she wonders? Deft, slim-fingered children in some sweatshop in Soho?

Perhaps a third of Duff's allegations correspond to vague memories of Helen's. But of course the jury won't know the difference between his half-truths and his pure fictions. Nor does he mention all the wearisome days Helen spent fulfilling the duties of consort to the admiral-superintendent of the dockyards. Nor all the time with her girls, when she wasn't a bad mother, not by any reckoning.

She feels a little relieved when Hawkins stands up to cross-examine the witness. "Mr. Duff," he drawls, "would you agree that you displayed antipathy towards your mistress?"

The footman squirms, and tucks an oily strand of hair behind his ear. "Well. She frequently made complaints of me without cause."

"For instance?"

"That I wouldn't take my hat off when the host was carried by in a procession."

Actually, Helen had forgotten that piece of insolence.

"You're not insinuating that Mrs. Codrington is a Roman Catholic," says Hawkins sternly.

"No, but she said it showed discourtesy to neighbours who were."

Hawkins glances down at his notes. "Is it not true that you were turned out by the admiral after you made an indecent attempt on Teresa Borg, a maid?"

Duff's face contracts, which pleases Helen. "I discharged myself voluntarily. There was no truth in it; the Borg woman called me into her room herself and only accused me afterwards. She's a Maltese," he says, appealing to the jury.

Hawkins makes another of his lightning changes of tack. "Can you specify the time, or date, or year, even, of any of the alleged incidents involving Mildmay or Anderson?"

A shrug. "I had no reason to make a note."

"But you claim you were disturbed by them. Surely it was a dereliction of duty, then, not to inform the admiral?"

"I—" Duff pauses, blinking, like a burglar interrupted on the job. "I didn't think it was my place."

"How so?"

"Well, he must have known how often those two officers came to his house."

Hawkins's patrician face brightens. "Ah. You believed the admiral turned a blind eye to his wife's friendships with these men, or encouraged them even? Perhaps in order to furnish grounds for a divorce?"

Condonation, connivance,
Helen lists in her head. Her barrister's not just a highly attractive man but also something of a genius.

Bovill's glaring at his witness: Duff scrambles to recover. "I never said any of that."

"No, your lips were sealed tight until petitioner's agents tracked you down in France a few weeks ago. May I ask, what compensation did they offer you in exchange for your spontaneous recollections?" Hawkins asks witheringly.

"Just the expenses of the voyage. Steerage," he insists.

"One final question, Duff. Did you ever, with your own eyes, see any actual misconduct take place between Mrs. Codrington and any male person?" Hawkins speaks one word at a time, as if to an imbecile.

"I suppose not."

"A simple no will suffice."

Once Duff's stood down, Bovill gets up again. "Thus matters went on." Helen's beginning to recognize it as his catchphrase, intoned a touch more grimly every time. He now reads the depositions of a number of witnesses taken under a commission in Malta. The accumulation of suggestive detail depresses Helen. The two women in front have clearly found her out; they keep turning to glance at her, whispering to each other. This wretched veil is like a sign over her head, marking her out as the one with something to hide. But she'll hear this out, as long as it takes.

She can't believe her eyes when the next witness turns out to be none other than Mrs. Nichols, the housekeeper who served Helen a late, singed breakfast this morning. The double-dyed treachery!

"Would you describe it as a Christian household?" Bovill is asking.

"Well." A small sigh. "The admiral reads prayers with the children every morning, but the mistress doesn't attend. And she doesn't go to church above twice a year."

To think I've kept her on all these years, though she boils the meat to leather...

"During summer months, on Malta, where did the family sleep?"

"Oh yes," Mrs. Nichols says, nodding eagerly. "Admiralty House was in a pestilential spot, so the admiral took the girls and us staff to sleep on board the
Azoff,
but the mistress insisted on going home every night. Said she slept better there." A sardonic curl of the mouth.

"Now, please tell the court about the trip to Cormayeur, a resort on the Franco-Italian border, in August of 1860."

Helen's stomach tightens; she forgot this had to be coming.

"The party was composed of Mrs. Codrington, her parents, the two girls, myself, and a maid," lists Mrs. Nichols, like a schoolgirl repeating her lesson. "After a few days, Lieutenant Mildmay turned up to stay at the same hotel, as if by accident. I heard the mistress introduce him to a new acquaintance as her cousin!"

"Did she ask you to take a letter to his room?"

A nod. "And when I objected she said, 'Well, Mary will take it, then, silly.'"

Did Helen really say that? She might have done.

"Back in Valetta, did you ever see the respondent and the lieutenant together in private?" asks Bovill.

"Once he was in her room for ten minutes while she was in bed," says Mrs. Nichols with relish. "I was going in and out all the while."

"She was wearing what, a nightgown?"

"With a jacket over it," she concedes reluctantly. "She had purchases from Naples and Leghorn spread all over the counterpane. She was asking him to take the handkerchiefs to England to get them embroidered."

A simple conversation; Helen vaguely recalls it. Neither she nor Mildmay would have thought there was anything to hide, just then.

"Oh, and another day the mistress had a blister on her foot from walking and he opened it with his pocket knife."

The mention of this intimacy causes quite a stir in the crowd. Helen smiles a little, under her veil. He did it so deftly, it barely stung.

Mrs. Nichols is well warmed up now. "One night," she volunteers, "I found him sitting on the staircase."

"Mildmay?"

"No, beg pardon, I mean Colonel Anderson, that time. I said, 'How you frightened me, sir,' and he laughed."

He and Mildmay have that in common, Helen acknowledges; they're both ready laughers. She used to love that about them. She can't quite remember what else there was. Did she sell herself twice over for a bit of merriment?

"Also, going along a dark passage another night, after ten," says Mrs. Nichols, switching to Gothic tones, "I almost walked into them—her and him, Anderson, I mean, again—they were close together. I ran back to the bedroom."

"What was she wearing, at that hour?"

"A loose red skirt and a flannel jacket," the housekeeper reports.

"So," says Bovill crisply. "By the year 1862, Mrs. Nichols, was the corespondent, Colonel Anderson, beginning to take Lieutenant Mildmay's place as the respondent's regular escort?"