The Sealed Letter (34 page)

"Had he his trousers on?"

"I'm sure I can't say," she snaps.

"What else do you wish to tell the jury about the incident?"

"Nothing."

A long glare from the barrister. "Miss Faithfull, I feel sure it's from womanly compunction, rather than from any wish to perjure yourself, that you're holding back."

The word
perjure
makes her pulse thump loudly. She shakes her head. She keeps her eyes away from the part of the courtroom where her sister's sitting. How will Esther report all this to the Faithfulls?

"Need I remind you that you gave a drastically different account of this incident to the respondent's solicitor, Mr. Few, on September the twenty-ninth?"

Black spots in front of her eyes. "I'm aware of that," she says, almost stuttering, "and I'm relieved to have this opportunity to clear up any misapprehension."

"Misapprehension?" Hawkins's smooth voice cracks. "Madam, either you were lying in assenting to that affidavit, or you're lying now!"

The jury watches Fido, open-mouthed as fish. At the lawyers' table, Few sits staring up at her with mute fury. She looks at her hands. "No, I believe I told Mr. Few what I have just told you," she says, stammering a little, "but with some details added."

"Yes, including one significant detail," Hawkins storms, "namely that what woke you was—allow me to quote from the fourth paragraph—
The petitioner in his nightdress came into the room and got into the bed where Mrs. Codrington and Miss Faithfull were sleeping together, and attempted to have connection with Miss Faithfull, and was only prevented from accomplishing his purpose by the resistance of Miss Faithfull on waking up"

The hum of talk among the audience deafens her. Her face feels as if it's crackling with flames. Faintly: "That was what Mrs. Codrington said."

"Speak up," advises the judge.

Fido raises her voice. "Just before my interview with Mr. Few, she—the respondent—told me that her husband had ... behaved improperly to me on the night in question. She persuaded me that the drug I'd taken had erased my recollection of the incident."

Hawkins's eyes are bulging.

She hurries on. "It must be understood that it wasn't that I gave Mr. Few the whole account as from my own memory; he already had it from Mrs. Codrington, and I felt I was being asked only to support her evidence. Particulars were barely mentioned, and he put things delicately, to spare my feelings," she says desperately. "When he asked me whether the account was true, I gave him to understand that the answer was yes, because I sincerely believed what my friend had told me."

"Come, Miss Faithfull!" The barrister is almost shouting. "You're an educated person. And, may I add, a celebrated advocate for the competencies of women. You must know that when a lawyer asks you a question, he means you to answer on your own authority. Mr. Few passed you the affidavit to read—"

"He slid it across the desk," admits Fido, "but I wasn't able to read it through, not so as to know its contents. I was very much confused and agitated, and my breathing was troubled; also Mr. Few was talking the whole time, so I couldn't concentrate."
Women are idiots,
she thinks,
that's the burden of my testimony. Feathery creatures who couldn't be logical if their lives depended on it, who lack the capacity for the civil duties that would go with civil rights.

"You formally assented to the document!"

"I didn't dissent from it," she says miserably, "but I do not recall saying that it was correct in all particulars. I deeply regret the trouble my ignorance of the law has caused," she rushes on, turning towards the grim judge. "I see now that I ought to have explicitly stated to Mr. Few that his client was my source. Later that day I had reservations, and asked for the affidavit back, but it was too late." She looks anywhere but at her sister sitting in the fifth row. "In a moment of weakness, I went abroad to avoid being summoned to repeat the story in this court."

Hawkins looks disgusted. "Well, Miss Faithfull. Although you were in a stupor at the time, do you now believe that the petitioner attacked you, just as the respondent related?"

He thinks me excessively scrupulous,
Fido realizes. "No," she says into the silence, very clearly.

His eyes lock onto hers. "You must admit that what you do recall—waking up in a sudden terror, glimpsing his fleeing form—is not incompatible with attempted violation."

She takes a long breath. "I never said I was terrified, or that the person I saw was fleeing." She must go further, if she's to look herself in the eye in the mirror tomorrow morning. "It's my firm belief, now, that nothing happened that night."

"Nothing?" The barrister's Adam's apple is bulging.

"That the admiral came in while I was asleep, exchanged a few words with his wife, and walked back to his own room."

There's a silence, while Hawkins gathers his forces. "You realize, madam, that you're accusing your dearest friend of inventing the most appalling falsehood in order to pervert the just process of this court?"

Fido is mute. And then says thickly, "Perhaps she dreamed it," which raises a great whoop of laughter from the audience.

"Could it be, I wonder, that someone has threatened you in some way, to force you to change your story?"

Her skin crawls. She mustn't look over at Harry.
This is what happened,
Fido reminds herself desperately, but she's never felt more of a liar. "No," she insists, "having had time to think it all through, I've resolved to do my duty and tell the whole truth."

"I have one more suggestion," snarls Hawkins. "Perhaps the admiral's attempt on your virtue that night was successful?"

She reaches out blindly for the wooden edge of the witness box; holds onto it so she won't fall down.

"I put it to you that all this talk of drugged stupors and blanks in memory is a futile endeavour to deny the horror of what happened."

"Mr. Hawkins!"

"If the petitioner is guilty of adulterous rape, madam, no one will blame you for having fallen a helpless victim to his lust."

"I—"

He plunges on. "But if in a feeble attempt to save your reputation, you cover up his crime and thereby destroy my client—"

"There was no crime."

A single blink from Hawkins. Then he changes his tone again. "Ah, then perhaps you did not resist?" he asks.

So mildly, almost pleasantly, that at first she doesn't follow. She stares at him.

"Half-consented, in fact, to overtures from your friend's handsome husband, with whom you'd lived on the most intimate domestic terms for more than three years? Allowed connection to be achieved, there in the bed a matter of inches from his sleeping wife?"

"How dare—"

"Mr. Hawkins," the judge interrupts.

But the barrister is unstoppable. "And when she woke, you panicked in your guilt, and told her he'd tried to violate you—"

"No!" she roars.

For all the weeks she's spent dreading this day, Fido never imagined such punishment. Barristers are wolves. Hawkins has long since given up constructing a plausible argument, she realizes; he's merely trying to discredit her with the jury.
Just a little longer,
she tells herself, as if comforting a child.

"Nothing happened," she says in a choked voice. "If the court requires it, I am willing to submit to medical examination."
Not that; please, anything but that.

After a long second, Hawkins steps away. "No further questions, my Lord."

Fido has pushed the gate open; she's on the top step before Bovill gets to his feet and she remembers she still has to be cross-examined by Harry's side. She fears she might burst into tears, but instead she sits down again.

"Do take a moment, Miss Faithfull. Would you care for a glass of water?"

"No, thank you," she whispers.

His voice is melodious. "By now you've realized that you were wrong to maintain a credulous attachment to a dangerous friend, wrong to trust the respondent against the evidence of your senses, wrong to attempt to evade a summons to this court. But on behalf of British justice, I'd like to thank you for coming forward so bravely today." A broad smile. "The gentlemen of the jury will, I'm sure, sympathize with your tale of duped innocence, and rejoice that you've seen the light in time to clear the petitioner's character and your own."

The kind tone weakens her.
Don't cry,
Fido tells herself.
Don't you dare.

"I can only regret that in previous speeches I have said some harsh things of you, Miss Faithfull, and here, in open court, I wish to withdraw them all. My client has now come to a better understanding of the complexities of his household in the period 1854-1857," says Bovill, "and wishes me to clarify that your influence over his wife seems to him to have been rather beneficial than otherwise."

Here it is, the reward Harry offered her in the cab. But how will the jury swallow these volte-faces?
We all sound like liars, every one of us.

"Would you agree that the petitioner treated you well while you lived at Eccleston Square?"

"With nothing but kindness and courtesy," says Fido mechanically.

"With regard to the so-called sealed letter which has provoked so much idle speculation," Bovill goes on, "I would like to specify that to the best of the petitioner's recollection, it contains a simple record of his view that you would be better off returning to your parents—and nothing at all to your detriment."

She should feel grateful: this is the key to the door of her cell. (But this will make no sense to the listening crowd: if the letter contained no terrible charges against her, why would Harry have written it at all, and put it into his brother's hands, and why did Bovill brandish it in court two weeks ago like a pistol loud enough to be heard across the country?) Hush, hush, Judas has received his silver.
Oh please let me go now.

"Now, turning if I may to the co-respondent, Colonel Anderson. When did you make his acquaintance?"

Fido's heart starts to pound again. Harry and his lawyers must think that by the terms of their bargain she's about to tell all. And certainly, last night, while she was ripping apart the seashell choker, that was her plan: pay Helen back for everything. But now it's come to it, somehow—

She begins with a bland summary of social encounters with David Anderson. "I'm afraid I don't know the dates of his various calls; I keep no diary."

"Were they ever alone together in your house?" asks Bovill suggestively.

"Alone?" Fido repeats. Here's her chance; here's the line in the sand.

The barrister nods and waits.

She finds herself strangely unable—unwilling—to step over it.

"Shall I repeat the question, Miss Faithfull?"

She shakes her head. This isn't mercy; she feels nothing that tender for Helen Codrington anymore. "No," she says hoarsely.

"By
no
you mean that I need not repeat it?"

"I mean no, they were never alone together in my house."
I was there too; I was just outside the drawing-room, listening.

The audience stirs and rustles. How many are cheering on the pretty, naughty lady, Fido wonders, and how many would rather see Helen punished? It's like a witch-ducking: the sleek copper head rises above the water, sinks again, rises, sinks.

The barrister's pouchy eyes narrow. "Do you recall any conversations with Mrs. Codrington on the subject of the co-respondent?"

If I say no, no one in this room will believe me.
She pauses, choosing her words carefully. "I believe I told her that her friendship with the colonel had an imprudent air to it, and that I didn't like to be mixed up in it." There, that has a credible ring to it. It's true that Fido said that to Helen—among other things.
The truth, the partial truth, and everything but the truth.

Bovill steps closer to the box. "Is that all you thought of your friend's behaviour? Nothing worse than
imprudent?"

"As I said."

"You maintain you never, at any time, witnessed any impropriety between the two?"

What does it mean to witness? Outside the door, face pressed to the wood, shut out of the mystery. "Never," she says hoarsely.

Her hands are curling closed; she's dying for a cigarette. What Fido's done—refrained from doing, rather—may make no difference, of course. There are other witnesses, and they've been only too willing to give chapter and verse on Helen's crimes. But Fido won't take another step. Helen may very well fall—but Fido won't be the one to give her the final push. She'd rather leave it up to the court, to providence—or, if there's no such thing as providence, to chance. It's not loyalty that stays her hand, nor anything like forgiveness. Only a need to regain her balance, not to be like Helen. Only a reaching back to find herself, her real self, in the dank fog.

For a moment, it occurs to Fido that Bovill's going to strike back at his recalcitrant witness. He could call for the sealed letter to be brought into court again. She shudders at the thought. The black wax could be broken, the accusation released like a plague on the air. Fido's dropped her weapon, while Harry still holds his. She stares at the barrister, silently pleading.

Bovill lets out a brief sigh and glances towards his client. Harry gives an infinitesimal shake of the head, and the barrister pronounces the words that release her. "No further questions, my Lord."

Verdict

(from Anglo-Norman, "to speak the truth":
the final and unanimous finding of
a jury at the end of a trial)

Come, cheer up, my lads, 'Tis to glory we steer, To add something more To this wonderful year; To honour we call you, Not press you as slaves, For who are as free As we sons of the waves?

David Garrick,
"Heart of Oak" (1759)
anthem of the Royal Navy

Codrington v. Codrington & Anderson

The verdict was accordingly entered for the petitioner on all charges. Judge Wilde pronounced a
decree nisi
and ordered the co-respondent (Colonel Anderson) to pay the petitioner's costs of £943. To the surprise of many present, Judge Wilde then took the unusual though not unprecedented step of ordering the petitioner to pay the costs of the respondent (Helen Jane Webb Smith, formerly Codrington) in the amount of £1,110, on the grounds that the petitioner had for many years suffered his wife to absent herself from his bed at night, and his company by day. As is customary, the Queen's proctor will be granted a period of not less than six months to look for any evidence of collusion between the divorcing spouses, in the absence of which Judge Wilde will then pronounce a
decree absolute.

***

The late October afternoon is cold. Harry's been motionless in a wing chair for hours, near one of the six fireplaces in the Rag Club's famous coffee room. He's brooding over his daughters: what to tell them next week when he collects them from Mrs. Watson's house and takes them home to Eccleston Square. He's trying out lines in his head.

Mama did some very wrong things, and has gone away.
Feeble, childish.

Your mother doesn't deserve to be a mother anymore.
Unnecessarily cold.

It may be best to think of her as dead. Dead to us.
No, Nan and Nell will start to shriek. He won't be able to bear it.

A divorce means that your Mama must go and live far, far away.
In fact he has no idea what'll become of Helen: where she'll go, or what she'll do with herself. In his concluding interview with Bird, yesterday, Harry almost weakened and proposed making her some kind of allowance—but then he got hold of himself again.

Your mother...
Need he say anything to them? The wrong words might be worse than none. Girls are quick to pick these things up without anything being spelled out. Should he perhaps simply bring them home in a cab, chatting about their zoetrope all the way, and make no reference to their missing mother, that day or ever again?

Two members come in and take a table behind him; he doesn't recognize their voices. It's the word
poker
that catches his attention. "In his nightshirt, poker at the ready," one is muttering. "Stiff as the proverbial!"

"Well, he was afraid the ladies would take a chill if he didn't rouse their flame," puts in the second man with a snigger. "When all the time the joke was on the ancient mariner, because they'd no need of his ministrations."

"Not those gels. Things were warm enough in the nuptial bed already—without him!"

Harry's hands form fists in his lap.

"The friend must be not just strong-minded, but strong-armed too, if she could beat off such a giant while she was doped to the gills," says the first man with a guffaw. "She was too many for the admiral. Oh yes, thank you, three lumps."

Drop it,
Harry commands himself, as the two are served their coffee, a few feet behind him. He has no power to stop people having private conversations. He's become what the managers of great concerns call a household name.

But that first needling voice carries on, once the waiter's gone. "To my way of thinking, it was no more than the old buffer deserved."

"Oh really?"

"Well, for years before the wife started straying, he hadn't been much of a husband, by the sounds of it."

"She was bold as brass," objects the second.

"Still, he oughtn't to have stood for it, like the judge said. Stands to reason, she must have been thwarted in her normal appetites, to turn to the other thing."

What have I done?
Harry asks himself. In those small, cramped chambers of Bird's, Mrs. Watson made up the most revolting rumour, and Harry agreed to spread it, and now the public takes it as gospel. Imaginary monsters walk the streets.

"Hm," says the second man, as if they're discussing a great question of the day, such as sewer construction or Irish tenant right. "But by all accounts she has more than the usual quota, when it comes to appetite."

"Notwithstanding. My wife's of a warm enough constitution, but you wouldn't catch her resorting to such folderols, not unless I'd left her in a very sad state of frustration!"

Harry can bear no more. He rears up so fast the chair skids, and spots appear before his eyes. He takes two steps, towers over the two men. "Do you know me, sir? Or you?"

One looks bewildered, the other, queasy. The one who hasn't guessed begins, "I don't believe I've had the honour..."

"My name is Henry John Codrington," he growls.
I loved my wife as best I could,
he wants to shout.
I was not a brute and she was not a freak.
"I don't know yours, but I can say with confidence that you're no gentlemen."

"Come, now, Admiral—"

"Everything all right?" The porter is at Harry's elbow.

Harry ignores him. "Such scurrilous indecency! You dare to sit here, soiling the name of a lady you've never met—" His head's a whirl of confusion. Can he really be defending Helen's honour—he, who to destroy that honour has squandered thousands of pounds and the long, impeccable patrimony of the Codrington name?

One of the men manages a half-smile. "We only repeat what's said in the papers."

"That's a worm's excuse."

The porter's put his hand on Harry's elbow. "Now, now, Admiral. No altercations in the club."

"In our fathers' day," says Harry, waving a finger in their nervous, smirking faces, "I'd have had you out. I'd have taken you by the throat and caned you like the curs you are."

"No altercations in the club," repeats the porter, leading him away.