The Sealed Letter (26 page)

"That's right, we all noticed the change. A regular relay, one of the boys called it."

This raises such a laugh that Judge Wilde resorts to his gavel.

Hawkins stands to cross-examine the housekeeper. Helen sits forward in anticipation, her stomach tight.

"When my colleague Mr. Few interviewed you, some weeks ago, didn't you acknowledge that you never saw anything even approaching actual impropriety between your mistress and any man?"

Mrs. Nichols purses her dry lips. "I might have said that."

The look he gives the jury—sweeping, magnanimous—is a marvel to watch. "No further questions, my Lord."

The housekeeper's face crumples. "But Few took me unawares in front of my husband, so he did, when it would have put me out of countenance to say all I knew," she gabbles, "and besides I wasn't on oath then as I am now."

"Oh, so you only speak the truth on special occasions?"

For a moment it looks as if Mrs. Nichols will burst into tears.

"You may step down," the judge tells her.

By God,
thinks Helen,
I'll discharge the bitch tonight if it means I have to toast my own bread.

A stranger gets into the box, in the tall varnished hat of a policeman, with a truncheon looped onto his belt.

(This is like dying, Helen decides. Faces familiar and forgotten move in a spectral parade before her eyes.)

"John Rowe," says the man, identifying himself gruffly. "Employed in the Dockland Police at Valetta."

"Can you tell the court what happened on July the tenth of this year?" asks Bovill. "That is, some four weeks before the Codringtons' departure for England."

"Yes, sir." Rowe keeps his eyes on the floor, but somehow the effect is to make him look shy rather than shifty. "I remember that night because there was a band playing; there were illuminations in town for some Romanist festival."

Helen's cheeks heat up under her veil, as she remembers. "I approached the gate of the victualling yard and I saw her—"

"The respondent?"

"She was walking towards me, and Colonel Anderson—the co-respondent," he corrects himself, "was behind her at the waterside arranging his costume."

Scattershot sniggers from the benches.

"Could I trouble you to be more particular?" asks Bovill in his scholarly way.

"He was buttoning up his trousers," says John Rowe to the floor.

Bovill always waits a beat or two after some shocking detail, Helen notices, to give it a dreadful weight.

"Did Mrs. Codrington speak to you?" he asks at last.

"She engaged me with some questions about pigeons."

More laughter. Yes, Helen remembers a pleasant conversation about the use of carrier pigeons in police work. All these perfectly commonplace moments in her past, now re-enacted in harsh limelight like scenes from
Othello.

When her barrister stands up, irritation is breaking through his suave manner. "This extraordinary tale of dropped trousers," Hawkins snaps. "Was there really light enough, Rowe, for you to see every detail of the gentleman's clothing?"

"It was a full moon, because of the festival. I mean to say," the policeman corrects himself, "they hold the festival at the full moon."

"If you saw such a shocking sight, why did you not report the matter to your superiors at once?"

"I dare say I put it out of my mind."

"Are you a logician, sir?"

The policeman's jaw tightens.

"In logic there's a principle known as parsimony, meaning, in layman's terms," Hawkins tells the jury, "that the simplest of two explanations is usually correct. Now, given that the co-respondent was standing by the waterside, don't you agree that he might very well have loosened his clothing in order to perform a natural function? If the court will permit—is micturition not a simpler, and therefore more likely, cause than adultery?"

A female laugh, very shrill, just behind Helen's head.

Rowe shakes his head. "I can't see an officer doing something like that in front of a fellow officer's wife."

This provokes gales of merriment.

I'll never be quite English,
thinks Helen. This stuffy idiot truly believes that to make water in front of a woman is worse than to have her.

The judge calls a recess, now, and most of the crowd rear up and shuffle out the back doors. Some keep their seats, Helen notices, and pull out packages of sandwiches. Few pauses beside her. "May I offer you some refreshment?" he asks tiredly.

She shakes her head. "It's going rather badly, isn't it?" she asks in as brave a tone as she can muster.

"Oh, early yet."

Helen drifts out into Westminster Hall with the dregs of the crowd. Through her thick veil, she cranes up at the bare, gigantic timbers, hung with faded banners, like something out of a Nordic saga. But instead of massive heroes, the hall is crammed with bewigged lawyers and their clients, and always the shuffling, chattering crowd that spills from one or other of the courts.

She has a pie from a stall. She can always eat, no matter what troubles beset her. Once, in the days of courtship, Harry told her that the life force sprang up very strong in her. She wonders what he'd call it now: vulgarity?

The first witness after the recess is the one Helen's been dreading: Emily Watson. It occurs to Helen that every friend one makes in life is a liability: one has let her past the walls, allowed her to matter, and one must keep her as a friend forever or she'll become an enemy.

Oh Fido, Fido.

The grey-haired lady makes quite a production of unpeeling her glove so her skin can touch the Book as she takes the oath; Helen's fingers tighten with rage. "My name is Emily Watson, wife to the Reverend Joshua Watson," says the witness with modest satisfaction. She aims a sudden, quick smile into the crowd:
that must be for her beloved Harry,
thinks Helen.

"When did you first meet the respondent in Malta?" asks Bovill.

"In July 1861. For several nights Helen and I—forgive me, that's what I always called her—were in attendance on an invalid in pecuniary distress, a Mrs. Coxon."

"What estimate did you form of the respondent's character on that occasion?"

Here Mrs. Watson makes a show of hesitating. "A touch too free in her manners, I dare say. A certain spirit of wildness about her."

"Subsequently you became friends with Mrs. Codrington, despite your reservations?" asks Bovill.

"Very good friends. I pride myself on believing the best of people, even if sometimes I suffer for it," she remarks, smoothing her iron chignon.

Helen nibbles her thumb through her cotton glove.
How could I ever have harboured this snake in my bosom?

"And how did the couple live together at this time?"

"Outwardly contentedly—but privately, quite otherwise." The sigh of a tragedy queen. "We—the reverend and I—took it as our mission to bring about a better state of feeling between them. The admiral confided his sorrows to us, as in a brother and sister, and I did my utmost to counsel his wife."

Bovill is nodding. "How did the admiral treat her at this time?"

"With exemplary attention and kindness. Admixed with the occasional silent reproof," Mrs. Watson tells him. "He was anxious about dear Helen's debts; her gay demeanour; her carelessness of the world's opinion."

"The impropriety of her behaviour with men?"

She throws up her wrinkled hands. "That's a strong term."

The woman's coyness makes Helen want to scream.

"I would prefer frivolity," she says squeamishly. "The admiral assumed—all three of us did at first—that she was only foolish, not wicked. Dear Helen had not found in motherhood the normal womanly fulfillment, and I formed the belief that she was ... well, taking refuge in flights of fantasy."

"How do you mean, fantasy?" asks Bovill.

"Exaggerating her own charms, you see," says Mrs. Watson with compassion, "and imagining herself an object of fascination to every bachelor on the island."

Jealous hag!

"And indeed, to others in the home country: she spoke very foolishly of attentions she claimed the Prince of Wales had paid her once at a party."

Helen's hands are knotted together in her lap. Can't the jurymen see through this woman?

Bovill's voice takes on a deeper bass note. "When did you first suspect that the respondent's friendships might border on the criminal?"

"In October 1861," says Mrs. Watson in a throbbing tone. "Helen confided in me that she'd discovered Lieutenant Mildmay in her sitting room, his head in his hands, quite wretched with passion for her."

Yes, Helen had been unable to resist dropping little hints; the round-eyed Mrs. Watson had responded with a titillated astonishment.

"He'd rushed at her, and in resisting him ... she'd bitten his cheek."

The audience likes this; there's a lot of muttering.
I never said that,
thinks Helen, appalled.
I never bit anyone's cheek.

"Did you and she have a quarrel in consequence?"

"Not a quarrel," she demurs. "I reproved and cautioned her, but had not the slightest idea of actual guilt on her part. Then later that evening I was amazed to see her going out in a loose gown. 'Mildmay is frantic,' she told me, 'I must see him.' Well, as her intimate friend I couldn't stand by; I said, 'Think how it could be misconstrued if you're seen meeting him alone; I'm determined to go with you!' Then she promised to stay in, and assured me she'd only meant to soothe his savage bosom, as it were."

Helen's head is spinning. It's as if Emily Watson is reading from some novel in which she's the pious heroine—or at least the confidante.

Under his calm manner, Bovill's clearly delighted by all this. "At what subsequent period did you come to believe your friend guilty of actual misconduct with Lieutenant Mildmay?"

The witness puts her hand across her eyes.

"Mrs. Watson?" asks the judge. "Do you need a moment's respite?" She shakes her head. "Perhaps—a glass of water?"

"Certainly."

She's laying it on thick,
thinks Helen venomously.
Did she and Bovill work this up together, for effect?

Emily Watson waits till a clerk rushes in with some water. She takes a ladylike sip. "I blame myself," she wails suddenly, "for an innocence that prevented me from acting in time to save my friend."

"Shall I repeat the question?" asks Bovill.

A fragile nod.

"At what subsequent period did you come to believe your friend guilty of actual misconduct with Lieutenant Mildmay?"

"I did not realize that the seal of infamy was set until ... until the night she made a full confession."

The word acts like a thunderclap.

What confession?
Through her own confusion and panic, Helen registers that Bovill's staring at his witness:
he didn't know this was coming.

But the barrister makes a good recovery. "When was this?"

"December the thirteenth, 1861," says Mrs. Watson fluently. "Helen Codrington made a communication to me which has never yet passed my lips, because she demanded of me a promise of secrecy before she spoke. But now I have been put on oath, I consider myself released, and in fact bound, to speak the whole truth."

What in all the seven hells is she talking about?

Mrs. Watson puts her hand to her temple for a moment. "I expected Helen to tea at seven o'clock, but she did not knock at the door till half past eight, and my husband let her in. Instead of coming at once to the drawing-room, she went to my bedroom and sent down a message saying she begged to speak to me in private. She had the servant bring her a bowl of hot water. When I went up I found that she was trying—" a long pause, another birdlike sip from the glass "—she appeared to be attempting to sponge out a spot on her skirt."

A snort of laughter, from a fellow picking his nails just a few feet from Helen. She shuts her eyes. The only time she ever scrubbed her skirts at the Watsons' was to get some mud off.

"What kind of dress was it?"

"Yellow nankin, as I recall."

"Can you describe the stain?"

"Not its colour, or consistency, as she'd already put water on it," says Mrs. Watson regretfully. "But it was on the front of her skirt, about as large as the top of a finger."

"A fingertip?"

"The whole upper phalange of a finger," says the witness, holding up her own.

Bovill bends to exchange a few words with his client—Harry, entirely impassive by his side—then scribbles something in his notes.

They haven't heard a word of this fiction before,
Helen guesses.
The witch saved it all for the witness box.

Harry's barrister clears his throat. "What exactly did Mrs. Codrington say to you?"

"She burst out in violent agitation," says Mrs. Watson, "and told me that the climax of evil had been reached."

The audience stirs with loud enjoyment.

The judge glares down at them. "Is it going to be necessary for me to clear this courtroom?"

They settle down like cowed schoolchildren.

"The climax of evil," indeed!
Helen knows she sometimes puts things strongly, but she'd never resort to such a penny-dreadful phrase.

"Were those her very words?" asks Bovill, as if struck by the same doubt.

"I cannot recall precisely how she put it," admits Mrs. Watson, "as the fact of the matter was so shocking to my sensibilities."

"Naturally. Did she give you any ... details?"

"Oh yes. She told me that Mildmay had escorted her to my house half an hour before, but instead of bringing her in, he'd persuaded her to go up the lane at the back, where the dreadful deed was accomplished."

Bovill's mouth opens but nothing comes out.

"I was paralyzed with horror," Mrs. Watson rushes on. "Helen put her head between her hands and said, 'Do you scorn me, Emily? Do you shrink from me? I am lost.'"

"And did you in fact shrink from her?"

Mrs. Watson hesitates.
Deciding on a politic reply,
thinks Helen. "At first, yes," she assures the barrister. "But then I asked myself who was I that I should cast her out into the darkness? She was weeping at my feet, scrubbing at her dress like a lunatic. So I said, 'Helen, if you are truly penitent—as the Lord said to the Magdalen—go and sin no more.'" Her eyes are shining.