The Sealed Letter Page 13

  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."

  Mrs. Watson throws up her hands. "If any man ever deserved to be happy..."

  "Ah, but divorce has nothing to do with happiness," says Bird, wagging his finger almost humorously. "Lay persons often make the mistake of believing it a legal remedy for the purpose of relieving miserable couples. In fact, divorce frees a good spouse from a wicked one."

  The Watsons nod in perfect unison.

  "It's not only requisite for one of you to be guilty, you see," Bird tells his client, "but for the other to be guiltless."

  "Of adultery, you mean?" asks Harry, frowning. "I assure you—"

  "Of all wrongdoing and negligence," the solicitor clarifies, steepling his fingers on the desk. "I very much fear it will be alleged, in this case, that you've been guilty of allowing Mrs. Codrington improper freedoms."

  "Are you married, Mr. Bird?" Harry demands.

  "I am not, Admiral; I've seen that craft founder in too many storms to ever trust myself to its timbers," says Bird, obviously pleased with his nautical metaphor.

  "For fifteen years I've done my best to maintain the domestic peace," Harry growls, "and that meant keeping my wife on rather a long leash. If it's true that she's been ... that she's formed a, a criminal connection, then I can only say that I knew nothing about it."

  "Nothing at all?"

  "Do you doubt the admiral's word, Mr. Bird?"

  "Not at all, madam—"

  Acid burns in Harry's oesophagus. What a double-dyed buffoon I've been. "I was preoccupied with work."

  "It's just that there's a danger they'll argue remissio injuriae. Meaning that you must have guessed and forgiven her years ago, you see," explains Bird. "In which case the jury will probably consider you to have made your bed, et cetera."

  "Forgiveness—" begins the reverend.

  "Oh, it's considered very estimable at the bar of Heaven," Bird interrupts with a grin, "but down here, in court, quite the contrary, I'm afraid. It's not so inexcusable if a wife forgives—especially if she has children, and nowhere else to go—but a husband..." He shakes his head.

  "I assure you, Mr. Bird, I was unaware that there was anything to forgive," says Harry, his voice tight as a rope. "I believed my wife to be flawed, yes, but not ... I was labouring under the misapprehension that she wasn't a passionate person." They're all staring at him now. Of course Helen's a passionate person, given to whimsical notions and impetuous demands. But how, especially in mixed company, can he explain his long-held view that, after two babies, all her yearnings were ... north of the equator?

  Bird nods kindly. "And our counsel will portray you as a loving husband who, though noticing certain signs of lightness in his wife, refused to believe the worst until the occasion of the unanswered telegram."

  The Unanswered Telegram: it sounds like a ghost story from one of the popular magazines. "If you knew her..." Harry's head is in his hands. "She's still such a girl; always striking some arch pose from one of her yellow-jacketed French novels. Once, after a chance meeting at a party, she talked a lot of rodomontade about the Prince of Wales being infatuated with her, do you remember, Mrs. Watson?"

  She nods, her face puckered.

  "Early on, I formed a policy of discounting at least half of what Helen said. We've led such separate lives..."

  "Ah, but that smacks of negligence," says Bird, holding up one finger in warning.

  "Would it help if the admiral now began laying down the law in earnest, at home?" asks Mrs. Watson. "Enquiring into or forbidding her excursions?"

  Bird smiles. "Paradoxically, that would make it impossible for—what's the agent's name?"

  "Crocker," she supplies.

  "Crocker, yes, to collect any evidence. No, your dilemma," turning to Harry, "is that of a policeman who notices a dubious character loitering in an alley. Should you chase him off, thus preventing a crime, or linger silently till the ruffian breaks a window, which allows you to make an arrest?"

  Harry's head is beginning to thump dully.

  "No, you must act a subtle role, Admiral," says Bird. "By all means, throw out the odd animadversion on her neglect of you and the children, but do nothing to thwart her meeting her paramour."

  None of this sounds real to him: her paramour, a faceless bogey, a slavering si
lhouette on a magic lantern.

  "Restrain your feelings, and remember that in all likelihood there's no virtue in her left to save."

  Harry swallows. "How long will all this drag on?"

  "That depends on what Crocker can gather here, and what my own agents can dig up in Malta," says Bird.

  "Strike not till thy sword be sharpened," Mrs. Watson puts in, in biblical tones.

  ***

  His faith is little comfort to Harry, these days. He sends up brief thanksgivings for Nell's recovery, that's about all. With regard to Helen, he doesn't know what to ask.

  Since the family's return, he's taken the girls to the church in Eccleston Square on several Sundays; he recognizes only a couple of neighbours' faces, and the sermons are dry investigations of certain controversies in church reform. Today, he leaves Nan at home to amuse her convalescent sister. (Yesterday, he caught them noisily practising chassée-croisée up and down the schoolroom: thank God for the blindness of children.) He sets out on foot to his childhood parish in Eaton Square, "for a change," he remarks to Helen on his way out, in an unconvincingly festive tone, but the fact is that he has to get away from this house before he begins to roar and kick little tables over. He's spent months on end on sloops that never felt so cramped.

  At fifty-six, he still walks like a sportsman. (People often look up in astonishment as Harry marches by; he's too tall to blend into a crowd.) Today he reaches Eaton Square far too early for the service. He kills some time strolling among the graves, visiting the tomb that his parents share with his eldest brother and William's eldest son. Both boys drowned; it strikes Harry now as a toll the sea takes of the Codringtons, once per generation.

  Harry was just fifteen, writing poetry in the dorm at Harrow, when the message came: his handsome brother Edward's boat had capsized off Hydra. When the mourning was over (nobody said, but everybody was aware),there'd be a vacancy as a midshipman in their father's gift: Sir Edward's nominee to replace his lost son would be accepted without question. Though fifteen was late to start, and Harry knew little Euclid or trig—the twin poles of a Naval Academy education—he immediately decided to seize this chance. He knew a life at sea would be a dangerous one, but active and absorbing.