The Sealed Letter

At thirty-five a Captain and the "hero of Trafalgar," now at fifty-seven, and a Rear-Admiral, Sir Edward Codrington was raised to the august position of Commander-in-Chief of the Mediterranean Fleet, with his flag on the Asia.

In his study, Harry straightens in his chair, mulls over the grammar of his sentence, then bends to his pen again. Jane, working interminably on the memoirs of their late father, keeps asking her brother for an account of the naval side of things, and now, at last-to keep his mind from gnawing on itself like a rat-he's writing it. Harry will be fifty-seven himself next year, and a vice-admiral is one rung above a rear, so to an outsider his career may seem to be advancing faster than his father's, but the fact is that Sir Edward Codrington is remembered by a grateful nation, and his younger son is the hero of nothing in particular.

The front door. That'll be Nan, going to the museum with Mrs. Lawless. Her hair's held back with a sky-blue ribbon today. Nell is still frail and confined to bed; when Harry went up to see her half an hour ago, she was half-asleep over The Thousand and One Nights, her toast-and-water barely touched on its tray. She jolted when her father put his head around the door. He knows his smile has a ghastly, painted quality these days.

The spy is out there on Eccleston Square. Not that Harry's seen him; the fellow wouldn't be much of a spy if he were visible, after all. (Enquiry agent is the term the Watsons prefer.) He's been posted there for four days now, according to Mrs. Watson. These things take time, Admiral.

Harry bites the edge of his thumb, then stops himself: it's a filthy, schoolboy habit. He consults his notes, and stabs his pen into the inkwell.

In order to protect from enslavement the beleaguered inhabitants of the Greek provinces and islands, who were at that point resorting for nourishment to boiled herbage, Sir Edward found it his duty to destroy the Turko-Egyptian Fleet at Navarino on October 20, 1827. This victory over the Ottoman Porte is so justly celebrated, it is sufficient to record here that the Allied Fleet, amounting altogether to eleven sail of the line, nine frigates, and four brigs, suffered a loss of just 172 men killed and 481 wounded, among which the present writer (Sir Edward's third son, a midshipman at the time) counted himself honoured to count himself.

Irritated when he spots the repetition, he scores it out.

… judged himself honoured to be counted.

Automatically Harry's fingers move to a hand-span above his right knee: through the cloth he can find the ragged scar. (Nan and Nell used to clamour to do this, like little Doubting Thomases.) Just as well he'd got blooded at nineteen. Heaven knows, Harry has enough gumption in him to shed any amount of blood for his Queen-if only an occasion for bloodshed would present itself. But in these peaceful times he's been obliged to loiter in private life (as the euphemism has it) for four years in his twenties, another five in his thirties, another five in his forties. Now he waits for another posting, or even a pen-pusher's job at the Admiralty, to fill a few years. At the ready, at all times, he waits.

His wife's upstairs in her boudoir (newly papered with birds of paradise, at inordinate expense), trimming an old bonnet, or at least that's what she announced at lunchtime that she'd be doing. Harry realizes now that he has no idea what trimming involves. To readjust the bonnet for use somehow, as in trimming a sail? To make it smaller, as one trims a beard? And does Helen really have the skill to do any of these things, given that she needs the maid to undo her buttons at the end of the day? Helen's a sort of engine of idleness: all she does is consume. Like the unseen spy outside, Harry's been keeping his wife in his sights: covertly focusing on her an intense observation that reminds him, strangely, of the days of their courtship. (The sight of Helen Smith's young wrist emerging from her glove once distracted him so much from his task of defending Florence from hypothetical mobs, it's a wonder the Grand Duchy didn't fall.)

What happens if the spy finds something to report? It's still unreal to Harry. His wife is upstairs doing something to a bonnet. How could she be having carnal relations with a stranger? And what stranger? Harry quite agrees with Mrs. Watson that it's imperative he should know the truth-but they haven't yet spoken of what he'll do with that knowledge. What if the spy manages to come up with proof, hard and indisputable proof, that Helen has… Harry's mind reels from the various phrases. Dishonoured him?Betrayed him? That she's fallen, ruined, lost?

Or, of course, the spy may discover nothing at all. Perhaps his wife really did linger over syllabub with the Reverend and Mrs. Faithfull, five nights ago: perhaps she's a slapdash mother, nothing worse. Will Harry be relieved to have her guiltlessness proved, even if he's had to hire a spy to do it? (How very modern, he thinks scathingly; what a model of a husband, in the mode of 1864.) What then? Will he be able to meet his own eyes in the mirror every morning?

He stares at the page under his hand, and forces out another sentence.

Although loaded with laurels in immediate consequence by his own Sovereign and those of France and Russia, the gallant Commander was afterwards recalled by the Admiralty as a result of political machinations to which, it is generally agreed, he was made a scapegoat.

A loud knock makes Harry jump. It suddenly strikes him as absurd that one keeps a servant to open the front door in order to save one from interruption, and yet one's work is in fact interrupted, since one always sits motionless, listening to deduce who's at the door; it would be almost simpler to stamp down the hall (in defiance of custom) and open it oneself.

The housekeeper, Mrs. Nichols, brings in the telegram herself. Heart thumping, Harry finds he's assuming the worst: critical illness in one or other branch of the family, the death of his elderly father-in-law in Florence… Or could it possibly be from top brass? But no word of a posting would be urgent enough for a telegram. He slices the envelope with his knife.

Messrs GABRIEL, dentists, Harleystreet, Cavendish-Square. Messrs Gabriel's professional attendance at 27, Harley-street, will be 10 till 5 daily.

Harry blinks at it. Why, it's nothing but an attempt to drum up business. The nerve of these fellows, clogging up the telegraph wires and wasting the time of important men with unsolicited messages! As if Harry would dream of having his teeth drilled by such upstarts as Messrs Gabriel. Why, he has a good mind to write to the Telegraph.

He pauses, then screws up the paper and tosses it in the basket. Letters to the Telegraph may be exactly what Messrs Gabriel are counting on. That's the devil of publicity: an airing of any kind only feeds the flame.

Harry rereads the few stiff paragraphs he's produced about his father. This is much like hanging about for a wind, at sea, when the canvas is limp; one begins to imagine malign forces conspiring to stop anything from happening. One prays for wind, as if the Lord has no more important business on His mind. The weather must break by Sunday, surely, one remarks-when of course nothing is sure, and any day can be still as easily as windy. There's a malady peculiar to becalmed crews, called calenture: in the end the sun turns the men delirious and they imagine the sea is land and step out onto it…

The door, again. Harry listens hard. Only the maid's feet in the hall. Who could it be, this time? On impulse, to stretch his long legs, he goes to the front of the house, and looks out the drawing-room window. The winter curtains-red velvet, heavily swagged-have been hung up; Harry stands behind them, peering through a narrow gap. He sees a rough-looking man going back to a hansom cab and climbing up into the seat on the dickey. Then more footsteps in the house: what sounds like someone hurrying downstairs. His wife? Harry's left his spectacles in his study; he rubs his eyes, strains to make out the details of the scene outside. The driver's whip doesn't stir; the reins lie in his lap. From this high angle, the interior of the cab is in darkness. Here comes Helen out of the house, now, in flamingo pink, her bright head bare. (Every other adult female in England has learned to cover her head when she steps outdoors, but not his wife.) She leans over the cab's folding door, talking to the unseen occupant.

Rage blooms inside Harry's eyeballs. Is the man in there, in the shadowy recesses? (What man?) Would they dare, in broad daylight?

Helen turns and glances up at the house; Henry shrinks into the shadow of the curtain. Is she sensitive enough to feel his gaze?

Then the door of the cab folds back and he braces himself to see the face of the passenger. But instead Helen climbs in, lifting her brilliant skirts out of the September mud. Harry stands in the window like some pillar of salt. A strange lightness clouds inside his chest. All he can see is a piece of his wife's sleeve. He watches the silent conversation, his face against the glass, which smells of something vinegary.

Suddenly Helen bends at the waist, doubles over. What the devil can be happening in there?

She sits up again. She's turned away from him, in intense conversation with the other passenger. Her hands move in sharp, mysterious gesticulations.

Harry could rush downstairs right now, catch the pair red-handed. But what if the fellow shoots off in the cab, leaving Harry on the curb? Yes, he feels suddenly sure that Helen's about to go off with this stranger, whoever he is. That would be like her: to drive off, after fifteen years, without so much as a bonnet or a handbag. Go, then, Harry barks in his head. He's paralyzed: all he can do is watch and wait.

But the cab isn't moving. The driver picks at something on the back of his hand. Then he leans down, opens the little hatch, and seems to exchange a few words with his passengers before he closes it.

A minute later, the cab door swings open so suddenly, Harry recoils. Helen climbs out, stumbles on the step. Her face is as unreadable as some Egyptian mummy's as she walks towards the house.

Harry thinks his skull is going to explode. He lurches out of the room.

The public house is almost empty, at noon. While Crocker licks his finger and flicks through his notebook, Harry looks him up and down. About thirty, Harry reckons, with the bad skin characteristic of his class, and an uncomfortable way of clearing his throat.

The fellow begins to read in a monotone. "I began my observations of Mrs. Codrington's home in Eccleston Square on September the eighteenth, 1864.''

"Could you keep your voice down a little, if you please?"

"Certainly."

Harry glances round at the scattered drinkers. "And perhaps… there's no need to use names, is there?"

"Whatever you like, sir." Crocker is about to resume his report when the barman arrives with his tray: beer for the enquiry agent, brandy for the admiral. Harry likes beer himself, but it seems an occasion for marking the distinctions.

"On the eighteenth inst.," Crocker goes on in a low voice, "I did not see any movements from the house in question except those of servants, and that of Admiral Cod-pardon me, sir, the husband of the party in question-who left at twelve and returned at ten past five."

Harry's seeing his life through the wrong end of the telescope. Well, he supposes one can't set a watch on one's wife without being oneself the object of surveillance. "I know my own comings and goings," he says in a tone that aims for lightness, "so you may leave them out. How do you… do you crouch behind a cart, Crocker, or something of that sort?"

The man looks mildly offended. "I've made an arrangement with your neighbour Mrs. Hartley across the street, to pose as a painter."

"What, you paint the same railings over and over?"

"Exactly, sir, the regulation green: then I clean them off." Crocker returns to his notes. "On the night of the eighteenth I watched the house until just after eleven when, as the agreed signal that the family were all accounted for, the husband of the party turned out all the lamps downstairs."

Harry finds himself wondering how the fellow manages about food, or the calls of nature.

Crocker's finger inches down the page. "On the nineteenth of September at ten in the morning I observed Mrs.-the party in question-leaving the house. I knew her from a photograph given me. She had with her two children, both female, I knew she was their mother from one of them calling her Mama."

"How is this germane? I'm well aware that my daughters are the children of my wife."

"Correct, sir, but Mrs. Watson says I'm always to note down why I believe something to be a fact. Assume nothing, you see."

Harry makes himself nod.

"On that day, the nineteenth inst., I followed her to the following establishments: Gambel's, Doughty's, Lock's. I saw her purchase two children's mackintoshes, some goldfish food, and a decanter for spirits. Also she was measured for a pair of shoes."

"You can leave out her purchases too."

"Very good, sir." A hint of sullenness this time. "Though it's hard to give a full account if all these things are cut out-"

Harry drums on the table beside his untouched brandy, and wonders whether the Watsons couldn't have found him a more competent, or at least laconic, spy. They're being terribly kind, but perhaps they've exceeded their expertise. (He says they, because Mrs. Watson says we, but of course it's a linguistic fiction: the Reverend Watson is a man of straw.) "Have you done much of this sort of thing before, Crocker?"

"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."

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 silhouette 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.

Only now, leaning on the Codrington tomb around the corner from his childhood home, does it strike Harry as disturbing that he stepped into a dead boy's shoes. On what arbitrary pivots our lives turn.

The bells, calling the congregation: Harry goes into the narrow church and finds a verger to pay for a pew. The hangings are more faded and dustier than he remembers. The liturgy's familiar, and mildly comforting; he can shut his eyes and pretend he's a boy again. But the sermon text, by some perverse chance, is from Proverbs:

Strength and honour are her clothing… She looketh well to the ways of her household; and eateth not the bread of idleness. Her children arise up, and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praiseth her.

Harry tries not to listen, but the vicar's insipid pieties on the subject of marriage creep into his head. He finds himself picturing the wide-eyed, petrified face of his drowning brother. All at once Harry fears he's going to vomit, here and now in the pew.

He pushes his way out, making his excuses in a strained whisper. How coldly the parishioners of Eaton Square stare.

On the street, he's shivering; the late September breeze infiltrates his summer coat at the neck and wrists. Sweat going clammy on his forehead, and under his black beard. What have I become? A creeping, plotting, spy-hiring man. A skeletal puppet of a husband. And what if he's wrong, after all, it occurs to Harry like a knife between the ribs: what if Helen really did get that telegram the other night, but decided out of misguided politeness to stay for dessert? What if all her crimes are his diseased inventions? What if she's never been any worse than an artless, restless young woman who likes a little flattery? What kind of monster would set a deadly trap for the mother of his children?

He keeps on walking. His stomach is feeling somewhat settled by the time he turns the corner onto Eccleston Square; the pain in his head has eased.

But there's a hansom parked outside his house. The driver's leaning down to the little hatch in the roof, collecting his coins. And then the door folds back, and a blond head emerges. Unmistakable. A man who should be in Malta but somehow is here instead, on the path outside Harry's house, tucking his watch back into his pocket with easy grace. Colonel David Anderson.

I have her.

Or rather, I've lost her.

Harry's knees give; his cane scrapes across the stone. Pull yourself together, Codrington. A quick glance across the road: no Crocker painting the glossy green railings. Damn the man. Of course, it's Sunday; the painting alibi would look very suspicious, and scandalize Mrs. Hartley's neighbours. Harry's shaking so much he has to lean against the garden wall of the corner house.

As the horse moves off, Anderson stands looking up at the Codringtons' house. Harry mustn't take a single step forward. Bird's warnings ring in his ears: his only chance of doing anything useful is to do nothing. He edges back around the wall, but it only comes up to his chest. He crouches down, then realizes that makes him look like a housebreaker, so he straightens up again. Let Anderson not look my way. It's a sort of terror.

In Sir Edward Codrington's day, a gentleman in this predicament knew exactly what to do: call the cur out. It was the age of heroes, and what did it matter if a little more blood got spilled? But nowadays a duel brings the parties nothing but reproach and ridicule. Harry was born too late: this is the age of correct form and due process. This is what comes of the long peace Harry's toiled to preserve.

He'll have to stand here like some tailor's dummy while Anderson goes into the house-then wait till he comes out again, some time later. The thought of this man with Helen chokes Harry. Behind closed doors, no witnesses. Crocker, where in the devil's name have you got to? Could the spy possibly be watching from some other nook? Or has he gone off for a bag of shrimp? It occurs to Harry to grab the nearest pedestrian and demand, "Will you testify on oath that you saw that person there going into and coming out of my house?" Calm yourself, man, the servants can do that much.

A dreadful plan occurs to Harry. He'll give Anderson five minutes. Ten, let's say. How long do these things take? (Harry has never had an intrigue. His few premarital experiences were strictly commercial.) Then he'll let himself into the hall with his key, very softly, and find a maid. No, the footman; a man will be more credible in court. "Be so good as to come with me to my wife's room," he'll say, "as quietly as possible."

All this shoots through his mind like a train, in the few moments Anderson is looking up at the house. But then the golden silhouette turns, and the handsome mouth opens in a very wide smile. Or a rictus of shock?

A hearty roar: "Codrington, the very man!"

Harry jerks as if he's been shot. Anderson's walking towards the corner with his hand out; Harry lurches towards him. "Good morning to you," he manages. "I was just about to ring your bell."

"Oh yes?" Like a ventriloquist's doll. "What are you doing on these shores?"

"Ah, well, that's the nub of it. I got some leave for a rather particular purpose. This is a farewell call, I'm afraid."

Harry sucks the soft inside of his lip. "But you've only just arrived."

"Farewell to single life, I meant," says Anderson with a gulping sort of laugh.

Harry's mouth goes slack.

"Yes, I'm just down from Scotland, and dropping cards all round town to announce that my cousin Gwen's consented to make an honest man of me at last."

Could Harry have misread the whole story? Has he been so bored and dull, in the purgatory of half-pay, that he's made up nightmares to scare himself? "Well! Congratulations, old fellow," he says in a strangled voice.

"Thanks, thanks. My ship's come in, that's a fact," beams Anderson. "She's a very dear girl, and quite a beauty. She's heard all my tales, over the years; she'll be thrilled to meet you, when we come to town."

"I very much look forward to it." Harry struggles to find some harmless truism. "Marriage…" he begins.

"Nothing like it, so all the chaps tell me," supplies Anderson after a second.

"Quite so."

"Well," with a stretch and a grin, "mustn't dally. I've still got most of Belgravia to cover, and all of Mayfair."

Harry's heart starts pounding, worse than ever it did during a bombardment at sea. Liars always say too much. What gave it away was the cab: Anderson sent the cab away before walking up to the house on Eccleston Square. Who ever heard of delivering a sheaf of cards on foot, all over Belgravia and Mayfair? And on a Sunday morning too? Now Harry knows for sure. It may not count as hard proof, but it's enough to still the nagging doubts in his mind. "Oh," he says mechanically, "won't you come up for a moment?"

"No, no, I don't think so. Time's winged chariot, and all. Give my respects to Mrs. C.?" The colonel pronounces this without a quaver.

"Indeed. Dine with us this week, won't you?"

"Ah, a shame, I'll be back in Scotland."

"Of course." Harry starts up the steps to his front door. Then an idea shoots through his head like an electric shock. He turns, fumbling in one of his pockets. "I say, have a copy of my latest photograph."

"Awfully kind of you, Codrington. Now I can prepare the future Mrs. A. for your fearsome beard!"

"Have you got one on you?"

The man blinks at him. "I-yes, I believe so," he says, leafing through his pocketbook, "though it's not kind to the old Anderson chin. Here you go."

"Well done, again." Harry waves, and watches the officer walk round the corner.

Now he has a picture to give to Crocker: This is the man. The other party; paramour; co-respondent. He looks down at the matt image, grips it so hard that the serene face buckles under his thumbnail.