The Sealed Letter

Do sit down," Helen tells Few on Friday evening, leading him into the dusty drawing-room. In the ten days since the staff-all but the taciturn Mrs. Nichols-were discharged, the house has taken on a derelict air. "A sherry?" Helen asks. The formulae of politeness are stiff in her mouth. The cockatoo shrieks.

"Nothing, thank you," says Few, taking a small chair. "My family will be expecting me."

That startles Helen; the solicitor seems too much of a dried-up bachelor to have a family. "To business, then," she says, as briskly as she can manage, sitting down. "Judge Wilde: what can you tell me about him?"

Few shrugs. "He breeds roses."

Helen wonders what bearing this trait may have on her case. An intolerance for anyone who poses a threat to the laws of lineage-or a sympathy for the frail flowers of womanhood? She notices that the three silver fish are floating motionless at the top of their bowl. Mrs. Nichols must have remembered to feed the noisy birds, but not the fish.

"Mrs. Codrington? I've come in person, to give you some bad news."

"My girls?" Her voice is strangled.

"No, no. Your friend, the inaptly named Miss Faithfull," he says dryly. "She's disappeared."

Helen stares.

"Yesterday, the very afternoon my clerk attempted to serve her with the subpoena-he found that she'd gone abroad."

"I don't believe it."

"That's all her servants will say-no forwarding address. And the same goes for her employees at the press; my clerk's talked to several of the girls, as well as the men who supervise them."

Helen sets her teeth.

Few releases an old man's sigh. "I need hardly point out that without her testimony as to the attempted rape… her flight at the eleventh hour may strike the jury as giving the lie to the whole story."

Damn the woman.

"Now, the petitioner's case will take several days to present, which gives our side a little time. If you have the least notion where Miss Faithfull might be skulking, with a particular relative perhaps…"

She shakes her head.

"I thought you were very old friends."

"Well, I thought many things," hisses Helen. "I thought I knew her, and it appears I was mistaken."

"Hm," says Few. "Well. I must take my leave. I'll send over a full report on Monday evening on the first day's business…"

When she's shown him out she stands there, in the dim hall, unable to decide what to do next. Should she go to bed, in the faint hope of sleep? Ask Mrs. Nichols to send up something to eat? Sit in the dim drawing-room, contemplating the putrefying fish in their bowl?

She doesn't move. She looks out the glass panel in the front door, as if the answer she seeks might be out there on the silent pavements of Eccleston Square.

Fido, Fido, where are you?

Helen's imagination roams all over London. England. Europe. The railway's reached Nice this year. Squeezing her eyes shut, Helen pictures Fido wheezing as she walks along the Promenade des Anglais, under a hard Riviera sun.

How could you abandon me in my hour of need? The woman's only lost her nerve, Helen's sure of that. But it amounts to the same thing: betrayal. After all these years. After all we've lived through, all we've been to each other. She owes me!

It's much later, tossing around in bed, entangled in her hot nightgown, that Helen comes to a more painful conclusion.

Yes, she used Fido. She took advantage of her old friend's innocence and idealism from the start. Much as Anderson took advantage of Helen's boredom and vanity, it occurs to her now. It's the way of the world, she supposes: everyone uses everyone. The trick is to know how much a given person can bear. No doubt Fido would have stood by her side throughout this ghastly trial, if Helen hadn't pushed her a step too far by obliging her to testify about Harry's attack. My fault, my own stupid fault!

Now Helen's lost everyone. Husband, daughters, lover, friend, like sand trickling through her fingers.

Helen finds a seat near the back. She's as calm as fifteen drops of laudanum can make her. Despite the protection of her veil, her heart judders with dread that she'll be spotted and pointed out. The court's crammed with visitors, as they're officially known, though Helen finds it a curious choice of word: as if they're paying some courtesy call. Watchers might be better, carrion feeders. It seems as if everyone in London who can muster a coat and hat has been allowed in; here comes one of the under-sheriffs, finding a place for a dodgy character in a battered topper. Some of the crowd standing at the back smell so mouldy, Helen suspects they just want to get out of the autumn rain. She's never come, herself, but a couple of her acquaintances queued up last year to hear the octogenarian Viscount Palmerston defend himself against a charge of adultery with the wife of a dissolute Irishman. How irritated they were when it was announced that the Irish marriage was not legally valid, so the case was dismissed! Helen thought it an amusing anecdote, at the time.

She tries to steady herself and make some sense of what her eyes are taking in through the irksome layer of black lace covering her head. There's the judge's high, empty seat. Newspapermen are on its left, squeezed into the first of the visitors' benches. To its right, what Helen recognizes from illustrations as the witness box-as if witnesses must be caged like lions or else they'll flee. And a larger panelled enclosure where miscellaneous men are already filing in and taking their seats: they must be the jury. Some have a pompous manner, some more hangdog, some a curious combination of the two. They'll sit there for long hours, for no pay, but at least there's a thrilling case in their hands. Who are these strangers to judge whether Harry should have the right to cast me off? Three gentlemen, perhaps four, she reckons; the others bourgeois. A military fellow who smirks through a thick moustache at a lady in the audience: he just might favour Helen's side.

No sign of Anderson in the audience, of course. Off on honeymoon, or hurrying back to his regiment in Malta, little Scotch bride in tow? Will Helen's last note have given him nightmares, she wonders? It's all that's left to her to hope. How she's come to despise her persuadable heart.

Now Helen sees her solicitor plodding up the aisle. "Mr. Few," she hisses as he passes her elbow.

He peers at her, then his expression turns to a frown.

"I found I couldn't stay away."

Few tuts. "It will only upset you, and if you're recognized it'll cause talk."

Talk? Helen laughs under her breath. What else is this mob gathered for but to hear talk about the most private details of her history? "It's only your beetling brows that will make anyone give me a second glance," she tells him, almost flirtatiously. "Which is my barrister?"

"The tall gentleman at the table on the left," he says, pointing discreetly with a thumb towards the middle of the courtroom. "Hawkins is a very brilliant advocate."

The man looks suave in his wig and gloves; half Few's age, which is some comfort. The one with his head in some legal tome has a more dusty air about him, and his bands are crumpled. "Is the other…"

"Bovill, counsel for the petitioner," says Few shortly, before he moves on.

A few minutes later her husband stalks up the aisle, his huge silhouette passing within inches of Helen's skirt. She flinches, but he doesn't notice her. Insensate frog! He's looking much as he did last Wednesday outside his club, when with maddening mildness he peeled her arms away from him, holding her at a distance as one would a yowling kitten. (So all that grovelling was for nothing: Helen's jaws tighten at the memory.) Harry takes his place beside his barrister and they exchange a few words. Helen squeezes her eyes shut for a moment.

When Judge Wilde sweeps in-all jowls and bushy white eyebrows-the back doors are forced shut, and the under-sheriffs can be heard announcing "No room, no room within."

The petition's read aloud by a clerk with a nasal voice, and the audience starts to stir like a beehive. There's something intoxicating, Helen's surprised to find, about such words being released into the air. This court is the one place in England, it occurs to her-except perhaps a doctor's office-where one's encouraged to speak bluntly about the carnal.

"I wish to express my sympathy with you on what must be an uncongenial duty," Judge Wilde is saying to the jury. "The evidence which will be laid before you is extensive, and contains much that is peculiarly sordid." An anticipatory giggle from somewhere in the courtroom makes him frown. "But I trust that the members of the public permitted to observe these proceedings will refrain from loud or vulgar reactions."

When Bovill stands up to speak for her husband, Helen revises her estimate of the enemy; though the barrister's robes could do with pressing, his manner is intelligent and precise. "Some have found fault with the relative facility with which divorces can be obtained, nowadays," he begins quietly, "but when you have heard the evidence, gentlemen, you will feel no small satisfaction in releasing the petitioner, a battle-scarred servant of Her Majesty's, from the onerous chains that bind him to an immoral woman."

Helen licks her numb lips. Behind her veil, it's as if she has no face. She might have overdone her dose by a few drops.

"A wife who has been no real wife-who has neglected her household and maternal duties, thwarted and opposed her husband, and repeatedly dishonoured him with other men."

Perhaps it's the laudanum that's giving Helen this strange detachment: she listens to the harangue as if it concerns some other woman altogether. As Bovill starts recounting the admiral's distinguished early career and choice of a younger, foreign-bred bride, she can't shake off a sense of unreality; this isn't her being described, this isn't Harry, these are tiny puppets on a faraway stage. Does her husband feel the same way?

"Until some time after the birth of their two daughters, that illusory happiness was uninterrupted. If I may enter into the record a letter the respondent wrote the petitioner in April 1856, when he had received orders to proceed to the Crimea-" Bovill reads it as dryly as a laundry list.

Merely one line with everything that's dear to you, my own Harry, on this our seventh anniversary. How rare the woman is who can say she's never experienced anything but kindness from her spouse. God ever bless you and keep you! Addio alma di mia vita.

Helen

"The Italian can be translated as Goodbye, love of my life" Bovill says in an aside to the jury.

Helen has no memory of writing this, but it doesn't surprise her: is there a wife who can't drum up an affectionate note on occasion? Now she comes to think of it-yes, she must have scribbled it to smooth Harry's feathers after a petty squabble they'd had while he was packing his trunks. How strange, to see all this flotsam of their private life wash up again. She's beginning to grasp Bovill's strategy. It wasn't that the couple was incompatible from the start; no, no, it was the wife whose heart cooled while her gallant lord and master was off fighting the Russians.

Her ears prick up at Fido's name.

"The situation was exacerbated by the presence in the household of the respondent's companion, Miss Emily Faithfull, with whom Mrs. Codrington generally slept. That same Miss Faithfull who has claimed, in a bizarre and libellous affidavit appended to the respondent's countercharge, that in October 1856, the petitioner attempted her virtue. An allegation that I almost shrink from repeating," intones Bovill, "so foul it is-and so ludicrous. The very idea that a respectable gentleman would clamber into bed between his unconscious wife and her unconscious friend-a maiden of twenty-one, and, I feel obliged to add, not reputed to be of conspicuous beauty-"

This raises a few guffaws.

"-and there attempt a violation of the latter! I have just learned, and am eager to inform the court," he says with relish, "that Miss Faithfull has mysteriously absented herself and gone abroad before she could be served with a summons to testify. The gentlemen of the jury may draw the logical conclusion."

It suddenly occurs to Helen that Harry might have hired some thug to abduct Fido. She peers through the sea of heads to catch a glimpse of his. The bearded face is grim and familiar. But how could the hypothetical thug have persuaded every one of the woman's servants and employees to say she'd gone abroad? This isn't a sensation novel, she scolds herself.

"Things came to a head in the spring of 1857," Bovill goes on, "when Mrs. Codrington took the extraordinary step of positively declining ever again to enter the petitioner's bed. From that time forward, if the court will pardon my frankness, all conjugal intercourse was at an end." He pauses to underline the gravity.

The story's convincing, Helen grants the barrister that; it has a simple thrust to it, like a sermon. The truth is more bitty, harder to explain. She feels a sudden temptation to stand up and say, There was no key in my door. Don't tell me he was burning for me, because I won't believe it.

"The respondent made a wild demand for a separation on grounds of incompatibility-though there are of course no such grounds in British law," Bovill adds. "The petitioner very correctly invited his wife's parents, and his own brother, General Codrington, to mediate. The conclusion was that the respondent agreed to resume at least the appearance of married life."

The house was in chaos, Helen remembers. Quarrels in corners, scenes in the hall, lukewarm soup… One of the girls hurled a wooden block through a stained glass window.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"In the cabin."

"Si."

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

"Yes, sir."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Helen rolls her eyes; these are merely word games.

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

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

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

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

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

"And remain there?" Bovill prompts.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"When was this?"

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

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

"And what did you do?" Bovill asks.

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

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

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

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

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

"For instance?"

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

Actually, Helen had forgotten that piece of insolence.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"How so?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I suppose not."

"A simple no will suffice."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Did Helen really say that? She might have done.

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

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

"She was wearing what, a nightgown?"

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

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

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

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

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

"Mildmay?"

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

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

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

"What was she wearing, at that hour?"

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

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

"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.

Could she possibly believe her own rigmarole? Helen wonders. Memory is unreliable, especially as one ages. Could it be that Emily Watson mistakes these grand scenes for how it was? No, the explanation must be simpler: a courtroom turns nobodies to tyrants for an hour, giving them a stage on which to spin their most inventive lies.

Mrs. Watson rushes on. "I made her promise to break off this unholy connection with Mildmay, and send back the rings and lockets he'd given her. Then the tea was ready and we went down," she finishes, anticlimactically.

Bovill seems at a loss as to what to ask his witness, for a moment. "Did you tell Reverend Watson about her confession?"

"Not at the time, because his doctor had instructed me to shield him from anything conducive to anxiety. Of course this made my trial all the heavier." She puts her handkerchief to her eye.

"Did she, to your knowledge, return Mildmay's gifts?"

"I thought she had," says Mrs. Watson grimly, "but she'd only locked them up in her bureau. Gradually, over the months that followed, little hints told me that she'd not broken off her intrigue with him at all!"

"And you quarrelled?"

Again, Mrs. Watson squirms at the word. "Not openly. Excessive loyalty is my weakness."

Helen wants to take her by the shoulders and shake her till something cracks.

"But I had withdrawn my heart from her, in private," Mrs. Watson assures Bovill. "We had one painful discussion, early the following year. I heard a rumour that she'd been calling Admiral Codrington's visits to my house too frequent; claiming there was an undue intimacy between us. Well, I broached the subject candidly; I reminded her that my friendship with the admiral had been formed with her full compliance and for her good. She accused me of having a Jesuitical influence over her children, of attempting to usurp her position as mother and as wife!"

Yes, Helen does remember that row; she allows herself a narrow smile.

"I asked her to deny the rumour in writing," says Mrs. Watson, "but she retorted that an honest woman didn't need a ticket of virtue! And when I made a delicate allusion to her own tarnished honour, she began to shriek in a frenzy: 'Send for my husband! You may as well tell him my secret and ruin me at once!' Then she flung herself on her knees and begged me to forgive her. I parted the hair on her brow and said, 'Oh Helen, darling, is this my return for all my love to you?'"

Helen is bewildered by this woman's gall; stray facts and purest fiction are mixed fluently in every sentence. What she's describing is their real, prickly friendship, but as if recalled in a delirium. Something occurs to Helen now: I'm the most exciting thing that's ever happened to her.

Bovill has been taking rapid notes with a scratchy pen. Now he peers at them. "Did the respondent ever write this letter you asked for-the letter denying she'd meant to accuse you and her husband of undue intimacy?"

Complacent: "She did, and I showed it to several acquaintances, to clear my name in Valetta before I left."

"The following question is of vital importance, Mrs. Watson." He gives her a hard look. "Before you and your husband departed from Malta in July 1862, did you ever breathe a word to Admiral Codrington of his wife's secret?"

"I did not."

"Or afterwards, in correspondence? Not even a hint, to put him on his guard?"

Go on, make up some scene in which you played the wise sybil, Helen urges her silently. Even a little hint could prove him guilty of condonation…

"Not one."

Unfortunately, she's not a fool.

The older woman's cheekbones are suddenly mottled with scarlet. "Some will blame me for this omission, though I know the admiral does not," she adds, with a grateful nod towards Harry. "I considered my silence a sacrifice on the altar of a dead friendship. My motive was womanly compassion."

As Bovill thanks his witness, and reminds her to stay in the box for cross-examination, Helen remembers something she's been trying to keep in the very back of her mind all day: this woman has my children.

Her own barrister, Hawkins, has been in intense, whispered discussions with Few. He rises now, unfolding his slim length, and glides towards the witness.

Save me, Helen tells him silently; do your worst.

"Now, Mrs. Watson," begins Hawkins, "from the time when the respondent ceased to accompany the petitioner to hear your husband's sermons, his Sunday visits to your home were of necessity paid alone. I must ask whether, from first to last, he ever took any liberty with you, or did or said anything inconsistent with your position as a married lady?"

An intake of breath. "Never."

Bovill jumps up. "My Lord, does my learned friend dare to imply what I think he is implying?"

"Only what is in the countercharge," says Hawkins mildly, "that the petitioner neglected his wife's company for that of another man's wife."

"The wording is ambiguous," protests Bovill, "and calculated to cause obscure damage to an impeccable lady's reputation."

Helen smiles, behind the clammy lace.

"I'm happy to let this point drop, if it causes so much offence, and move on," says Hawkins. "Though I must confess I hardly know where to begin, in responding to this impeccable lady's almost… unbelievable testimony."

Emily Watson bristles visibly.

"To take just one instance. This lane behind your house in Malta, madam-are there houses on this lane?" asks Hawkins. "There are."

"And people continually passing by?"

"I don't know about that."

"What puzzles me is, how could any two persons commit the act in question in such a lane undisturbed, around eight o'clock in the evening?"

A small shrug. "I gave it verbatim, as my friend-as was-confessed it." Hawkins turns towards the jury. "What my client is barred from telling you herself, gentlemen, is that Mrs. Watson's statement is utterly false." He's allowed his voice to heat up now. "This impeccable lady has told us of a private dialogue between herself and the respondent-a confession, so-called-knowing full well that the mouth of the respondent is sealed."

Judge Wilde, nodding, clears his throat with a roar. "This is one instance of the many evils that flow from forbidding the parties in a divorce case to testify-a flaw in British law which I hope one day to see reformed."

"An admirable aim, my Lord," says Hawkins, with a broad smile. Then his mouth turns hard again as he glances at his notes, and looks up at Mrs. Watson. "You claim that you had 'withdrawn your heart' from the respondent by the early months of 1862, because by then you thought her engaged in a lasting intrigue with Lieutenant Mildmay. Yet I have here a letter dated June the fifteenth, a full six months after the alleged confession. Is this your hand?"

Fumbling, she puts her glasses on to look at it. "I believe so."

"I will now read a passage to the court."

My dearest Helen,

I am sorry you should feel annoyed with me on account of my leaving hurriedly the other day. Since I am customarily admitted to your room at all times, your dressing seemed no reason for not seeing me. But enough of this; life is too short to spend in vain squabbles, and true friends are too rare to lose. Let this be but an April shower, the sun must now shine again.

Believe me always

lovingly yours,

Emily Watson

The witness sucks her lips.

"Would you not agree that this letter implies an ongoing intercourse of the most cordial kind?"

Her eyes flick between the judge and jury. "The outward skin of that intimacy survived," she says, stammering, "even when it was dead within."

"The rankest hypocrisy!"

"I was anxious not to distress the admiral by any open scandal-"

Hawkins narrows his eyes. "Logic will suggest to the gentlemen of the jury that either you were lying in this letter, with its warm declarations of sisterly love, or that you're lying now: that there was no breach, because you did not in 1862 believe the woman you addressed so dotingly to be adulterous, since the alleged confession never took place."

"Not so, not so." Mrs. Watson takes a drink of water, swallows as if it's ground glass.

Hawkins leaps on. "How is it, I wonder, that you can recall with such precision the date of the alleged confession?"

"I noted it down in my memorandum book."

His slim eyebrows shoot up. "With what intention?"

"None. I hardly know. On a sort of impulse-"

"An impulse, a plan, a plot, in fact, someday to destroy your dearest Helen's marriage?"

Bovill stumbles to his feet. "I object, my Lord, in the strongest-"

"I should be happy to rephrase that," concedes Hawkins. "Mrs. Watson, were you anticipating that you would one day give evidence against her in a divorce case?"

"No!"

"A divorce case, in fact, of which you are the origin, the prime mover. It was you, was it not, a clergyman's wife," Hawkins barks before she can answer, "who when the petitioner called on you last month, lost not a moment in encouraging his jealous imaginings. Far from attempting to pour Christian unction on the troubled waters of that marriage, you immediately hired a spy for the purposes of surveillance on his wife. Pretty sharp work, if I may say so!"

"The admiral was in great distress," Mrs. Watson protests.

"So you found him a solicitor for the purpose of obtaining a divorce-in direct defiance of the teachings of your husband's church, by the way. You egged him on to cast off a lady you'd always envied for her personal charms, her lovely children, her lofty position in Maltese society. A lady on whom you'd privately vowed to have vengeance, ever since she'd complained of your fawning over her husband."

"Come, come," begins Bovill, half-rising.

But Hawkins has already spun to address the jury. "It will be for you, gentlemen, to decide where there is any grain of truth in all this tarradiddle.

Whether this false friend turned open enemy can be trusted to report on private conversations with the respondent, who, as Mrs. Watson knows, is barred from defending herself. Whether perhaps some talk on the subject of Lieutenant Mildmay's unreciprocated infatuation with the respondent did pass between the two ladies, but Mrs. Watson has distorted and exaggerated it. Or whether in fact the tale of the stained dress and the confession, brought out today like a rabbit from a hat, is the most egregious coup de théâtre."

Strangely enough, Helen's enjoying herself.

"I am not well," whimpers Mrs. Watson. "May I be granted a rest?"

"Hm. You were inexhaustible in answering my learned friend's questions," remarks Hawkins. "But I have just one more."

"Will you carry on?" Judge Wilde asks her.

"If I must."

"On September the twenty-fifth of this year, the day the admiral deserted his wife and home, did you take away their two daughters?"

"He was gracious enough to consign them to my care," Mrs. Watson says faintly. "Mine and my husband's."

"And have these girls-at the tender ages of eleven and twelve-been allowed to meet, correspond with, or even glimpse their mother since that date?"

"They have not."

She steps down, looking older.

Was that antidote enough to the woman's poison? Helen wonders. Hawkins is a superb performer, but the story of the so-called confession still seems to linger on the courtroom's stifling air. It will be a sad twist if what damns Helen is not the truth but these lies.

She's suddenly bone-tired. She barely listens as Bovill continues his narrative: the departure of the Watsons, the transfer of the respondent's affections from Mildmay to Anderson, then Admiral Codrington's receiving orders to return to England in the summer of 1864, and Colonel Anderson's fortuitously coincidental request for home leave. She only comes to attention when Bovill remarks, "Her old friend Miss Faithfull, as we will prove, aided and abetted the sordid affair."

Fido, Fido, Helen thinks giddily, you may run to the ends of the earth but you can't escape your share of punishment.

Bovill's holding up a volume that Helen recognizes as her leather-bound appointments book.

Hawkins stands up to protest: "That item was seized in the respondent's absence, and by force."

"Need I remind my learned friend that on the respondent's wedding day, she gave up her legal identity, including rights of property?"

He purses his lips. "Wives have always been allowed to hold certain personal possessions, of no great monetary value."

"My Lord," Bovill appeals, "the book was found within a cherry-wood writing desk, which, as part of the house's furnishings, can be considered the chattels of the petitioner."

Judge Wilde nods. He just wants to hear what's in it, Helen realizes. All these distinguished men, agog like boys outside a circus tent.

Bovill reads various short entries, giving them a grim emphasis. "Scene with H, put a veto on my going out. 'H' can be none other than the petitioner, Admiral Henry Codrington," he remarks. "To V. P. This can be taken to refer to the Victoria Press, the place of business of Miss Faithfull on Great Coram Street. To T. S., And. there, unsatisfactory. Which clearly stands for: a visit to Miss Faithfull's residence at Taviton Street-Colonel Anderson there-and an unsatisfactory meeting."

Helen curses herself for making these briefjottings.

"Thus we see that the respondent's missing witness-Miss Emily Faithfull-has played a shameful role in the Anderson intrigue, as go-between, accessory, in short as panderess!"

The word thrills the crowd.

Hawkins stands up to make a token protest about initials proving nothing. Helen rests her veiled, hot face on her hand.

"Now we come to a vital clue on September the twenty-first," Bovill goes on. "E. F. has letter from Scotland. Miserable night. While the misery of the respondent's night might of course have been caused by some minor ailment," he concedes, turning sardonic, "I think it more likely that this refers to the news of Anderson's engagement, passed on by their guilty abettor, Miss Faithfull."

A new witness is stepping into the box, a stranger with spotty cheeks. "John Crocker," he answers nervously. "Cabman at Southampton Mews."

"But on this occasion, weren't you employed to make private enquiries?"

"Yes, sir, I watched Mrs. Codrington from the eighteenth till the twenty-fourth of September," he says, checking his little memorandum book.

So Harry did set a spy on her. Who knew the old man had so much go in him? Helen listens to the tedious detailing of Crocker's long days outside the house, waiting for her to show herself, the trips to Whiteley's on which he trailed her. As if I were some princess.

Bovill leads Crocker on to Monday the twenty-fourth.

"She came out of her house alone, in a hurry, and took a cab to Number 24, Pall Mall. Or rather, the cab drew up outside Number 28, but she sent the driver to knock on the door of Number 24" says Crocker scrupulously. "A gentleman with blond whiskers came out and got into the cab with her. As I was standing some thirty yards down the street, I didn't see his face well enough to identify him, but his colouring and regimentals matched that of the photograph of Colonel Anderson supplied to me by the petitioner the previous day. I then followed their cab to the Grosvenor Hotel, where they went inside."

Helen closes her eyes, remembering the shabby room, the harshness of cigarette smoke in her throat. One never knows, at the time, that this is the last time.

"I waited till about midnight, when the two emerged and took a cab to Eccleston Square. Mrs. Codrington alighted from it about four doors from her house, then walked the rest of the way."

I'm done for. Helen subsides a little on her bench. There's nothing theatrical about this fellow's testimony, nothing that rings false. It's as plain as day.

Hawkins cross-examines, but to little purpose. He sneeringly enquires the rate of pay for spy-work-nine shillings a day, it emerges, rather less than Helen would have thought-and asks about the man's long-standing family connection with Mrs. Watson.

"Before the night of the hotel, I did offer to resign," Crocker volunteers. "It seemed low to spy on a lady when she wasn't up to any mischief that I could see. But Mrs. Watson kept assuring me it was an honourable business, because the lady was no better than she should be."

Sporadic laughter from the crowd.

"As so often occurs," Hawkins tells the jury with majestic scorn, "a detective is brought in to 'discover' only what will confirm the prejudice of his paymasters."

Yes, yes, thinks Helen, but this doesn't make the Grosvenor Hotel go away. She wonders, now, if she'd been just a little more careful, a little more discreet, could she have saved herself even on the brink of disaster? She seems to have acted like a boy pushing his tin soldier inch by inch towards the edge of the table, just to see what will happen.

It's Bovill's turn again. "I would like to enter into evidence something found with the appointment book," he says, almost pleasurably. "A folded strip of paper containing what have been identified as fragments of moss and heather, marked Yours ever, A."

Helen's veil is suddenly sticking to her wet face.

"While, as my learned friend has been at some pains to emphasize, initials are subject to interpretation, I would put it to the gentlemen of the jury that in this particular case, A. can only mean the co-respondent, Colonel David Anderson."

She heaves silently. Fragments of moss and heather. From that hill above Valetta, that afternoon kissing in the bushes. The fragments are hers, hers alone, nobody's but hers. And yet they'll be filed away somewhere in the bowels of this medieval building, by faceless men, and she'll never get them back.

"And last but by no means least," says Bovill, "a letter-perhaps a draft or copy-found in the respondent's desk, which will remove any remaining doubts as to the nature of the relations between the respondent and the co-respondent."

People sit up straight, shush each other as Bovill starts to read.

Sunday, September 23

It has taken me two days to compose this letter.

Surely, before you formed an engagement you were bound in all honour to tell me of the changed state of your heart…

As he recites her words with monkish precision, Helen tries to shut her ears. She's on the hillside above the harbour, sun warming the heather and moss under her skirts, salty breeze in her hair.

"Although the letter contains no names, nor even initials," concludes Bovill, "to men of the world such as yourselves, gentlemen of the jury, it will clarify that for two years, Mrs. Codrington and Colonel Anderson have been on terms of declared, illicit affection. And although the letter contains no evidence of carnal actions, as such, you will bear in mind that when a married woman so abjectly surrenders her heart, it is a very short step indeed to the surrender of her person."

A skinny man hops up and turns out to be Dr. Swabey, for the corespondent. Helen's neck prickles. "My Lord, I submit that this letter does in no wise tell against my client, Colonel Anderson," he says squeakily. "No proof has been offered that it was written to, posted to, or received by him, or that it has any bearing on his character at all."

A wintry smile from Judge Wilde. "The learned counsel is quite right in point of law, but not in point of common sense. The jury are free to interpret the letter in such a way as to conclude that Mrs. Codrington committed adultery with your client."

Swabey's mouth opens and shuts. "Even if they do," he maintains, "my duty is to create a reasonable doubt as to whether my client committed adultery with Mrs. Codrington."

A gale of laughter goes up, and Swabey's frown deepens.

"Very well, Doctor," says the judge, deadpan. "Gentlemen of the jury, if you find it plausible that a woman may have carnal relations with a man without him having such relations with her, then I direct you, in considering Colonel Anderson's guilt or otherwise, not to take this letter into consideration."

More hilarity, which the men of law pretend to ignore.

Few comes to her at Eccleston Square in the evening.

"I do hope you and Mr. Hawkins realized that Mrs. Watson's testimony was a heap of rubbish?" she demands.

The old man sighs. "Many of her stories did have the ring of yellow-jacket fiction, but they'll still have had their effect on the jury. As it happens, what interested Hawkins most was her emphasis on your powers of imagination."

Helen is open-mouthed. "You mean-when the creature claimed I deluded myself into thinking that every man I met was in love with me?"

"Mmm. Hawkins believes this could work to your advantage, if he were to reshape your defence somewhat along those lines."

Helen lets herself lean back into the sofa's padded embrace. "I'm entirely bewildered."

"Please don't take offence, Mrs. Codrington. Desperate times, desperate measures, eh?"

She stares him down.

"Hawkins says, what if he were to present you as an unhappy woman whose fancy has a tendency to run away with her? A woman who in fact has never gone further than the mildest coquetting, but who in her dreams is entangled in the most lurid intrigues?"

"Few, this is bilge, and offensive to boot."

The elderly solicitor holds up his hand. "Of course, but have the goodness to hear me out. In this way your gaddings about in Malta, your so-called confession to Mrs. Watson, even your appointments book and your letter to Anderson could all be explained away as mere… fantasy."

"Madness," she corrects him.

"There's a recent precedent," he tells her with dry enthusiasm. "A Mrs. Robinson: her husband's counsel produced a very frank diary in which she recorded her adultery with a hydropathic physician-but her side claimed that she'd made it all up, being afflicted with erotomania brought on by measures to prevent conception! The jurymen preferred to believe her unbalanced rather than immoral, so Mr. Robinson was denied his divorce."

"What cretins!"

Few shrugs. "Englishmen are reluctant to knock ladies off their pedestals."

"If Hawkins proves me mentally unhinged," Helen snaps, "am I right in thinking my husband could have me confined in a private asylum for the rest of my days?"

"Oh, come, the chance of such an eventuality-"

"Why risk it? And why humiliate me still further?" The words burst out of her. "I'd rather every paper in the country called me a harlot than a pathetic lunatic who only imagines that men desire her."

The look Few gives her is long and chilly. "That's your prerogative, Mrs. Codrington."

"Besides, I was under the impression that in order to block this divorce, you don't need to prove that I'm blameless, but only that Harry's somehow culpable."

"That's true."

"Well, then!"

"That's become exceedingly difficult in the absence of our chief witness." Few tugs at his collar. "I wish you'd never brought your unreliable friend to my office in the first place."

"Believe me," growls Helen, "I feel the same way."

"By the by. A solicitor of my acquaintance has heard a rumour that Miss Faithfull's still in London."

She blinks at him.

"In male disguise, if you can believe it."

"I can't," says Helen with disdain. That's just the kind of thing they like to invent about strong-minded women. Going uncorseted is one thing, but trousers? "For all her strong views on certain subjects, Mr. Few, she's an utterly conventional woman."

After the solicitor has left, Helen sits up by the dying fire, eating some old ham she found in the pantry. (Mrs. Nichols, unsurprisingly, has not returned to the house after her performance in court, and her room is bare.) Tomorrow, Helen supposes, she'll have to start sending a corner boy to fetch her meals from an inn. And do something with the rotting silver fish in the bowl. How fast a life comes undone. When the trial is over she must hire a new maid-of-all-work, but more urgently, she must get hold of some clean linen. How has she been reduced to this?

She goes up to bed, and sits reading The Small House at Allingham to bore herself to sleep.