The Sealed Letter

That Monday evening, Harry and William stand smoking in an alley outside Bird's chambers, as the sun's yolk trickles down between the roofs of Gray's Inn. Harry sucks the harsh tobacco deep into his lungs. "How the years fall away."

"Hm?"

"When we were boys. You taught me how to fill a pipe when I was just eleven, I believe. Mama was incensed."

His brother grins. "Cigarettes are so much easier."

"Oh Will," says Harry, releasing a long plume of smoke, "this has been the longest day of my fifty-six years."

"I dare say it went well, though, as such things are reckoned?"

"Well, yes, inasmuch as the most appalling proofs of my cuckoldry were exposed to the public view," says Harry grimly. Cuckoldry's an old-fashioned word; what name should his shame go by, nowadays? "That's the perversity of the process," he goes on. "To be quit of Helen, I'm obliged to offer myself as a laughing stock to every newspaper reader in Britain."

William claps him on the shoulder. "When a tar needs an amputation, what does the surgeon tell him?"

"Sharp and sore's soonest 'oer," quotes Harry, managing a half-grin. They smoke on in silence. "I'm awfully grateful you could be here," he remarks.

William waves that away. "You've had to rely on strangers too much already."

Harry registers the implicit criticism.

"By the way. This Mrs. Watson of yours. Do you place full credit in her stories?"

"What, the dress, and the confession, and all that weeping at each other's feet?" Harry scratches his whiskers. "I don't-not Helen's style-and I have the distinct impression Bird and Bovill don't either."

"Well, perhaps the good lady was stretching a point," murmurs William. "Fibbing in the service of a greater truth, as it were. Is she, ah, happy in her home?"

Harry's eyebrows contract. "Perfectly."

"Oh, I'm not insinuating anything on your side, dear fellow," says William with a chuckle. "It's just that she seems very warm in your defence. These older, childless females…"

"She lacks occupation, that's all; she's taken me up as a cause."

"Better than joining that crew on Langham Place, I suppose! They don't seem to grasp that women have a business already: marriage. Spinsters should be considered as so many bankrupts who've failed at it," remarks William.

The very thought of Fido Faithfull makes Harry's heartburn flare up. "Tomorrow Bovill's main task is to clear my name of the charge of rape." He speaks the word aloud to try to harden his ears to it. "How long is this whole wretched business going to drag on?"

"Difficult to say." William speaks lightly, as if speculating about a cricket match. "The lower orders have a custom known as besom divorce, I believe. Delightfully simple: if you don't like each other, after a year, you simply set a broom aslant in your door, then jump backwards over it."

Harry manages a smile.

"But I dare say court cases are always long in proportion to the names involved."

"The names?" repeats Harry, with a huge yawn. Funny how tiring it is to sit as still as a gargoyle all day in a crowded room.

"Well, if you were a brickie who'd staved his wife's head in, say, they'd have found you guilty in half an hour." William chuckles. "And remember these lawmen charge by the day: they'll spin it out as long as your pocketbook will bear."

Yes, of course; until the moment the decree absolute is in his hands, Harry's liable for every penny his wife spends, whether on bonbons or on dresses (stained, about the size of the upper phalange of a finger) or on defaming her husband. Harry's funding every word spoken in court, on both sides; it's like some absurd command performance. But if he wins, at least Helen will become liable for the fees of her expensive lawyers…

"Actually," remarks William, "what struck me today wasn't so much the long-windedness, as the dirty-mindedness. All those over-educated fellows vying with each other to invent euphemisms for the act in question."

Harry nods.

"Did you ever go to the Judge and Jury, opposite Covent Garden?"

"What is it, an inn?"

"A sort of mock court," William tells him, "where you're entertained with some gross indecencies over your cigar and rum."

Harry fixes him with a look. "Can you imagine me in such an establishment?"

William grins. "I suppose not, Brother Temperance."

"Besides, on today's evidence, the institution hardly needs to be parodied," he mutters.

They smoke for another minute in silence, then go into the chambers.

Bird looks up to acknowledge each of them with a nod.

Bovill is in full flow. "I still believe she could be charged with contempt, as she so clearly decamped in order to evade the subpoena."

"But what I can't follow-forgive my stupidity, gentlemen," says Mrs. Watson, "is why we need to find the creature at all. Shouldn't we rather rejoice that her failure to testify to those audacious slurs on the admiral's character proves her a coward as well as a liar?"

The solicitor sighs, absent-mindedly crumpling his lapel. "Any jury is a microcosm of the public, madam, and the public is not logical. Rumours and allegations linger like bad odours."

"Or rather," contributes Bovill, "they stick like mud in a carpet, until they're beaten out!"

"There's a wild one going round at the Rag Club," mentions William, "that my brother's smuggled this Faithfull woman out of the country-or worse."

Harry stares at him, injured that he hasn't heard this before.

Bird shakes his head. "The paradox is that unless Mrs. Codrington's counsel produce their missing witness, we can't actually disprove her affidavit."

"It's patently absurd," Harry bursts out. "If you knew Miss Faithfull-she's simply not the kind of woman one would dream-" Remembering the presence of Mrs. Watson, who's another of those women whom no man would attempt to molest, he decides to drop that line of argument. "I swear, I never went into that room when my wife and Miss Faithfull were sleeping there, except on a couple of occasions, to see to the fire."

"What on earth for?"

All heads turn to the general.

"I mean to say," says William, addressing his brother, "that's the maid's job, isn't it?"

Harry feels his cheeks heat up. "I had acceded to separate rooms, at Helen's request, but I didn't take that to mean I wasn't allowed to address a few remarks to her, on domestic affairs."

"Ah, so the fire was an excuse," Bird murmurs.

"I might have sat on the edge of their bed once or twice, in the course of conversation," snaps Harry. "But I defy Fido-Miss Faithfull," he corrects himself awkwardly, "to look me in the eye and say I ever tried to lay a hand on her."

"Could she have formed a personal grudge against you, Admiral?" asks Bovill.

"On what basis? When she was living with our family, I considered her a friend." It sounds weak, to his own ears; yet again, he's coming across as an idiot.

"Ah, but she was little more than a girl in those days," remarks Bovill. "Perhaps, now that she's become a strong-minded reformeress, she disapproves of our sex on principle?"

"Gentlemen, forgive my interrupting, but I believe you're in danger of overlooking the obvious," says Mrs. Watson. "From all I've heard, and my own encounter with this person, she is Mrs. Codrington's gull. Her tool. Perhaps the appalling story of the, ah, attempt, is entirely your wife's invention, Admiral, and Miss Faithfull only parrots it."

Harry stares at her.

"None knows better than I, after all," says Mrs. Watson, eyes on the carpet, "how Helen can take advantage of the strongest sentiments of female friendship."

"I believe she's hit on the truth," Harry murmurs to his brother.

"Well, whatever the woman's convoluted motives," says Bovill irritably, "if we can only find her and drag her into the witness box, I'll make mincemeat of her."

"We don't need an address to send her a message; wherever she may be, she'll be reading the English papers," observes the solicitor. "Is there anything we could offer her by way of a lure?" After a second, "Or a threat?"

"I've already called her a panderess," Bovill points out. "What arrows are left in our quiver?"

"Apprentices beaten and starved, at this famous press of hers?" suggests William facetiously. "Men-friends? Some by-blow, fostered back in Surrey?-begging your pardon, Mrs. Watson."

"No need," she murmurs. "I hardly know how to put this, gentlemen, but-"

"Go on," Bird tells her.

Mrs. Watson puts her hand to her cheek. "First I must exonerate myself from any imputation of coarseness… Due to pastoral duties and extensive travel, I have more experience of the underbelly of society than perhaps a gentlewoman ought."

"Speak freely, do," says Harry, hiding his irritation.

"Well. Let me just intimate," looking down at her hands, "that a sinister construction could be put on the behaviour of a woman who, night after night, for months, usurps a husband's place in his wife's bed."

Nobody says a word. Harry feels a painful jab in his chest. He takes a breath. "You don't mean-"

Mrs. Watson's fingers are over her face. "Don't make me say a word more."

It's his brother who breaks the silence. "By Jove, you're on to something, Mrs. Watson. That might just fly."

Bovill is nodding eagerly. "I could certainly drop a few hints along those lines, intimating that I'll shout it to the four winds if Miss Faithfull doesn't come to court at once."

"This is ridiculous," says Harry, almost to himself.

"The knack will be, to say it without saying it; anything explicit could rebound in our faces," the barrister goes on. "Admiral, are you by any chance familiar with the story of 'The Purloined Letter'?"

Harry scowls at him. "I'm not a lover of fiction."

"Very instructive, Mr. Poe's stories, from the legal point of view. A government minister, aiming to gain power over a certain royal personage, has stolen a letter from her," Bovill tells them all. "The thing is, he doesn't show it to her husband and destroy her honour, because his-the minister's-power lies in the possession and not the use of the letter-rather, in its permanent potential for use."

"But I never thought of such bizarre possibilities." The words explode from Harry. "Are we to believe, or to expect an Englishjury to believe, that as well as indulging in relations with two different men, my wife would-" His throat locks.

William shrugs. "Really bad women can move from vice to vice, like butterflies in a flowerbed."

"She was brought up in India and Italy," Bird points out. He pats Harry's wrist. "But don't torment yourself, Admiral: no one in this room is claiming that any such debaucheries really occurred."

His chest refuses to unknot.

"Why don't you let Bovill hint tomorrow that you might have had such suspicions-so the Wednesday newspapers, by repeating it, will scare Miss Faithfull into taking the first boat back to London to defend herself?"

There's to be no end to the shame poured on Harry's head, then; no end to the lewd laughter prompted by the name Codrington, which his ancestors-all descended from a spear-carrier of Henry the Fifth's-passed down to him unstained. When Sir Edward was accused of exceeding his orders in starting the battle of Navarino, Harry remembers, he'd sat down calmly to draw up a narrative of proceedings that would clear his name. The truth was shield enough for all those bluff generations. Sir Edward's son has the misfortune to live in modern times, when, it seems, it takes lies to set one free.

After a long moment, he nods. "If you all think it worth trying."

"Very good," says the solicitor soothingly.

Bovill is musing aloud. "If someone had only written something down at the time Miss Faithfull was living at Eccleston Square… It wouldn't even need to be read aloud: the very fact of such suspicions having been consigned to paper would tell against her. I don't suppose you kept a diary, Admiral?" he asks in a curious tone, head on one side.

"I never have, apart from a ship's log."

"Or a letter to some trusted associate on the subject of your wife and her bosom friend?" suggests Mrs. Watson. "If you'd even confided your fears in me, in Malta…"

"You can't testify twice, madam," Bird reminds her quietly.

Harry's finally catching on. He knows what answer the faces turned towards him require. "Well, I dare say it's possible I did jot something down at the time, and have forgotten. I could look through my papers," he concedes, his stomach leaden.

"Anything at all," says Bird. "A brief memorandum, for instance, signed and dated and sealed… I'm sure it would have been sealed, as you wouldn't have wanted a servant to read it."

"Of course, the admiral might very properly have consigned such a document to the trusted hands of, say, his brother," says Bovill with a twinkle.

"Mm, that would be much the best," says Bird, "as the general, unlike the admiral, could appear as a witness and testify to the circumstances of its composition."

"Certainly," says William.

"If I wrote anything down, I very well might have given such a thing to my brother," says Harry woodenly.

Mrs. Watson rewards him with a dazzling smile.

In his bedroom at the Rag Club, Harry takes a few pages of notepaper from the back of his writing box. "These are rather yellow. Could they pass for seven years old?"

"They say Vice-Admiral Henry J. Codrington, though," William points out. "You were only a captain in '57, weren't you?"

Harry grunts at his own stupidity and screws up the pages.

"Plain paper will do. Here's some in the drawer."

To put the task off for a moment, Harry pours more brandy for his brother.

"Have another tot yourself, won't you?"

He shakes his head. "It doesn't suit my constitution. Clouds my head." Silence fills the room, like stale air. "I don't like dragging you into this,Will…"

"Stuff and nonsense. Besides," his brother adds, pragmatic, "I won't be testifying to anything but the fact of receiving a sealed envelope from your hands, which will be perfectly true."

"The perjury's all mine, then," says Harry grimly.

"Buck up. You won't be in the witness box. Just write this memorandum whatsit, and Bovill will see to the rest."

"These sleights of hand revolt me. What Father would have thought-" Harry breaks off, his voice shaking.

"Oh, to the devil with our sainted father." William's red about the cheekbones; it must be the brandy. "You've always carried him about like some idol, a figure of awe and reproach. But to my mind, his career would have benefitted from a sprinkling of diplomacy."

"You can spout such things-his heir, his favourite?"

"That old theme?" His brother rolls his eyes. "I tell you, he loved us all the same. The morning he got your letter after Acre, he wept, Jane says, wept into his porridge, out of pride in his young chip-off-the-old-block. I'm sure he's looking down from a better place, now, hoping you win your divorce, even at the cost of a little sleight of hand."

Harry sits, mulling all this over, while William drains his glass. Could his brother be right? He doubts it; his conscience is in a queasy state.

He takes a piece of plain stationery and smooths it out on the desk. "Something we hadn't considered yet," he murmurs. "Will an English jury understand a glancing allusion to this sort of vice?"

"Oh, the more up-to-snuff men will be delighted to explain it to the others, when they're locked up in their room," says William with a snort of amusement. "Anyone who's read Baudelaire, or-what's that old poem about the two lords' wives that still goes the rounds? They ask no joys beyond each other's smock…"

Harry winces, and returns his gaze to the blank page. "It's all nonsense, though."

"No doubt," William assures him. "My own dear wife insists on sleeping with her friends, whenever they visit."

"What I mean is, Fido-the woman-did stir up some trouble at one time, took Helen's side. I'd go so far as alienation of affections, even, if we're to use legal jargon," Harry makes himself say. This is like picking a scab, but he can't stop. "These all-engrossing passions of theirs can be damned inconvenient, can even come between man and wife, I don't deny that. But to go beyond, and fancy a monster behind every bush-"

"Yes, yes. It's after midnight," William reminds him, tapping the page.

"I'll begin in a moment." He stares at the paper, the subtle nap of it. "I know I've been mistaken before. After all, I thought Helen quite used up by motherhood," he says, hot-faced. "She seemed-to be frank, Will, she was as unresponsive to me as a dead fish."

A grimace from his brother.

"I assumed that all she wanted from men was flattery-and how wrong I was! Which makes me wonder, now, if it's theoretically-if it's within the realm of possibility that I might have been so blind as to miss other horrors going on under my very nose, in the very next room…"

"Enough! You may sit up all night trying to spook yourself," says William, standing up and stretching, "but I want my bed."

Harry stares at the page till his eyes unfocus. "What shall I put?"

"Bovill says in all likelihood it won't even be read," William tells him. "Just make a start and some suitably stern expressions will come to you. Goodnight."

Harry puts the pen down and wipes his sweating hands.

"What's the matter now?"

"It's my first attempt at forgery, after all," he says, trying for a jocular tone.

"It's not forgery when you're signing your own name," William tells him, making for the door.

On the second day of the petitioner's case, Bovill wears an air of mild cheer. "I will now dispose of the respondent's countercharges-libels, rather-against the good name of the petitioner. Specifically, her claim that if the adultery occurred, her husband conduced to it by neglect and cruelty. Now, a foreigner with a less than perfect grasp of the subtleties of British law might call this a strange defence from a woman who maintains her complete innocence." His tone's neutral, but he waits for the laugh. "But leaving that rather obvious point aside, let us consider how the petitioner is said to have mistreated his wife so badly that she was obliged to flee into another gentleman's arms. Oh, excuse me," he tells the jury, "I mean, of course, into the arms of not less than two other gentlemen."

This causes waves of mirth.

Harry's eyelids keep sagging. How embarrassing it would be if he were to doze off during proceedings of such importance to him. But he barely slept last night, in his narrow bed at the club, and when he did he was tormented by dreams of Helen. Not the snappish woman he shared a house with until just two weeks ago, but a dancing Helen in the glittering gauzes of an odalisque.

"Two of our witnesses-Mrs. Nichols and Mrs. Watson-have attested to the petitioner's exemplary treatment of his wife," Bovill reminds the jury. "He found her extravagance, her tantrums, and her flightiness distressing, but he bore with them all. Far from neglecting her, he maintained perfect trust in her honour while she was flitting all over the island with various officers. Even before their departure for Malta in 1857, when she demanded a separate bedroom, he had at no point insisted on his marital rights. What husband in this courtroom-in the country!-could match such forbearance?"

I sound like a doormat, thinks Harry, head down. Or a eunuch.

His barrister's tone turns outraged. "The respondent's counsel may accuse the petitioner, with the grim hindsight a courtroom offers, of uxoriousness-but what is that but husbandly love so perfect it borders on excess? They may even argue that he must have guessed the true role that Mildmay and Anderson played in his wife's life-but the truth is that this veteran of Her Majesty's wars is of such an upright character that he can barely comprehend duplicity in his fellow man, let alone in the softer sex."

Harry wants to groan aloud. Some myopic Quixote; a feeble-minded Christian soldier. Is it really vital to his case to strip him of every vestige of manliness?

"Beset by official cares, reluctant to suspect any real ill of the mother of his children," Bovill goes on, "the petitioner nonetheless did share his concerns with others, notably the Watsons but also-very properly-his wife's widowed father, Mr. Christopher Webb Smith. If I may read the crucial sentence from a letter that venerable merchant of Florence sent his son-in-law in November of 1863, that is, last year-" Bovill clears his throat.

I can only express my hope that my daughter will alter her conduct and avoid disgracing her husband, children, and family, in time to save herself from ruin.

"The jury should note," says Bovill, holding up one finger, "that Mr. Smith, like the admiral, showed no awareness that Helen Codrington was already ruined. Thus the petitioner, like his father-in-law, was deeply troubled, but did in no sense condone, connive-in the popular phrase turn a blind eye- rather, he was blinded by the highest sentiments of familial affection. Only on the couple's return to London in August of this year did the petitioner, now released from the cares of his post, have leisure to consider his wife's behaviour more closely. It was the unhappy accident of their child's illness, which prompted the admiral to send his wife a telegram at Miss Faithfull's house on September the sixteenth-a telegram her response revealed to him that she never received-which caused him to face the dreadful possibility that she had in actual fact been unfaithful to him."

Where were Helen and Anderson the night of the telegram? Harry wonders. In some dubious hotel, while Nell lay white-hot and straining for breath at Eccleston Square? Even after all the evidence is presented, so much of his wife's hidden life will remain opaque to him.

Bovill consults his notes. "I will now address the most outrageous countercharge, that of cruelty, and in particular the claim, in Mr. Few's affidavit, that in October 1856 the admiral attempted the virtue of Miss Emily Faithfull. In that lady's conspicuous absence, I propose to my learned friend that it would be better for all concerned if that particular claim were withdrawn forthwith."

Harry's ears prick up at this. If the charge is withdrawn, there'll be no need for anyone to mention the memorandum he sealed up, with shaking hands, at half-past twelve last night.

Hawkins rises, suave as ever. "I thank my learned friend for the suggestion, but I decline. I would be delighted if he were to drop any of the even more disgusting charges made against my own client."

This little bit of repartee amuses the audience. Damn these lawmen, Harry thinks: it's all a game to them.

Bovill resumes mildly. "Well, then. In that case-my client has asked me not only to deny the charge in the most unequivocal terms, but also to make the jury fully aware of the poisonous role Miss Faithfull has played in his marriage as far back as that same year, 1856. The petitioner had by then harboured her at Eccleston Square, in the bosom of his family, at his personal expense, for over two years. And how did she repay him? On his return from the Crimea, the petitioner found that his wife's passionate feelings for this person were causing her to shrink away from her husband."

Hawkins, on his feet, blinking. "Causing? What proof of causality does my learned friend intend to offer us?"

"Very well: let me say instead that the friendship and the withdrawal were simultaneous and proportional," says Bovill crisply. "The respondent generally slept with her friend, claiming that Miss Faithfull was subject to asthma and needed aid in the night." He pauses significantly, as if to let those words ring hollow. "When the marriage reached a point of crisis the following year, and my client called in his brother and Mrs. Codrington's parents for advice, they fully concurred with him that Miss Faithfull should be dismissed from the house."

This causes a stir. Harry chews his lip.

"At which point, he entrusted to paper his thoughts on her role in the crisis, and his reasons for banishing her-which document was sealed up and placed by him in the hands of his brother."

There's a moment's silence. Then Hawkins rears up again. "I know nothing of such a document, and nor does the respondent. I object to any statement being made respecting its contents, unless it can be proved that the respondent was present and was cognizant."

"She was not cognizant," says Bovill silkily, "but the document has every bearing on the issue of her character."

"What is its nature, may I ask? Is it a statement of facts?"

Harry's sweating into his shirt, as if he's on deck in tropical waters.

Bovill hesitates. "At this time-"

"Is it addressed to his brother?"

"It is not addressed to General Codrington."

"To what party is it addressed, then?" demands Hawkins.

"To no particular party except perhaps to the petitioner himself. But in that it is not a record of events, so much as reflections, feelings-suspicions, even," says Bovill, producing the word with a sinister gentleness "-perhaps it can best be described simply as a letter."

Hawkins holds his opponent's gaze for a long moment. "Is this sealed letter in court?"

"It is," says Bovill.

A frisson goes through the packed chamber. Harry's hands are wet; he clamps them between his legs.

"I mention it to illuminate the testimony of my final witness: I now call General William Codrington."

After a few preliminary questions about Harry's treatment of his wife-"considerate in every way," William says, more than once-Bovill asks about the marital crisis of 1857. "The sealed letter: do you have it in your custody?"

William pulls out of his pocket a white folded paper, heavy with black wax. Harry flinches at the sight of it.

Bovill pauses, and makes no move to take it. "Do you recognize the seal?"

"It's my brother's. Admiral Codrington's."

"Has it been opened or tampered with?"

"No, it remains in the state in which he entrusted it to me."

Every eye in this courtroom is trying to bore through the paper, Harry thinks. He risks a glance over his shoulder at the staring faces. Their vulgarity, their desperate greed. There's a lady at the back with a black lace veil, like those mantillas the Catholics wear on Malta. Wait a moment.

"Do you know its contents?" Bovill is asking the general.

"I don't."

Could it be?He moves his neck to get a better look at the veiled lady. There: a strand of red hair, below the hem of the lace.

"What did the petitioner give you to understand that it contained?"

William answers with a guarded discomfort. "An explanation of his reasons for ordering Miss Emily Faithfull to leave his house."

Helen. It has to be. Has she sat here all morning, and yesterday too? The gall of her! Yes, he might have guessed that a woman who pores over intriguing messages from strangers in the Telegraph could hardly resist watching her own terrible story re-enacted. Like Hamlet among the players.

"May I ask, my Lord," demands Hawkins, on his feet again, "whether the petitioner's counsel mean to open this document about which they've been making such a deep and dark mystery?"

Harry, rigid, turns his eyes back to the white square of paper, the black wax that bears the Codrington arms. Everything depends on the next few moments.

"I will leave it to my learned friend to have the seal broken or not as he pleases," says Bovill with a courteous gesture.

Hawkins clearly wasn't expecting that; he leans down to consult with the aged solicitor. Then he draws himself up to his full height. "I must observe that this whole proceeding smacks of pettifoggery and chicanery."

Harry registers with a prickle of pleasure that Helen's barrister is losing his temper. But will that make the man open the letter or not?

"If this document contained anything to support the petitioner's attack on Miss Faithfull's character," barks Hawkins, "surely my learned friend would have opened and read it aloud already."

"I wouldn't dream of taking such a step without my learned friend's consent," says Bovill. He holds Hawkins's gaze, raises one eyebrow.

There's a long moment in which no one speaks; the longest so far in this case, thinks Harry.

"I neither assent nor dissent to the opening of the seals," says Hawkins warily. "It's for my learned friend to attempt to enter the document in evidence, that is if and only if he can prove my client is directly connected with it."

Judge Wilde intervenes brusquely. "If the letter's contents are germane, by all means let the seals be broken."

Harry looks back at Helen, through the sea of heads. Of course it's her; he should have known her at first glance, for all the layers of black lace. She's frozen like marble. What's that play in which the statue of the wife comes to life?

"If my learned friend declines-I do not choose to take such a step at this time, my lord," Bovill tells the judge.

William puts the thing back in his jacket pocket. Harry's hands are shaking, between his knees, like some small captured animal.

"Then," says Hawkins, as quick as a snake, "I move to strike the whole tangential discussion from the record."

What difference would that make, Harry wonders? How can the jury unhear what they've heard?

Judge Wilde frowns in indecision, then says, "No, the transaction is part of the regestae, and no fact bearing upon the case should be concealed from the court."

Bovill gives Harry the smallest of smiles. "Gentlemen of the jury, in conclusion. We of the petitioner's counsel have shown how the latent germs of corruption that Helen Codrington displayed as a young bride gradually ripened into criminality of the most sordid kind. We need shock and weary you no longer, although a French novelist would no doubt delight in showing in endless, repulsive detail how immediately Mrs. Codrington fascinated, how inevitably she injured, all those drawn into her web-whether confidantes, paramours, or, above all, her long-deluded and now heartbroken husband."

Harry's learning to recognize his twisted image in a succession of cracked mirrors. When this whole thing is over, when the stacks of newspapers are wrappers for tea-leaves or turnip peelings, which Harry Codrington will linger? The hero of a tragedy, the butt of a farce? The battle-coarsened rapist, or Old Pantalone, the dotard who wears the horns he deserves?

It seemed such a simple decision, when he said it in Bird's chambers, during that first interview: I want a divorce. But it's himself Harry seems to be divorcing. Will he ever get back that firm sense of who he is, like a pebble in his palm?

When he turns his head sharply, to ease his aching neck, he notices Helen's elderly solicitor slipping out. Few stops to speak to his client; she adjusts her veil and follows him out. The door is closed softly behind them, and Bovill is still spelling out the nefarious details of Helen Jane Smith Codrington's career. You're missing the grand climax, Harry tells his wife in his head.

"I urge you," Bovill addresses the jury, "to acknowledge the terrible facts of this marriage, though they may contradict the polite, fashionable fiction of feminine innocence. I urge you to release, as from the coils of a serpent, one of the most honest, valiant servants our sovereign has ever had."

Bird turns to beam at Harry. But instead of any surge of pride, or even relief, Harry feels only a flatness.

In the brief recess, he stands in Westminster Hall, keeping one eye out for Helen, but there's no sign of her.

William takes him out for a turn around Parliament Square in the smoky October air. To the left of Westminster Bridge stretches the muddy chaos of London's most ambitious construction project. Having squeezed houses, streets and railway lines into every square inch of the city, the developers now mean to build on the Thames: fill a broad slice of water with mud and sewers and call it the Victoria Embankment. It would be hard to explain to a South Sea Islander. Harry thinks of himself as a progressive thinker, but in this case he can't help wishing they'd left the river alone.

"This city still stinks," observes William.

Harry nods. "Though the Board of Works are boasting they've found a salmon in the river."

"What, a single fish?"

"Mm, but alive. A sign of hope for the new age of sanitation, they're calling it."

William lets out a sardonic laugh. "You may as well have this back," he says, holding out the packet with the black seal.

Harry finds himself strangely reluctant, but pockets it. "I was sure, at one point, that Hawkins would insist on its being opened."

"No, it was just as Bovill predicted: no counsel will risk a document being read unless he knows exactly what it contains."

Exhaustion passes over Harry's head like a wave. "Was it worth the fuss, do you think?"

"Hard to tell, yet," says his brother, smoothing his glistening white beard. "It'll be in all the papers tomorrow, and just might flush this Faithfull woman from her nest in time to be examined."

Somehow, Harry doesn't believe it. Fido, in whatever corner of Europe she's hidden herself, on whatever ship steaming towards Philadelphia or Shanghai, seems as remote as a character from a fairy tale.

"At the very least," says William briskly, "it'll have splashed her with a bucketful of filth, and Helen too. The jury might have already decided not to credit a word either woman's ever said!"

Going back into the courtroom, Harry expects to find Hawkins already on his feet, outlining the case for the respondent. But both barristers are standing below the judge, deep in consultation. "What's afoot?" whispers Harry in Bird's ear.

The solicitor's puffy with irritation. "They've had the nerve to apply for an adjournment."

"An adjournment?"

"A delay of several weeks. On the spurious grounds that our original petition contained no reference to one of the acts of adultery having taken place in the lane behind the Watsons' house! Hawkins claimed he couldn't possibly rebut it without sending his agent back to Valetta."

"Surely one sordid location among so many is neither here nor there?"

"Not in the eyes of the law," says Bird through his teeth. "Opposing counsel claim the credibility of our witness hangs on it."

"Can't we withdraw that particular allegation, then?"

"It's out of our hands; we knew nothing about the whole confession story in the first place."

Harry silently curses Mrs. Watson.

Judge Wilde clears his throat and addresses the court. "As an adjournment would represent more distress, delay, and expense to both parties, I am going to suggest that the petitioner's advisers consider whether they might abandon the charges against the respondent with reference to Lieutenant Mildmay, and rely solely upon the charges against her and the co-respondent, Colonel Anderson."

This causes a stir in the audience.

"Should we?" Harry mutters to Bird. "I suppose we'd still have ample proof about the two of them, especially at the Grosvenor Hotel…"

"And throw away most of Mrs. Nichols's evidence, and all of Mrs. Watson's?" Bird's tone puts Harry in his place, as an ignorant layman. "By no means." He's shaking his head at Bovill, who nods and turns back to the judge.

"Well, then," says Judge Wilde. "There are times when the wheels of justice must grind slowly in order to grind thoroughly. I have no alternative but to adjourn this trial for two weeks, to resume on October twenty-third."

Harry's reeling. He'd hoped this nightmare might be over in another three days, or four. The fire put out. Sails set for a calmer harbour.

As the crowd disperses, Bird reaches up to put his hand on Harry's shoulder, a familiarity that makes him recoil a little. "Don't be downcast, Admiral. A delay will allow all our evidence to linger in the jury's minds, and no doubt our men can dig up some more dirt in Malta, too. Besides, that small commotion wasn't really about Mrs. Watson's lane."

"How do you mean?"

Bird taps his florid nose. "Just a pretext on their part, don't you know. Hawkins and Few must be desperate for time to track down their lost witness, especially since we produced our sealed letter. And now both sides will have agents combing the ports for news of Miss Faithfull, chances are we'll sniff her out."