The Sealed Letter

On the evening of the twenty-second, Fido walks the polished boards of her bedroom. Tomorrow she'll wait till her name is called, then mount the steps to the box. She'll take her oath, hand on the Bible, and then-

What on earth is she going to say?

Each time she passes her mirror, out of the corner of her eye she glimpses her large, moonlike face. Not reputed to be of any conspicuous beauty. She doesn't turn to look at herself head-on: no need. Not in my wildest dreams, he said in the cab, not even if delirious or demented. Fido doesn't care so much about that; it's not as if she's ever wanted men to take that sort of interest in her. She can bear to be plain; she has other shining qualities. What's tormenting her is the sense that she's been a fool.

There was no attempted rape. Oh, Harry has attacked her savagely, with this ghastly, un-spelled-out story of the sealed letter-but he never laid a hand on her.

How could she have been taken in by Helen's lurid tale for one second? Leaving aside its intrinsic unlikelihood-the timing rings false. Why, if not to bolster her desperate legal defence by smearing her husband's character, would Helen have brought the thing up, that day in the teashop? The unspeakable incident. Hidden away in the deepest folds of your memory. Nonsense! And all that posturing, those delicate qualms: I'd never ask you to testify, dearest… If only I could take this cup from your lips… Fido's hands have contracted into fists, now, and she's pacing faster; one board groans every time she puts her weight on it. Looking back, there were so many points when any woman of average intelligence should have smelled a rat. And Fido knows that she's more intelligent than the average woman-that is, when her brains aren't blurred by the proximity of Helen Codrington. She deceives me over and over, and I let her, I open my arms to gather her lies like blossoms.

Now she's begun admitting the sense of what Harry told her, she can't stop. Stitch by stitch, Fido is unpicking the woman's fraudulence. That pair of missing letters, for instance: the vilified Maltese post. How likely is it, really, that two different letters from the same sender, on two different mail-boats, would go astray in the crossing from Valetta to London? Slitting open one of yours, Harry said, at the breakfast table in Valetta, and casting it aside with a snide remark about spinsters having too much time on their hands. Yes, Fido canjust imagine Helen in that little scene, a roll of those sapphire eyes. So the truth must be that Helen simply discarded her best friend, as soon as Fido was too far away to be of any immediate use. After all the years I'd lived in her house, slept in her bed, tried to keep her life from flying into pieces! Then when Helen ran into Fido again seven years later, on Farringdon Street-

Hold on. Her mind works slowly, a worm chewing up dirt, but it still does work.

Fido pulls the bell-cord, and waits for her maid to mount the stairs. Her throat is dry. "I'm sorry to trouble you so late, Johnson, but I believe some warm milk may help me sleep."

"No trouble at all."

The expressionless, ageing maid must know that tomorrow's the day her mistress is going to testify. The staff must all be familiar with every detail, from the specific-the colour of the yellow nankin stained dress-to the opaque-the sealed letter and what it may say about the relations between their mistress and an adulteress. It occurs to Fido that this is the measure of loyalty: Johnson could have made her nest-egg by now, simply by offering an interview to one of the weekly papers. The Faithfull Connection: Behind the Scenes in Woman-ist's Bachelor Household.

She forces herself on. "Also-I wonder if I could check your memory, a small point…"

"Certainly, madam."

Fido swallows. "The first time you met Mrs. Codrington-" The name's like a stain on the counterpane. "Do you happen to remember when that was?" The maid's lined face has stiffened.

"Was it towards the beginning of September? The sixth, I believe?" Fido sighs; how can the maid be expected to remember? "She came to tea that day. As did a military gentleman." It's ridiculous; she finds she can't say Anderson's name.

Johnson shakes her head, suddenly decisive.

"Of course, you'd have had no reason to make note of the date," Fido mutters, partly to herself.

"It was before that, madam."

This is what she dreads to hear. "You first laid eyes on Mrs. Codrington before the day she came to tea?"

The maid's nodding. "At least a week before that-the end of August, it must have been-though I didn't know who she was then, of course. She came by in a cab with the same gentleman," says the maid with pointed hostility, "and asked for you."

Fido's pulse is painful in her chest. "You're quite sure?"

"Yes, madam, it stuck in my mind because they didn't leave their names, though I asked of course," says the maid. "She-Mrs. Codrington-she wanted to know was this the correct address for Miss Faithfull. I said you were at your steam printing office on Farringdon Street, and would she like to leave a card? But she didn't. She just drove off in a hurry. The two of them did, I mean."

Fido's hand is over her mouth.

"So I'll bring up the milk now?"

"Never mind that," she manages to say, turning away. Waiting for the door to shut.

It was a conspiracy from the beginning, then. Helen, learning from the maid that Fido was in the City that afternoon, hovered outside her office with Colonel Anderson so they could pretend to bump into her, quite by chance. How beautifully it all worked out-Fido's asthma attack on the Underground, their visit to the press, the whole flurry of newfound intimacy… And Fido, in her sparking soap-bubble of self-delusion, attributed the whole thing to providence!

Perhaps there is no providence, no fate, no grand plan, she thinks now. Perhaps we dig our own traps and lie down in them.

Her cheeks are encased in her cold fingers. Oh Helen, what wrong did I ever do you? Haven't I loved you with all my being, tried to save you, suffered untold humiliations for you?

But no, it occurs to her that she's looking at it from the wrong angle. The mortifying truth is that Fido's irrelevant: a convenient messenger, go-between, mouthpiece. Some handkerchief or umbrella. In Helen's tangled melodrama, Fido's is only a walk-on part. That's what leaves her sick and dizzy now; that's why this little lie about Farringdon Street hurts more than all the other, graver ones. The joke is that Helen is probably not guilty of any malice towards Fido. She's dealt her a mortal blow, but carelessly, as one might drop a book.

Does that make it better? No, worse. I'd rather count, Fido decides, lifting her face.

She heaves a long breath, and squares her shoulders. She pads over to the dresser. In the jewellery box she finds the velvet choker, and she holds it taut in her fingers and marvels that she was ever charmed by such trash. With her thumbnails, she starts stripping off every dull bead, every last fragment of shell.

Knowledge like honey in her mouth: I can destroy her. I can do it tomorrow.

Fido, hovering at the back of the court, looks around the packed rows. Will she have to stand for hours? She's not sure she has the strength, after a sleepless night. But just then a gentleman stands to offer her his small portion of the bench, and she accepts with a grateful nod.

She's wearing her usual business costume of long-sleeved bodice and ankle-length skirt. (At first light, she put on her best dress-plum velvet, over a stiffened petticoat-then told herself it was rank hypocrisy and took it off again.) Nobody casts her a glance; her name may be somewhat famous, but her face, not at all. That will be different by the end of the day: everyone in this crammed courtroom will have memorized her features. (Please, no photograph in the papers!)

The tallest of the barristers rises. "I rejoice, gentlemen," he tells the jury, "that the moment has finally come to argue the case of my much persecuted client."

Hawkins, for the respondent: that's how the papers describe him, Fido remembers.

"I regret that the adjournment was necessary. But I have the fullest confidence that despite all the arguments prejudicial to Helen Codrington you heard two weeks ago, you will have held your judgement in righteous suspense, remembering that your verdict is one of moral life or death for the lady. This is a tragic story," Hawkins goes on sonorously, "of an ill-matched couple who, by British law, I trust you will find, must remain married for the rest of their days and make the best of it. Such a verdict will teach a valuable lesson to husbands, that if they choose to live more or less apart from their wives, they cannot, at some future period of their own convenience, shake off the yoke they have come to find heavy."

Fido's eyes seek out Harry, sitting beside his lawyers. In profile, he's a wooden figurehead, weathered by storms.

"The respondent is of a lively and artless disposition," admits Hawkins, "given to speaking in superlatives, and kicking against the chains of custom. Unwise, perhaps, in agreeing in her carefree girlhood to become the helpmeet of a sober naval officer in his middle years-unwise, I grant you, but never criminal."

A few snickers from the audience.

Hawkins looks graver. "Raised in the relaxed atmospheres of India and Italy, my client has foreign habits, such as letting gentlemen escort her at night, or conversing with them while sitting up in bed. These habits may arouse your English distaste, but it would be most unfair to judge them by English rules of propriety."

Does anyone believe a word this man is saying? Fido wonders.

"A web of malicious, salacious innuendo has been all my learned friend has offered to prove Mrs. Codrington's misconduct," remarks Hawkins. "For a couple to live separate lives, even with each other's full sanction, is dangerous, especially for the wife. A husband's frequent visits to another woman-in this case, Mrs. Watson," he adds darkly, "are generally assumed to be harmless, whereas a wife's friendship with another man is vulnerable to the most sordid suspicions."

Well, that much is true, Fido admits; there's nothing symmetrical in marriage. If Fido didn't know the truth-if Helen were any other woman in the world-she'd probably give her the benefit of the doubt.

"But the petitioner was fully aware of his wife's friendships," Hawkins points out, "and did nothing to curtail them. Regarding Lieutenant Mildmay: may I-need I-point out that my client would hardly have asked for him to be examined if she were conscious of the least guilt in her relations with him? Mildmay's declining to be interviewed may be due to a natural dread of publicity, or perhaps some lower motive: it is not impossible that he may feel some enmity towards her for refusing him her favours…"

Fido almost admires the light way the man drops in these outrageous suggestions.

"We have been told of wild conversations, private trysts and assignations," Hawkins sweeps on, "but all this testimony has been circumstantial and contradictory. We have heard inferences, not facts, from a shabby line-up of witnesses, including an embittered housekeeper, a footman discharged for a brutish attack on a fellow servant, and the most patently hostile of former friends, Emily Watson," says the barrister with a handsomely curled lip. "Much of this so-called evidence is obscene fantasy. My learned friend has asked you to believe, for instance, that a lady and gentleman would commit adultery in an upright position on a quay under full dazzling moonlight! Or on a cabin bench of no more than twelve inches in width, on a journey by gondola of no more than ten minutes!"

"Three would do," shouts someone from the gallery, which provokes roars of mirth.

Fido goes hot. Unspeakable things can all be spoken in this packed, stifling room: it's a little hell at the heart of the metropolis where a sort of alchemy turns everything to dirt.

After a brief hiatus as Judge Wilde orders the offender found and ejected from the court, he gives Hawkins a warning.

"The court must pardon my explicitness, my Lord," says Hawkins magnificently, "since it is the tool required to hack through the thickets of innuendo that threaten to ensnare my client."

Now he calls his witnesses one by one: another boatman who denies that the gondola got particularly out of trim on the nights when Mrs. Codrington was in it with either of her escorts; another former servant who insists that on Malta Mrs. Codrington usually had a maid sleeping in her room. Fido's not really listening, she's distracted by a kind of stage fright: when will she be called?

Turning to the London evidence, Hawkins admits that his client's meetings with Colonel Anderson-by sheer coincidence, on home leave this summer-did become covert, "but only because the petitioner began to display an unaccountable hostility to his wife continuing in England the independent life she'd formed in Malta," he says. "As for the so-called assignation at the Grosvenor Hotel, no witness from the hotel has been produced, nor any evidence that Colonel Anderson took a bed-chamber. He and Mrs. Codrington can hardly have committed the act in question in the coffee-room! My learned friend has performed a similar sleight of hand on the letter found in the respondent's desk," Hawkins rushes on. "There is no proof that she ever sent it; it might have been merely a private soliloquy-an outpouring of emotion. Its language, in either case, is not that of hardened adulteress to paramour, but that of a troubled lady to a platonic friend, on the eve of his rash marriage. As a missive from a married woman, I do not deny it is imprudent, but it contains in its sorrowful tone and high-minded wishes for the co-respondent's welfare much that is creditable, and nothing-nothing-to prove that she broke her marriage vows with him."

Hawkins pauses to sip from a glass of water. Fido feels a mad impulse to applaud.

"But I understand that some gentlemen of the jury may still be feeling swayed by the many petty and misleading anecdotes got up by the petitioner's agents and counsel," says Hawkins sternly. "This is why the respondent's counterclaim states that if you are led into the error of believing her guilty of misconduct, she wishes you to be made aware of grave neglect and cruelty on the part of her husband which would have conduced to that misconduct, had it occurred."

His grammar's getting strained, Fido notices. It must be difficult for a barrister to keep up the pretence that he believes his clients. Are lawyers liars by definition? Do liars, then, make good lawyers? She thinks of a world in which all careers will be open to women, and wonders-aware of the absurdity of the thought-whether Helen Codrington would make a good barrister.

"Firstly, neglect," says Hawkins crisply. "The petitioner's insensitivity to, and virtual abandonment of, his charming young bride began as soon as she followed him from Florence to England. She found herself expected to occupy every day with running his household, bearing his children, and nursing his dying father. I put it to you, gentlemen of the jury, that by ignoring his wife's needs for stimulus and amusement, the petitioner left her to seek these things alone, unguarded, exposed to the rumours of a malicious world."

His tone turns hushed. "Those were not the only needs of hers he neglected to fulfill. The last issue of the marriage was born in 1853: some four years later, her patience exhausted and her heart broken, the respondent finally requested the dignity of a room of her own." He pauses to allow the whole audience to register his meaning. "Since the petitioner, as we have been told, did enter his wife's room on occasion-the door not being locked-it may be presumed that it was by his own acquiescence, or even by his own wish, that marital relations did not resume at any point in the seven years that followed. I need hardly remind you, gentlemen, that it is for the spouse of the stronger sex, not the weaker, to demand the exercise of conjugal rights."

Fido watches the jury: the smug faces, the uneasy ones.

"To shed more light on this delicate subject I now call Captain Strickland of the Royal Navy."

Strickland turns out to be a hangdog, red-haired subordinate of Harry's from Malta.

"Did the respondent complain to you bitterly about not seeing her husband from one day to the next?" asks Hawkins. "Ah, yes."

"Did the petitioner ever ask you how many children you had?" A glum nod. "I told him two."

"His reply?"

"I believe he said, 'That's quite enough. Follow my example and have no more.'"

This starts a scandalized ripple in the crowd.

"Did you think he meant simple abstinence," asks Hawkins grimly, "or-I beg the court's indulgence-the use of devices to thwart conception?"

"I don't recall what I thought, exactly," mutters Strickland, scratching his temple.

"Did the petitioner express any shame on the subject?"

"No, no. Pride, if anything."

"Pride!"

Bovill, muttering in Harry's ear, is offered the opportunity to cross-examine, but shakes his head.

It suddenly strikes Fido that the Codringtons are-or rather were-a thoroughly modern couple. Progressive, even, in some ways (even if in others they resemble some stomping crusader and his lecherous chatelaine). The discreet limitation of child-bearing, the separate friendships, the refusal to allow two unique characters to be assimilated into one-are these not ideals Fido and her friends at Langham Place have often invoked when discussing a new relation between the sexes?

The coincidence turns her stomach. Women like Helen taint the very notion of female independence. Is this what it all slides into in the end-grunting couplings on sofas?

Strickland gives way to a short, busy little man: a naval surgeon called Pickthorn.

Hawkins asks him, "Did they quarrel about the care of the children?"

"Indeed, yes," says Pickthorn, "and in particular Mrs. Watson's interference in their management. She-Mrs. Codrington-told me the admiral threatened to send the girls to England to live with his sister, Lady Bourchier."

The barrister raises his smooth eyebrows at that. "Now, turning to the matter of the bedrooms. What did Mrs. Codrington tell you on one occasion in 1862?"

"That when she attempted to go into the admiral's chamber, he'd put her out of the door, and hurt her in doing so."

"Hurt her," Hawkins repeats, eyes on the jury. "Did you confront the petitioner about this assault?"

"I thought it my duty, as the lady's physician. But he denied having used the least violence."

"In your experience, Dr. Pickthorn, what effects might it have on a woman to be thwarted of the normal outlets?"

"You mean-"

"Conjugal outlets."

"That depends on her constitution," says the doctor gravely. "If cool or sluggish, the answer may be, none. But if she's of a warm constitution, she will suffer from tension, broken sleep, digestive disorders, and emotional disruption."

"How would you characterize the respondent's constitution?"

"Very warm."

He wants her, Fido realizes. This little surgeon pants for her, and tells himself it's benevolence. It seems as if every man Helen meets is roused by her, in one way or another, and the sad joke is that Harry, once past the point of desiring her himself, couldn't see it.

"So if a man denied his wife her rights over a period of many years," asks Hawkins, "would that man be altogether blameless if her natural passion were to overflow and seek release elsewhere?"

"Not blameless at all."

Bovill has been huddled in whispered consultation with his client. Now he leaps out of his seat to cross-examine. "On the night of this so-called assault, Dr. Pickthorn," he barks, "would you be surprised to learn that the respondent had returned very late from a ball in a state of unnatural excitement brought on by dancing-and strong punch," he adds pointedly, "and that when she persisted in hanging over the petitioner's bed and making provoking comments unworthy of an English lady, he was obliged to very gently remove her from his room?"

The surgeon falters, and shrugs. "What seems gentle to a tall, muscular officer may not seem so to a delicate woman."

Bovill's mouth tightens. "In addition, are you aware of the view of many eminent medical authorities that virtuous women have no need for sensual outlets? That to many wives, the natural cessation of relations after the birth of several children is, if anything, a relief?"

"I am aware of that notion," says Pickthorn stoutly, "and I believe it to be ignorant cant."

Bovill's eyebrows shoot up.

"Are not men and women, for all their differences, made of the same stuff?"

Fido groans inwardly. He sounds like a supporter of the Cause.

As soon as the witness has been dismissed, Hawkins stands up again. "This court has often heard appalling accounts of the brutality of working men towards their wives, but educated gentlemen have their own refined forms of cruelty. They rarely strike with their fists," he says snidely over his shoulder in Harry's direction. "They only assail the tender feminine affections, only lacerate the heart!"

Helen's case is looking much stronger, Fido realizes with a start. The jury may well decide that Harry was at least partly to blame. What kind of life will Helen have won, in that case? No children, a reputation in tatters. But she'll still have her name, her income, a separate household.

Except that I haven't testified yet.

"The petitioner went further," says Hawkins with a flourish, "and revealed the true baseness of his character on October the eleventh, 1856. I now call Miss Emily Faithfull."

She barely hears her name over the roaring in her ears. She wants to run down the aisle, away from the buzzing hive of watchers.

As she steps up into the box, she feels giddy. She scans the crowd for Helen, but the only face she recognizes is-to her horror-her sister Esther's: meaty cheeks and a grave mouth. Fido averts her gaze. How kind, how scrupulously loyal of Esther to make a showing on behalf of the family. But Fido wishes her at the other end of the earth.

She puts her hand on the Book and takes the oath without a qualm. The letter of the truth doesn't matter to her anymore, only the spirit. Somehow she must find her way through the tangled forest.

Hawkins gives her a small, tight smile, as if to congratulate her for having overcome her feminine qualms at last. Fido steels herself against him.

Mechanically, she answers several questions about her proprietorship of the Victoria Press-meant to establish that she's a serious person, she supposes.

"Under what circumstances did you first become acquainted with the Codringtons?"

"In 1854," she says, then clears her throat. "In 1854 I was staying with-" no need to name her sister. "I was staying at Walmer in Kent when I met Mrs. Codrington."

"Ten years ago, you were what age?"

"Just nineteen."

"You'd always lived in a country parsonage, had been educated in very strict principles, and were altogether ignorant of the world?"

"I suppose so." Is that his angle? She waits, then goes on with the account she's prepared. "After Mrs. Codrington introduced me to her husband, I visited them at Eccleston Square, at their joint and repeated request. I stayed there on and off until 1857-not as Mrs. Codrington's companion, as was stated in a newspaper," she adds stiffly, "but as a friend."

"A trusted family friend," says Hawkins, nodding.

He believes I'm still Helen's witness; he thinks I'm her last, best chance.

"How did their marriage seem?"

Here it comes. "They were in the habit of quarrelling. In the very first days of my acquaintance with her-Mrs. Codrington-she admitted she was not happy. Sometimes they wouldn't speak to each other for a week."

"In the autumn of 1856," he asks, "what room were you occupying at Eccleston Square?"

"The large bedroom next to that of the Codringtons."

"You mean they slept together in one room?"

Fido can hardly believe she's spelling out these private details in a witness box. "Sometimes, at that point. It was the room designated as theirs," she says weakly.

"Had they shared it, during the months between the petitioner's return from the Crimea in August, and October of that year?"

"Really, at this distance of time, I can't remember remarking it." Liar; she was always aware of where Helen was: only an inch across the pillow or shut away behind the oak-panelled wall.

"When did Mrs. Codrington sleep with you in your room?"

"Whenever the admiral was away." Afraid of being caught out, Fido adds, "Also sometimes when he was home. I am subject to asthma, and sometimes need medical assistance…" Isn't that what maids are for? she asks herself, brutally, but Hawkins doesn't probe.

"Now, when Mrs. Codrington was not sleeping with him, where did the admiral spend the night?"

"In his own room."

"You're now referring to a third room, on the other side of yours?"

"No, I-" Oh heavens, she's got in a muddle already. "He'd sleep in that room-the room designated as theirs. While she was in the room beside it, with me."

To her ears that's no clearer, but Hawkins only says, "There is a communicating door between the two rooms?" Fido nods.

"Answer in words, if you please."

"Yes." Of course, everything must show up on the record. Like speaking in stone.

Hawkins's tone is becoming that of a teller of ghost stories. "On nights when Mrs. Codrington was sharing your room, Miss Faithfull, was the door locked?"

"Shut fast, but not locked. Helen-the respondent-used sometimes to pass in and out between the two rooms." Then she wishes she hadn't added that detail. It conjures up visions of casual flittings in the dark.

"Did the petitioner ever come into the room when you and his wife were sharing it?"

She stiffens. "Occasionally he might walk in to address a remark to her, or poke the fire."

One eyebrow goes up. "Did you often have a fire in your bedroom?"

"A concession to my health; I'd had a fever, and my habitual asthma," she explains, absurdly apologetic. "The admiral can be… a rather fidgeting man; he didn't trust the maid to see to the fire." She ought to have said the fires; why would he single out the one in her bedroom, rather than those burning downstairs? It all sounds so peculiar, she can't help defending herself. "I didn't like it, and I told her-Mrs. Codrington-that I wished she wouldn't allow it. But she laughed and said that if the admiral liked to play the housemaid, what did she care?"

Hawkins nods twice, as if to stem her nervous flow of words. "Now for the night of the eleventh," he says portentously. "What time did you and Mrs. Codrington retire to bed?"

Her body's as rigid as a mummy's. "About ten, perhaps? I'd taken medicine," she says, getting the fact out brusquely. "I fell into a deep sleep."

"And woke up at what time?"

"I've no idea." She clears her throat, too loudly. "All I remember is that the fire was low and I saw a white figure leaving the room."

Hawkins frowns slightly. "No no, Miss Faithfull, take it from the beginning."

"I have done so," she says through clenched jaws.

He doesn't understand; he still thinks his star witness just needs a little encouragement. "First the petitioner came in through the communicating door?"

Fido shakes her head. "I woke, and saw a white figure going out the door, and presumed it was the admiral, as no one else was in the habit of coming in, and Mrs.-the respondent-said afterwards that it was he." She's gabbling. It's all the literal truth, so why does it feel like a lie?

Hawkins, frowning again, refers to his notes. "Was he in his nightshirt?"

"His dressing gown, I believe." That's not half as bad. "Really, it was all so very rapid that I could hardly tell what I saw; I was still drowsy from my medicine."

"Had he his trousers on?"

"I'm sure I can't say," she snaps.

"What else do you wish to tell the jury about the incident?"

"Nothing."

A long glare from the barrister. "Miss Faithfull, I feel sure it's from womanly compunction, rather than from any wish to perjure yourself, that you're holding back."

The word perjure makes her pulse thump loudly. She shakes her head. She keeps her eyes away from the part of the courtroom where her sister's sitting. How will Esther report all this to the Faithfulls?

"Need I remind you that you gave a drastically different account of this incident to the respondent's solicitor, Mr. Few, on September the twenty-ninth?"

Black spots in front of her eyes. "I'm aware of that," she says, almost stuttering, "and I'm relieved to have this opportunity to clear up any misapprehension."

"Misapprehension?" Hawkins's smooth voice cracks. "Madam, either you were lying in assenting to that affidavit, or you're lying now!"

The jury watches Fido, open-mouthed as fish. At the lawyers' table, Few sits staring up at her with mute fury. She looks at her hands. "No, I believe I told Mr. Few what I have just told you," she says, stammering a little, "but with some details added."

"Yes, including one significant detail," Hawkins storms, "namely that what woke you was-allow me to quote from the fourth paragraph-The petitioner in his nightdress came into the room and got into the bed where Mrs. Codrington and Miss Faithfull were sleeping together, and attempted to have connection with Miss Faithfull, and was only prevented from accomplishing his purpose by the resistance of Miss Faithfull on waking up"

The hum of talk among the audience deafens her. Her face feels as if it's crackling with flames. Faintly: "That was what Mrs. Codrington said."

"Speak up," advises the judge.

Fido raises her voice. "Just before my interview with Mr. Few, she-the respondent-told me that her husband had… behaved improperly to me on the night in question. She persuaded me that the drug I'd taken had erased my recollection of the incident."

Hawkins's eyes are bulging.

She hurries on. "It must be understood that it wasn't that I gave Mr. Few the whole account as from my own memory; he already had it from Mrs. Codrington, and I felt I was being asked only to support her evidence. Particulars were barely mentioned, and he put things delicately, to spare my feelings," she says desperately. "When he asked me whether the account was true, I gave him to understand that the answer was yes, because I sincerely believed what my friend had told me."

"Come, Miss Faithfull!" The barrister is almost shouting. "You're an educated person. And, may I add, a celebrated advocate for the competencies of women. You must know that when a lawyer asks you a question, he means you to answer on your own authority. Mr. Few passed you the affidavit to read-"

"He slid it across the desk," admits Fido, "but I wasn't able to read it through, not so as to know its contents. I was very much confused and agitated, and my breathing was troubled; also Mr. Few was talking the whole time, so I couldn't concentrate." Women are idiots, she thinks, that's the burden of my testimony. Feathery creatures who couldn't be logical if their lives depended on it, who lack the capacity for the civil duties that would go with civil rights.

"You formally assented to the document!"

"I didn't dissent from it," she says miserably, "but I do not recall saying that it was correct in all particulars. I deeply regret the trouble my ignorance of the law has caused," she rushes on, turning towards the grim judge. "I see now that I ought to have explicitly stated to Mr. Few that his client was my source. Later that day I had reservations, and asked for the affidavit back, but it was too late." She looks anywhere but at her sister sitting in the fifth row. "In a moment of weakness, I went abroad to avoid being summoned to repeat the story in this court."

Hawkins looks disgusted. "Well, Miss Faithfull. Although you were in a stupor at the time, do you now believe that the petitioner attacked you, just as the respondent related?"

He thinks me excessively scrupulous, Fido realizes. "No," she says into the silence, very clearly.

His eyes lock onto hers. "You must admit that what you do recall-waking up in a sudden terror, glimpsing his fleeing form-is not incompatible with attempted violation."

She takes a long breath. "I never said I was terrified, or that the person I saw was fleeing." She must go further, if she's to look herself in the eye in the mirror tomorrow morning. "It's my firm belief, now, that nothing happened that night."

"Nothing?" The barrister's Adam's apple is bulging.

"That the admiral came in while I was asleep, exchanged a few words with his wife, and walked back to his own room."

There's a silence, while Hawkins gathers his forces. "You realize, madam, that you're accusing your dearest friend of inventing the most appalling falsehood in order to pervert the just process of this court?"

Fido is mute. And then says thickly, "Perhaps she dreamed it," which raises a great whoop of laughter from the audience.

"Could it be, I wonder, that someone has threatened you in some way, to force you to change your story?"

Her skin crawls. She mustn't look over at Harry. This is what happened, Fido reminds herself desperately, but she's never felt more of a liar. "No," she insists, "having had time to think it all through, I've resolved to do my duty and tell the whole truth."

"I have one more suggestion," snarls Hawkins. "Perhaps the admiral's attempt on your virtue that night was successful?"

She reaches out blindly for the wooden edge of the witness box; holds onto it so she won't fall down.

"I put it to you that all this talk of drugged stupors and blanks in memory is a futile endeavour to deny the horror of what happened."

"Mr. Hawkins!"

"If the petitioner is guilty of adulterous rape, madam, no one will blame you for having fallen a helpless victim to his lust."

"I-"

He plunges on. "But if in a feeble attempt to save your reputation, you cover up his crime and thereby destroy my client-"

"There was no crime."

A single blink from Hawkins. Then he changes his tone again. "Ah, then perhaps you did not resist?" he asks.

So mildly, almost pleasantly, that at first she doesn't follow. She stares at him.

"Half-consented, in fact, to overtures from your friend's handsome husband, with whom you'd lived on the most intimate domestic terms for more than three years? Allowed connection to be achieved, there in the bed a matter of inches from his sleeping wife?"

"How dare-"

"Mr. Hawkins," the judge interrupts.

But the barrister is unstoppable. "And when she woke, you panicked in your guilt, and told her he'd tried to violate you-"

"No!" she roars.

For all the weeks she's spent dreading this day, Fido never imagined such punishment. Barristers are wolves. Hawkins has long since given up constructing a plausible argument, she realizes; he's merely trying to discredit her with the jury. Just a little longer, she tells herself, as if comforting a child.

"Nothing happened," she says in a choked voice. "If the court requires it, I am willing to submit to medical examination." Not that; please, anything but that.

After a long second, Hawkins steps away. "No further questions, my Lord."

Fido has pushed the gate open; she's on the top step before Bovill gets to his feet and she remembers she still has to be cross-examined by Harry's side. She fears she might burst into tears, but instead she sits down again.

"Do take a moment, Miss Faithfull. Would you care for a glass of water?"

"No, thank you," she whispers.

His voice is melodious. "By now you've realized that you were wrong to maintain a credulous attachment to a dangerous friend, wrong to trust the respondent against the evidence of your senses, wrong to attempt to evade a summons to this court. But on behalf of British justice, I'd like to thank you for coming forward so bravely today." A broad smile. "The gentlemen of the jury will, I'm sure, sympathize with your tale of duped innocence, and rejoice that you've seen the light in time to clear the petitioner's character and your own."

The kind tone weakens her. Don't cry, Fido tells herself. Don't you dare.

"I can only regret that in previous speeches I have said some harsh things of you, Miss Faithfull, and here, in open court, I wish to withdraw them all. My client has now come to a better understanding of the complexities of his household in the period 1854-1857," says Bovill, "and wishes me to clarify that your influence over his wife seems to him to have been rather beneficial than otherwise."

Here it is, the reward Harry offered her in the cab. But how will the jury swallow these volte-faces? We all sound like liars, every one of us.

"Would you agree that the petitioner treated you well while you lived at Eccleston Square?"

"With nothing but kindness and courtesy," says Fido mechanically.

"With regard to the so-called sealed letter which has provoked so much idle speculation," Bovill goes on, "I would like to specify that to the best of the petitioner's recollection, it contains a simple record of his view that you would be better off returning to your parents-and nothing at all to your detriment."

She should feel grateful: this is the key to the door of her cell. (But this will make no sense to the listening crowd: if the letter contained no terrible charges against her, why would Harry have written it at all, and put it into his brother's hands, and why did Bovill brandish it in court two weeks ago like a pistol loud enough to be heard across the country?) Hush, hush, Judas has received his silver. Oh please let me go now.

"Now, turning if I may to the co-respondent, Colonel Anderson. When did you make his acquaintance?"

Fido's heart starts to pound again. Harry and his lawyers must think that by the terms of their bargain she's about to tell all. And certainly, last night, while she was ripping apart the seashell choker, that was her plan: pay Helen back for everything. But now it's come to it, somehow-

She begins with a bland summary of social encounters with David Anderson. "I'm afraid I don't know the dates of his various calls; I keep no diary."

"Were they ever alone together in your house?" asks Bovill suggestively.

"Alone?" Fido repeats. Here's her chance; here's the line in the sand.

The barrister nods and waits.

She finds herself strangely unable-unwilling-to step over it.

"Shall I repeat the question, Miss Faithfull?"

She shakes her head. This isn't mercy; she feels nothing that tender for Helen Codrington anymore. "No," she says hoarsely.

"By no you mean that I need not repeat it?"

"I mean no, they were never alone together in my house." I was there too; I was just outside the drawing-room, listening.

The audience stirs and rustles. How many are cheering on the pretty, naughty lady, Fido wonders, and how many would rather see Helen punished? It's like a witch-ducking: the sleek copper head rises above the water, sinks again, rises, sinks.

The barrister's pouchy eyes narrow. "Do you recall any conversations with Mrs. Codrington on the subject of the co-respondent?"

If I say no, no one in this room will believe me. She pauses, choosing her words carefully. "I believe I told her that her friendship with the colonel had an imprudent air to it, and that I didn't like to be mixed up in it." There, that has a credible ring to it. It's true that Fido said that to Helen-among other things. The truth, the partial truth, and everything but the truth.

Bovill steps closer to the box. "Is that all you thought of your friend's behaviour? Nothing worse than imprudent?"

"As I said."

"You maintain you never, at any time, witnessed any impropriety between the two?"

What does it mean to witness? Outside the door, face pressed to the wood, shut out of the mystery. "Never," she says hoarsely.

Her hands are curling closed; she's dying for a cigarette. What Fido's done-refrained from doing, rather-may make no difference, of course. There are other witnesses, and they've been only too willing to give chapter and verse on Helen's crimes. But Fido won't take another step. Helen may very well fall-but Fido won't be the one to give her the final push. She'd rather leave it up to the court, to providence-or, if there's no such thing as providence, to chance. It's not loyalty that stays her hand, nor anything like forgiveness. Only a need to regain her balance, not to be like Helen. Only a reaching back to find herself, her real self, in the dank fog.

For a moment, it occurs to Fido that Bovill's going to strike back at his recalcitrant witness. He could call for the sealed letter to be brought into court again. She shudders at the thought. The black wax could be broken, the accusation released like a plague on the air. Fido's dropped her weapon, while Harry still holds his. She stares at the barrister, silently pleading.

Bovill lets out a brief sigh and glances towards his client. Harry gives an infinitesimal shake of the head, and the barrister pronounces the words that release her. "No further questions, my Lord."