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 herse
lf.
"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."
The Sealed Letter Page 24
