said, in her musical voice. But all of a sudden he doesn't believe it. There's only one explanation that fits the facts. He has to admit this much: Helen loves her girls. She might sit cracking nuts while Harry was dying, but she wouldn't ignore a telegram about one of her daughters. So she never received it tonight—but she felt obliged to pretend she did. Because this evening she wasn't at Miss Emily Faithfull's, Number 10 Taviton Street. (Harry looked the address up in the directory earlier this evening, while the boy stood scratching one knee.)
Harry's mind is buzzing. Facts slide together like bolts. Helen was somewhere else tonight, then. With someone else.
A vast revulsion, growing. His eyes, wide open to the darkness, burn as if scales are peeling away.
***
Over breakfast, the Codringtons eat almost nothing, and talk only of Nell. How she seemed yesterday, at the onset; the signs they should have noticed; the infections that have been going around; the effect of dirty London air. The doctor's been again, and administered various doses, and assured them that the fever should break today.
Harry finds it surprisingly easy to maintain a normal tone while cutting his toast into smaller and smaller triangles. It strikes him that he and Helen must sound, and look, and seem, like an ordinary couple. Marriage is a habit much like any other, he supposes. He thinks of that house in Bayswater he was telling the girls about the other day: the facade perfectly correct, the trains roaring by beneath.
It's not that he's never considered the possibility of Helen and other men. In Malta, she quickly adopted the Continental style for wives, and was never without some idle army officer or other tagging along. But the very openness of her actions meant that they didn't alarm Harry. She was bored, she preferred the company of other (younger, jollier) men to his; what was noteworthy in any of this? There were petty improprieties that pressed themselves on his notice only now and then, in the intervals of business; generally he chose to overlook them, sometimes he mentioned them mildly to Helen if they seemed liable to cause talk, and though she rolled her eyes she corrected her behaviour accordingly. Flirtatiousness, that's all he ever suspected. Games and poses: he knew that to react to them with any heat would be to fall into her trap.
Their discussion of Nell's health over the breakfast table has lapsed into silence. Helen stretches out her hand for the Telegraph.
Harry shakes his head. "You never read anything but the advertisements."
"They're by far the most interesting part," murmurs Helen, snatching it up and opening it.
An automatic giggle from Nan, her mouth sticky with preserves.
Rage, like a swelling vein behind his eyes. Where was Helen last night? Who in the world was she with? She's only been back in London a matter of weeks; can that be long enough to form what they used in his youth to call a criminal connection?
"I can't be alone in my preference," says Helen, "as the first four pages are given over to advertisements. Listen to this, for instance," she goes on. "'The lady who travelled from Bedford to London by Midland train on the night of the fourth inst. is now in a position to meet the gentleman who shared the contents of his railway lunch basket.'"
"I don't know that this is the most suitable stuff for—for Nan," remarks Harry. He'd been going to say the girls, but Nell is still in bed, of course. Coming down the stairs, he heard her coughing like a wounded seal.
"Why, Papa? What was in his basket?" Nan is big-eyed.
"It's no worse than 'Orrible Murders, in my humble opinion," says Helen, and goes on to the next. '"mary ann do come home. You labour under an illusion.' Or here, Nan, listen to this: even more pathetic, but it must be a code. 'The one-winged dove must die unless the crane will be a shield against her enemies.'"
"What kind of code, Mama?"
"Murderers hatching their plots, perhaps?"
"Enough," barks Harry. "Do you want to give the girl nightmares again?" He holds out his hand for the paper, and watches it shake. Feminine evasions, equivocations, he's caught her out in those before, over the years. Never a barefaced lie. Never till last night: "Miss F has begged me to stay and dine with Rev & Mrs. F."
"Perhaps I do. Nightmares are said to clean out the brain, like purgatives," says Helen, meeting his eyes for