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For a few moments he felt better; then he found himself thinking once again that it was not a nightmare; he really was sitting in a room at the Hotel de la Poste in Amiens with a French smuggler and a Cockney picklock: on their efforts, cu
'Supper is at seven o'clock,'.Louis said. 'Unfortunately our friend Stafford has an upset stomach and looks too ill to come down, so he will be free to get on with his work while we and the lieutenant attack the soup - onion soup, the landlord tells me; bis wife's speciality. And I think you will have to retire to your bed when you begin to feel ill after the sole - the same symptoms as Stafford and due to something the two of you ate for lunch in that wretched café, no doubt. That will leave you free to inspect Stafford's work while the lieutenant and I attend to the roast sucking pig that you requested me to order specially - and which,' he said with a broad grin, holding out a hand as if to fend off Ramage's protests, 'and which is the reason why we are all supping together downstairs tonight: you ordered roast sucking pig and invited the rest of the guests in the hotel to your table.
'The lieutenant is the only guest, apart from ourselves. The landlord was very impressed with the generosity of his Italian guest: no doubt it will show on your bill,' Louis added impishly. 'I am, incidentally, a co
Ramage had never felt so hungry, onion soup had never been so delicious - or less satisfying. The sole melted in the mouth but did damned little to soften the hunger pains in his stomach. The lieutenant, young and fair-haired with long silky moustaches, was expansive and friendly; a casual onlooker would have assumed he was the host and Ramage and Louis his guests. The i
Louis spoke little and while not appearing to eat fast managed to consume twice as much as Ramage, who was obliged from time to time to answer the lieutenant's questions. The lieutenant, he swore to himself, was an expert in asking short questions that needed long answers. And all the while the delicious aroma of the sucking pig roasting on its spit wafted through every time the door between the kitchen and the small dining-room was opened. Ramage glanced at Louis and thought that if he could have had a few slices of the sucking pig he would not care if a cu
Upstairs an even hungrier Stafford was at work: Ramage had tried to avoid thinking about the Cockney, not because he feared that he would fail but, with the French lieutenant sitting on the opposite side of the table, he had the uncomfortable feeling that if he thought about Stafford the Frenchman would suddenly remember something he wanted from his room. He had watched him all the time the soup was on the table: a splash of onion soup down the Frenchman's stock would be enough to send him upstairs to change. Then he had worried that a glass of wine would spill, or a piece of fish drop from a fork. And all the time Louis had eaten stolidly, eyes on his plate, shoulders hunched - but, Ramage sensed, his ears missing nothing, whether a horse's hooves in the street or the crackling of dripping fat as the sucking pig turned on its spit.
The i
In anticipation of the question, Ramage had been surreptitiously holding his breath until he felt dizzy. He put a hand to his head and groaned and with his head spi
'He and his foreman - they lunched at a café. The foreman is already ill; now M'sieur is stricken.'
Ramage, suddenly afraid that the lieutenant would insist on helping him to his room and already worried about Stafford, found it easy to simulate a retch and a moment later retched again and tasted the onion soup. He muttered in Italian, brushed away Louis's hand, told them both to continue their meal and rushed for the door, as though about to be sick. As he closed the door behind him he heard Louis telling the i
He managed to stop himself ru
He gave the pre-arranged triple tap on their door and heard a movement in the room. A moment later the door opened and as soon as he stepped inside was closed and quietly locked by Stafford. There was nothing on the table - and nothing on his bed or Stafford's. The seaman had failed. He must have entered the room but not found the satchel. Or the lieutenant was on his way to Paris to collect dispatches, not deliver them. The queasiness increased and he belched, a vile compôte of sole and soup.
He turned to ask Stafford what had gone wrong - and saw that the man was gri
The Cockney walked over to the chest of drawers, pulled out the second drawer and carried it to the table. Lifting out some clothes, he produced a shiny leather satchel the size of a family Bible and with a long shoulder strap. Ramage saw that the top flap was down and the clasp was locked,
With a flourish Stafford produced a thin sliver of metal, inserted it in the keyhole and turned. The flap sprang open from the natural stiffness of the leather, and Stafford took out a dozen letters and two slim packets.
Ramage sat down at the table, his heart pounding; one half of him wanted to snatch up the envelopes and see, from the superscriptions, if there was a dispatch from Bruix to the First Consul; the other half of him shied away like a horse balking at a fence, scared to take the plunge because the consequences of there being no such dispatch meant that he would have wasted several days by believing a fool of a corporal.
Stafford tapped one of the letters. 'My French is a bitrudeemental, sir -'
'Rudimentary,' Ramage corrected him absent-mindedly.
' - rudimentally, sir, but I think this is the one you want.'