He filled his glass and drank deeply and, as if comparing the position of former Corporal Jobert in Boulogne with his brother M. Jobert in Amiens, he said almost spitefully: 'But he's not in England yet, and he has his problems in Amiens. Ah, I could tell you a thing or two about them, too . . .'
His eyes seemed to go glassy at the thought, and Ramage prompted him. 'We all have our problems, it's overcoming them that distinguishes the men from the boys!'
'Or the girls,' the Corporal said, almost absently. 'It's his daughter that is the problem, you see. My niece. A fine girl mind you; pretty and hard-working, but inclined to be wilful. My brother says that the minute the girl and the lieutenant first looked at each other, he knew there would be trouble.'
He drained his glass, and Ramage pushed the bottle towards him. 'Trouble? With the lieutenant on the First Consul’s headquarters staff?'
‘The Admiral's staff,' the innkeeper corrected him. ‘Twice a week he rides into the hotel yard - on Saturday night as he goes to Paris, and on Tuesday night as he returns with orders and dispatches for Citizen Bruix from the First Consul. It all seems very romantic to a young girl, I suppose.'
'It would be a good match,' Ramage said, knowing that would provoke the Corporal into more confidences.
The Frenchman shook his head sadly. 'It might seem like it to you, because you are looking at it as a carpenter; but you have to consider it from the point of view of a man of property: a man like my brother - or me, come to that. She’s his only child, you see, so what happens when he's gone? None of us live for ever. But a lieutenant's wife - will a naval man settle down to an innkeeper's life after the war?'
Ramage nodded his head vigorously, not liking the sad note. creeping in to the Corporal's voice, which was already slurring as the new wine added its weight to that drunk before Ramage and his men arrived at the Chapeau Rouge. ‘After all, you've settled down as an innkeeper after a military life.’
The flattery was so gross that for a moment Ramage thought he had overdone it, but the Corporal screwed up his eyes, as if examining the statement and liking what he saw. 'That is true,' he admitted judiciously, 'and I don't want you to think I'm against the young man. He is a smart fellow. Five years ago he was a haberdasher’s assistant. He joined the Navy – and now look at him. Why, in a year or two who knows – he might be given the command of a sloop of war; a frigate, even.’
‘He’ll end up an admiral, you’ll see,’ Ramage whispered in a suitably awed voice. ‘An admiral, think of that!’
'Not a chance," the Corporal said firmly, 'the war won't last long enough. It takes time to become an admiral; another seven or eight years, I should judge, and the war will be over this time next year, you'll see.'
'Still, he has an interesting job now - and exciting, too; just imagine, galloping to Paris with urgent dispatches; sleeping with a pistol in his hand to guard them safely I expect . . .'
The Corporal laughed condescendingly. 'Not as romantic as that, I can assure you. Sleeping with a pistol in his hand - why, he would probably blow his foot off in his sleep! That's the thing you people don't understand. When you are handling secret dispatches all the time - as this young man is - you get used to it. Like you carpenters starting off with a plain plank of wood. Why, my brother says the lieutenant has even left the satchel behind on the dinner table - how about that, eh?' He nudged Ramage across the table. 'Mind you, my brother is a responsible innkeeper, and seeing the young man was lifting his glass a bit freely - it's a fault he has, 1 have to admit - he kept an eye on the satchel. After all, the First Consul's secret documents have to be safeguarded.'
'Indeed they do,' Ramage said. 'What about another bottle?'
Ramage was weary, jubilant but just sober when he finally returned to the room to find Jackson still awake but the other two snoring stertorously. After assuring Ramage that the passports and travel documents were safely hidden under the bolster, Jackson waited to see if he was going to hear an account of the talk with the Corporal. Ramage thought about it for several minutes and decided that their situation was precarious enough for the American, as the second-in-comand of the little expedition, to need to know all the details, so that he could take over if necessary.
Keeping his voice down to a whisper, Ramage quickly outlined the orders he had received from Lord Nelson and the procedure he intended to adopt to get reports back to England.
'I'm hoping we'll get all the information at the same time, so we can all go together; but if not, then one of you will sail as necessary with Louis and Dyson in the Marie here, meet the Folkestone Marie - she'll be going to the rendezvous every night from tomorrow night onwards, Dyson was bright enough to arrange that - and return with her to Folkestone. Each report must then be taken at once to Dover Castle, so that it can be forwarded immediately to Lord Nelson.'
Ramage paused to rest his throat: whispering was extra-ordinarily tiring, and he wondered if he would end up with a sore throat.
'Now we get to this innkeeper. He wants us to call him "The Corporal" by the way: it seems he was once in Boney's Army, and lost the leg in Spain. He has a brother who owns an inn at Amiens called the Hotel de la Poste - remember that name. The brother's name is Jobert. Now, the French admiral in charge of the invasion flotillas along this coast - and that includes construction - is called Bruix. Every Friday night Bruix writes a report on the state of the invasion flotilla, including new construction, and sends it to Bonaparte's headquarters in Paris first thing on Saturday morning.
'In other words,' Ramage said slowly, 'all the information the Admiralty needs might be contained in that one report. It could be this week's, last month's - but the information it contains would take us six months to discover on our own.’
He could feel Jackson's body tensing as he grasped the significance of what Ramage was saying.
'The link between the Corporal's brother in Amiens and Admiral Bruix is a young lieutenant who rides to Paris, leaving Boulogne early on Saturday and arriving in Paris on Sunday night -'
'And spending Saturday night at the Hotel de la Poste,’ Jackson whispered.
'Not only that, but he drinks too much, left the leather dispatch case behind on the dining-room table at least once, and is much enamoured of the innkeeper's daughter.'
'Does he spend the night with her?' Jackson asked bluntly.
'I doubt it; in fact the worthy innkeeper and his wife probably lock her bedroom door. They are considering him as a husband for the girl, and as she's the only child that means they are deciding whether or not he is worthy of inheriting the Hotel de la Poste when they die: probably in lieu of a dowry, knowing how canny their sort of folk can be,'
Jackson was silent for a moment, and then whispered cautiously: 'If we could get our hands on the bag . . .'
'We'd find it locked. Only two keys - Admiral Bruix has one; the other is kept at Bonaparte's headquarters.'
'But a leather bag,' Jackson said longingly. 'I can just see Staff's face. He's brought a set of picks with him, and those leather bags never have much of a lock on them . . .'
'Surprising how useful it is to have a locksmith in one's crew,' Ramage mused, 'and particularly one trained to work in the dark . . . Still, what bothers me is that it all looks a little too easy at the moment.'
'Well sir,' Jackson whispered cheerily, 'over the past two or three years we've had our share of jobs that looked impossible from the start, but we managed them.'
'That's what I mean,' Ramage said, unable to keep the sharpness out of his voice. 'The difference is that this looks so easy at the beginning that we can be sure it'll turn out to be difficult.'