Sharpe rode to the right of the house, following the route he and Harper had taken three nights before. Hidden from the house by its front garden wall he dismounted, led the horse down into the creek bed, hobbled it, then went on foot down the sucking, muddy creek. The rising tide had half-filled the channel, forcing Sharpe to one side. He could smell the rotting vegetation that his squad had grubbed up under Sergeant Lynch's command.
The boathouse was locked again, but it was a simple matter to use the bars of the gate as a ladder. Sharpe, his rifle on his shoulder, pulled himself up to the arch's summit, peered over the top to see the east lawn deserted, then rolled onto the grass. He stayed there, a shadow at the lawn's edge, listening for guard dogs. He could hear none. The tall windows which opened onto the banked terrace above the lawn were lit, their candlelight rivalled by the moon which showed every detail of the house in black and silver.
He wondered if Sir Henry had returned. There would be consternation in London if Lord Fenner, finding Sharpe gone from the Rose Tavern, believed him to have come here, and who better than Sir Henry to come to Foulness to hide all evidence of wrongdoing?
He walked forward, his shadow cast before him, but no one saw him, no one called an alarm, and he crouched in safety at the top of the bank and stared into the rooms.
On his left was an empty dining room, its table showing the litter of dinner. On the wall over the mantelpiece was a huge picture like the one in the entrance hall of the Horse Guards; British infantry lined beneath the battle's smoke.
In the second room, less brightly lit, he saw Girdwood. It was a library, its shelves scantily provided with books, but its walls lavish with weapons. A rosette of swords surmounted the doorway opposite Sharpe, while muskets were racked above the fireplace. Lieutenant Colonel Girdwood, his back to Sharpe, was opening the drawers of a bureau. From it he took a brace of pistols, fine-looking weapons with silver handles, then two black leather-bound books with page edges marbled in bright colours.
Sharpe had planned to follow Girdwood from the house, reasoning that he could more easily take the auction records on the lonely marsh road than in a house where Sir Henry's servants could and should resist him. Sharpe was ready to run back across the lawn, jump into the creek bed and find his horse, but, as Lieutenant Colonel Girdwood pushed the books and pistols into a saddlebag and buckled it, so a servant came to the library door and spoke with him. The servant seemed to gesticulate, inviting Girdwood to another room, and Sharpe, rather than running for his horse, waited.
Girdwood buckled the last strap, dropped the bag on the library table, and followed the servant into the hallway. They turned to their right, and Sharpe, still on the slope of the bank beneath the terrace, sidled that way.
He saw a sitting room. A grey-haired woman sat with her back to the window while, beside the empty fireplace, a book on her lap, sat Jane Gibbons. Lieutenant Colonel Girdwood, introduced into the room, bowed to his fiancee. The servant who had fetched Girdwood crossed to the girl's side and picked up the small white dog to keep it from annoying the Colonel.
Sharpe watched for a few seconds, then went back to the library window. The room was empty, the saddlebag left on the table, and within that leather bag, he knew, were the books that would finish Lord Fenner, Sir Henry, and Girdwood. Sharpe stared at the bag, knowing he could take the books now, and then, remembering that hesitation was fatal, he unslung his rifle and opened the small brass lid that covered a compartment carved in the butt.
Inside the compartment were the tools that were used to clean the rifle's lock and to draw a bullet after a misfire. There was a stiff brush, a small screwdriver to take off the plate, a one inch iron nail that held the tension of the mainspring when the cock was dismounted, a small, flat, round oil can, a wormscrew that fitted on the ramrod to draw a bullet, and a metal bar to give leverage on the ramrod when screwing down onto the misfired round. He took the wormscrew, torque bar, and screwdriver, closed the butt trap, and moved over the gravel terrace to the library door.
His sword clanged as he stooped, but there was no pause of alarm in the indistinct noise of voices from the next window on the terrace. He ran the slim screwdriver blade between the leaves of the window, pushed gently to confirm that it was latched, then saw where the shadow, thrown by the candles within the library, betrayed the presence of a lock-tongue.
There was no keyhole on the outside of the door, but the wormscrew, provided by His Majesty, was a perfect cracksman's tool. He slotted the torque bar onto one end, so that it looked like a grim corkscrew, and worked the screw tip to where he knew the tip of the lock-tongue would be. He turned it.
The screw point grated, screeched, and he pushed it further into the gap of the doors, breaking the old wood, turned again, and the wood creaked alarmingly as the strain came onto the metal, then, with a click that he thought must raise the dead, the lock-tongue shot back.
He froze. He could hear nothing except the low voices and the far off mutter of the sea. He pushed the latch down, pressed gently on the door to see whether there were bolts both top and bottom and, to his surprise, the door swung back. The servants had not bolted it, perhaps waiting to do so when they closed and barred the heavy shutters.
He left the garden door open one inch, then silently crossed the bare, polished wooden boards and, praying that the hinges would not creak, closed the library door. He bolted it. Now, should anyone come to the library, he could leave with the books and be on his horse long before they could break down the door or think to use the garden entrance.
He smiled as he unbuckled the saddlebag and took out the two heavy books. He opened one. On the flyleaf, in neat handwriting, was written "The Property of Bartholomew Girdwood, Major". The «Major» had been crossed out and, next to it, was written "Lieutenant Colonel". Then Sharpe's smile went, for the heavy volume was not an account book at all. It had no pages of ruled columns, no closely written figures that would add up to Sir Henry Simmerson's disgrace. It was an ordinary book, entitled A Description of the Sieges of The Duke of Marlborough. Sharpe riffled its pages, seeing only text and diagrams. The second book, equally bare of figures, was called Thoughts on the Late Campaign in Northern Italy with Special Reference to Cavalry Manoeuvres. There were no other books in the saddlebag, just sheafs of paper that proved to be verse, all written in the same meticulous hand. Sharpe stood, frozen. He had pinned all his hopes on finding the auction records in this house, and instead he had found two books of military history. He pushed them, with the poetry, back into the saddlebag and buckled it.
He turned to re-open the door, planning to leave the room as he had found it so that no one would know an intruder had been in the library. He unbolted the door, turned the lever, and pulled it ajar. Then he froze again.
When he had closed the door, caring only about the noise of its hinges and the grating of its bolt, he had been aware that the entrance hall to the house was as packed with weapons as the library in which he stood. Rosettes of bayonets and fans of lances vied with hung pistols and crossed swords. The weapons could have furnished a small fortress, yet it was not the carefully arranged armaments that caught his attention, but rather what, when he had glimpsed them before, he had taken to be the draped folds of curtains.
But he was not seeing curtains. He was seeing two great flags. Each was thirty-six square feet of coloured silk, fringed with yellow tassels. The staffs were proudly topped with carved crowns of England. He was seeing the Colours of the Second Battalion of the South Essex which, against all honour and decency, had been brought to this house and hung in its hallway like trophies of battle.