Sharpes assassin, p.11
Sharpe's Assassin, page 11
Sharpe kept looking behind to see if Harper was following, but only glimpsed the Irishman a couple of times and worried that Harper and his men would get lost. Fox set a brisk pace, striding with his long legs and only occasionally pausing to decide which street to take. The streets were muddy, and Sharpe reckoned there was rain coming. The western clouds were dark, rimmed with the sunset. Men were lighting occasional oil lamps that hung from posts, though their light was so dim that Sharpe knew they would be useless to illuminate the nighttime streets. “A thieves’ paradise,” he commented.
“Thieves and whores, Sharpe. Parisians! A wonderful place to live!”
They came to a wide grassy space not far from the city’s southern wall and Fox led him across to the far side. “We’re looking for number twenty,” he said, “but the buggers jumble their house numbers.”
“House numbers?”
“It’s a new idea,” Fox explained, “to give every house a number. They should be in order, one, two, three, four, but being bloody French they get it wrong. You’ll probably find number twenty between number six and number forty-three. Clever idea, though, to number the houses!”
“You’ve not been here before?”
“Only in broad daylight. Ah, that looks like the place!” He pushed open an iron gate that creaked alarmingly on ungreased hinges and Sharpe found himself in a small garden facing a substantial stone-built house with dark shuttered windows. Fox rapped on the door with his stick. “Fellow’s name is Collignon, Félix Collignon. Treat him with respect, Sharpe.”
“Of course.”
Fox rapped again. “Bugger must be asleep,” he growled, then the door was pulled open by a maid who curtseyed. She seemed confused by Fox, who loomed over her, but then a middle-aged, gray-bearded man appeared in the candlelit hall. “Monsieur Fox!” he exclaimed. “Come in, come in! A pleasant surprise!”
“Surprise?” Fox asked as he took the man’s outstretched hand. “I sent you a note this afternoon!”
“It never arrived, monsieur. Charlotte!” He turned on the maid. “Did you see a letter this afternoon?”
“Non, monsieur.”
“These things get lost,” Collignon said apologetically, “but come in, come in! With your friend.”
Sharpe was introduced, then followed the two men into a comfortable book-lined parlor lit by oil lamps. “Some wine, Charlotte,” Collignon called over his shoulder, then invited his visitors to sit. “Can I take your coat, Colonel?” Collignon asked in English.
“I’ll keep it, sir,” Sharpe said, and sat in a great leather armchair. A cat leaped onto his lap.
“Do not mind Josephine,” Collignon said, amused. “She likes to be petted.”
Sharpe dutifully stroked the cat, which purred happily. Meanwhile he looked around the room. The shuttered window to the small front garden was behind him, the two walls either side were filled with bookcases, while the far wall, beyond Collignon’s chair, was made of doors, presumably opening into another room, which would create one long chamber the length of the house. Fox was in a chair next to Sharpe and was talking fast to their host, who nodded frequently but said little. Sharpe gathered that Collignon had offered a list of names that Fox now wanted, but it was evident that the Frenchman was reluctant to yield the list. “You know who these people are?” Fox demanded sharply.
“Maybe some of them. It is difficult to be certain.”
“Why difficult?”
“La Fraternité is secret, monsieur.”
“But you know some,” Fox pressed, “who are they?”
“Soldiers.”
“I want the names!”
“Monsieur.” Collignon frowned. “I must be certain. I cannot betray men unless I am sure of their guilt.”
“We can establish their guilt,” Fox insisted.
“By using him?” Collignon nodded toward Sharpe. “He looks formidable.” He seemed to assume that Sharpe spoke no French, an assumption Sharpe was happy to encourage.
“By questioning them,” Fox said.
Collignon, Sharpe noticed, was getting ever more nervous as Fox pushed him. His hands kept gripping and regripping the arms of his chair, his eyes darted from Fox to Sharpe, back to Fox, then around the room. He seemed relieved to welcome the maid when she returned carrying a large dark bottle and three glasses on a silver tray. “It is not the best wine,” Collignon said, “but alas, good wine is difficult to find right now.” The maid gave each man a glass of the wine, then put the half emptied bottle on a small table to Sharpe’s right. “Monsieur,” she said to Sharpe, and he nodded thanks.
“You drink wine, Colonel?” Collignon asked in English as the girl left.
“I do, monsieur.”
“Perhaps I should have offered you brandy.” Collignon grimaced at the taste of the wine. “This wine is expensive, but . . .” he shrugged, leaving the rest unsaid.
“It’s barely drinkable swill,” Fox finished for him, then opened his pouch and laid ten golden English guineas along the arm of his chair. He placed each coin slowly, deliberately, and Sharpe saw the greed in Collignon’s eyes. “We pay, Monsieur Collignon,” Fox said, “but there will be no future payments unless you give me what you offered before I was arrested.”
“And you are free now!” Collignon wrenched his eyes from the gold. “How did that happen?”
“The British army freed me, then sent me here to find you. To obtain what you promised, to obtain what you were paid to provide.”
“It is delicate,” Collignon said, “you do not understand.”
“Colonel Sharpe is not delicate,” Fox said menacingly.
Sharpe looked surprised at the mention of his name, but Collignon appeared terrified. “Non, non,” he said, holding his hands out as if to ward off trouble. “I will supply what you want, Monsieur Fox.”
“Names,” Fox said, “I want names! You told me you had the names, so give them to me!”
“I made a list,” Collignon said uncertainly.
“Then give it me!”
“I will fetch it for you,” Collignon said, then stood and went to the wide doors that evidently divided the long room. “Just a moment,” he said.
He opened the two center doors and Sharpe saw two men in the darkness beyond. He also saw the barrel of a musket reflect the small lamplight and he pushed hard with his feet to throw the armchair backward. A musket fired, the ball thumping into the chair’s thick upholstery. The cat was hissing, clawing at Sharpe’s right hand, and he hurled the beast over the fallen chair toward the far doors, then reached into his pocket for the pistol. He heard a shout of alarm, presumably caused by Josephine’s sharp claws, then he was crouched behind the thick rampart of the chair’s horsehair and leather. He held the pistol in his left hand and snatched the bottle of wine from the table. He planned to hurl it too, but before he could draw his arm back a mustached face appeared above the fallen chair and a pistol was pointed at his head. “You will stand, monsieur,” the man said in French.
“Stand, Sharpe,” Fox muttered. He had taken shelter beside his own armchair, crouching awkwardly, but now unfolded his huge height, his hands outspread to show he had no weapon.
Sharpe also stood and swung the bottle as he did. It crashed into the mustached man’s head hard enough to shatter and the broken glass scored deep bloody cuts across his face. The man howled, dropped his pistol, and swiveled away. Another man leveled a musket at Sharpe, who dropped behind the chair again, took the pistol into his right hand, and edged fast about the fallen chair’s right-hand side. He leveled the barrel and fired. The musket fired at the same moment, its smoke filling the room, but Sharpe saw the man stagger back, evidently struck by the bullet.
And at that same moment the window behind him shattered and the shutters bulged inward until their metal locking bars snapped out of their iron brackets and they burst open to reveal a massive Irishman holding a seven-barrel gun. “Through there, Pat!” Sharpe pointed at the open doors. “We want the fellow alive!” He tossed down his empty pistol and picked up the one dropped by the man whose face he had savaged with glass. He went to the doors, conscious he was in a well-lit room facing men in darkness who could see him while he could not see them. He heard a man panting deeply and suspected that was the man he had shot, but Sharpe wanted Collignon, who had fled. He threw the remaining doors back and saw only the panting man, who had collapsed into another chair. Sharpe snatched up the man’s musket and slammed the butt into his skull.
“Ouch,” Harper said.
“The fellow we want has gray hair and a beard,” Sharpe said. A door was open and he went through into a hallway. Light came from a room to his right and he ran there to find the maid Charlotte in a kitchen. She screamed when she saw Sharpe.
“Quiet, girl,” Sharpe said. “Where is Monsieur Collignon?”
Charlotte shivered in fear, but pointed to a door. “There, monsieur.”
Sharpe opened the door to see steps going down into a cellar. “Monsieur Collignon!” he called.
Silence.
“I’ve killed or wounded your two companions. You want me to come down and do the same to you?” Sharpe called.
The answer was a pistol shot that thumped into the wooden stair beneath Sharpe’s feet. “I have more guns!” Collignon called.
Sharpe looked at Charlotte, who nodded. “He keeps his guns down there, monsieur,” she whispered.
“How many?”
“A lot, monsieur!”
The cat Josephine, none the worse for being used as a missile, stalked into the kitchen. “Give her some cream,” Sharpe told the maid, “she deserves it.”
Charlotte crossed to a cupboard. Sharpe heard the rattle of a ramrod in a barrel coming from the cellar. He was thinking to hurl himself down the stairs, then turn and shoot before Collignon could react, but if the man did have three or four loaded pistols then such an attack was foolhardy.
Charlotte had taken down a jug draped with a beaded muslin cover and Sharpe saw bottles in the cupboard. “What’s that?”
“Brandy, monsieur.”
“God save Ireland!” Harper said. “Enough for a battalion!”
“Put a couple aside, Pat,” Sharpe said, “and bring me the rest.”
Harper brought a dozen bottles, each corked and each bearing a small handwritten label that read “Félix Collignon. Courvoisier, Bercy, Paris.”
Sharpe pulled the cork from one bottle and tasted it. “Good brandy,” he said. He hurled the bottle down the stairs and it shattered on the cellar’s stone floor. He threw another half-dozen bottles, seeing a pool of brandy spread toward the rear of the cellar. “Get me a light, Pat.”
Harper took a rag from beside the kitchen sink, opened the stove door, and lit the rag, which he gave to Sharpe, who launched it down onto the brandy. Flames immediately sprang up and Collignon called out in alarm. Sharpe hurled another bottle down the steps and was rewarded with a sudden rush of bright flame. “Non, monsieur!” Collignon called.
“Let’s get the bugger,” Sharpe said just as Alan Fox came into the kitchen.
“What are you doing, Colonel?”
“Burning his bloody house down. Come on, Pat.”
“This first, sir,” Harper said, and leveled his seven-barrel gun down toward the blue flames and pulled the trigger.
The report of the gun was immense, like firing a cannon in a closed space, and the smoke belched out to fill the cellar as the pistol balls ricocheted from the stone walls. “Now,” Harper said, confident that the sound alone would have terrified the man below. Sharpe ran down the stairs, jumped into the flickering flames, and twisted toward the rear of the cellar, where Collignon was crouched behind a table on which were six pistols. Sharpe ran through the fire, reached over the table, and hauled the shivering wretch up and over. He dragged him through the shattered bottles and burning brandy, then up the stairs. Harper was reloading the volley gun. “Let me get the other fellows,” he said.
“Who’s with you?”
“Finn, McGurk, and O’Farrell.” All Irish, Sharpe noted. “I sent McGurk and O’Farrell round the back,” Harper said. “Finn’s at the front of the house.”
Smoke was drifting in the hallway now so Sharpe closed the cellar door then dragged Collignon into the elegant book-lined room. Finn, a lanky man, climbed through the shattered front window, and Sharpe sent him to look at the two men who had first threatened him. “One’s dead, one’s near dead,” Finn reported.
“Savages,” Collignon said, then held out his hands as if warding off evil when Sharpe looked at him.
“There’s a maid in the kitchen,” Sharpe told Finn, “make sure she’s safe and get her out of the house before it burns down.”
“We should leave,” Fox said nervously. “The sapeurs-pompiers will be here soon.”
“The what?” Sharpe asked.
“They put out fires,” Fox explained.
“We’ll leave when we’re ready,” Sharpe said. He faced Collignon and slowly drew his sword. “I guess Mister Collignon received your message this afternoon after all,” he told Fox.
“So it seems.”
“So question him, Mister Fox, and I’ll make sure he tells you the truth.” Sharpe pushed the point of the sword against Collignon’s chest. “You’re not going to lie to me, monsieur.”
The smell of burning had thickened and smoke was seeping under the doors that led to the hallway. “We should leave, Colonel,” Fox said. “Good God, man, the house is burning!”
“Question him!” Sharpe snapped, then slapped the flat of the blade against Collignon’s cheek and went through into the dark half of the parlor. Doors led to the garden and he threw them open to see Harper and the remaining two riflemen in the darkness. “Pat! I need these two men searched,” he gestured at the dead man on the floor and the dying man in the chair where Sharpe had clouted him with the musket’s stock. “We need to know who they are.”
“We must leave!” Fox shouted from the front of the parlor.
“McGurk, O’Farrell, search those two men. Pat? Make sure Collignon comes with us. Carry him if you have to. Is there a back way out of this garden?”
“There’s a gate.”
“Then we go that way.” Sharpe suspected there would soon be a crowd at the front of the house and, presumably, men attempting to extinguish the flames that were now bright through the kitchen windows. Finn had the maid safe in the garden. Charlotte was clutching the cat.
“Coming, Mister Fox!” Sharpe called. “With me, Pat.”
They hauled Collignon from his chair and Harper plucked him up and carried him to the back garden. Sharpe paused long enough to rescue the ten golden guineas that were still on the arm of Fox’s chair, then followed. He pushed one of the coins into Charlotte’s hand and the rest into his cartridge pouch. “Go,” he told the girl. “Go home, or find another employer.” She fled.
There was a brick building beside the back gate. Finn, curious, tugged open the door and, in the light of the flames that now sprang from the kitchen windows, Sharpe saw a small carriage inside. “That’ll do,” he told Fox.
“No horses?”
“We don’t need horses.” Sharpe assumed that Collignon hired carriage horses when they were needed, thus saving the expense of grooms, feed, and stabling. “Bring the bugger here, Pat.”
The carriage was a small two-wheeled vehicle. “Good God,” Fox said, “a curricle! Bit sporty for an old fellow like Collignon.”
“Ideal for us,” Sharpe said. A curricle was light. “In you get, Mister Fox, and give us directions.”
Fox climbed onto the single bench-seat and Collignon was put beside him. Sharpe took McGurk’s sword-bayonet from its scabbard and handed it to Fox. “If the bugger gives you trouble stick that through his ribs.”
The two carriage-house doors were swung open and Sharpe, Harper, and their three men took hold of the shaft and pulled the curricle out into the night. Sparks drifted overhead and flakes of ash fell into the alley like snow. “Go left, then left again,” Fox called. He had discovered a whip that he cracked over their heads. The carriage burst from the alley, turned left, then left again beside the Champ de l’Alouette. Collignon’s house was now ablaze and a small crowd had gathered in the street to watch the destruction. “It’s the books,” Sharpe said with relish, “they make good fires, books.”
Collignon moaned when he saw his house, then yelped as Fox pressed the sword-bayonet against his ribs. Sharpe could hear the two men talking, but as he was at the front of the shaft he could not make out the words, but it was evident Collignon was being voluble.
“It isn’t right, Mister Sharpe,” McGurk said beside him.
“What’s not right?”
“An officer doing this. You should be in the carriage.”
“No room,” Sharpe said.
They made good speed. Curricles were dangerously light, much loved by young men with too much money and not much sense. They were usually drawn by two horses and could reach alarming speeds. Collignon’s carriage looked old, and Sharpe suspected he had owned it a long time. “Straight ahead!” Fox called.
Folk watched them pass. The streets were surprisingly crowded and the windows well lit. Sharpe noted how many places sold meals, Lucille called them restaurants, and all he saw were doing brisk business. At some there were tables outside and the diners cheered the men hauling the curricle. Finn and O’Farrell were in their rifle green jackets, but no one recognized the uniforms for what they were and must have assumed they were French soldiers on a drunken spree.
“Left onto the river’s quay!” Fox called, and the curricle bowled along the Seine’s southern bank. “Take the first bridge!”
“We should take this bloody carriage into the warehouse,” Finn growled.
“Why?” Sharpe asked.
“There’s no fuel for that stove. We can break it up, get some hot food.”
“Good idea,” Sharpe said, “we burned the bugger’s house so we might as well burn his carriage.”
That would dispose of the curricle, but Collignon himself was another matter. Fox had questioned the man during their breakneck ride through the Paris night and reckoned he had gleaned everything there was to learn. “Do we keep him prisoner now?” Sharpe asked Fox once they were safe inside the small warehouse. “If we let him go he’ll warn the others.”
