“I did once, why not again?”
“I don’t think you will,” she said, then rang the bell vigorously. “There,” she exclaimed, “I’m still alive.”
Sharpe found her good looks unsettling. He lowered the rifle’s muzzle. “Where did I shoot you?”
“In the leg,” she said. “You have given me a scar on the thigh and I think I hate you.”
“Should have been in your head,” Sharpe said.
“But the wound does well,” she went on. “Thank you for asking.” She turned as a sleepy-eyed servant girl came from the house. She spoke to the girl in Danish and the maid curtseyed and then ran back indoors. “I’ve sent for help,” Madame Visser said, “so if you have any sense you’ll leave now.”
She was right, Sharpe thought. He should leave, but the gold was a lure and finding it would be a sweet revenge on Lavisser. “I’m looking for the bastard’s gold,” he told her, “and you can send for all the servants you want.” He used the rifle’s muzzle to open the work basket that weighted the newspaper.
“You think I keep a thousand guineas in there?” Madame Visser asked with amusement.
Sharpe had been looking for a pistol, but the only things in the basket were folded papers and a lethally long hatpin. He backed away. “A thousand guineas?” he asked. “What about the other forty-two thousand?”
For the first time since he had woken her Madame Visser looked discomfited. “Forty-two thousand?”
“He stole forty-three thousand guineas,” Sharpe said. “What did he tell you? That it was a thousand?” She said nothing and he knew he had surprised her. “So which room did he use here?” he asked her.
She shrugged. “Upstairs, I suppose.” She frowned at Sharpe. “Forty-three thousand?” She sounded disbelieving.
“All except for fifteen guineas that I stole off him.”
“I imagine he took it to Copenhagen,” Madame Visser said.
“Or hid it here,” Sharpe said.
She nodded. “There are cellars and attics.” She shrugged. “What will you do with it?”
“Return it to the British.”
Madame Visser smiled. “I think, Lieutenant, you will keep it. And my silence will cost you five thousand.”
He backed away. “Cheap, aren’t you?”
She just smiled and blew him a kiss. He still backed away, unsure whether she had a pistol hidden under her skirts, but she did not move, just watched as he went back into the house.
He went upstairs. He considered searching the bedrooms, but decided Lavisser would not leave a fortune where any servant could filch from it and so he looked for the attic stairs and found them behind a small door. The loft was dusty, but lit by small dormer windows, and it was also crammed with chests, valises and crates. His hopes rose.
There was no gold. There were chests filled with ancient papers, crates of old toys and piles of moth-eaten clothes. There was a child’s sledge, a rocking horse and a model ship that was rigged with cobwebs. But no guineas. He could not search all the boxes, but he could lift them and detect from their weight whether gold was stored inside, and there was none. Damn, he thought. So search the cellars. Madame Visser had sent for help and even though no one had yet disturbed him he knew he did not have much time.
He ran down the narrow, uncarpeted attic stairs, then crossed the landing and went down the big curving stairs and there in the hall, of all people, was Captain Warren Dunnett. A half-dozen riflemen were with him, their grubby uniforms looking out of place in the elegant setting. Dunnett smiled as Sharpe came downstairs. “You’re under arrest, Lieutenant.”
“Don’t be daft,” Sharpe said. He saw the surprise on Dunnett’s face, then pushed past the six riflemen who looked embarrassed.
“Sharpe!” Dunnett called.
“Go boil your head,” Sharpe answered. He went down the passage, past the dog, and so out into the back garden where Madame Visser was now attended by Captain Murray and two black-coated civilians in breeches and riding boots. The maid, Sharpe guessed, must have run to the village and appealed to the British.
Captain Murray, a decent man who commanded a company of greenjackets, shook his head sadly. “What were you thinking of, Sharpe?”