‘You’d better come, sir.’
‘What is it?’
‘The officers’ baggage, sir. It’s been rifled.’
‘Rifled?’ He was scrambling out of the trench.
‘The Colonel’s lost some silver, sir. Everyone’s lost something, sir.’
Sharpe swore. He had been in charge of the baggage and, instead of guarding it, he had been brawling in the mud. He swore again and began to run.
CHAPTER 14
‘God damn it!’ Colonel Windham paced up and down in the tiny sheepfold. He was carrying a riding crop and he cut with it in his fury, slashing at the pile of baggage. When he bent his head to look at the rifled baggage, water cascaded from his bicorne hat. ‘God damn it!’
‘When did it happen?’ Sharpe asked Major Forrest.
‘We don’t know. ‘ Forrest smiled nervously at the Rifleman.
Windham swiveled. ‘Happen? When? This God-damned afternoon, Sharpe, when you were supposed to be in Goddamned command!’ There were another dozen officers crowded back against the walls of the sheepfold and they looked to Sharpe with accusing faces. They were all wary of the Colonel’s anger.
‘Do we know it was this afternoon?’ Sharpe insisted.
Windham looked as if he would like to whip Sharpe with his riding crop. Instead he swore again, and turned away. It was not the officers’ day-to-day baggage that had been burgled, but their valuables which had been stored in leather mule-bags. None of the baggage, as far as Sharpe knew, had been touched for three days. It contained the kind of things that a man would only unpack if he were in comfortable quarters for a long period; silverware, crystal, the luxuries that reminded them of home comforts. Windham growled at Major Collett. ‘What’s missing?’
It was not a long list. Forrest had lost a money draft, but it had been found screwed up and thrown away in the mud. Whoever had slit the bags had not known what to do with the paper. There was a pair of snuffboxes gone, a gold chain that
Sharpe suspected had been looted from Ciudad Rodrigo; certainly the officer who reported that loss had been voluble about his poverty before the siege and remarkably silent afterwards. There was a set of gold scabbard furniture, too valuable to wear in battle, a pair of silver spurs and a pair of jeweled ear-rings that an embarrassed Lieutenant claimed was a present for his mother. Major Collett had lost a shaving mirror with a silver lid and a watch that he said was worth a small fortune. Most important of all was the Colonel’s loss; the silver-filigree-framed portrait of his wife, the chinless, stern Jessica. The Colonel, rumor had it, was particularly fond of his wife; she had brought him a small fortune and the hunting rights for half of Leicestershire, and Colonel Windham was furious at the loss. Sharpe remembered the portrait sitting on the low table in Elvas.
Windham pointed the whip at Sharpe. ‘Did you lose anything?’
Sharpe shook his head. ‘I’ve nothing here, sir.’ Everything he owned he carried on his back, except for the Patriotic Fund sword and the gold stolen at Almeida which were with his London agents.
‘Where’s your pack?’
‘With the others, sir.’
‘Is it marked?’
Sharpe shook his head. ‘No, sir.’
‘Fetch it, Sharpe.’
It did not make sense. Was the Colonel accusing Sharpe of being the thief? If so, why ask Sharpe to fetch his own pack and, in so doing, have an opportunity of hiding the stolen goods? He found the pack, brought it back to the sheepfold. ‘Do you want to search it, sir?’
‘Don’t be a fool, Sharpe. You’re an officer.’ And thereby, went the unspoken words, and despite all evidence to the contrary, a gentleman. ‘I want to see how far our thief’s net was cast. See if anything’s missing, man!’
Sharpe unbuckled the straps. The French pack was crammed with spare, dirty clothes; two spare locks for his rifle, and a half bottle of rum. He kept only one valuable in the pack and he did not need to look for it; it was gone. He looked up at Windham. I’m missing a telescope.’
‘Telescope? Anything special about it?’
Something very special; the inlet brass plate that was inscribed In Gratitude. AW. 23 September 1803. It had gone. Sharpe pushed his hand desperately down through the clothes, but it was gone. Damn the thief ! The telescope had been a gift from Wellington, a valued gift, and Sharpe cursed himself for leaving the pack with all the others. Yet they had been guarded. As the sheepfold with the officers’ valuables had been guarded. Windham listened to Sharpe’s description and nodded with satisfaction. ‘That proves one thing.’