‘Give me a few more minutes.’
‘This basket is heavy, Miss Amalia.’
‘Then put it down for a moment.’
Beatrix obeyed, folding her arms and hoping she’d not be kept waiting too long. In fact, Amalia’s vigil was promptly interrupted. A young man came round the corner from the lane and approached them at speed.
‘There you are,’ he said, breathlessly. ‘I was told I might find you here. Your father’s been taken ill, I’m afraid. I was sent to fetch you.’
Amalia was disconcerted. ‘What’s wrong with him?’
‘Come and see for yourself. The doctor’s been sent for.’
‘Wait a moment,’ said Beatrix, her instincts aroused. ‘Who exactly are you, sir?’
‘I’m a friend of Emanuel Janssen,’ said the man. ‘I was in the house when he had the seizure. Please hurry — I’ll explain everything on the way.’
Amalia was too worried to have any suspicions. She allowed herself to be guided around the corner. A coach was waiting in the lane. As soon as they drew level with it, the man opened the door and bundled her into the vehicle, jumping in beside her. Beatrix tried to protest but she was grabbed from behind by the man who’d been following them since they’d left the house. Spinning her round, he threw her violently to the ground then clambered into the coach. Beatrix was left face down on the pavement, hurt, dazed and surrounded by the contents of the upturned basket. The driver cracked his whip and the coach rolled swiftly down the lane. Amalia was inside it, being overpowered by two men so that she could be bound and gagged. She was terrified.
Daniel’s letter had not brought her luck, after all.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
‘Can this be true?’ asked Jonathan Ainley, incredulously.
‘As true as I stand here, Lieutenant,’ said Welbeck.
‘But he seemed such an engaging fellow.’
‘That’s what made me suspect him.’
‘He promised to paint my portrait.’
‘You’ll never receive it now,’ said Daniel. ‘Ralph Higgins’ career as an artist is at an end — and so is his work for the French.’
‘Upon my soul!’ exclaimed Ainley. ‘This is most extraordinary.’
The three of them were standing beside the stream that looped around the edge of their camp. Cooks were filling buckets of water to use in the preparation of the day’s meals. A little way upstream, horses were being allowed to slake their thirst. Camp followers were washing clothes so that they could be hung out to dry in the warm sunshine. A boy was trying to fish with a rudimentary rod.
The lieutenant had just been told that the sutler with whom he’d talked so freely was, in reality, an enemy spy. It was sobering news. Guilt made Ainley wince.
‘I should have been more alert,’ he admitted.
‘I think you should, Lieutenant,’ said Welbeck, muffling his contempt under a token respect. ‘I would have thought a man in your position would not be taken in so easily.’
‘How right you are, Sergeant!’
‘Before you confided in him, Higgins should have been sifted.’
‘I can see that now.’
‘Better men than you have been deceived,’ said Daniel, trying to soften the blow for his fellow officer. ‘The fact is that Higgins has been gathering intelligence under our noses since this campaign started and nobody had the slightest idea of his true purpose. We must be thankful to Sergeant Welbeck that he was finally unmasked.’
‘I endorse that wholeheartedly — congratulations, Sergeant.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ said Welbeck.
‘You deserve commendation for this.’
‘His Grace was kind enough to write to me, sir. Yet I look for no praise.’ Welbeck straightened his shoulders. ‘I was only doing my duty.’
‘You were doing it very well.’
‘It was Captain Rawson who got the proof that Higgins was a spy. We caught him as he tried to flee.’
‘And we caught his accomplice as well,’ added Daniel. ‘One of them, anyway — there’s a third man who acted as courier but we’ve been unable to identify him. The chances are that he’s already left with whatever intelligence Higgins had managed to collect.’
Ainley swallowed hard. ‘I see.’
‘That brings us to you, of course. What exactly did you tell him?’
‘We had a pleasant conversation, that’s all.’
‘Can you recall what it was about?’
‘I divulged no secrets,’ said Ainley, defensively.
‘You must have divulged something, sir,’ said Welbeck, ‘or the fellow wouldn’t have come to me.’
‘I simply said that you were Daniel’s — Captain Rawson’s — friend and that you probably knew him better than any of us.’
‘What else did you say?’ wondered Daniel.
‘I talked about you, mainly.’
‘Sutlers are only here to sell their provender. Didn’t it strike you as odd that this particular one wanted to talk to you about a fellow officer?’
‘That’s the curious thing,’ said Ainley, ‘We didn’t begin by discussing you. Higgins was too cunning for that. He worked around to it as he did that sketch of me. I suppose,’ he went on with obvious discomfort, ‘that I was drawn in.’
Welbeck was forthright. ‘You were too gullible, sir.’
‘I suppose that I was.’
‘It’s not for you to criticise an officer, Sergeant,’ said Daniel, coming to the lieutenant’s aid. ‘We both know how credible Higgins was. Anyone could have been fooled.’
‘I wasn’t, sir,’ said Welbeck. ‘But I was too late.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘The damage was done by the time he came to me.’
‘What damage?’ said Ainley, hurt by the accusation. ‘On my word of honour, I said nothing about Captain Rawson that wasn’t common knowledge. I talked about him leading a forlorn hope at the Schellenberg and of his gallantry at Blenheim. There’s no secret about any of that.’
‘What else did he want to know?’ asked Daniel.
‘How you’d risen from the ranks.’
‘That was done purely on merit,’ said Welbeck, pointedly.
‘You were more aware of the details, Sergeant, so I took the liberty of mentioning your name. Had I had the slightest inkling of his true motives, of course, I’d never have dreamt of doing that.’
‘No, Lieutenant, I’m sure that you wouldn’t.’
‘I told Higgins nothing he couldn’t have got from elsewhere,’ said Ainley. ‘He’d already heard rumours of what you did in Paris. In fact — now that I remember — it was your adventures in the Bastille that really interested him. He couldn’t believe that you could rescue a prisoner then bring him and three other people all the way back to Holland. He was laughing in wonder.’
‘He was laughing at you,’ said Welbeck to himself but he didn’t translate the thought into words. Stone-faced and bordering on disrespect, he put a question to Ainley.
‘How long would you say that you and Higgins talked, sir?’
Ainley considered. ‘I can’t really put a time on it, Sergeant.’
‘He boasted to us that he could draw a sketch in five minutes. It sounds to me as if the pair of you went on a lot longer than that so you must have told him a great deal about Captain Rawson.’
