Ramage and the Guillotine r-6

by Dudley Pope

  'You have nothing to say, eh? Well, I have,' the officer said. 'You are under arrest because your man - your foreman, I believe? - was seen by the daughter of the landlord in the room of another guest. An officer of the Republic,' he added ominously.

  'I thought she said she saw several men.' It was a glimmer of hope but no more.

  'She may have done; what concerns you is that your foreman is the one she definitely recognized.'

  Ramage shrugged his shoulders. ‘That's what she says. I was asleep and have no idea what was going on. Was she in the room with my foreman? Did they have an assignation?'

  It was a weak enough answer, but for the moment he was trying to gain time to think. Where the devil was Stafford now - obviously he had escaped out of the window, but how long could he avoid recapture? He did not speak a word of French, had no money and no map to help him get back to Boulogne. The only thing on his side was a natural Cockney shrewdness.

  'What was your foreman doing?'

  'Seducing her, perhaps? How should I know - I told you, I was asleep.'

  Where was Louis now? Had he escaped before anyone checked up on his story that he was acting as the spy-cum-guard to the Italian travellers? Ramage could not remember seeing him from the moment the gendarmes said, 'Get dressed ...' On the other hand he might still be at the hotel, pretending to be as puzzled over Stafford's behaviour as the gendarmes. That would make sense! At the moment the only thing the gendarmes knew was that Stafford had been seen in the lieutenant's room. Nothing had been stolen so there was nothing to incriminate either Signor di Stefano or Louis. If Louis suddenly vanished it would be taken as proof of complicity.

  In fact he and Louis would be cleared completely if the gendarmes accepted that whatever Stafford was doing had nothing to do with his employer or Louis. Let's see what happens, Ramage thought. For the moment I remain the Italian shipbuilder outraged that he should be lodged in jail for the night . . . All that gaunt-faced policeman knows is that my foreman was in someone else's room: no one has challenged my story that I was asleep at the time. With a bit of luck they'll release me tomorrow with suitable apologies!

  Ramage thought of asking to be allowed to write to his own country's ambassador in Paris protesting at his arrest, but he remembered, just in time, that the Republic of Genoa, whence he allegedly came, was now Bonaparte's Ligurian Republic. Then the officer, who had been staring at the top of his desk for several moments, looked up.

  'If he was trying to seduce her with her consent,' he said coldly, his voice sounding to Ramage like that of every outraged father or cuckolded husband, 'why did she scream?'

  Ramage shrugged his shoulders expressively. 'How should I know? Perhaps she changed her mind.'

  'She is in love with the lieutenant,' the officer said doggedly. 'It is impossible that she went to the room to meet your foreman.'

  'Very well,' Ramage said in a bored voice, 'she had an assignation with the lieutenant in his room. Clearly not a very virtuous young lady, eh?'

  'She did not have an assignation with the lieutenant in his room,' the officer said angrily, his right eye winking and his shoulder jerking.

  'What was she doing in the room, then? Meeting my foreman instead?'

  'She had written a note for the lieutenant and was leaving it in his room. Where is your foreman now?' Again the wink and shoulder twitch.

  'I don't know,' Ramage said impatiently. 'Perhaps he has an assignation with the young lady's mother - have you inquired? '

  It must be midnight by now. Had Louis managed to get that damned loaf to the courier? If Ramage could be sure that the report - he found himself trying to avoid even thinking of the name Bruix, as if the police officer might read his thoughts - reached Jackson on board the Marie, it would make it worthwhile. What worthwhile, he found himself asking. Stop thinking in euphemisms. If I know that my copy of Vice-Admiral Bruix's report on the state of the Flotille de Grande Espèce has reached Vice-Admiral Lord Nelson safely, then tipping over on the bascule, and staring down into the basket which will catch my head a fraction of a second after the guillotine blade lops it off, will be a little easier to bear.

  It must be easier to die when you know you have achieved something. On the average, Ramage had gone into action four times a year, for the past three years, never expecting to come out of it alive. There had been a good chance that a French or Spanish roundshot would knock his head off or - involuntarily he reached up and rubbed the scars on the right side of his brow - he would be cut down by a cutlass or skewered on a boarding-pike.

  For Lieutenant Ramage, there was no difference between having his head knocked off by roundshot or lopped off by guillotine. Yet, in a bizarre sort of way, there was. If the copy of Bruix's dispatch reached Lord Nelson safely, there could be nothing more in his career (even if he lived to become an admiral) that could match it in importance. The sort of things that involved the risk of having your head knocked off by a roundshot were relatively trivial: it is only when you play for the very highest stakes that you risk 'marrying the Widow.'

  The officer was staring at him and when he caught Ramage's eye he asked curiously: 'What were you thinking about?'

  ‘That if my foreman did have an assignation with the landlord's daughter, I envied him. Pretty girl - have you seen her?'

  The officer flushed, a redness that stained his lined and wrinkled face like wine soaking through lasagna, and Ramage realized that the man must have been speculating about her.

  'The other man you were with - the Frenchman: who is he?'

  'You mean to say you don't know?' Ramage was scornful.

  'Why should I?' the officer asked defensively.

  'One of your ministries sent him along to spy on me wherever I go, that's all I know!' As soon as he saw the officer nodding, as though the information was credible, Ramage decided to embellish it. 'I can tell you, I've had enough of his company. "Won't you have another bottle of wine, M'sieur?" he says ... And I have half a glass and he finishes the whole bottle. Who pays, eh? I do. Liqueurs - you tell me why all the liqueurs go on my bill? And the brandy -Mama mia, how much that man can drink! I pay for it, every drop. Not -' Ramage added hastily, as though suddenly nervous, 'that I'm saying anything against him, you understand.'

  The police officer nodded sympathetically. 'He was sent from Paris, no doubt.'

  'Yes, he joined me in Paris after my visit to Boulogne was arranged.'

  Nothing said about Louis up to now could incriminate either of them. This local police officer might accept that Louis was working for some ministry or committee - he would be used in secrecy - without checking up. He might well think that arresting a foreigner who was being supervised by the employee of a ministry or committee would leave him open to an accusation of interfering ... it was a faint hope.

  'Where is he, anyway?' Ramage asked crossly. 'Let him speak for himself - he's always very secretive, although he keeps a sharp enough watch on me.'

  'Probably writing a report on this affair for his superiors,' the officer said. 'I expect he'll be in to see me later.'

  'Well,' Ramage said calmly, 'he can tell you all about everything, so there's no need for me to stay. You'll find me at the hotel.'

  He had not walked two paces before the officer was shouting. Ramage turned to find himself covered by the pistols of the two gendarmes.

  'You are going to a cell!' the officer said angrily. He pulled a large book towards him, a book that reminded Ramage of a ledger in a counting-house. 'Now, I want your full name and address, and all the details of why you are in France . . .'

  The cell was square, five paces along one side and five paces along the other. It had a chill of its own, something which had nothing to do with the outside temperature, for it was a warm night. Ramage only saw the inside for a brief moment, in the light of the guard's lantern, before being pushed in and having the door slammed behind him. As his eyes became accustomed to the darkness he saw that there was a single small window high in one wall, and alt
hough it was barely large enough for a man to put his head through, there were iron bars.

  He had seen a low wooden cot but in the darkness misjudged the distance, finding it by banging his shin painfully on a comer. A moment later he kicked over a bucket, and from the smell guessed its purpose. There was a thin palliasse of sacking and straw on the cot, and he thought momentarily of all the bedbugs lurking in there, waiting for the majesty of French law to provide them with their next meal.

  He sat down on the cot and realized how tired he was. The strain of the last hour had drained his energy, and he hoped he was tired enough to drop off to sleep quickly, instead of finding his mind invaded by a dozen worries which tightened his muscles and chased sleep away. Having already been caught once in his nightshirt he decided that undressing would be confined to his boots.

  The interview had not gone too badly. The officer was suspicious but not more so than was to be expected. His main interest obviously centred on Stafford, and Ramage was sure he had accepted the story of Louis being the representative from some ministry or committee in Paris.

  As he stretched out on the cot he reflected that whatever happened - and for the moment there was no need to be too pessimistic - Louis had almost certainly had time to get the report out of his room and into the courier's hands. Sleep, that was what he needed; worrying could achieve nothing, since once again everything was in Louis's hands.

  Dawn was a pale grey square at the window when he was woken by the rasp of bolts being pulled back. A moment later the door creaked open and a wedge of yellow lantern light on the floor showed a small bowl being put down on the floor just inside the cell. The door slammed shut, cutting off the light, and the bolts rasped again, all without anyone saying a word.

  Ramage rubbed his eyes and heard the faint rasp of other bolts: presumably the inmate of another cell was also receiving his breakfast. He walked carefully over to the door and picked up the bowl. It was a watery gruel which had a vague smell of dried peas, and he saw something he had not noticed at first, a large crust of bread, the end of a long loaf.

  There was no spoon - presumably they were afraid of a prisoner using it to beat in the guard's head, although heaving the bread like a half brick would do more damage. He tilted the bowl and began drinking, and was reminded immediately of the landlady's medicine. The taste was not the same; the prison gruel had far less body but hinted at the same strange origins. Certainly the gruel owed most of its substance to cabbage water, although the peas floating around in it might well have been rabbit droppings for all the taste or sustenance they offered.

  Birds began to chatter outside the window as it grew lighter. There were a few high clouds and the wind seemed to be from the south-west. With luck it would hold there long enough to give Jackson a fast reach over to Folkestone tonight. Was Louis's courier already heading towards the coast from Amiens? Already through Picquigny, Abbeville and Montreuil? In his imagination Ramage travelled the road back to Boulogne, crossed the Channel, hired a horse at Folkestone and rode to Aldington, where his clothes and perhaps Gianna, were waiting ...

  He put the bowl down angrily: of all the thoughts that had tried to fight their way into his mind in the past week, the one he had resisted most successfully until this moment was of Gianna, and he knew he had to continue to shut her out. Men were supposed to be spurred on to great feats of daring and bravery by the thought of beautiful women, but he was damned if it worked for him. He had often thought of Gianna just before going into action, but all that happened was that the prospect of getting his head knocked off became even less attractive. Now there was a possibility of getting it lopped off by the guillotine he found even this brief glimpse of her painful. Next week, he whispered to himself, she must go away now and come back next week ...

  There was no sign of life inside the police station although outside the window the occasional clatter of hooves showed that the people of Amiens were beginning to stir. He felt grubby and greasy; his chin and cheeks were ready for a shave, though presumably prisoners were not trusted with a razor.

  It was Sunday morning, and in London it would be another couple of hours before the family came down to breakfast. Then - he stood up abruptly to shake off the thought and began pacing up and down the cell. Five paces to the window, turn, five paces back. The floor was made of stone blocks: the same stone as the walls. He passed by the door and noted that it was made of four thick baulks of timber, braced and strengthened by iron crossbars, with the whole surface closely studded with iron bolts which would presumably deflect the blade of an axe, whether wielded from inside or outside the cell.

  For the moment the question of escaping did not arise, he decided, but to give himself something to do he began going over every inch of the cell. The window was so small he would have difficulty getting his head through it, let alone his shoulders, so there was no point in testing the bars. The outside wall - stone blocks, each four feet wide by a foot thick, with the bars of the window set in the middle. The inner walls - again solid granite blocks, probably a foot or more thick. The ceiling was a good nine feet high, and rust marks in the plaster showed him that it was made up of iron rods spaced about six inches apart. A woodsman's axe would make no impression on the door itself and the hinges were outside in the corridor. Whoever designed and built this cell knew his job. Despite all the stories of daring escapes from barred cells, the fact was that the only way out of this, without the key to the door, would be by igniting a barrel of powder .. .

  Supposing things did go wrong, and it came to escaping? He shrugged his shoulders and sat down on the cot. The only way out was through the door, and the only way of opening the door was by sliding back the bolts and turning the key in the lock from outside. If Stafford had been there he might have been able to pick the lock from inside, but even he could not slide back those big bolts.

  Which left no alternative but to overpower the jailer. Get the man inside the cell under some pretext or other, knock him out, walk blithely out of the building and hope to vanish down the side streets. It would be wise to watch the habits of the jailers. The one on duty at the moment was a cautious beggar who opened the door just enough to push the bowl in and then slammed it shut. Habit or orders? Was one jailer on duty at a time, or was there another one sitting or standing out there as well? He needed to know that before he made any move.

  Then he pushed the thoughts away: it was still early on Sunday, and the courier would not yet have reached Boulogne. All being well, Dyson, Jackson and Rossi would sail tonight for the rendezvous and Jackson would transfer to the Folkestone Marie to arrive in England tomorrow morning. He would deliver the report and be back in the Folkestone boat ready to sail for the rendezvous on Monday night, meet the French Marie, and be back in Boulogne on Tuesday.

  There could be a delay of course - the courier for Amiens might be a day late getting to Boulogne; the Marie might lose twenty-four hours if she could not leave Boulogne early enough to reach the rendezvous that night. Hellfire and damnation, it was hard to guess . . . All right, say the courier reaches Boulogne too late for the Marie to sail tonight to get to the rendezvous, Dyson would sail on Monday night instead, and Jackson deliver the dispatch on Tuesday and get back to Boulogne soon after dawn on Wednesday.

  Say Louis and Stafford managed to escape from Amiens and made their way to Boulogne, they would miss the Marie sailing with the dispatch, so they would have to wait for her to return on Tuesday or possibly not until Wednesday. They would be safe enough hidden on board her all day Wednesday, until they could sail on Wednesday night.

  This meant that to give them all a chance of getting away - which was the least he owed the men - he needed to keep his secret until dawn on Wednesday. After that he could confess, tell blatant lies, bait the gendarmes or do whatever he wanted, knowing that he would not endanger the men or the dispatch. It was a long time to wait; today, Monday and Tuesday: seventy-two hours.

  He stood up suddenly, as if to drive away the hours. It migh
t not arise; Louis might convince the officer that all the trouble had been caused by a foreman with a roving eye. I’ll be back at the hotel by this afternoon, he told himself, and began pacing up and down the cell.

  He was used to walking in a confined space - the quarterdeck of his last two ships had not allowed more than a dozen uninterrupted paces - but this cell was even smaller and the constant turning made him feel dizzy. Queasy, perhaps; the turning was swilling the gruel around in his protesting stomach, and the few pieces of stale bread he managed to swallow did nothing to ballast it down.

  He flopped down on the cot and shut his eyes. He had felt trapped in the hotel room, but it had not really given him the slightest idea of what it was like to be locked in a cell. Once when he was a boy he had nearly drowned, and he remembered the terrible feeling of being utterly trapped, and the desperate way he had kicked his legs and flailed his arms to escape from the water which enclosed him like glue . . . A few days in this cell could drive a man mad. How did anyone endure being jailed for years? That's something I'll never know, he thought grimly; I'll have been freed, escaped, or they'll be leading me across the square to the guillotine long before a week has passed.

  An hour later he heard the bolts being pulled back and the key turning in the lock. The door swung open and a gendarme with a pistol walked into the room, motioning him to remain sitting on the bed. He was followed by the gaunt officer, who nodded briefly.

  'I trust you slept well,' Ramage said sarcastically. 'I'm sorry to be the cause of you getting to bed rather late.'