Текст книги "An echo in the bone"
Автор книги: Diana Gabaldon
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Текущая страница: 49 (всего у книги 75 страниц)
“And so you went to the brothel. Where money…”
“They say water is the universal solvent,” Percy said, shaking his head, “but it isn’t. You could plunge a man into a barrel of freezing water and leave him for a week, and you would accomplish much less than you might with a modest quantity of gold.”
Grey silently noted the adjective “freezing,” and nodded to Percy to continue.
“It took some time, repeated visits, different attempts—the madam was a true professional, meaning that whoever had paid her predecessor had done so on a staggering scale, and her doorkeeper, while old enough, had had his tongue torn out at an early age; no help there. And of course none of the whores had been there when the infamous carpet was delivered, that being so long before.”
He had, however, patiently traced the families of the present whores—for some occupations run in families—and managed after months of work to discover an old woman who had been employed at the brothel and who recognized the miniature of Amelie that he had brought from Trois Flèches.
The girl had indeed been brought to the brothel, in the middle stages of pregnancy. That had not mattered particularly; there were patrons with such tastes. A few months later, she had been delivered of a son. She had survived childbirth but died a year later, during a plague of influenza.
“And I could not begin to tell you the difficulties of finding out anything about a child born in a Paris brothel forty-odd years ago, my dear.” Percy sighed, employing his handkerchief again.
“But your name is Perseverance,” Grey noted with extreme dryness, and Percy glanced sharply at him.
“Do you know,” he said lightly, “I believe you are the only person in the world who knows that?” And from the expression in his eyes, that was one too many.
“Your secret is safe with me,” Grey said. “That one, at least. What about Denys Randall-Isaacs?”
It worked. Percy’s face shimmered like a pool of quicksilver in the sun. In half a heartbeat, he had the perfect blankness back in place—but it was too late.
Grey laughed, though without humor, and stood up.
“Thank you, Perseverance,” he said, and walked away through the grassy graves of the nameless poor.
That night, when his household was asleep, he took pen and ink to write to Arthur Norrington, to Harry Quarry, and to his brother. Toward dawn, he began, for the first time in two years, to write to Jamie Fraser.
BATTLE OF BENNINGTON
General Burgoyne’s camp
September 11, 1777
THE SMOKE OF burnt and burning fields hung over the camp, had done so for days. The Americans were still withdrawing, destroying the countryside in their wake.
William was with Sandy Lindsay, talking about the best way to cook a turkey—one of Lindsay’s scouts having just brought him one—when the letter arrived. It was likely William’s imagination that a dreadful silence fell upon the camp, the earth shook, and the veil of the temple was rent in twain. But it was very shortly apparent that something had happened, nonetheless.
There was a definite change in the air, something amiss in the rhythms of speech and movement among the men surrounding them. Balcarres felt it, too, and stopped in his examination of the turkey’s outspread wing, looking at William with eyebrows raised.
“What?” said William.
“I don’t know, but it isn’t good.” Balcarres thrust the limp turkey into his orderly’s hands and, snatching up his hat, made for Burgoyne’s tent, William on his heels.
They found Burgoyne tight-lipped and white with anger, his senior officers in clusters round him, speaking to one another in low, shocked voices.
Captain Sir Francis Clerke, the general’s aide-de-camp, emerged from the press, head down and face shadowed. Balcarres caught at his elbow as he passed.
“Francis—what’s happened?”
Captain Clerke was looking noticeably agitated. He glanced behind him into the tent, then stepped aside and moved out of earshot, taking Balcarres and William with him.
“Howe,” he said. “He’s not coming.”
“Not coming?” William said stupidly. “But—is he not leaving New York after all?”
“He’s leaving,” Clerke said, his lips so tight it was a wonder he could speak at all. “To invade Pennsylvania.”
“But—” Balcarres darted an appalled look toward the entrance to the tent, then back at Clerke.
“Exactly.”
The true proportions of the disaster were revealing themselves to William. General Howe was not merely cocking a snook at General Burgoyne by ignoring his plan, which would be bad enough from Burgoyne’s point of view. By choosing to march on Philadelphia rather than coming up the Hudson to join Burgoyne’s troops, Howe had left Burgoyne essentially to his own devices, in terms of supply and reinforcement.
In other words, they were on their own, separated from their supply trains, with the disagreeable choice of continuing to pursue the retreating Americans through a wilderness from which all sustenance had been stripped—or turning round and marching ignominiously back to Canada, through a wilderness from which all sustenance had been stripped.
Balcarres had been expostulating along these lines to Sir Francis, who rubbed a hand over his face in frustration, shaking his head.
“I know,” he said. “If you’ll excuse me, my lords—”
“Where are you going?” William asked, and Clerke glanced at him.
“To tell Mrs. Lind,” Clerke said. “I thought I’d best warn her.” Mrs. Lind was the wife of the chief commisary officer. She was also General Burgoyne’s mistress.
WHETHER MRS. LIND had exerted her undeniable gifts to good effect, or whether the general’s natural resiliency of character had asserted itself, the blow of Howe’s letter was swiftly encompassed. Whatever you want to say about him, William wrote in his weekly letter to Lord John, he knows the benefit of certain decision and swift action. We have resumed our pursuit of the Americans’ chief body of troops with redoubled effort. Most of our horses have been abandoned, stolen, or eaten. I have quite worn through the soles of one pair of boots.
In the meantime, we receive intelligence from one of the scouts to the effect that the town of Bennington, which is not too far distant, is being used as a gathering place for the American commissary. By report, it is lightly guarded, and so the General is sending Colonel Baum, one of the Hessians, with five hundred troops to capture these much-needed supplies. We leave in the morning.
Whether his drunken conversation with Balcarres was in part responsible, William never knew, but he had discovered that he was now spoken of as being “good with Indians.” And whether it was owing to this dubious capacity or to the fact that he could speak basic German, he found himself on the morning of August 12 deputed to accompany Colonel Baum’s foraging expedition, this including a number of dismounted Brunswick cavalry, two three-pounder artillery pieces, and a hundred Indians.
By report, the Americans were receiving cattle, funneled out of New England, these being collected in quantity in Bennington, as well as a considerable number of wagons, these full of corn, flour, and other necessaries.
It was, for a wonder, not raining when they set out, and that alone gave the expedition a feeling of optimism. Anticipation of food increased this sense significantly. Rations had been short for what seemed a very long time, though in fact it had been only a week or so. Still, more than a day spent marching without adequate food seems a long time, as William had good cause to know.
Many of the Indians were still mounted; they circled the main body of soldiers, riding ahead a little way to scout the road, coming back to offer guidance through or around places where the road—no more than a trace at the best of times—had given up the fight and been absorbed by the forest or drowned by one of the rain-swollen streams that leapt unexpectedly out of the hills. Bennington was near a river called the Walloomsac, and as they walked, William was discussing in a desultory way with one of the Hessian lieutenants whether it might be possible to load the stores onto rafts for transport to a rendezvous downstream.
This discussion was entirely theoretical, since neither of them knew where the Walloomsac went nor whether it was navigable to any extent, but it gave both men a chance to practice the other’s language and so passed the time on a long, hot march.
“My father spent much time in Germany,” William told Ober-Leftenant Gruenwald, in his careful, slow German. “He is of the food of Hanover very fond.”
Gruenwald, from Hesse-Cassel, allowed himself a derisive twitch of the mustache at mention of Hanover, but contented himself with the observation that even a Hanoverian could roast a cow and perhaps boil some potatoes to accompany it. But his own mother made a dish from the flesh of swine and apples, beswimming in red wine and spiced with nutmeg and cinnamon, that made his mouth water only to remember.
Water was running down Gruenwald’s face, sweat making tracks in the dust and dampening the collar of his light-blue coat. He took off his tall grenadier’s headdress and wiped his head with a giant spotted kerchief, sodden from many earlier employments.
“I think we will maybe not find cinnamon today,” Willie said. “Maybe a pig, though.”
“If we do, I will him roast for you,” Gruenwald assured him. “As for apples …” he tucked a hand into his tunic and withdrew a handful of small red crab apples, which he shared out with William. “I haff a bushel of these. I haff–”
Excited yips from an Indian riding back down the column interrupted him, and William looked up to see the rider throw back an arm, gesturing behind him and shouting, “River!”
The word enlivened the sagging columns, and William saw the cavalry—who had insisted upon wearing their high boots and their broadswords, in spite of their lack of horses, and had suffered in consequence—draw themselves up, clanking loudly with anticipation.
Another shout came from the forward line.
“Cow turds!”
That caused a general cheer and much laughter among the men, who hastened on with a quicker step. William saw Colonel Baum, who did still have a horse, turn out of the column and wait on the roadside, leaning down to speak briefly with the officers as they came past. William saw his aide lean close, pointing up a small hill opposite.
“What do you think—” he said, turning to Gruenwald, and was startled to find the ober-leftenant staring at him blank-faced, his jaw hanging open. The man’s hand loosened and fell to his side, and the mitred helmet fell and rolled away in the dust. William blinked and saw a thick worm of red snake its way slowly down from under Gruenwald’s dark hair.
Gruenwald sat down quite suddenly and fell backward in the road, his face gone a muddy white.
“Shit!” said William, and jerked suddenly to an awareness of what had just happened. “Ambush!” he bellowed at the top of his lungs. “Das ist ein Überfall!!”
There were shouts of alarm rising from the column, and the crack of sporadic firing from the woods. William grabbed Gruenwald under the arms and dragged him hastily into the shelter of a group of pine trees. The ober-leftenant was still alive, though his coat was wet with sweat and blood. William made sure the German’s pistol was loaded and in his hand before taking his own pistol and dashing toward Baum, who was standing in his stirrups, shrieking directions in high, shrill German.
He caught only a word here and there and looked urgently round, to see whether he could tell what the colonel’s orders were from the actions of the Hessians. He caught sight of a little group of scouts, running down the road toward him, and ran to meet them.
“Goddamned lot of rebels,” one scout gasped, out of breath, pointing behind him. “Coming.”
“Where? How far?” He felt as though he were about to run out of his skin, but forced himself to stand still, speak calmly, breathe.
A mile, maybe two. He did breathe then, and managed to ask how many there were. Maybe two hundred, maybe more. Armed with muskets, but no artillery.
“Right. Go back and keep an eye on them.” He turned back toward Colonel Baum, feeling the surface of the road strange under his feet, as though it wasn’t quite where he expected it to be.
THEY DUG IN, hastily but efficiently, entrenching themselves behind shallow earthworks and makeshift barricades of fallen trees. The guns were dragged up the small hill and aimed to cover the road. The rebels, of course, ignored the road, and swarmed in from both sides.
There might have been two hundred men in the first wave; it was impossible to count them as they darted through the heavy wood. William could see the flicker of movement and fired at it, but without any great hope of hitting anyone. The wave hesitated, but only for a moment.
Then a strong voice bellowed, somewhere behind the rebel front, “We take them now, or Molly Stark’s a widow tonight!”
“What?” said William, disbelieving. Whatever the man shouting had meant, his exhortation had a marked effect, for an enormous number of rebels came boiling out of the trees, headed at a mad run for the guns. The soldiers minding the guns promptly fled, and so did a good many of the others.
The rebels were making short work of the rest, and William had just settled down grimly to do what he could before they got him, when two Indians came springing over the rolling ground, seized him under the arms, and, yanking him to his feet, propelled him rapidly away.
Which was how Lieutenant Ellesmere found himself once more cast in the role of Cassandra, reporting the debacle at Bennington to General Burgoyne. Men killed and wounded, guns lost—and not a single cow to be shown for it.
And I haven’t yet killed a single rebel, either, he thought tiredly, making his way slowly back to his tent afterward. He thought he should regret that, but wasn’t sure he did.
Deserter Game, round II
JAMIE HAD BEEN bathing in the river, sluicing sweat and grime from his body, when he heard remarkably odd swearing in French. The words were French, but the sentiments expressed were definitely not. Curious, he clambered out of the water, dressed, and went down the bank a little way, where he discovered a young man waving his arms and gesturing in an agitated attempt to make himself understood to a bemused party of workmen. As half of them were Germans and the rest Americans from Virginia, his efforts to communicate with them in French had so far succeeded only in entertaining them.
Jamie had introduced himself and offered his services as interpreter. Which is how he had come to spend a good bit of each day with the young Polish engineer whose unpronounceable last name had quickly been shortened to “Kos.”
He found Kos both intelligent and rather touching in his enthusiasm—and was himself interested in the fortifications Kościuszko (for he prided himself on being able to say it correctly) was building. Kos, for his part, was both grateful for the linguistic assistance and interested in the occasional observations and suggestions that Jamie was able to make, as the result of his conversations with Brianna.
Talking about vectors and stresses made him miss her almost unbearably but at the same time brought her somehow nearer to him, and he found himself spending more and more time with the young Pole, learning bits of his language and allowing Kos to practice what he fondly imagined to be English.
“What is it that brought ye here?” Jamie asked one day. In spite of the lack of pay, a remarkable number of European officers had come to join—or tried to join—the Continental army, evidently feeling that even if the prospects of plunder were limited, they could bamboozle the Congress into granting them rank as generals, which they could then parlay into further occupation back in Europe. Some of these dubious volunteers were actually of use, but he’d heard a good bit of muttering about those who weren’t. Thinking of Matthias Fermoy, he was inclined to mutter a bit himself.
Kos wasn’t one of these, though.
“Well, first, money,” he said frankly, when asked how he had come to be in America. “My brother the manor in Poland has, but family no money, nothing for me. No girl look at me without money.” He shrugged. “No place in Polish army, but I know how to build things, I come where things to build.” He grinned. “Maybe girls, too. Girls with good family, good money.”
“If ye came for money and girls, man, ye joined the wrong army,” Jamie said dryly, and Kościuszko laughed.
“I say first money,” he corrected. “I come to Philadelphia, read there La Declaration.” He pronounced it in French, and bared his head in reverence at the name, clasping his sweat-stained hat to his breast. “This thing, this writing… I am ravish.”
So ravished was he by the sentiments expressed in that noble document that he had at once sought out its author. While probably surprised by the sudden advent of a passionate young Pole in his midst, Thomas Jefferson had made him welcome, and the two men had spent most of a day deeply involved in the discussion of philosophy (in French), from which they had emerged fast friends.
“Great man,” Kos assured Jamie solemnly, crossing himself before putting his hat back on. “God keep him safe.”
“Dieu accorde-lui la sagesse,” Jamie replied. God grant him wisdom. He thought that Jefferson would certainly be safe, as he was no soldier. Which reminded him uncomfortably of Benedict Arnold, but that was not a matter he could—or would—do anything about.
Kos had wiped a strand of stringy dark hair out of his mouth and shaken his head.
“Maybe wife, one day, if God wills. This—what we do here—more important than wife.”
They returned to work, but Jamie found his mind dwelling with interest on the conversation. The notion that it was better to spend one’s life in pursuit of a noble goal than merely to seek safety—he agreed with that entirely. But surely such purity of purpose was the province of men without families? A pardox there: a man who sought his own safety was a coward; a man who risked his family’s safety was a poltroon, if not worse.
That led on to more rambling paths of thought and further interesting paradoxes: Do women hold back the evolution of such things as freedom and other social ideals, out of fear for themselves or their children? Or do they in fact inspire such things—and the risks required to reach them—by providing the things worth fighting for? Not merely fighting to defend, either, but to propel forward, for a man wanted more for his children than he would ever have.
He would have to ask Claire what she thought of this, though he smiled to think of some of the things she might think of it, particularly the part about whether women hindered social evolution by their nature. She’d told him something of her own experiences in the Great War—he couldn’t think of it by any other name, though she told him there was another, earlier one by that name. She said disparaging things about heroes now and then, but only when he’d hurt himself; she knew fine what men were for.
Would he be here, in fact, if it weren’t for her? Would he do this anyway, only for the sake of the ideals of the Revolution, if he were not assured of victory? He had to admit that only a madman, an idealist, or a truly desperate man would be here now. Any sane person who knew anything about armies would have shaken his head and turned away, appalled. He often felt appalled, himself.
But he would, in fact, do it—were he alone. A man’s life had to have more purpose than only to feed himself each day. And this was a grand purpose—grander, maybe, than anyone else fighting for it knew. And if it took his own life in the doing… he wouldn’t enjoy it, but he’d be comforted in the dying, knowing he’d helped. After all, it wasn’t as though he would be leaving his wife helpless; unlike most wives, Claire would have a place to go if something befell him.
He was once more in the river, floating on his back and thinking along these lines, when he heard the gasp. It was a feminine gasp, and he put his feet down at once and stood up, wet hair streaming over his face. He shoved it back to find Rachel Hunter standing on the bank, both hands pressed over her eyes and every line of her body strained in an eloquence of distress.
“Did ye want me, Rachel?” he asked, wiping water out of his eyes in an effort to locate just where on the riverbank he had left his clothes. She gasped again and turned her face in his direction, hands still over her eyes.
“Friend James! Thy wife said I would find thee here. I beg pardon for—please! Come out at once!” Her anguish broke out and her hands dropped, though she kept her eyes tight shut as she reached out to him, pleading.
“What—”
“Denny! The British have him!”
Cold shot through his veins, much colder than the wind on his exposed wet skin.
“Where? How? Ye can look now,” he added, hastily buttoning his breeches.
“He went with another man, posing as deserters.” He was up the bank beside her, shirt over his arm, and saw that she had her brother’s spectacles in the pocket of her apron; her hand kept going to them, clutching them. “I told him not to, I did!”
“I told him, too,” Jamie said grimly. “Are ye sure, lass?”
She nodded, pale as a sheet and her eyes huge in her face, but not—not yet—weeping.
“The other man—he came back, just now, and ran to find me. He—it was ill-luck, he said; they were brought before a major, and it was the same man who had threatened to hang Denny when he did it last time! The other man ran for it and escaped, but they caught Denny, and this time, this time…” She was gasping for breath and could barely speak for dread, he saw. He put a hand on her arm.
“Find the other man and send him to my tent, so he can tell me exactly where your brother is. I’ll go to fetch Ian and we’ll get him back.” He squeezed her arm gently to make her look at him, and she did, though so distracted he thought she barely saw him.
“Dinna fash yourself. We’ll get him back for ye,” he repeated gently. “I swear it, by Christ and His Mother.”
“Thee must not swear—oh, the devil with it!” she cried, then clapped a hand over her mouth. She shut her eyes, swallowed, and took it away again.
“Thank you,” she said.
“Ye’re welcome,” he said, with an eye to the sinking sun. Did the British prefer to hang people at sunset or at dawn? “We’ll get him back,” he said once more, firmly. Dead or alive.
THE CAMP’S commanding officer had built a gibbet in the center of the camp. It was a crude affair of unbarked logs and rough timber, and from the holes and gouges round its nails, had been disassembled and moved several times. It looked effective, though, and the dangling noose gave Jamie a feeling of ice in his water.
“We’ve played the deserter game once too often,” Jamie whispered to his nephew. “Or maybe three.”
“D’ye think he’s ever used it?” Ian murmured back, peering down at the sinister thing through their screen of oak saplings.
“He wouldna go to that much work only to scare someone.”
It scared him, badly. He didn’t point out to Ian the spot near the bottom of the main upright, where someone’s—or someones’—desperately flailing feet had kicked away chunks of the bark. The makeshift gibbet wasn’t high enough for the drop to break a man’s neck; a man hanged on it would strangle slowly.
He touched his own neck in reflexive aversion, Roger Mac’s mangled throat and its ugly raw scar clear in his mind. Even clearer was the memory of the grief that had overwhelmed him, coming to take down Roger Mac from the tree they’d hanged him on, knowing him dead and the world changed forever. It had been, too, though he hadn’t died.
Well, it wasn’t going to change for Rachel Hunter. They weren’t too late, that was the important thing. He said as much to Ian, who didn’t reply but gave him a brief glance of surprise.
How do you know? it said, plain as words. He lifted a shoulder and inclined his head toward a spot a little farther down the hill, where an outcrop of rock covered in moss and bearberry would give them cover. They moved off silently, keeping low, making their movements in the same slow rhythm to which the wood was moving. It was twilight and the world was full of shadows; it was no trick to be two more.
He knew they hadn’t hanged Denny Hunter yet, because he’d seen men hanged. Execution left a stain upon the air and marked the souls of those who saw it.
The camp was quiet. Not literally—the soldiers were making considerable racket, and a good thing, too—but in terms of its spirit. There was neither a sense of dread oppression nor the sick excitement that sprang from the same source; you could feel such things. So Denny Hunter was either here, alive—or had been sent elsewhere. If he was here, where would he be?
Confined somehow, and under guard. This wasn’t a permanent camp; there was no stockade. It was a big camp, though, and it took them some time to circle it, checking to see whether Hunter might be somewhere in the open, tied to a tree or shackled to a wagon. He was nowhere in sight, though. That left the tents.
There were four large ones, and one of these plainly housed the commissary; it stood apart and had a small cluster of wagons near it. It had also a constant stream of men going in and out, emerging with sacks of flour or dried peas. No meat, though he could smell cooking rabbit and squirrel from some of the campfires. The German deserters had been right, then; the army was living off the land, as well as it could.
“The commander’s tent?” Ian whispered softly to him. It was plain to see, with its pennants and the knot of men who stood about just outside its entrance.
“I hope not.” Plainly they’d have taken Denny Hunter to the commander for interrogation. And if he were still in doubt as to Hunter’s bona fides, he might have kept the man close at hand for further questioning.
Had he already made up his mind on the matter, though—and Rachel had been convinced of it—he wouldn’t keep him. He would have been sent somewhere under guard to await his reckoning. Under guard and out of sight, though Jamie doubted the British commander feared a rescue attempt.
“Eeny-meeny-miney-mo,” he muttered under his breath, twitching a finger back and forth between the two remaining tents. A guard with a musket was standing more or less between them; no telling which he was set to guard. “That one.” He lifted his chin to the one on the right, but even as he did so felt Ian stiffen beside him.
“Nay,” Ian said softly, eyes riveted. “The other.”
There was something strange in Ian’s voice, and Jamie glanced at him in surprise, then down at the tent.
At first, his only thought was a fleeting sense of confusion. Then the world changed.
It was twilight, but they were by now no more than fifty yards away; there was no mistaking it. He hadn’t seen the boy since he was twelve, but he had memorized every moment they’d spent in each other’s presence: the way he carried himself, the quick, graceful movement—that’s from his mother, he thought in a daze of shock, seeing the tall young officer make a gesture of the hand that was Geneva Dunsany to the life—the shape of his back, his head and ears, though the slender shoulders had thickened to a man’s. Mine, he thought, with a surge of pride that shocked him nearly as much as William’s sudden appearance had. They’re mine.
Jarring as they were, these thoughts took less than half a second to dash through his head and out again. He breathed in, very slowly, and out again. Had Ian remembered William from their meeting seven years earlier? Or was the resemblance so instantly visible to a casual eye?
It didn’t matter now. The camp was beginning its supper preparations; within minutes everyone would be engrossed in the meal. It was better to move then, even without the cover of darkness.
“It has to be me, aye?” Ian gripped his wrist, compelling his attention. “D’ye want to make the diversion before or after?”
“After.” He’d been thinking, in the back of his mind, all the time they were creeping toward the camp, and now the decision lay ready, as though someone else had made it. “Best if we can get him away quiet. Try, and if things go wrong, screech.”
Ian nodded and, with no further conversation, dropped to his belly and began a stealthy worming through the brush. The evening was cool and pleasant after the heat of the day, but Jamie’s hands felt cold and he cupped them round the clay belly of the little firepot. He’d carried it from their own camp, feeding it bits of dry stick along the way. It was hissing softly to itself as it fed on a chunk of dried hickory, both the sight and the smell of it safely hidden in the haze of campfire smoke that drifted through the trees, dispelling the gnats and the bloodthirsty mosquitoes, thank God and His mother.
Wondering at his own twitching—it wasn’t like him—he touched his sporran, checking yet again that the cork had not come loose from the bottle of turpentine, even though he knew well it hadn’t; he’d smell it.
The arrows in his quiver shifted as he shifted his weight, the fletchings rustling. He was in easy bowshot of the commander’s tent, could have the canvas well alight in seconds if Ian screeched. If he didn’t…
He began to move again, eyes flitting over the ground, searching for a patch that would do. Dry grass there was in plenty, but it would go up too fast if that was all there was. He wanted a fast flame but a big one.
The soldiers would have already scavenged the nearby forest for firewood, but he spotted a fallen fir snag, too heavy to carry away. Foragers had snapped the lower branches off, but there were plenty left, thick with dried needles that the wind hadn’t taken yet. He moved back slowly, far enough out of sight that he could move quickly again, gathering armfuls of dry grass, bark scraped hasty from a log, anything that would kindle.
Flaming arrows in the commander’s tent would compel instant attention, to be sure, but they would also cause widespread alarm; soldiers would boil out of the camp like hornets, looking for attackers. A grass fire, no. Such things were common, and while it would certainly create diversion, no one would be looking further once they’d seen it was nothing.
