Or rather, there were letters, for with the regiment dispersed there was really very little of routine to detain him. Indeed, that morning he’d dismissed St Alban before ten to accompany Georgiana on her daily exercise. The hircarrah had brought a full bag from Fort St George, including several letters from England. These – with a single exception – he looked forward to reading, but first there were the official papers, one in particular that caused him the keenest disquiet. Indeed, he’d been turning it over in his mind since first breaking the seal the night before, yet could find no answer, for he’d never dealt with its like. Yet the statement, from the chief book-keeping officer of the Commissariat, was categorical:

I am now in possession of a sworn statement by an Indian of the highest reputation that the sum of 800 Arcot Rs was paid by him to the person of Major Garratt, in inducement to tender for supplies to His Majesty’s Sixth Light Dragoons at Fort St George, this Thirteenth Ultimo …

He couldn’t believe it. Or was it simply that he didn’t want to? There was some consolation at least in reading that there was no impropriety on the part of Collins; but Garratt? How could a man who’d proved so faithful and active in so short a time be just as corrupt as the run of native merchants? After all his years of being under authority and having soldiers under him, was he really no judge of men at all?

But it was not a time for excessive pride. How now was he to proceed? ‘Always strive to do the right thing, because it is the right thing to do.’ Oh, the voice of his father, and of many a master at Shrewsbury! But what struggles of moment were theirs compared with matters of the regiment? Besides, doing the right thing was the easier part; it required only courage. How did one first discern the right thing? What indeed was ‘right’ in the profession of arms, an occupation encompassed about with a great many rules and regulations, but with rather more questions than the rules and regulations provided answers for? Was the right thing the most prudent course? Prudential judgement was the true practice of command, Lord George Irvine had been wont to say, not the blind practice of the King’s Regulations and the Mutiny Act. And that, he trusted, had ever been his own conviction, albeit conscious of the human tendency towards convenience. Was it for mere convenience – the regiment’s, but more particularly his own – that he now sought some way of avoiding the due process of military law?

He trusted not. He cared nothing – well, nothing very much – for what the chiselling, fraudulent merchants of Madras would think. (They would likely never hear of it anyway, for what villain would complain to another of his own corruption going unrewarded?) But the confidence in the regiment of both officers and the rank and file – the confidence that their seniors were men not only of courage but of honour – was everything. Yes, he might use this case as an exception to prove the rule – ‘be ye ever so high, there is nothing higher than the law’ – but what might be its dispiriting effect? He simply had no precedent to consult – or even another whom he could trust, save, perhaps, Fairbrother.