Ampersand Papers

by Michael Innes

  ‘Ordering his remains! You mean arranging his funeral, and that sort of thing?’

  ‘His literary remains, Charles. Reliquiae, I believe to be the Latin term. He had copious diaries to set in order, and a large correspondence with his friends. When he was very young he and William Wordsworth, who was his contemporary at St John’s, used to exchange poetical compositions. With Coleridge, to whom Wordsworth introduced him, Adrian collaborated in an abortive tragedy. According to my grandfather, who was a person of cultivation, Adrian had simply thrust it away in a drawer, and it never again saw the light of day.’

  ‘But that is perfectly astounding!’ Charles came out with this while actually munching plum cake, and found himself at the same time looking almost suspiciously at his hostess. Was it conceivable that the old girl was pulling his leg? The idea was a fantastic one. ‘Have you ever,’ he asked more calmly, ‘thought of doing anything about the matter yourself?’

  ‘I have certainly once or twice considered paying a visit to the Ampersands – they could hardly decline to receive me, were I to propose myself – and have some quiet conversation with Lord Ampersand about the possibility of finding the remains. But on the whole I have thought it best to wait on the event. And now, Charles, you tell me that the event has, in effect, arrived. With a professional researcher at work, anything of significance will be found – and will be published and edited and so forth by competent people. Money-interests may be involved, as you suggest. But with these we need not concern ourselves.’

  ‘No,’ Charles Digitt said. ‘No – I suppose not.’

  ‘I ought to tell you that I possess a very considerable collection of family papers myself. Perhaps I shall show it to you one day, and let you look over it. I have noticed a few pieces by my great-grandfather, which would appear to be of only minor interest. There may be others. I have not gone in detail into the bulk of the material, but my will directs that this should eventually be done. At least I haven’t stuffed my papers away at the top of a ruined tower. Incidentally, were Lord Ampersand properly acquainted with the chronicles of our family, he would know that the North Tower has more than once before been made a repository of what may be called treasures. Including a beautiful maiden, Charles. A Baron Digitt is said to have incarcerated such a one there in the interest of most reprehensible designs upon her.’

  ‘Do tell me,’ Charles said – rashly, since he had no desire at all to hear this murky family legend. Now Miss Digitt made quite a thing of it – and lent it, moreover, a very rosy and sentimental colouring. In a way, Archie had been right about her; she had a simple-minded side, and it lay in the direction of romantic imaginings. A designing rascal – it occurred to Charles – would have little difficulty in turning her silly old head. The oddity of this being all mixed up with a decidedly astringent personality so interested Charles that he quite forgot to ask what other treasures the North Tower of Treskinnick Castle was reputed from time to time to have harboured.

  5

  Charles Digitt found himself giving considerable thought to that small Budleigh Salterton occasion. It had several aspects that left him guessing. Was it conceivable that in Adrian Digitt there lurked a little gold mine? Although almost forgotten about in the family now (except, indeed, by his great-granddaughter), he had probably been something of a legend in it once. And about legendary relations the most exaggerated stories are likely to start up, and to flourish for a time. The business, for example, of his associations with Wordsworth and Coleridge – names even more tremendous than those of Shelley and Byron – might well be an instance of this. Unknown poems and an unknown unfinished tragedy! Charles, although he had no particular interest in literary scholarship, knew that such things would create a small sensation if discovered, and that publishing them would be a profitable enterprise for somebody. And he also knew, as he had hinted to Miss Digitt, that there was a quite mad market for original manuscripts of such a kind. Quite irrationally, such objects, if recently unearthed, would fetch far more money than if they had been known for a long time. The fact was an absurdity. But there would be nothing absurd about profiting from the knowledge of it. Then again, what about Adrian’s own ‘remains’? Suppose that, over a long period of years, he had kept diaries as good as, or better than, say Henry Crabb Robinson’s? Yesterday afternoon a long and interesting conversation with William Blake. That sort of thing. The sky would be the limit. Or if not the sky, at least something well up in a financial stratosphere.

  Vague thoughts of this sort had been with Charles ever since he had heard of the current goings-on at Treskinnick. But now there was something new and imponderable in the situation. Almost casually (or had it been that?) Deborah Digitt had intimated that she herself possessed a considerable body of family papers. Even if the treasure of Treskinnick proved to be a mare’s nest it was conceivable that the treasure of Budleigh Salterton would richly reward some vigorous spade-work. And whereas numerous learned persons had received at least a whiff of what might be so bizarrely concealed in that absurd tower, and the Ampersands themselves might almost be described as in full cry after it, the possible secret of Budleigh Salterton appeared to be at present shared between himself and Miss Deborah Digitt alone. Or had Archie got wind of it? Miss Digitt had given no hint of this – and Lord Skillet, moreover, despite the occasional attentions he had paid her, seemed not to stand high in Miss Digitt’s regard.

  But Archie – Charles felt sure – was very capable of playing a deep game. He was quite clever in his not too pleasant way. Certainly he ought to be sounded – although with the greatest circumspection, no doubt. Even some sort of alliance with him was a possibility. Having arrived at this thought, Charles wasted no time. The eighth marquess-to-be rang up the seventh in his flat in town and suggested that it might be agreeable to have a meal together. Archie said it was a delightful idea. He didn’t sound surprised. But perhaps he was.

  The cousins met in what purported to be a Spanish restaurant near Trafalgar Square. It had been Archie’s choice, but this didn’t appear to mean that Archie proposed to play host. Indeed, he hastened even to exclude the possibility that they might go Dutch. Like his father (and a greater nobleman, a Duke of Argyle, as described by Dr. Johnson) he was narrow in his quotidian expenses.

  ‘Nice of you to invite me,’ he said easily, as he scanned a dubious bill of fare. ‘And I thought it would be an appropriate place.’

  ‘Appropriate?’ Charles was remembering how much he disliked Archie. ‘How so?’

  ‘I’d avoid the paella, old boy. Oh! Because of all this at Treskinnick. The treasure hunt.’

  ‘Oh, that!’ Not very successfully, Charles tried to give the impression that Treskinnick and all its affairs had been far from his mind. ‘I still don’t quite get your point.’

  ‘Doubloons and moidores and pieces of eight. Don’t you know that at one time the North Tower was supposed to be stuffed with them? The old wrecked Spanish galleon story. It attaches to any house of the slightest consequence on our coast – just as do yarns of wreckers and smugglers. Highly improbable that there’s a word of truth in it. But not more improbable than this Adrian Digitt vagary that the old folks at home have started up with.’

  ‘I’ve never heard of our Spanish galleon.’ Charles said this rather dryly, since he had a strong suspicion that Archie had just made it up – this by way of a devious approach to something that in fact interested both of them much more strongly. But then he remembered Miss Digitt’s line of talk about the North Tower and its former riches (which had included a beautiful maiden) as a matter of family report. So perhaps there really had been some sort of old wives’ tale about a foundered argosy. ‘But I have heard just a word or two about this Adrian Digitt’s lost papers,’ Charles went on. ‘You think it’s all moonshine?’

  ‘Oh, most absolutely. Have you looked at the wine list? The Rioja is probably all right, but I seem to remember they have a capital Hau
t Brion ’66.’

  Charles ordered Rioja. There were limits – particularly to go along with the food in prospect. And he wasn’t doing any sort of sucking-up act on Archie. He was just proposing to himself a very cautious exploratory exercise.

  ‘I don’t myself see anything inherently improbable,’ he said, ‘in this Adrian’s having dumped some papers in the castle. And I do vaguely gather he knew some quite interesting people.’

  ‘It seems so. And I agree it’s worth spending a few pennies – my father’s pennies – on some sort of look-see. I’m arranging it, as a matter of fact.’

  ‘I’ve heard that too, Archie. Bringing in a professional, I gather. Well, good luck to him. Have you actually found your man?’

  ‘I rather think so. One has to be careful, of course. And there isn’t all that hurry.’

  ‘If the whole notion is moonshine, as you say, there clearly isn’t any hurry at all – or only so much as will satisfy your parents that something is being done. By the way, have you had a hunt through the stuff yourself?’

  ‘I’ve taken a quick look once or twice, Charles. But it’s a grubby ploy: dust and mildew and cobweb.’

  ‘So I’d suppose. And you didn’t come on the slightest trace of anything interesting – either by or about this Adrian Digitt?’

  ‘Nothing at all.’

  ‘Suppose there is nothing at all up there in the tower. Would you say, Archie, that that’s an end of the matter?’

  ‘Obviously.’

  ‘I don’t think you understand me. The man must often enough have put pen to paper. And received letters and so forth from this chap and that. Isn’t it probable that some portions, at least, of all this do survive – if not at Treskinnick, then somewhere else? Although I confess I’ve myself nowhere to suggest. If we knew just a few facts about his life, it might help.’

  ‘Oh, I see.’ Lord Skillet cast a speculative eye on his cousin. ‘Perhaps this old mole we’re hiring may run up a bit of a biography. It would be the orderly thing.’

  There was a pause while a waiter poured the unassuming Spanish wine. Archie, Charles reflected, wasn’t going to be easy to draw. But it seemed reasonable to believe that he knew nothing of Miss Deborah Digitt’s papers. Perhaps it hadn’t even occurred to him that she was Adrian’s direct descendant. Of course he was bound to catch up on all this sooner or later. But at the moment it looked as if Charles had a good start in that quarter.

  ‘Shelley seems to be the fellow that the learned chiefly associate with Adrian at present. But Adrian would have been older than Shelley, wouldn’t he?’

  ‘Definitely.’ Archie had the air of a man who, although not yet admitting boredom, soon will be. ‘So what?’

  ‘I just wonder what his relations, if any, were with the first generation of the Romantics. Wordsworth and Coleridge, for example.’

  ‘Search me.’

  ‘Is there anybody who might definitely know?’

  ‘There may be, or there may not. I’m not an authority on this business, my dear Charles. So don’t treat me as one.’

  ‘Who would the stuff belong to?’

  ‘The stuff?’

  ‘Archie, don’t be tiresome. Those conceivably valuable papers if they conceivably exist.’

  ‘I expect my father would regard them as his – particularly if it was at Treskinnick that they turned up. As being head of the family, and all that.’

  ‘Suppose, Archie, that they constituted a substantial property. Mightn’t the lawyers take a different view? Mightn’t you have a case for having them regarded as heirlooms, so that you would yourself have a life-interest in what they produced?’

  ‘As you might after me, Charles? It’s a delightful idea. And what a helpful fellow you are! But I don’t believe it for a moment. They’re not the Ampersand Diamonds – not that there are any Ampersand Diamonds, worse luck. The heirloom business is all a matter of deeds and inventories and so on. You know that perfectly well. Let’s be frank about this. My father would sell anything worth selling, and pocket the money. Or buy a pedigree herd with it, or what have you. There’s no sense in the old boy – none at all.’

  ‘Well now, let me make one more point. Have you thought about the law of copyright?’

  ‘Copyright? My dear Charles, nothing of the sort could have the slightest relevance. We’re talking of stuff that belongs with Noah’s Ark.’

  ‘You may be right.’ Charles said this on a slightly dismissive note, as if their topic were pretty well exhausted and they’d better talk about something else. But he was wondering whether here was the deep Archie again. Was it conceivable that a clever man should be so ignorant as to believe what he had just said? Even if he was, it would again be a matter on which he would eventually catch up. But if this was it, Charles once more had at least a start on him.

  Charles now talked about motor cars, a subject upon which his cousin was knowledgeable and quite pleased to converse. It was only at the end of the meal that they returned for a few minutes to the topic of Adrian Digitt.

  And it had once more to be on Charles’ initiative.

  ‘Have you got the length of short-listing your moles?’ he asked. ‘And might I be a candidate myself? Shall I run over my qualifications?’

  ‘You must be joking.’ Archie seemed genuinely amused. ‘It has to be a pro. I thought you’d gathered that. It’s what is firmly in my father’s head. And, as I’ve already told you, I have one runner fairly well out in front already.’

  ‘What’s his name?’

  There was nothing particularly impertinent about this question – or not as between cousins. But Charles had brought it out in a sharply interrogative manner which appeared to offend Archie, or at least to disconcert him. He had raised his eyebrows.

  ‘Sutch,’ he said coldly.

  ‘Such as what?’

  ‘Sutch is his name. His name is Sutch. No doubt it can be made fun of. He’s Dr Ambrose Sutch. A very senior man.’

  ‘How did you get hold of him?’

  ‘Oh, just by inquiring here and there. Asking one person and another. Why do you ask? You seem devilishly curious.’

  ‘You said yourself that one has to be careful. And it’s a position of trust, in a way. Sutch might prove to be Snatch, and start pocketing things.’

  ‘What a suspicious fellow you are, Charles! But, of course, what you say is perfectly true.’ Lord Skillet hesitated. He might have been a man weighing the wisdom of making a confidence to a not wholly reliable person. ‘As a matter of fact, Charles, I have a slight suspicion that something of the sort may have been happening somewhere already.’

  ‘I don’t understand that, at all. If you don’t believe there are any papers in the castle…’

  ‘I said somewhere. And I didn’t, you’ll recall, turn down flat your notion that some of Adrian’s effusions may lurk in some quite different locality. And the admirable Dr Sutch, being anxious to nail the job, has done a little preliminary research already. Apparently the first thing one does is to rake through the likely learned journals for any recent mention of the chap you’re interested in. And there has been some interest in Adrian Digitt, as you know, on the part of the kind of people who write in such things. Sutch has turned up an affair of the sort in an American journal. By a Shelley fan, I gather. He reports that something or other of Adrian’s has lately been acquired by a private collector in California, who is refusing even well-accredited scholars access to it. That’s not uncommon over there, it seems. No striking commercial motive involved. Just dotty acquisitiveness. Sort of squirrel instinct. But it might be because this collector has come by what he has come by in some underhand way. That’s not uncommon either.’

  ‘It sounds plausible.’

  ‘Of course it does. One of Sutch’s jobs would have to be keeping a look-out for any further quiet
goings-on of the same flavour.’

  ‘I see.’ Charles looked hard at his cousin, who at the moment was innocently pushing over to his side of the table the bill presented by the waiter. ‘You mean that something like theft may be going on, we don’t know where? That there really is a cache of Adrian’s scribblings in existence, and that it is being unobtrusively pilfered from, and the booty being equally unobtrusively fed into the market?’

  ‘You express the possibility admirably, my dear Charles, which is just what I’d expect of you. You haven’t any ideas yourself as to where it might be happening, and by whose agency?’

  ‘Of course I haven’t, Archie. I’ve been taking no active interest in all this, at all. It has simply turned up in our chat during this very pleasant meal.’

  And Charles Digitt produced his wallet, and extracted from it a couple of five-pound notes. He had a strong feeling that the little party had now better break up – break up and be thought about. Unsurprisingly, he was conscious that here might be deep waters. Did Archie really know about the situation at Budleigh Salterton? Was he actually suspecting his cousin of having already slipped into a pilfering role there? Was he in effect saying, ‘Charles, my boy, have a care! Sutch is keeping an eye on you’? Or was the boot, so to speak, on the other foot? Perhaps Archie himself was the pilferer, and the field of his operations nothing other than the North Tower of Treskinnick Castle. This sudden communicativeness on Archie’s part might be a ruse designed to deflect suspicion from himself if it did become known that Adrian Digitt’s remains were beginning unaccountably to surface here and there. Was there anything impossible about this? Charles Digitt took another hard look at his cousin (and at everything he either knew or imagined of his cousin’s character) and decided that definitely there was not.