‘Decent woman,’ Lord Ampersand said. ‘Send her game from time to time. The right thing. Didn’t know you saw much of her, Charles.’
‘Oh, yes – quite a lot, just recently. Deborah is a delightful woman – lively and cultivated. She owns a great many family papers, too, and could write us up if she wanted to. She’s the great-granddaughter of Adrian Digitt, you know. And it’s Adrian, in a sense, that we’re having all this fuss about.’
‘Ah, yes.’ Appleby continued mildly interested, ‘Would Dr Sutch’s researches have taken him at all into Miss Deborah Digitt’s company, would you say?’
‘I’ve no idea – no idea, at all. I had very little conversation with poor Sutch. Archie may know. Archie?’
‘I’ve no idea either.’ Archie again faintly suggested the poker player. ‘We’ve all wondered from time to time, of course, whether those supposed papers of Adrian Digitt’s mayn’t be in the old girl’s possession, after all. Surely you must have sounded her about that, Charles? If you’ve really been getting thick with her, that’s to say.’
‘She’s rather close, as a matter of fact, Archie. And your father would be the proper person to inquire.’
It was at this juncture that a violent altercation broke out between certain of Lord Ampersand’s dogs in the courtyard outside the library windows, and the conference was thrown into confusion as a result. Appleby took the opportunity to withdraw. He had been given a good deal to think about. Had an officer higher in the hierarchy of the police (only there wasn’t one) demanded a statement from him at that moment he would have had to record the impression – perhaps the key impression – that a good deal had been going on among the Digitts both before and after the decease of the unfortunate Dr Ambrose Sutch.
12
Lady Ampersand was the last person to run to earth. Appleby didn’t want to leave Treskinnick Castle without making the acquaintance of its chatelaine. Lady Ampersand, after all, wasn’t a Digitt. She might be quite agreeable.
Ludlow, appealed to as he passed through the hall, was confident that there would be no more difficulty in locating her ladyship. It was her jigsaw hour, he explained. This was her invariable pursuit between tea and dressing for dinner, and she invariably prosecuted it in the grey drawing-room. Ludlow made no scruple about immediately conducting Appleby to this apartment. He opened the two leaves of an imposing door, said ‘Sir John Appleby’ in a loud voice which would have been appropriate to carry over the din of a large party, and withdrew.
Lady Ampersand had for a moment the appearance of greeting her caller with a dramatic gesture ambiguously poised between welcome and arrest. But this was merely because she happened to be holding up in air a small and convoluted fragment of plywood, the better to meditate its place in the puzzle on the table in front of her.
‘Ah, yes,’ she said. ‘How do you do?’ Although perhaps reluctant to break off from her absorbing task, she was much too well-bred to be other than graciously welcoming. ‘I am so pleased that my daughter Grace thought of you, Sergeant. But when the idea was brought forward I also rang up my sister Agatha, who is a tower of strength when anything disagreeable happens. She was quite clear that you were the person to send for.’
‘I’m afraid I’m not a sergeant,’ Appleby said. ‘I have retired, you see, and am no longer a policeman at all.’
‘I don’t think it makes any difference. In fact I am sure my husband will be delighted to employ you. And I will see to it that he makes a satisfactory arrangement on the financial side. He is sometimes a little absent-minded in such matters. I think it is going to be the giraffe.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘In the top right-hand corner. The puzzle, you see, is called “Noah’s Ark”. It arrived from Harrods only this morning.’
‘How very interesting.’ Appleby advanced to the table. ‘Yes, almost certainly the giraffe.’ Lady Verinder in The Moonstone, he was thinking, was surely the last woman in England to propose the private hire of a detective officer from Scotland Yard. ‘Giraffes are creatures readily identifiable by their necks, are they not? But I have always thought their little stumpy horns very characteristic too.’
‘So they are.’ Lady Ampersand appeared now to have become aware that her visitor was not from the order of society which she had supposed. Her error, however, failed to disturb her. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I am so pleased. My husband, you must understand, would be upset if it were discovered that one of us had done something dreadful to that unfortunate man. Not that he wasn’t rather tiresome at times. When he wasn’t calling Rollo “my lord” he was calling him “your grace”. I even distinctly heard him on one occasion say, “May it please your grace”. It irritated my husband very much to be mixed up with a duke. Rather a long time ago, it seems, there was an Ampersand who declined a dukedom in exchange for his wife. I have never got to know a great deal about the Digitts. But they appear to have been very odd people at times. Dear me! Here is what must be the trunk of the elephant. Don’t you think, Mr…?’
‘Sir John Appleby. And undoubtedly the trunk. I am sorry to hear that Dr Sutch was so socially insufficient. I wonder whether we might discuss some other aspects of his time at Treskinnick?’
‘But certainly, Sir John.’ Lady Ampersand took this transition in her stride.
‘Can you tell me, for instance, how Lord Ampersand came to get hold of him?’
‘He was found somewhere by our son, Archie. It was scarcely a recommendation, to my mind. It would have been better to consult my sister Agatha. Archie, of course, is extremely clever, and my husband relies on him a good deal. But not all of his acquaintance are agreeable, or even presentable.’
‘I have no doubt that Lord Skillet possesses catholic tastes, Lady Ampersand. He interested himself, for instance, in this matter of Adrian Digitt’s papers?’
‘Oh, very much. It was a matter of his feeling there was money in them.’
‘Yes, of course. It is only natural. Would his cousin, Mr Charles Digitt, have had the same sort of interest in them?’
‘I suppose so. In fact, that is only natural too. Charles will inherit the title, you know, and presumably anything else that there is to inherit. And as the family affairs are somewhat embarrassed, he must be expected to have an eye to anything that might raise the wind.’ Lady Ampersand appeared pleased with this free-and-easy expression. ‘I am almost sure that here we have the lion’s mane. The best puzzles come from Harrods. They have a very special man who knows about them.’
‘Reliable tradesmen are a great blessing, are they not? By the way, do you yourself believe that these papers really exist?’
‘Certainly I do. In fact, it is my belief that Archie came on them – or on some of them – a long time ago. And I don’t think he wanted Dr Sutch about the place one little bit.’
‘But didn’t you say it was he who found Dr Sutch for the job?’
‘Oh, certainly. But it was only because we insisted that a person of that sort should be brought in. He may have thought that Sutch would be less troublesome than anybody else, don’t you think? Particularly if he himself had been selling some of those papers in a quiet way already.’
‘Dear me, Lady Ampersand! Would your son have been doing that?’
‘As a small boy, Sir John, Archie was much given to going to my purse – just as, later, he was given to going to his father’s brandy and cigars. As my sister Agatha once said to me, Archie is one of nature’s pilferers.’ Lady Ampersand paused to fit in the lion’s mane. ‘It is a weakness, no doubt. But only a small one. I used to feel it distracted his mind from other less trivial failings.’
‘It is a reasonable view.’ Appleby was conscious that he ought to find all this candour distressing. At the same time he felt a certain respect for Lady Ampersand. Even for her intelligence, in a limited sense. It might almost be said that she knew what she was about.
‘Are you saying,’ he asked gravely, ‘and are you judging it necessary to say, that your son might involve himself in acts of petty dishonesty but would be unlikely to be implicated in major crime?’
‘That is how my daughter Grace would put it. But then she has always been a plain-spoken girl. A little toad.’
‘Your daughter?’
‘And, I think, the tail of the second toad. They must all be two by two, of course. Otherwise it would be cheating.’
‘Certainly it would.’ Appleby felt he had made an unfortunate error. ‘But cheating seems to be what we are talking about, Lady Ampersand.’
‘So it is. And pilfering. We started from that.’
‘Quite so. Would you be inclined to describe it as a kind of hereditary thing among the Digitts? Mr Charles Digitt, for instance. Would he have the same unfortunate instinct to put his hand on things as you say Lord Skillet has?’
‘Archie and his cousin Charles don’t seem to me to be at all like each other, Sir John. Except that they talk in the same clever way, and often won’t stop making fun of people.’ Lady Ampersand picked up another fragment of her puzzle, and studied it for an unusual length of time. ‘Charles,’ she said, as if she had worked something out in her head, ‘would always have larger ideas than Archie.’
‘A broader point of view, you mean?’
‘No, not exactly that.’ Lady Ampersand’s features now indicated perplexity. She was in deep waters, and knew it. ‘Bolder designs,’ she said suddenly. ‘That’s it! How Charles differs from Archie, I mean. And there’s something attractive in it, it must be said.’
‘A good jigsaw puzzle, for instance, always reveals a bold design?’
‘How very true!’ Lady Ampersand accorded Appleby a frankly admiring glance. ‘And do you know what I think?’
‘No, I don’t. But I’d like to, very much.’
‘I think that in this one there will be some tiny creature so well in the foreground that it will take up quite a lot of space.’
‘I haven’t the least doubt you are right. The same effects, as a matter of fact, sometimes occur in detective investigation.’
‘Is that so?’ Lady Ampersand, although still perplexed, was interested. ‘But I have always preferred jigsaws to detective stories. They are more restful, don’t you think? And they don’t often cheat.’
‘Certainly not if they come from Harrods. May I ask you one further question?’
‘Please do, Sir John. I am enjoying our little talk very much. It gives me quite a new notion of the police.’
‘Ah, yes – the police! Let us consider what we ought to tell my colleagues who are still active in that profession. We are to make it clear to them, are we not, that it would be psychologically quite inept to regard Lord Skillet as one likely to look on the larger, the darker face of crime? Very good. But now, what about your nephew, Charles Digitt? Would you be surprised, for instance, to hear that he had murdered someone? Poor Dr Sutch, say.’
‘Oh, very surprised, indeed.’ And Lady Ampersand really looked surprised. ‘Please tell your subordinates to ignore such an idea entirely. It is out of the question. My daughter Grace says so. And perhaps you should consult my sister Agatha. She would say precisely the same thing.’
‘I don’t think that will be necessary, Lady Ampersand.’ Appleby got to his feet. ‘And I am most grateful to you. We are undoubtedly gaining ground.’
‘So we are – for here is the rest of the lion.’ It was evident that Lady Ampersand’s attention had again wandered a little. ‘And I do hope you will call again, Sir John. Perhaps you could dine with us one evening quite soon. My husband would be delighted.’
‘Thank you very much. It is possible, however, that we shall meet again before that.’ And Appleby glanced at the table. ‘The bits and pieces begin to arrange themselves,’ he said. ‘It’s a satisfactory moment when that happens, is it not?’
‘Yes, indeed,’ Lady Ampersand said.
13
Judith Appleby, contacted on the telephone, was unperturbed by her husband’s having to confess to a trick of the old rage. She was used to it. And the Birch-Blackies, it appeared, had mumps in the house and were obliged to scratch their dinner engagement.
‘But we have the Ouseleys on Thursday,’ Judith said. ‘So I hope it will be one of your twenty-four-hour things.’
‘What do you mean – my twenty-four-hour things?’
‘When you blunder in on some hideous crime early one morning, and sort it all out over the breakfast-table next day.’
‘Well, no. It won’t be like that. Or not quite like that. For instance, I shall have to pay a call at Budleigh Salterton.’
‘At where?’
‘Budleigh Salterton. And probably bearing a brace of pheasants.’
‘Don’t be silly. It would be a shocking solecism, and you’d probably be run in as a poacher. Wrong time of year.’
‘So it is. A couple of hares, then. With their noses in those little paper bags.’
‘Then don’t do anything messy with them. Are you in your London suit?’
‘Of course I’m not in my London suit. I’m wandering the wilds of Lyonnesse, aren’t I? Appropriately clad.’
‘And with magic in your eyes. Are you putting up with these lordlings at this Treskinnick place?’
‘No, I’m not. That might prove embarrassing, supposing their affairs to turn out on the murky side. Come to think of it, I wasn’t invited, either. I’m at the local pub. It’s called the Ampersand Arms.’
‘I expect they’ll give you a marvellous dinner,’ Judith said. ‘Or perhaps just what they call a cream tea.’ She rang off.
A second telephone call had ensured that Appleby would have somebody with whom to share whatever the inn thought to provide. Inspector Craig arrived before dinner, and while they waited for it they conversed in a corner of the bar.
‘Well, sir,’ Craig asked cheerfully, ‘what did you make of that crowd?’
‘That they’re not a crowd, to start with. We have to deal with a comparatively small dramatis personae.’
‘Perfectly true – but I suppose a few more characters may yet turn up. And there are some quite choice specimens already. It’s hard to believe in Lord Ampersand, for instance.’
‘Not as being anything much other than he seems to be, I’d say. And – do you know, Craig? – I’m less hooked on the cast than on the mise en scène.’
‘Ah, the tower.’
‘Just that. By the way, I hear you borrowed a helicopter.’
‘Straight away. It simply landed on the roof a chap who then fixed up a rope and pulley affair. I was winched up myself in no time, and I can’t say I liked it one little bit. But tomorrow morning we’re to have fellows run up a light scaffolding carrying a zigzag of ladders on the inner face of the tower. Not such a job as you’d imagine, it seems. You must honour us, Sir John, by being the first man to make the ascent.’ Craig paused to permit himself laughter at this innocent joke. ‘Which means I needn’t waste your time by describing the muniment room to you now. Nothing all that odd about it – except anyone siting it in such a place. That seems clean barmy to me.’
‘Particularly with the staircase as it plainly was. Your helicopter, incidentally, has been putting ideas in Lord Ampersand’s head. He thinks that a helicopter came huffing and puffing about the place and blew the blessed staircase down.’
‘Well, why not? A helicopter can shatter windows fifty yards away. It could easily…’
‘You know perfectly well there was no helicopter, Craig.’
‘Yes, sir – and perhaps there was no criminal either. Doesn’t your mind return to that from time to time? Mine does.’
‘Well, yes. But for one simple circumstance, I might settle for that view. A half-rotten structure gives way under a heavy man. No
thing could be more plausible.’
‘As, perhaps, it was meant to be.’
‘Quite so. But by the one simple circumstance, Inspector, I mean, of course, that rope and cord. There it was, a thoroughly unaccountable thing, and bang on the site of the supposed accident. But as soon as one begins to think in terms of a crime, those unaccountable objects take on an obvious function. Isn’t that so?’
‘Yes, Sir John. Somebody lies in wait for Sutch at the top of the tower, tips him off the platform, and shins down the rope as it hangs as a loop from the top of the staircase. But the structure doesn’t stand up to such treatment, and down it comes too, almost in the instant that the murderer has safely touched ground and bolted.’ Craig paused, and shook his head. ‘It’s the alibi theory we were talking about, more or less. Only it couldn’t have happened that way – not just that way – for a very sufficient reason that we know. You happened to be on the spot, Sir John, and you just can’t – can you? – square such a sequence of events with your own observations. Not to speak of the rope being left neatly coiled like it was. So none of it makes sense.’
‘No more it does – I agree. So try something else, Craig. Why should anybody want to murder this man Sutch, anyway?’
‘Sutch had found – up there in that crazy place – a large collection of very valuable papers. He had divulged the fact to somebody with no legal title to their ownership, but who nevertheless proposed to be the sole beneficiary. So he killed Sutch and nobbled the stuff.’
‘Nobbled it? Just how?’
‘It had already been removed to some hiding-place he’d been told about. He only had to bide his time, and collect.’
‘Yes. That does make sense, I agree. Or it makes a limited sort of sense in one area of the puzzle. Perhaps we can work outwards from it to a rational view of the whole thing. But there’s – well, a piece missing.’
Ampersand Papers Page 10