But there did seem to be one certainty. Between the moment of that catastrophe and the arrival of the forces of the law in their borrowed helicopter any conceivable activity in the muniment room had been suspended. The original spiral staircase was presumably as impassably choked up as ever. It must, indeed, be in total ruin. Otherwise the birdwatching Lord Ampersand would surely have contrived to bring it into use again. Mediaeval castles, of course, are popularly supposed to be replete with secret passages and staircases – not to speak of concealed dungeons and much else. But the simple structure of this grim tower rendered anything of the sort extremely unlikely.
As Appleby climbed higher his situation became increasingly blowy. Down in the inner ward there had been no effect of wind at all, but it was different up here. One could even tell oneself that a small gale was blowing; that it was chasing itself round and round the tower with the speed of a kitten in pursuit of its own tail. The final ladder didn’t exactly wobble but it did rather uncomfortably quiver. It ended on a small platform outside what had apparently been a glazed window. The window had been removed and a stiff tarpaulin hung in its place – as a protection, it was to be supposed, against any sudden worsening of the elements. Appleby was quite glad to have finished his little climb.
The tarpaulin stirred as he confronted it, and was then drawn back with an oddly ceremonious effect which was increased by what was revealed. Ludlow stood within, holding the thing back to afford Appleby entrance, and actually making a composed and formal bow. He might have been going to announce that Lord Ampersand was, or was not, at home.
‘Good morning, Sir John,’ Ludlow said. ‘Please come in. Mind the step.’
Appleby minded the step – as he had been rather carefully doing during the past five minutes. There was considerable relief in standing on a flagged stone floor.
‘Good morning, Mr Ludlow.’ Appleby glanced round the large, much cluttered, room, and saw that the butler was not alone. There was a workman in a far corner of it, seemingly engaged in gathering up and stowing away in a canvas bag a miscellaneous collection of tools. He probably accounted for Ludlow’s somewhat surprising presence. The butler judged that this person ought not to be left unattended amid the ancestral proliferations concentrated in the place. ‘They’ve made quick work with those ladders,’ Appleby said.
‘Yes, indeed, sir. They were on the job at dawn, pretty well, and finished and gone in no time. But the police left only half an hour ago. Taking photographs and the like, they were – all with his lordship’s permission, of course. Some of them are to be back later, it seems, and I’m here until that happens.’
‘Very proper, I’m sure.’
‘I’ve been doing a little clearing-up meanwhile. I wouldn’t think to send any of the under-servants up those things. It’s different if you’ve been in the navy.’
‘Ah, yes – of course.’ Appleby glanced curiously at this very upper upper-servant, who seemed a little anxious to explain himself. ‘And the navy lent a hand at the start, I gather.’
‘And a very neat operation it was, Sir John. But they only had to drop a rating or two on the flat roof, you know. There’s a trap door giving access from that, as you can see.’
‘Quite so.’ Appleby directed his gaze upwards and verified this statement. ‘It’s a curious set-up, Mr Ludlow. Really very curious, indeed. Did the unfortunate Dr Sutch quite take to it?’
‘He seemed to, all right.’
‘Perhaps at one time he was in the navy too.’
‘I’d judge not, Sir John.’ Ludlow responded to this perhaps frivolous suggestion with some severity. ‘Never out of libraries and the like in his life, if you ask me.’
‘Well, his last occupation wasn’t exactly a sheltered one.’ Appleby paused on this. ‘Mr Ludlow, do you recall saying something to me about a key?’
‘A key, Sir John?’
‘The key of this muniment room. To the door over there, I suppose, that let one in from the top of the wooden staircase.’
‘Quite correct, sir. It was hung up just outside my pantry. And kept coming and going. That’s what I said, I think.’
‘It certainly was. And you spoke of people coming and going as well. A general effect of there being something a little odd in the way of activity up here. I suppose you have communicated those thoughts of yours to Inspector Craig?’
‘Yes, I have – although not too willingly, if you understand me. In my position, I have to consider myself as in a relationship of confidence with the family. If I knew about what you might call mere goings on, it would be no business of mine to divulge them. But the situation changes, I can see, when people start breaking their necks.’
‘A very proper point of view. And you and I needn’t talk more about these things now.’
‘Much better not, I’d say.’ Ludlow had directed a disapproving look at the workman, presumably a kind of rearguard to the scaffolding gang, who was showing signs of interest in what he could catch of this conversation. The death of Dr Sutch, after all, must have been sensational news throughout this entire region. Ludlow turned to the workman. ‘Now then,’ he said. ‘About finished, are you?’ He might have been a petty officer briskening up just such a rating as he had recently been speaking of.
‘Take it easy, pal.’ The workman had no disposition to regard himself as under discipline. ‘You’re not on a bloody quarter-deck, you know, and never were. A menial, that’s what you are. A bleeding lackey of the idle rich. But I’m off, all right.’ He picked up and shouldered his heavy bag of tools. ‘Sweating it out and risking our own flipping necks, we’ve been, while you’ve been taking round the early morning tea to a lot of parasites. Drop dead, and I’d die of laughing.’
‘That will do, my man.’ Ludlow spoke with proper hauteur in face of this atrociously offensive and subversive harangue. ‘You may go.’
The workman went. Or, rather, he had reached the window now serving as a door, when Appleby spoke.
‘One moment,’ Appleby said mildly. ‘You haven’t got quite all your gear, I think.’ And he pointed to a corner of the room where, almost concealed behind a litter of papers, lay what appeared to be a heavy mallet and chisel. The workman walked over to them.
‘Not ours,’ he said briefly.
‘Are you sure? They look just the sort of thing for getting your scaffolding wedged into the wall.’
‘Nothing to do with us, mate.’ The workman glanced at Appleby indifferently, offered the ghost of a rude gesture to Ludlow, walked back to the window, and disappeared.
‘Quite shocking,’ Ludlow said. ‘He ought to be reported. But what would that do? A word from his employer, and the whole lot would be “out”, as they call it, and living fat on Social Security. I’d give them Social Security with a stick, I would, if I had my way. And when working, mark you, for one of the principal noblemen in the Duchy! A regular disgrace.’
‘Ah, well!’ Appleby said. ‘If I had to be scrambling about all day like a monkey on a stick, Mr Ludlow, I dare say I’d enjoy giving a bit of lip from time to time. We must be tolerant when dealing with the simpler classes of society. I suppose you wouldn’t know anything about that mallet and chisel?’
‘Nothing at all. Except that I’d have expected one of those blundering policeman to notice it and ask about it.’
‘So should I, I’m afraid – except that every manner of rubbish appears to have been dumped here at one time or another. The things couldn’t have been brought in since the police left, could they?’
‘Certainly they could not – unless that impudent fellow was lying. Or, of course, unless I am.’
‘Quite so.’ Appleby was now prowling round the muniment room, his eyes on the flagstones beneath his feet. ‘Mr Ludlow, when Dr Sutch was doing that tapping and measuring and so on in the castle did he ever actually get round to attacking the fabric with tool
s like these?’
‘Certainly not, Sir John. He’d have heard of it if he had.’
‘And have been heard. It’s not a thing you could do without people being aware of it. By the way, I have a notion Inspector Craig told me that Mr Charles Digitt is an architect. Would that be right?’
‘Quite right, sir. Mr Charles has to have a profession, I suppose, being a bit out and away from the title at present. Converts things, I’ve been told.’
‘Converts them?’
‘Mucking around with pig-sties so that they look like gentrified cottages. All that.’
‘Ah, I understand. But now listen to this, Mr Ludlow. I have had it from one witness – perhaps not a particularly reliable one – that Dr Sutch was searching for something quite other than family papers…’
‘I’d believe him as to that.’ Ludlow was surprisingly emphatic. ‘That Sutch was after something deep, if you ask me.’
‘Quite so – and the question may be exactly how deep. But Sutch – so this witness told me – had a theory, and it was a theory that Sutch said had been put in his head by an architect. Can you make anything of that?’
‘Something about the way castles were built in the olden time. That would be my guess.’
‘And a very good one, I’d be inclined to say, Mr Ludlow. Perhaps Mr Digitt made some suggestion to Dr Sutch.’
‘You could ask him, couldn’t you?’ Quite unexpectedly, Ludlow’s features assumed a humorous cast. ‘Mr Charles, that is. Not Sutch.’
‘I must make a note of it. By the way, where did one get into this chamber from the original spiral staircase?’
‘On the other side from this, Sir John. To the left, behind those stuffed animals.’
‘It’s a regular zoo, isn’t it? Can one peer down the thing?’
‘Not now, sir. The entrance has been bricked up.’
‘I see. And long ago, I suppose.’
‘No time ago, at all. I remember when you could open a door, and there below you was this great mass of broken stone. There was a bombardment, you know, and the castle took a great hammering, in the time of the Cavaliers and Roundheads. You’ll have heard of them. But when this was made into a muniment room – lumber-room would be more like, if you ask me – they thought it a dusty sort of thing, particularly when the gales blew. So they walled it up.’
‘Very sensible. What about the other end of the old staircase?’
‘Just the same, Sir John. Or, rather, it’s clear as far as the first storey, and after that all collapsed and jam-packed again. I don’t reckon a rat could get up it.’
‘Ah, that’s a pity. It can’t have been a rat that startled Dr Sutch and sent him tumbling. Or scores of rats that went gnawing at the wooden staircase until it collapsed with the poor man. Another hypothesis negatived. But we have to work by elimination, you know.’
‘So I’ve been told, Sir John.’ Ludlow, although not appearing to resent this levity, moved to the window. ‘Perhaps you’d be thinking,’ he asked, ‘of looking round at your leisure? I could leave you to it, and the police sergeant will be back quite soon.’
‘Yes, by all means, Mr Ludlow. I’m afraid I’ve already taken up too much of your time.’
‘Not at all. It has been a privilege to discuss matters with one of your authority, Sir John.’
And with this courteous speech Lord Ampersand’s butler withdrew through the window and slowly sank out of sight – like some supernatural personage on a stage, Appleby thought, being winched through a trap into the nether regions.
16
Left to his own devices, Appleby decided to begin his exploration by climbing higher still. There was an old ladder that could be perched against the trapdoor in the roof. He sited it, mounted to the top, and managed with some heave and shove to get a heavy wooden cover displaced and himself out on the leads. Although he was almost in the centre of the large space, and therefore many yards from the crenellated verge of the tower, it was with a certain caution that he got to his feet. He may have felt that the wind might be so robust up here that it could take him like a leaf and blow him into what was coming to be known as the Celtic Sea. And oh ye dolphins waft the hapless youth. But he wasn’t a youth and he wasn’t going to be hapless – or not here and now. He walked across the broad and barely sloping roof, leant over the battlements where they came breast-high, and admired the view. It was worth admiring. Sea and land were alike in bright sunshine. Moors and mountains lay available for inspection to the south. To the west one could imagine oneself looking past the tip of Ireland for the purpose of taking a glance at Nova Scotia.
After a few minutes, however, and by dint of hazardously leaning over and boldly peering down, Appleby took a good look at Treskinnick Castle and its immediate environs themselves. From up here, he supposed, some resolute Digitt – an earl, perhaps, though not yet a marquess – had surveyed the advancing forces of the men who were to turn England into a commonwealth, and had no doubt commanded the hanging out of sundry defiant banners on his walls. But the day of banners had been really over, and these disagreeable great squires and great merchants had deployed their cannon and let fly. There must be history books describing how much damage had been done. Sieges and capitulations at just that period, Appleby vaguely supposed, had sometimes been rather formal and ritualized affairs. You surrendered your castle in a dignified way when the water, or perhaps just the claret, ran out. At other times these occasions had been bloody enough, and extremely destructive. How it had been at Treskinnick, he had no idea. It was a subject which Dr Sutch would certainly have got up.
Appleby climbed down into the muniment room again, still thinking about Lord Ampersand’s late lamented archivist. He recorded to himself the impression that Dr Sutch must have been an orderly character. At least half the available space was crammed with junk – with the stuffed animals preponderating. These creatures huddled together, nose to tail and haunch to haunch, as if some perfectly appalling danger were constraining them to a quite unnatural contiguity. The majority were in very poor condition, either bursting through their skins or shrinking within their skeletons. Several had shed tails and one or two were short of an eye, so that the general effect was of some fiendish act of cruelty being perpetrated against an unoffending lower creation. But even upon this huddle of decayed taxidermy there appeared to have been a recent attempt at imposing a certain orderliness. Some of the creatures had been shunted round – and were even ranged two by two, as in Lady Ampersand’s jigsaw. Perhaps this had been the work of the police, but Appleby rather supposed that Sutch had had a hand in it. Certainly there were evidences that he had been a systematic worker. The papers dispersed in mere piles and bundles here and there had been so discarded because quite evidently of no significance: they fell within the general category of obsolete sales-catalogues and telephone directories. On two long tables and a range of open shelves everything was as neat as could be. And this would probably prove true of the contents of a couple of steel filing-cabinets were a key available to open them.
Appleby sat down on an upturned dinghy (surely a quite crazy thing to lug up to such a place) and tentatively turned his mind to the subject of Adrian Digitt and his remains. It was worth remarking, he told himself, how readily Adrian withdrew, as it were, into a background whenever there sailed into view that highly improbable craft, the second Nuestra Señora del Rosario. Even the minds of retired Police Commissioners harbour pockets of juvenile fancy. And one had known all about buried treasure and pirate hoards (Pieces of Eight! Pieces of Eight!) long before one had heard of Shelley and what Lord Ampersand would call that crowd. Still, this affair began with the real or supposed Ampersand Papers. There could be no doubt of that.
So start there. There was the extraordinary fact that the wholesale transfer of every sort of paper and document in the castle to this unlikely repository had followed upon, and been the cons
equence of, a learned world beginning to take some interest in Adrian Digitt. Essentially this bore the appearance of a freakish joke and nothing else. But was it not an improbably laborious joke as well? Suppose that somebody – and presumably some member of the family – had come upon some scattered papers of interest and value, and suppose it were in this person’s interest both to discourage qualified scholarly investigation and to secure conditions under which he could himself go to work at leisure in the interest of discovering further treasures of this entirely literary order. Might not that person…?
There was no point in dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s here, Appleby reflected. On evidence, or at least suggestion, already available to him, all this pointed straight at Lord Skillet, whose own mother believed that he had been in some pilfering relationship to Adrian’s papers for some time back. Suppose that, this being the situation, Sutch had been more or less wished on Lord Skillet, but had been at the same time Lord Skillet’s accomplice or creature. And suppose that Sutch had then made a really major find. Here, again, it might have been a matter of thieves falling out – not over specie, but over diaries and letters and poems and the lord knew what. Sutch might have taken fright, wanted to turn honest, proposed to dump the lot on Lord Ampersand. Whereupon Lord Skillet (by means at present scarcely obvious) might have brought about his demise.
If this were the general picture, where was the main body of Adrian’s remains now? Where had they been at the time of Sutch’s death? If here in the muniment room, it would be necessary to believe that they were here in the muniment room still. But that was improbable. The booty over which Sutch and Lord Skillet were falling out would already have been removed elsewhere by mutual agreement – with the consequence that, upon Sutch’s death, they were within Lord Skillet’s sole control. At this point Appleby found himself wishing heartily that he could persuade himself that Sutch’s death had been indeed an accident; had simply happened to happen, as it were, while this intrigue was going on. For, if only this were so, Appleby could very happily rid himself of the whole affair. Digitts pinching things from one another need be no concern of his. No doubt it was his duty as a citizen to unmask petty crime if he came across it. But he’d done a great deal of his duty in his time. Were the wrong Digitt to cash in on Adrian’s remains, Appleby – very scandalously, no doubt – would find his sleep quite undisturbed by a knowledge of the fact. Murder, unfortunately, was another matter.
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