Ampersand Papers

by Michael Innes

  Nobody found anything to say to this. The two constables addressed themselves to prizing up the lid of the first chest. It came free with a good deal of creaking. Most inconsequently, Appleby was reminded of Miss Deborah Digitt’s maid. Lord Ampersand advanced and peered inside.

  ‘What’s that on top?’ he asked. ‘Deuced odd thing. Little picture of quite a pretty girl. What do you make of that?’

  ‘The Blessed Virgin, Uncle.’ Charles Digitt had stepped forward too. ‘But having nothing to do with our Señora del Rosario, I fear. Although here, for that matter, is an actual rosary as well. And – good Lord! – rather a nice wooden crucifix into the bargain. But French, I’d say, rather than Spanish.’ He rummaged rapidly in the chest. ‘Apart from that, nothing but books.’

  ‘Books?’ Lord Ampersand repeated blankly, and not exactly as a book-lover might utter the word. ‘What the devil do you mean, Charles?’

  ‘I think I know what I mean. And probably Sir John does too.’ Charles laughed harshly. ‘Damned good!’ he said. ‘Open up the other two treasure chests at once.’

  This was done, and amid mounting stupefaction the contents were turned out on the dusty floor. Books. Nothing but books.

  ‘Sir John,’ Lady Grace Digitt said with dignity, ‘you are a person, I have been told, of considerable cultivation. Pray explain all this to us if you can.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s very difficult.’ Appleby wasn’t entirely amused at being credited with a smattering of letters. ‘What we have here is quite a large accumulation of works of Catholic devotion. And a good deal of polemical theology, no doubt. The collection may be of some interest to scholars. Here is Polanco’s Vita Ignatii Loiolae. And the Acta quaedam too. This, in fact, was the treasure that certain past Ampersands thought cunningly to hide away when Cromwell’s soldiers were surrounding them.’ Appleby looked up soberly. ‘These books must have been very dear to somebody.’

  This edifying conclusion to the hunt for Spanish gold unfortunately failed to please Lord Ampersand. Lord Ampersand, in fact, promptly treated himself to some species of mild fit, and there was confusion as a result. Ludlow hastened forward with coffee. And then suddenly, and to a freezing effect, the hollow chamber resounded to a maniacal laugh. Appleby turned round in time to see the bottom of the ladder disappearing through the hole in the roof. A moment later there was a tremendous crash; the fraudulent treasure house shook on its foundations; the single glaring light went out. Lord Skillet had withdrawn from the scene, and in doing so had contrived to topple a massive flagstone on the only exit from it. A series of further muffled clatters told that he was successively dislodging the ladders by which he was now descending to terra firma. The baffled treasure-seekers were immured within the arena of their fiasco.

  One of the constables had a torch. It gave a pretty poor light, but one good enough to show that Lord Ampersand had recovered. Lady Ampersand encouraged him to let Ludlow pour him more coffee. Lady Ampersand appeared not particularly discomposed.

  ‘It has really been quite some time,’ she said to Appleby in the gloom, ‘since Archie had one of these little episodes. They run in the family, it seems. My husband’s family, that is – not mine. I suppose he was disappointed at our finding nothing but all those books.’

  ‘As Sutch would have been too,’ Charles Digitt said. ‘And what will Archie be doing now? Chewing the drawing-room carpet, or climbing up the curtains?’

  ‘Oh, nothing so uncomfortable as that.’ Lady Ampersand spoke reassuringly, as if anxious to set her nephew’s mind at ease in the matter. ‘He just makes off for a time, and perhaps plays one of his rather silly jokes. And then he comes home and tells us about it. I wonder whether we shall get back to the castle in time for luncheon. I believe there are to be lamb chops. Ludlow, are there to be lamb chops for luncheon?’

  ‘I believe so, my lady.’

  ‘That will be very nice. And meanwhile we must resign ourselves, must we not? But I shall be disappointed if I have to miss my Noah’s Ark. Inspector Craig, am I likely to do that?’

  ‘I don’t know, madam.’ Craig was perplexed and irritated. ‘We are in something uncommonly like a Noah’s Ark ourselves. But it can only be a matter of minutes, I imagine, before somebody tumbles to the fact. It’s getting up the ladders again that will take time.’

  ‘Anything up to an hour, I expect,’ Appleby said. ‘Might it be a good opportunity to explain to you just what happened to Dr Sutch?’

  ‘This is rather a gloomy setting,’ Charles Digitt said, ‘to be told about a murder.’

  ‘No doubt. But there was, as it happens, no murder. Dr Sutch’s death was an accident.’ Appleby paused on this. ‘But an accident, I must admit, of rather a peculiar kind.’

  21

  In the low light from the single electric torch the two constables might have been observed to glance at one another apprehensively. If this high-ranking person was about to pronounce upon confidential matters they would in normal circumstances be expected to make themselves scarce. But circumstances were far from normal, since the entire company was virtually shut up in a box. But Inspector Craig, as Appleby would have expected of him, took charge of this aspect of the matter.

  ‘Excellent,’ Craig said. ‘I’m sure Lord Ampersand and his family, just as much as myself and my own officers, would like to see this confused affair cleared up in double quick time. But I wonder whether we can find Lady Ampersand a seat? Richards, see what you can do with some of the larger of those books.’

  At this Constable Richards (who probably had a nasty feeling that he ought to have been watching Lord Skillet like a lynx throughout the past half-hour) sprang gratefully into activity. As a result, Lady Ampersand was presently accommodated on a sort of bench constructed out of substantial quartos and folios. On this she seated herself with composure, rather in the manner of Dame Theology as conceived by some mediaeval mind. It seemed likely that there were those present who would have preferred to see her in the character of Usuria, plumped down on Spanish money-bags.

  ‘It must be understood,’ Appleby began, ‘that what I have to say is bound at times to reflect disadvantageously upon the conduct and motives of certain of the persons concerned. That must be put up with, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Are you talking about my son?’ This, which came from Lord Ampersand with a sharpness doing surprising credit to his intellectual grasp of the situation, didn’t find Appleby in any doubt.

  ‘Lord Skillet,’ he said, ‘has certainly behaved in an odd and reprehensible manner. He has done so this morning, as I think you must agree. Just what he is up to now, I can’t say. Probably something freakish rather than vastly criminal. He appears subject – as indeed his mother has told us – to a good deal of mental aberration from time to time. But let me begin.

  ‘From the first there have been what we may term two magnets in this affair. The first has been represented by the notion that hidden somewhere in Treskinnick Castle there has been this hoarded and concealed treasure of Spanish origin. There is a family legend to that effect, and it connects with what I take to be an actual historical occurrence which other people have known about as well: the shipwreck in the early seventeenth century of a vessel called the Nuestra Señora del Rosario. But, if that is fact, the legend is moonshine. What was veritably tucked away here at the time of the siege, we have just discovered.’

  ‘Books,’ Lord Ampersand said darkly – and then a new thought seemed to strike him. ‘Uncommonly old books. Might be worth a lot of money, eh? Astonishing, I’m told, what people will now pay for rubbish.’

  ‘No doubt the collection may have some moderate pecuniary value.’ Appleby took up this hopeful suggestion patiently. ‘But it would be unwise to repose much confidence in it. These are probably very run-of-the-mill theological works, together with a great many manuals of homiletic character, designed in the main, it may be, to assist fe
male devotion. They are not likely to have any large appeal today. But let me continue.

  ‘The second magnet, of course, has been Adrian Digitt’s papers. These do exist, and have been discovered. They have been lately within the control of Mr Charles Digitt – have they not, Mr Digitt? – and he, having judged them to be the rightful property of Miss Deborah Digitt of Budleigh Salterton, has in fact returned them into the possession of that lady. They are with her now.’

  There was a short silence. How Charles Digitt took the making of this communication to his kinsfolk, it was too dark to see. The Ampersands and their daughters were presumably stupefied by such a revelation of treachery in their midst.

  ‘So much is now clear,’ Appleby continued. ‘I now come to Dr Ambrose Sutch. He is to be described as an acute, ingenious, and – I fear – singularly unscrupulous man. He was introduced into the castle by Lord Skillet – not, I imagine, without the thought of being exploited to Lord Skillet’s private advantage were he actually to discover the papers. He did discover them. But he also discovered something else. The fabled Spanish treasure was very much in his mind, and it was, I believe, a chance remark of Mr Digitt’s that put him on what he supposed to be the track of them. To an architect there would appear to be something fishy – it is probably the right term – about the manner in which the spiral staircase admitting to the upper ranges of this tower had been rendered impassable. Dr Sutch investigated. He investigated with the aid of a mallet and chisel. They are implements, as it happens, that we have not heard the last of.

  ‘Take the papers first. Sutch’s discovery of them became known to Mr Digitt, who had been much about the place, and Sutch was constrained to agree to removing them elsewhere in the castle while the two men bargained over them.’

  ‘Bargained over them!’ Lord Ampersand exclaimed.

  ‘Just that. Shall we put it, for the moment, that Mr Digitt was so righteously convinced of Miss Deborah Digitt’s being entitled to them that he entered upon a course of conspiracy with Dr Sutch – whom he was determined, to put it bluntly, to double-cross. Dr Sutch was much too clever not to be aware of this. So Mr Digitt and Sutch became, in a sense, adversaries. There was this booty – if the word be not too coarse – to quarrel over.

  ‘But now I pass again to the supposed treasure. Here it was Lord Skillet who did a little successful spying: he too, as you are aware, was much about the place.

  ‘You will see that it would be much to the advantage of Lord Skillet and Mr Digitt severally were Sutch at this point to disappear from the scene. But, equally, it would be to his advantage if they did – or if even one of them did. It was a dangerous state of affairs.’

  At this point in Appleby’s exposition Inspector Craig might have been distinguished as moving over to his subordinates and murmuring to them in an instructive manner. They had let Lord Skillet slip. If Charles Digitt gave trouble – suddenly producing, it might be, a lethal weapon – they were to pounce.

  ‘I may say that Dr Sutch, a resourceful man, now himself brought into the picture a more or less reliable confederate of his own: a person called Cave, who was to assist him in smuggling away the treasure when he succeeded in getting down to it. The plan involved, in a manner I need not at the moment detail, a length of rope and a length of cord. These, Sutch caused Cave to deposit in a cavern which, as it happens, lies far below this chamber in which we are at present so ludicrously incarcerated.

  ‘But now Sutch had a brilliant idea: nothing less than the employment of that rope and cord for a quite new purpose. At an appropriate time he would loop the rope round the platform of that insecure and rotting wooden staircase. He would then descend to the shore, having achieved a perfectly constructed booby-trap. If he caught Lord Skillet on one of his visits to the muniment room, he could himself become the undisputed possessor of the treasure; if he caught Mr Digitt, he would be in a similar position in regard to the papers. He was in the happy position of profiting handsomely whether he achieved one murder or another.

  ‘Unfortunately for Sutch, his flair for improvisation carried him a little further – or so it is reasonable to conjecture. While working industriously at the enlarging of his spyhole, I imagine, it occurred to him that mallet and chisel might be put to a further use. He had doubts about that powerful tug from below. He decided – and it was a courageous decision in its way – to go out to the platform and do a little tinker with the masonry of the tower at one or two accessible points at which the supports of the staircase were embedded in it. He succeeded in this, and returned happily to his operation in the interior. But he had been a little too radical in the matter, and when he next stepped – cautiously, no doubt – out on the platform down it went without any assistance of a tug from below, and this very evil man with it. The enginer, as Hamlet has it, had been hoist with his own petard.’

  22

  It had been in various ways an uncomfortable morning – and not the less because there had been several hitches in freeing the prisoners of the tower. Lady Ampersand, with her jigsaw hour in jeopardy, more than once remarked that it had been too bad of Archie. Inspector Craig consulted Appleby on the propriety of placing Charles Digitt formally under arrest. Appleby was unsympathetic.

  ‘My dear chap,’ he said easily, ‘–whatever for? Because somebody has tried to murder him?’

  ‘The man has impudently stolen those valuable papers…’

  ‘Perhaps so. But you’d get nowhere with it in court. There’s nothing but an obscure family dispute about the ownership of Adrian Digitt’s remains, which are now in the possession of his sole legitimate descendant. There wouldn’t be the ghost of a case, criminally regarded. Of course they can all go to law with one another, if they want to.’

  ‘Do you know what I heard him insolently tell his uncle a few minutes ago?’ Craig had drawn Appleby cautiously into a corner of the disgraced treasure chamber. ‘That the papers are of enormous importance in their particular line. That there’s a play almost entirely by one chap, and a lot of unknown poems by another, and a voluminous diary…’

  ‘There may be a shade of exaggeration about all that, don’t you think? As there has been about the treasure.’

  ‘And then he actually told his uncle that he is going to marry the lady. It’s entirely outrageous.’

  ‘I don’t see that a proposed marriage need be an outrage. Or not from a policeman’s point of view.’

  ‘And Lord Skillet is worse. Plotting blatantly to defraud…’

  ‘Perfectly true, Craig. But we’d get nowhere there, either. The Ampersands wouldn’t support us for a moment. The sole real villain of the piece has escaped us. He’s dead.’

  ‘And the man Cave.’

  ‘Bother the man Cave. Ah! I think I hear them with the ladders now.’

  There is always something a little ignominious about being let out of the lock-up. And this particular liberation had taken nearly three hours to achieve. The Chief Constable himself had hastened to the scene, but it turned out to be with the object of insisting that every operation involved should be carried out with a minimum of risk. There must, if it could possibly be avoided, be no scandal at Treskinnick Castle. And if through injudicious haste some workman or constable was hurried or flurried into breaking his neck, scandal there would inevitably be. In addition to which the humorously disposed Brunton was rather tickled by the thought of his old colleague John Appleby (who had outpaced him in the end) furiously raging in his narrow den.

  But eventually everybody got up and then down. The Chief Constable, having uttered courteous and consolatory words to Lady Ampersand, departed again, taking Craig and his constables tactfully with him. And the lamb chops were belatedly served.

  They were served to Appleby among others, since he had seen no way of decently declining Lady Ampersand’s eminently proper invitation that he should join in the family meal. The family – perhaps with som
e strangeness – included Charles Digitt, and Appleby supposed that the Ampersands might calculate that the presence of a stranger at the board might restrain any extreme exhibition of such passions as the late events in connection with Adrian Digitt’s remains might well be expected to arouse.

  As it was, it proved a chilly meal. Yet the only person to appear really angry was Ludlow, who clearly regarded his late immurement as an intolerable affront to the dignity of his position in the household. No man on earth better commands the technique of indicating a just disgruntlement than an experienced upper servant, and Ludlow laid it on thick. His manner in merely replenishing his employer’s glass was so infinitely menacing that Lord Ampersand positively quailed before it. And then, towards the end of the muted banquet, and after whispered consultation with the parlourmaid, Ludlow abruptly left the room.

  He returned some ten minutes later, came to a halt several feet away from the table, and spoke in a loud and formal voice.

  ‘A telephone message from Lord Skillet, my lord. He desired me not to bring you to the instrument. I was instructed merely to give you a message.’

  ‘A message, Ludlow?’ Lord Ampersand was unashamedly nervous. ‘What sort of message?’

  ‘To the effect, my lord, that he has them.’

  ‘Has them! Has what?’

  ‘The call came through from Budleigh Salterton, my lord. And his lordship employed the word “retrieved”. I understood him, my lord, to be referring to the family papers of which there has been some question of late. His lordship is returning to the castle with them now.’

  ‘The bloody swine!’ Charles Digitt had sprung to his feet, white and trembling. ‘Deborah would never…’

  ‘Charles, sit down at once.’ Suddenly, Lord Ampersand was in command of his household. ‘Ludlow, you may leave the room – take that goggling girl with you.’ He waited for a moment, and then turned to Appleby. ‘Sir John, have you anything to say about this? Is it legal, and all that?’