Ampersand Papers (14 page)

This long speech was perhaps not the less effective as being delivered in no sort of intimidatory manner. It was evident that the mixed grill, which had now arrived, was going to present Cave with considerable problems in the way of mastication. Presumably his mouth had gone dry, since he took two swigs at his wine in rapid succession. It looked, indeed, as if another bottle might be required before this conference was concluded. (And Craig’s hypothetical barrister would certainly inquire about that.) ‘Sutch and I,’ Cave said with an effort, ‘turned out, you see, to have certain interests in common. We were both on the track of the
Nuestra Señora del Rosario
.’

‘Of the
what
?’ Craig demanded.

‘Not the flagship of 1588, of course. That had to surrender, as you know.’ Cave had suddenly the manner of an earnestly informative professor addressing his pupils. ‘A much later galleon of the same name. In fact it was taking specie and bullion to Ireland.’

‘And, no doubt, was wrecked near Treskinnick,’ Appleby said. He was conscious that this new and improbable dimension of the Ampersand affair wasn’t quite so new, after all. In some dim way, it had already glimmered in his head. Had it been when Lord Skillet said something idle about what people get themselves killed on account of, and what they don’t? He couldn’t remember. But at least he was prepared to listen to Mr Cave with an open mind.

Inspector Craig was not so disposed. He had even produced what might be called an angry snort.

‘That kind of yarn again!’ he said. ‘Scores of them drifting around these parts – and a damned nuisance they are every time. People out on the beaches and among the rocks with their metal-detectors, thinking they’re going to turn up the iron-work on ancient chests and then sure to find no end of gold coins inside. Fighting one another for their pitches, even, like fossickers in yarns of the Wild West. Not to speak of those that go skin-diving and get themselves drowned – and better men drowned too, from time to time.’

‘No doubt,’ Appleby said – and refrained from any hinted reproof of this outburst. ‘But the death we have on our hands now wasn’t by water. Mr Cave, surely Dr Sutch’s interests were quite remote from Spanish treasure, and that sort of thing? I don’t know about your own.’

‘Sutch had got up the whole history of Treskinnick Castle and the Digitts, and had come upon something that looked rather more than a legend. At some date early in the seventeenth century just such a treasure was discovered by a member of the family. It had been buried in sand, or washed into a cave, several decades earlier. The then earl decided to hang on to it quietly for a time, because he feared the interposition of the Crown, should he announce the find. That makes sense, wouldn’t you say, Sir John?’

‘Yes, it does. Sense so far.’

‘Then came the Civil War, and the stories differ. According to one, the entire treasure was disbursed in the royalist cause. According to another, it was simply hidden away yet more securely – so securely that it escaped discovery when the castle was captured. And more than that. So securely, that its whereabouts perished out of mind.’

‘And the very memory of it?’ Appleby asked sharply. ‘This was something Sutch discovered that the present Digitts didn’t know?’

‘Not quite that, I imagine, Sir John. Rather, perhaps, something that they had long ago fallen into the habit of not believing in.’

‘It wouldn’t be possible that Sutch had been brought to Treskinnick, whether by one member of the family or another, ostensibly to examine family papers but actually to run this supposed treasure to earth?’

‘No, I don’t think so.’ Cave looked slightly bewildered. ‘In fact, I am sure not. Or at least Dr Sutch would have been being extremely disingenuous with me, were it so.’

‘Whereas,’ Craig demanded, ‘you were in fact being completely candid with one another. We’ve heard the story he told you. May we now have the story you told him?’

‘Yes, indeed.’ Cave nodded nervously. ‘For a number of years I have made a study of all the records of foundered galleons and the like. And also of the activities of wreckers and smugglers: all that sort of thing. Particularly in relation to natural hiding-places along the coast.’

‘And that,’ Appleby asked, ‘is why you go poking round all those caverns and grottoes and potholes and so on?’

‘Well, yes.’

‘It has been less a scientific interest than a matter of possible gain?’

‘Both, Sir John. I assure you – distinctly both.’

‘No doubt. And so we come to Treskinnick. You and Sutch meet, and begin cautiously to explore one another’s minds. And then you decide to join forces. Would that be right?’

‘Perfectly right. He had this specific information about the
Nuestra Señora del Rosario
. And I had my special knowledge of caves and so on as hiding-places.’

‘You were simply proposing to find this treasure and quietly make off with it?’

‘Something like that. Yes, I am afraid so.’

‘And it is merely this intention that perturbs you now that Sutch has died in mysterious circumstances, and that you have judged it prudent to make what you call a “confession” of? Or does the story continue?’

‘Continue, Sir John? I fear I don’t understand you.’

‘There has been a plan, or plot. Well, did anything come of it? Did you and Sutch continue in what may be termed amity, or did you by any chance fall out between yourselves? And did you discover anything? For example, that cave from which I saw you emerge some seconds – or was it minutes? – after Sutch’s death: just where and how far does it go? Right under the castle, I suppose. Can there be any question of there having been, or even being now, a passage connecting it with the upper reaches of the North Tower?’

Not unnaturally, this rain of questions had an unnerving effect upon the eminent speleologist. Then a further recourse to his glass a little rallied him.

‘No, no,’ he said. ‘We certainly didn’t quarrel, Sutch and myself. There was no occasion for such a thing, since we were neither of us really any nearer what we were after. At least I wasn’t. But I am bound to say that Sutch was irritatingly reticent at one point. He had been very thorough in searching and sounding the castle for possible hiding-places, but with no success. He told me all about that. But then, one day, he said he had a theory, all the same. He wouldn’t say more than that. Except that it had been put in his head by an architect. I was a little put out by his failing to be quite frank with me. Frankness had been in our bargain, you know.’ Cave hesitated. ‘And it may have cost him his life, if you ask me.’

‘And just what do you mean by that, Mr Cave?’

It was Craig who had asked this question – and quite without Sir John Appleby’s urbanity. And Cave, as a consequence, was at once extremely upset.

‘I don’t mean anything at all!’ he cried. ‘I mean that what I mean is…’ He took another gulp of wine.

‘At least you seem to be accepting the view that Sutch was murdered – presumably by somebody with whom he was now sharing a secret?’

‘Nothing of the kind!’ Cave seemed now to be casting about in his mind in mere panic. ‘I know nothing about how Sutch died. It is entirely mysterious to me. I was thinking merely that, if he had divulged his theory to me, we might together have hit upon the treasure at once. And then he wouldn’t have been on that staircase when he
was
on it. So he wouldn’t have fallen with it when it fell.’

‘I see.’ It was Appleby who spoke again now – and mildly. ‘And that is really all you have to tell us, Mr Cave?’

‘Oh, yes. Absolutely. I don’t know anything more – anything more at all.’

‘Then we are obliged to you for what you have been able to tell us.’ Appleby put down his table-napkin. ‘And I think we can cut out the biscuits and cheese.’

It was noon on the following day before Appleby returned to Treskinnick Castle. He had spent the earlier part of the morning on a fairly long walk: a cliff walk for the most part, but by the seashore when it was possible to get down to it. It was still a surprisingly empty coast. Here and there a hamlet – it might be no more than three or four fishermen’s cottages – nestled at the foot of creek or cove, but there were hardly any other habitations visible. Whatever was around had been around for a long time. Caravan parks such as erupt and proliferate like uncomfortable cutaneous diseases in most maritime regions of England were for some reason entirely absent. It was possible, in fact, to think of a great deal of the scene as totally undisturbed between the ages of the first Elizabeth and the second. There was food for thought in this. Just what, conceivably, thus lay undisturbed in Lord Ampersand’s stately if dilapidated home? Those literary remains of Adrian Digitt which connected him with the great figures of the Romantic Revival? That was to think in terms only of the day before yesterday, but at least it wasn’t wholly improbable. Doubloons and pistoles bearing the image of Philip II of Spain? Perhaps that
might
be called at once a more commonplace and a less likely conjecture.

And was either of them really mixed up with the death of Dr Ambrose Sutch? Either of them might be. Indeed, their existence or postulated existence – whether pistoles or papers – seemed a little to increase the probability that Sutch’s death had not been an accidental one. The hunt for valuable objects that have long lain concealed provides a plausible sort of context or occasion for a criminal act. But, as with Oranges or Lemons, there appeared to be a choice that had to be made. If sheer mischance hadn’t been the death of Sutch, then
either
the Ampersand Papers
or
the Ampersand Spanish gold had been. These disparate things surely defied any lumping together as constituting a single motive or main-spring in the case. Or did they? Common sense seemed to say that it must be so. But logic? Logic, Appleby saw, had, so far, nothing to say about the matter at all. There were still too many missing pieces in the Sutch affair to permit of any confident intellectual dealing with it. Appleby was not yet out of the twilight world of intuitions and hunches – and hadn’t he warned Inspector Craig that hunches were chancy things? Nevertheless, one hunch he’d indulge himself in. Both Lord Skillet and his cousin Charles Digitt were at the heart of the mystery – or poised, say, at an equal distance from that heart. The image was that of a seesaw. Or was it rather that of two duellists, eyeing one another each at an equal number of paces from the dropped handkerchief? And then what about Cave, that far from disinterested speleologist? Could any hunch yank him into the cloudy picture – or at least further into it than his own confession had taken him? There is nothing truer about thieves than that they fall out – so mightn’t Cave and Sutch have found themselves in a lethal confrontation – a duel deadlier than whatever was the duel that Archie and Charles were engaged in?

Useless rhetorical questions, Appleby told himself – and turned round to make his way back to Treskinnick.

The scaffolding was up: a light tubular structure, apparently niched into the wall of the tower, and supporting, as Craig had foretold, a criss-cross of fairly short ladders. There was nothing intimidating about it, and nobody stood guard over it. Craig’s men had perhaps decided that all they needed to know about the muniment room they already knew. Appleby scarcely supposed that their confidence would be misplaced. Nevertheless it was possible that he himself might have some luck as a snapper-up of one or another unconsidered trifle. He made the ascent briskly, but paused once or twice to glance below him. Since the foot of each ladder rested on solid planking, it would have been difficult so to tumble as to risk more than the breaking of a limb. This didn’t mean that looking down at the inner ward would be agreeable if one had no head for heights. The original wooden staircase, turning an angle, as it had done, to ascend the face of the tower virtually overhanging the sea, must have been an even nastier affair. He was astonished that it should ever have been contrived, and more astonished at the bizarre behaviour of the present generation of Digitts in having brought it into requisition again. As for the inner ward, it was a secluded kind of place, surrounded in the main by blank walls. If one had wanted to come and go to the so-called muniment room unobtrusively, it wouldn’t have been hard to do so. How much of that had there been, before Sutch and the staircase had gone to their ruin together? It was again an idle question.

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.