Ampersand Papers (18 page)

‘I can say nothing as to that. And need this interview continue?’

‘Only for a moment longer, madam. I am interested in your declaring that the hunt for those papers at the castle was a singularly futile project. May I ask why you are in a position to express yourself so strongly?’

‘Certainly you may. The entire body of my great-grandfather’s papers are in my possession and are my property. They have been so since the death of my father many years ago.’

‘In fact they are in this house now?’ It was in a reasonably composed manner that Appleby asked this question. It would have taken a very keen observer indeed to detect that a moment of complete illumination had come to him.

‘Indeed they are – although I am ashamed to say that until recently I was unaware of the fact. It is true that I have come across a few scattered papers from time to time. But my collection of family material is voluminous, and I have been deferring my full examination of them – thinking of the matter, perhaps, as an occupation for my later years.’

‘An agreeable prospect, I don’t doubt.’ Miss Digitt’s last words had again produced an effect of illumination, although this time of a minor order. ‘May I take it that it has been Mr Charles Digitt who has succeeded in turning them up for you?’

‘You may,’ Miss Digitt said. And she rose and gave a tug at the bell-rope.

So Sir John Appleby was indeed shown out. He drove back to Treskinnick meditating, among other things, the mysteries of the female heart. What had made Miss Deborah Digitt so problematical was that she was living – uncertainly, no doubt – in a new world. She had even been wearing an engagement ring.

Appleby arrived back at Treskinnick at an hour constraining him to close with the Ampersand Arms for another dinner and another night’s lodging. This time it looked as if, so far as residents went, he was going to have the place to himself. Mr Cave, of course, had once again departed. It had been a shade unkind to terrify him with the threat of a charge of conspiracy on the strength of his abortive designs upon the Spanish treasure, even although it might be conceivably possible to secure his conviction if the police went about it with a will. A good deal of play could be made with those coils of rope and cord, and of the close contiguity to them in which the speleologist had first revealed himself. Appleby worked out this picture as he ate his dinner.

Dr Ambrose Sutch was the master criminal, and an inspired opportunist into the bargain. Having run up against Cave in an entirely fortuitous way, and discovered that he had at least vague designs upon wrecked treasure ships in general and the
Nuestra Señora del Rosario
in particular, he had promptly recruited the wretched man as his accomplice or tool. Granted that that inaccessible chamber in the North Tower held riches untold, it would be evident that getting at the loot and smuggling it out of the castle would be two men’s task at least. Suppose that much more extensive work with mallet and chisel would make it possible to haul the stuff up into the muniment room, just where did one go from there? Very evidently, it could be said, to that cave, or system of caves, almost immediately below. One would make one’s preparations there. It would not be possible, without grave risk of detection, to carry through the castle and up the wooden staircase the large coil of stout rope essential for the operation to be put in hand. But the cord one could collect at any convenient time, carry in and up in something no bulkier than a briefcase, and subsequently employ to haul up the rope under cover of night. Providing these materials would have been Cave’s job; Cave would cache them in the cave; and thus Sutch would not, so far, have made a single incriminating move. Even if his labours as a stone-mason should chance to be detected and interrupted, they could be passed off as no more than an excessive zeal exercised wholly in the interest of his employers.

That, it could be said, had been the plan, and its main actual risk would have been a simply physical one: were Sutch to begin enthusiastically lowering from that crazy little platform something in the nature, say, of a heavy sea-chest, the chest and the staircase and Sutch himself might all arrive at the bottom of the tower with an altogether unplanned impetus. But nothing of the sort – of precisely that sort – had happened. The breach in the floor of the muniment room was still no more than a peephole, and the treasure remained where for centuries it had been. And rope and cord, too, remained undisturbed where Cave had so neatly deposited them. On this theory, therefore, it would be necessary to believe that, at some anterior point in his preparations, Fate had intervened and been the end of Ambrose Sutch. It wasn’t difficult to imagine that the whole sequence of events had terrified Cave very much.

Was there anybody else who would have reason to be terrified – anybody else whom this untoward turn of events would threaten to expose, as it were, as hazardously out on a limb? Appleby asked himself this question as he finished his meal and was about to leave the dining-room of the Ampersand Arms. He was arrested, however, by the entrance of Inspector Craig.

It was evident in an instant that Craig was pleased neither with himself nor with his subordinates, and that the situation required the exercise of a certain amount of tact. The tap-tap of Dr Sutch’s mallet could almost be heard in the room.

‘I’m so glad,’ Appleby said easily, ‘that you’ve found time to drop in. We’re not without notes to compare. Let me fetch some brandy from the bar, and we can get down to it. And you mustn’t be too hard on your chaps for not nosing out that small activity on our deceased friend’s part.’

‘They’ve heard about it already,’ Craig said darkly.

‘One of them took the dramatic revelation quite well. What about some food, by the way?’

‘No thank you. I had a bite an hour ago, Sir John.’ Craig was recovering good humour. ‘But the brandy I’ll be grateful for.’

Appleby fetched the brandy. He went up to his room and dug out of his suitcase that solace of elderly and modestly prosperous men, a box of Havana cigars. Having thus adequately played the host, he left it to Craig to begin.

‘It may be tricky,’ Craig said. ‘Just getting at that stuff, I mean. They may have to tackle clearing that spiral staircase from the top. The main walls of the tower are immensely solid, as you’d imagine. But it’s a question whether they can monkey with that floor without inviting trouble. They’ll know in the morning.’

‘And we’ll know quite a lot by then, too,’ Appleby said cheerfully. ‘Perhaps Sutch was having his own doubts about more banging away.’

‘Perhaps so. We’ve enlarged that hole a little, of course, and had a flashlight camera down. Odd bit of work. So I can tell you what’s there – in a very general way.’

‘I can tell you what isn’t – in one specific particular, at least. The place isn’t harbouring Adrian Digitt’s remains.’

‘It would be most unlikely, sir. But you mean you can be confident about it?’

‘Yes, indeed. Didn’t I let you know I was going to Budleigh Salterton? All those confounded papers are there, in the possession of Miss Deborah Digitt. If the woman isn’t mad, that is. I didn’t actually get a sight of them.’

‘You mean that this relation of those people has had them all the time?’

‘So she says, and so perhaps she believes. It’s perfectly plausible, you know. She’s the direct descendant of Adrian Digitt. But although plausible, Craig, it isn’t true. I haven’t the slightest doubt that those papers were in that muniment room no time ago at all.’

‘Right up to the day of Sutch’s death?’

‘Possibly so – although I rather suspect they may have been moved elsewhere in the castle by then.’

Inspector Craig took some moments to digest this information and these conjectures. He sipped his brandy, drew on his cigar, and directed rather a sombre gaze on the former Commissioner of Metropolitan Police.

‘And would you know,’ he asked, ‘how they got from Treskinnick Castle to Budleigh Salterton? Would it have been by parcel post?’

‘Almost certainly not. They were taken there by Charles Digitt. He either handed them to her with a flourish, in which case she is a shocking old liar, or slipped them in among her own voluminous and very-little-examined family papers for subsequent delighted discovery by himself.’

‘Why on earth should he do such a thing, Sir John? A jury would find it hard to believe.’

‘A jury mayn’t be asked to. And he had several reasons bundled together, I imagine. He wanted to cheat Sutch, who was proposing to do a quiet deal with him. He wanted to cheat his cousin, Lord Skillet, whom he detests. He wanted, you may say, to make fools of his whole family. And the papers, don’t forget, may have a quite absurd market value.’

‘But, if they were sold, wouldn’t the proceeds come to him one day in any case? So wasn’t he cheating himself, in a way, when he dumped them on this distant kinswoman in Budleigh Salterton?’

‘He couldn’t be sure there would be a penny left by the time he became Lord Ampersand – which, in any case, he may never do. As for the lady, I rather suspect him of having turned her head.’

‘Turned her head!’

‘She has what you might call a faded romantic streak to her. I’m not sure she doesn’t believe herself to be engaged to him.’

‘Good heavens, the man’s a scoundrel! But we can get him for the theft, I suppose.’

‘I rather doubt that, my dear Craig. Certain rights in many of those papers, you see, Miss Deborah Digitt undoubtedly has.’

‘Copyright?’

‘Precisely so. And the mere fact of their having been lying unknown in Treskinnick Castle by no means gives Lord Ampersand a clear title to their ownership as physical objects. Charles Digitt has merely discovered them and handed them on to Adrian Digitt’s sole descendant – or perhaps has tactfully spared her perplexity by simply slipping them in among her existing possessions of that sort. In fact, Craig, it all sounds to me much more a case for civil proceedings than for criminal ones. And in such affairs as these, at least, possession really often is nine-tenths of the law.’ Appleby paused to examine the tip of his own cigar. ‘But all this,’ he said, ‘seems to take us rather far from the death of Dr Sutch.’

‘Seems to – or actually does?’

‘Ah, that’s very much a question. So let us forget about the papers for the moment, and turn to the treasure.’

‘The Spanish hypothesis,’ Craig said with a grin. ‘But it looks as if it’s a hypothesis no longer, and has turned into solid fact.’

‘I’m delighted to hear it – if only because I’ve been spinning myself a bit of a yarn about it.’

‘Is that so, sir? Well, a good many people in these parts do. Spin themselves a yarn, I mean, about Spanish gold. I think I’ve mentioned that before. And about its causing us a certain amount of trouble and annoyance from time to time. Which is why I haven’t been in a hurry to believe in this Digitt hoard. Well, I’ve seen it now, and seeing has to be believing.’

‘
Seen
it, Craig? You’re ahead of me. I haven’t seen the papers.’

‘To say I’ve seen
it
, Sir John, would be to stretch a point. But I’ve seen what it’s stowed away in. In the photographs, that is.’

‘Photographs you’ve secured through that spyhole, you mean?’

‘Just that. What shows up isn’t by any means all that may be down there. But it’s enough to be going on with, you may say. There’s three massive chests – iron-bound, padlocked, and looking as safe as the Bank of England.’

‘Well, well!’ Appleby seemed much impressed. ‘When archaeologists dig down into ancient tombs, you know, they frequently find that the wandering Bedouin or whoever have succeeded in rifling them long ago. You are sure those chests haven’t been neatly broken into at the back?’

‘Of course I’m not sure of anything of the sort.’ Craig was not quite pleased by this carefree conjecture. ‘Perhaps Charles Digitt has been miraculously in on this loot too, and has poured it out at the feet of his beloved. We can only wait and see, sir.’

‘Yes, of course. By the way, are Lord Ampersand and his family waiting and seeing too? I mean, have you told them about the discovery of this Aladdin’s Cave?’

‘Yes, sir. I rang up the Chief Constable, and he said it wouldn’t be proper not to inform Lord Ampersand of what had happened at this stage of the investigation.’

‘I suppose Brunton was right.’ Appleby didn’t say this with much conviction. ‘Did Lord Ampersand show much interest in this prospect of sudden wealth within his grasp?’

‘I doubt whether his mind got round to seeing it quite in that way, Sir John. He said he’d tell his wife, and then he said something about having to walk the dogs. Perhaps the penny would drop when he got under full steam with them.’

‘Several pennies will drop here and there in the castle, I don’t doubt. Is the whole family at home still?’

‘I believe so.’

Appleby glanced at his watch.

‘It’s a pity,’ he said, ‘that we can’t clear this thing up tonight. But I’ll have a go, Craig, round about breakfast time.’

Faithful to this resolution, Appleby was back at Treskinnick Castle by nine o’clock on the following morning, and the first person he came upon was Lord Skillet, who was pacing up and down a small terrace which lay outside the moat on the landward side of what a guidebook might have called the frowning pile. Lord Skillet was frowning too, and he sufficiently forgot the canon of
noblesse oblige
to utter the words, ‘Good God, you here again!’ as Appleby came up to him. Appleby wasn’t perturbed. The meeting was entirely agreeable to his wishes, however disagreeable the heir of the Ampersands proposed to be.

‘Good morning,’ Appleby said. ‘I think we may hope for a sunny day. And, of course, a busy day as well. For I suppose you must have heard the remarkable news?’

‘About this nonsense in the North Tower? Of course I have. And my father has taken it into his head to get excited about it. What he ought to be is indignant. There are half a dozen damned impertinent fellows up there now, doing their best to pull the place to pieces. And without so much as a by-your-leave, curse them!’