Ampersand Papers by Michael Innes Read Free Book Online

Adrian at present. But Adrian would have been older than Shelley, wouldn’t he?’
    ‘Definitely.’ Archie had the air of a man who, although not yet admitting boredom, soon will be. ‘So what?’
    ‘I just wonder what his relations, if any, were with the first generation of the Romantics. Wordsworth and Coleridge, for example.’
    ‘Search me.’
    ‘Is there anybody who might definitely know?’
    ‘There may be, or there may not. I’m not an authority on this business, my dear Charles. So don’t treat me as one.’
    ‘Who would the stuff belong to?’
    ‘The stuff?’
    ‘Archie, don’t be tiresome. Those conceivably valuable papers if they conceivably exist.’
    ‘I expect my father would regard them as his – particularly if it was at Treskinnick that they turned up. As being head of the family, and all that.’
    ‘Suppose, Archie, that they constituted a substantial property. Mightn’t the lawyers take a different view? Mightn’t you have a case for having them regarded as heirlooms, so that you would yourself have a life-interest in what they produced?’
    ‘As you might after me, Charles? It’s a delightful idea. And what a helpful fellow you are! But I don’t believe it for a moment. They’re not the Ampersand Diamonds – not that there are any Ampersand Diamonds, worse luck. The heirloom business is all a matter of deeds and inventories and so on. You know that perfectly well. Let’s be frank about this. My father would sell anything worth selling, and pocket the money. Or buy a pedigree herd with it, or what have you. There’s no sense in the old boy – none at all.’
    ‘Well now, let me make one more point. Have you thought about the law of copyright?’
    ‘Copyright? My dear Charles, nothing of the sort could have the slightest relevance. We’re talking of stuff that belongs with Noah’s Ark.’
    ‘You may be right.’ Charles said this on a slightly dismissive note, as if their topic were pretty well exhausted and they’d better talk about something else. But he was wondering whether here was the deep Archie again. Was it conceivable that a clever man should be so ignorant as to believe what he had just said? Even if he was, it would again be a matter on which he would eventually catch up. But if this was it, Charles once more had at least a start on him.
    Charles now talked about motor cars, a subject upon which his cousin was knowledgeable and quite pleased to converse. It was only at the end of the meal that they returned for a few minutes to the topic of Adrian Digitt.
    And it had once more to be on Charles’ initiative.
    ‘Have you got the length of short-listing your moles?’ he asked. ‘And might I be a candidate myself? Shall I run over my qualifications?’
    ‘You must be joking.’ Archie seemed genuinely amused. ‘It has to be a pro. I thought you’d gathered that. It’s what is firmly in my father’s head. And, as I’ve already told you, I have one runner fairly well out in front already.’
    ‘What’s his name?’
    There was nothing particularly impertinent about this question – or not as between cousins. But Charles had brought it out in a sharply interrogative manner which appeared to offend Archie, or at least to disconcert him. He had raised his eyebrows.
    ‘Sutch,’ he said coldly.
    ‘Such as what?’
    ‘Sutch is his name. His name is Sutch. No doubt it can be made fun of. He’s Dr Ambrose Sutch. A very senior man.’
    ‘How did you get hold of him?’
    ‘Oh, just by inquiring here and there. Asking one person and another. Why do you ask? You seem devilishly curious.’
    ‘You said yourself that one has to be careful. And it’s a position of trust, in a way. Sutch might prove to be Snatch, and start pocketing things.’
    ‘What a suspicious fellow you are, Charles! But, of course, what you say is perfectly true.’ Lord Skillet hesitated. He might have been a man weighing the wisdom of making a confidence to a not wholly reliable person.