Ampersand Papers by Michael Innes Read Free Book Online Page A

‘As a matter of fact, Charles, I have a slight suspicion that something of the sort may have been happening somewhere already.’
    ‘I don’t understand that, at all. If you don’t believe there are any papers in the castle…’
    ‘I said somewhere . And I didn’t, you’ll recall, turn down flat your notion that some of Adrian’s effusions may lurk in some quite different locality. And the admirable Dr Sutch, being anxious to nail the job, has done a little preliminary research already. Apparently the first thing one does is to rake through the likely learned journals for any recent mention of the chap you’re interested in. And there has been some interest in Adrian Digitt, as you know, on the part of the kind of people who write in such things. Sutch has turned up an affair of the sort in an American journal. By a Shelley fan, I gather. He reports that something or other of Adrian’s has lately been acquired by a private collector in California, who is refusing even well-accredited scholars access to it. That’s not uncommon over there, it seems. No striking commercial motive involved. Just dotty acquisitiveness. Sort of squirrel instinct. But it might be because this collector has come by what he has come by in some underhand way. That’s not uncommon either.’
    ‘It sounds plausible.’
    ‘Of course it does. One of Sutch’s jobs would have to be keeping a look-out for any further quiet goings-on of the same flavour.’
    ‘I see.’ Charles looked hard at his cousin, who at the moment was innocently pushing over to his side of the table the bill presented by the waiter. ‘You mean that something like theft may be going on, we don’t know where? That there really is a cache of Adrian’s scribblings in existence, and that it is being unobtrusively pilfered from, and the booty being equally unobtrusively fed into the market?’
    ‘You express the possibility admirably, my dear Charles, which is just what I’d expect of you. You haven’t any ideas yourself as to where it might be happening, and by whose agency?’
    ‘Of course I haven’t, Archie. I’ve been taking no active interest in all this, at all. It has simply turned up in our chat during this very pleasant meal.’
    And Charles Digitt produced his wallet, and extracted from it a couple of five-pound notes. He had a strong feeling that the little party had now better break up – break up and be thought about. Unsurprisingly, he was conscious that here might be deep waters. Did Archie really know about the situation at Budleigh Salterton? Was he actually suspecting his cousin of having already slipped into a pilfering role there? Was he in effect saying, ‘Charles, my boy, have a care! Sutch is keeping an eye on you’? Or was the boot, so to speak, on the other foot? Perhaps Archie himself was the pilferer, and the field of his operations nothing other than the North Tower of Treskinnick Castle. This sudden communicativeness on Archie’s part might be a ruse designed to deflect suspicion from himself if it did become known that Adrian Digitt’s remains were beginning unaccountably to surface here and there. Was there anything impossible about this? Charles Digitt took another hard look at his cousin (and at everything he either knew or imagined of his cousin’s character) and decided that definitely there was not.
    With expressions of mutual esteem (and clearly in an atmosphere of deep mutual distrust) the two gentlemen – or the two prospectively successive noblemen – parted outside the restaurant.

6
     
    Lord Ampersand knew almost at once that he wasn’t going to care greatly for Dr Sutch. Dr Sutch was an egghead in the literal acceptation of the image; he was bald, and had a massive domed forehead reminiscent of the disagreeable people who know all the answers in competitions in the field of Universal Knowledge mounted by the BBC. Whether Dr Sutch in fact possessed Universal Knowledge was never to appear, since he turned out to be