Ampersand Papers Read Free Page A

more outrageous insistences, judged that this injunction could be sufficiently obeyed by raising a single eyebrow to an assisting parlourmaid – who removed the offending toast so nervously that she contrived to scatter a good many crumbs down Lord Ampersand’s neck. Lord Ampersand made no protest. He was always quite as well-disposed as was at all proper to the more personable of the female domestics about the place.
    ‘Agatha’s eye caught the name of Digitt, Rollo.’ Lady Ampersand was now consulting the cutting received from her sister. ‘Adrian Digitt.’
    ‘Never heard of him.’
    ‘A son, it seems, of the second marquess’ younger brother. There’s quite a lot about him. It seems that he had a circle too. Or several circles. He revolved in several circles. Whereas Shelley revolved only in his own.’
    ‘Balderdash, my dear. Utter balderdash, the whole thing.’
    ‘No, I don’t think so.’ Lady Ampersand was a patient – sometimes even a persistent – woman. ‘Agatha says it may be important. She believes that Adrian, although rather far out, may have spent part of his life at the castle. He had left his wife, you see. Perhaps because of all those circles.’
    ‘Sounds a bit dubious, to my mind. But go on.’ Lord Ampersand held his wife’s wisdom in considerable regard, although he was not always entirely civil to her. She came of a large family and had been, he liked to say, ‘the pick of the bunch’ – whereas Agatha would have been the bottom of the barrel. ‘Go on,’ he repeated encouragingly. ‘Did Adrian know this fellow Shelley?’
    ‘Very well, it seems. The article says that Shelley was a difficult person, but that he was devoted to Adrian Digitt, and that it is now clear that Adrian was one of the two people who knew how to manage him. The other was a man called Peacock – who was quite obscure, I imagine, and certainly didn’t move in the best society as a Digitt would naturally have done.’
    ‘Naturally not. But I still don’t see what’s important, or even quite proper, about a member of my family taking up with a lot of scribblers. And fiddlers and daubers too, likely enough. Except for Lord Byron, of course. He may have been all right.’
    ‘It’s really the review of a book, you see, that Agatha has sent. And she has marked what she thinks is the most important passage. It’s where the writer says that few men in England can have been as widely and warmly esteemed by people destined to be famous as, it is now apparent, was Adrian Digitt.’
    ‘That’s very kind of you, my dear child. Put it down in front of her ladyship.’ Lord Ampersand was speaking thus paternally to the parlourmaid, who had returned with a rack of more acceptable toast. ‘But, Lucy,’ he went on to his wife, ‘does all this have any practical bearing on our affairs?’
    The sixth Marquess of Ampersand has perhaps not figured so far in our narrative as a man of commanding intellect, or even of keen observation, extensive views, or wide reading. But it is undeniable that at this moment his mind was beginning to stir. If not stung by the splendour of a sudden thought, he had at least been pinched by the ghost of a perception.
    ‘It might have a bearing, Rollo. Agatha points out that in the earlier nineteenth century – which is when all these people appear to have lived – they were excessively fond of letter-writing and diary-keeping, and that sort of thing. This Adrian Digitt may have kept a diary, and all sorts of people may regularly have corresponded with him. Lord Byron and young Mr Shelley may even have sent him poems, and things of that sort.’ For a moment Lady Ampersand paused, as if thinking of embarking upon useful enumeration in the field of literature. But she thought better of it. ‘There may be money in it,’ she said.
    ‘Money!’ Lord Ampersand was really startled. ‘How on earth can there be money in it?’
    ‘Agatha says that, nowadays, things that people have just