“Two novels and a detective story.” The Vicar’s tone was disconsolate, and he set down with every appearance of distaste the three books he had been carrying. “I don’t know what our local library is coming to. Again and again I have impressed upon the committee that in biographies and memoirs is to be found an inexhaustible store of edification and pleasure.”
“But they keep on ordering fiction, all the same?” Appleby drew a second chair to the fire in the club smoking-room. “I agree with you on the pleasure to be had from memoirs, but I’m not so sure about the edification. Consider the case of the Spendlove Papers.”
“The Spendlove Papers?” The Vicar shook his head as he sat down. “The title seems familiar to me. But I doubt whether I ever set eyes on them.”
“You never did. In point of fact, they have remained unpublished. And thereby hangs a tale.”
“Splendid!” A man transformed, the Vicar gave his library books a shove into further darkness, and beamed happily on the steward who advanced to set down a tea-tray in their place. “Pray let me hear it, my dear fellow.”
“Very well. Lord Claud Spendlove never gained the political eminence customary in his family. In state affairs he was much overshadowed by his elder brother, the Marquis of Scattergood, and he never attained more than minor rank in the Cabinet. When it came to social life, however, it was another matter. For more than fifty years Claud Spendlove went everywhere and knew everybody; his persistence in the field of fashion eventually more than made up for any lack of positive brilliance in it; and he had one marked endowment which was never in dispute. Lord Claud was the most malicious man in England.”
The Vicar looked doubtful. “It may be so, my dear Appleby – although one day you must let me tell you about Archdeacon Stoat. But proceed.”
“Moreover, Spendlove was known to be a diarist in a big way, and it was confidently expected that eventually he would put all the masters in the kind – Greville, Creevey, and the rest – wholly in the shade. There was a good deal of speculation as to just how scandalous his revelations would be. Some declared that the book would be so shocking that publication would be impossible for at least fifty years after his death. Others maintained that such a concession to decency was alien to the man’s whole cast of mind, and that he would see to it that his memoirs were just printable pretty well as soon as he was in his grave. In the end it appeared that this second opinion was the right one. On his seventy-fifth birthday Spendlove announced that his book was ready for the press and would go to his publisher on the day of his funeral. He had decided to call it A Candid Chronicle of My Life and Times.”
With a fragment of crumpet poised before him, the Vicar shook his head. “It must have had for some an ominous sound.”
“Decidedly. And presently Spendlove died. He was staying with his aged brother the Marquis at Benison Court at the time, and there was a quiet country funeral at Benison Parva. I myself knew nothing about all this until, on the following day, an urgent message reached me at New Scotland Yard. Fogg and Gale, the dead man’s solicitors, were in a panic. The manuscript of A Candid Chronicle had vanished.
“At first, I couldn’t see that it was particularly serious. But they explained that through the length and breadth of England there was scarcely a Family – old Gale enunciated the word with a wonderful emphasis on that capital letter – that might not be outraged and humiliated by some revelation in the book. Spendlove had let himself go from the first page to the last, but had agreed to some arrangement for pretty stiff editing of what would, in fact, be offered to the first generation or two of his readers.
“It became clear to me that the solicitors were right, and that we were facing a real crisis. In the first place, the missing manuscript was a blackmailer’s dream; anyone well up in that line of business could make a large fortune out of its ownership. In the second place, it contained a mass of stuff that could be fed dispersedly into the sensational Press without any acknowledgement as to its source. And in the third place, a great many threatened parties must have had a strong motive to get hold of the thing and destroy or suppress it. I travelled down to Benison that night.”
“A beautiful place.” The Vicar had shamelessly turned his attention to an éclair. “One of the most mellow of the great English houses. I hope you saw the orangery and the great fountain.”
“My dear Vicar, I had other things to think about. For instance, finding a room.”
“Finding a room?”
“I preferred not to stop at Benison Court itself. And the local inn was full.”
“Ah – the tourist season.”
“Not a bit of it. This was in mid-November. So I was rather surprised to see old Lord Whimbrel crouching over a smoky fire in the lounge, and Sir Giles Throstle gossiping in the bar with Sharky Lee.”
“Sharky Lee? What an odd name.”
“Sharky is one of the smartest blackmailers in England. There were also the Duke and Duchess of Ringouzel, who had been obliged to put up with an attic; and in a yard at the back there was Lady Agatha Oriole, who had arrived with a caravan. I drove on to Benison Magna and then to Abbot’s Benison. It was like a monstrous dream. The entire nobility and gentry of these islands, my dear Vicar, were encamped round Benison Court – and the only escape from this uncanny social elevation was into the society of an answering abundance of notorious criminals. They had begun to arrive in the district before noon on the day on which The Times had announced that Lord Claud Spendlove was sinking. Some of the more resolute of them – mostly members of the peerage – had openly imported house-breaking implements and high explosives. With the usual resourcefulness of their class, they had contacted the charitable organisations for assisting reformed cracksmen, and had taken the most skilled professional advice.”
The Vicar looked thoughtful. “Lord Scattergood,” he ventured presently, “must have felt some cause for alarm.”
“I don’t think he did. The Marquis, as I have mentioned, was a very old man; and when I saw him next morning he seemed to have the unruffled confidence that sometimes goes with old age. He took me to his late brother’s sitting-room himself and showed me what had happened. A window giving on a terrace had been forced open, and so had a handsome bureau in the middle of the room. Splintered wood and disordered papers were all over the place, and one capacious drawer was entirely empty. The Scattergood Papers, roughly ordered into A Candid Chronicle, had been in that.
“I asked a number of questions – pretty discreetly, for Lord Scattergood had held, as you know, all but the highest office in the realm, and was a person of decidedly august and intimidating presence. He answered with the unflawed courtesy one would expect, and very coherently in the main. If his years showed at all, it was in the way that a certain malice – what one might call the hitherto suppressed family malice – peeped through the chinks of his great statesman’s manner. And he was decidedly frank about his younger brother’s proposed book. Claud had never acknowledged the responsibilities proper in a Spendlove; his incursion into the Cabinet had been a fiasco; and while he, the elder brother, had toiled through a long lifetime to sustain the family tradition of public service, Claud had done nothing but amass low scandal in high places, and acquire the ability to adorn and perpetuate it with what was undoubtedly a sufficient literary grace. To this last point Lord Scattergood recurred more than once. But I see, Vicar, that you have guessed the end of my story.”
The Vicar nodded. “I think I have. None of the folk congregated in those nearby inns had anything to do with the disappearance of A Candid Chronicle of My Life and Times. The Marquis of Scattergood had himself staged the burglary, and saved his family’s honour by pitching the wretched thing in the fire.”
“You are at least half-way to the truth.” And Appleby smiled a little grimly. “That night I stopped at Benison Court after all – and did a little burglary of my own. Lord Scattergood, too, had a sitting-room, and Lord Scattergood, too, had a bureau. I broke it open. The manuscript was there.”
“He had preserved it?”
“He had begun to transcribe it. And with a new title page. The Intimate Journals of Eustace Scattergood, Fifth Marquis of Scattergood. It was as a writer that he would have chosen to be remembered, after all.”