The Curious Silence – The Missing Robert Aickman Stories
In 2002 I contacted the late Robert Aickman’s literary agents (“Artellus”) in London to ask for permission to publish audio tapes which feature the writer reading six of his own short stories aloud. I dealt with a lady called Lesley Gardner. Initially I found her courteous and helpful. She said she would ask Robert Aickman’s heirs about the issue, but in the meantime, could I please explain how I knew of the tapes’ existence?
I replied that I had my own copies. Miss Gardner expressed acute surprise, assuming that Artellus held the only copies. She then asked from where had I obtained them? I replied that two or three years earlier, someone had offered me the tapes in exchange for some tapes or books I had that they wanted (I forget precisely what I gave in exchange). It transpired that this person was Miss Gardner’s colleague at Artellus, which came as a shock to us both. He had been making free with the late Robert Aickman’s personal effects.
Thereafter Miss Gardner refused to discuss the issue of the Robert Aickman readings. Her colleague quickly fired off a very curious letter to me, stating that when I had been given copies, it had been explicitly understood that the tapes were for personal use only and that I was prohibited from passing on second generation copies to anyone else. Yet this is untrue. Miss Gardner’s colleague had insisted upon no such conditions when copying the tapes. Indeed, I didn’t know he worked for Artellus at that stage.
This seemingly unprofessional behaviour raises concerns about the way that Robert Aickman’s interests are being managed. However, I understand that the gentlemen concerned no longer works for Artellus, so perhaps the issue has been resolved. Unfortunately it is still not known whether Aickman’s literary heirs know about the existence of the tapes nor that a request was made to release the recordings on CD. It therefore seems unlikely that fans of Robert Aickman will ever get to hear these remarkable tapes, just as the estate will never get to profit from their existence.
This episode was bizarre in itself, but during the course of my conversations with Artellus I made an even more alarming discovery. Miss Gardner informed me that after Robert Aickman had died, someone had stolen unpublished working manuscripts for several new short stories, rewritten them in their own style, and then passed the work off as their own.
I listened shell-shocked to this news. If true, it is undoubtedly one of the greatest and strangest mysteries in the history of horror and supernatural literature. I asked Miss Gardner who had stolen the manuscripts; she said she knew who, but was unable to comment. I asked why she did not pursue litigation against the thief; she referred vaguely to the difficulty of proving the case. I guessed that just like the audio tapes issue, Robert Aickman’s heirs had not been told about this matter.
The only other information I have been able to uncover about the matter is this. Kirby McCauley, Ramsey Campbell and T.E.D. Klein were all friends, acquaintances and colleagues of Aickman at the time of his death (as they are of each other). I believe that Kirby McCauley has represented all three authors. For some strange reason, Lesley Gardner asked me not to tell Ted Klein about the manuscript, after I had told her that Ted had supplied me with an intriguing article about his one meeting with Aickman for my journal Weirdly Supernatural. It is my belief that she did so not because Ted himself had filched the stories – after all, Ted only met Aickman once, and he was living in America when the latter died – rather, because she was concerned that Ted might pass the news on to someone else, perhaps Kirby McCauley or Ramsey Campbell.
When I raised the issue with Ramsey Campbell, he denied any involvement in the matter. However, he did not express any surprise about so stupendous a mystery, and he has made no visible efforts to discuss this important issue in any of the various forums at his disposal. Ordinarily this might imply that he could have known about the issue beforehand, but he has since claimed that the first he knew of it was when I approached him on the subject. Which begs the question, why is he showing such disinterest? When I first raised the matter with Ted Klein and later Ray Russell at Tartarus Press, both expressed immediate amazement and inquisitiveness. Mr Campbell’s disinterest is in contrast very strange.
In conclusion, all we know is that according to Robert Aickman’s former friend and literary agent, several story drafts were stolen and passed off by a contemporary writer as his own work. Until any new evidence comes to light – a deathbed confession, perhaps, or a case built upon analysis of other people’s work – then we can only speculate as to who the guilty party / parties might be. I can hazard no guess myself, but think it likely that it must be a British author, perhaps one who has since become known for having authored Aickmanesque stories in the period following Robert Aickman’s death.