Carson's Conspiracy

by Michael Innes

  ‘I said, “I’m so glad about Robin”. Mary asked, “Is he coming home?” You see, I’ve naturally mentioned him to her before.’

  ‘Naturally. And then?’

  ‘I said, “Yes, of course. But what I’m really so glad about is Robin and you. Carl has always hoped that his son would marry.” Mary seemed surprised. I think she was upset. She said something like, “I’m afraid I don’t quite understand you.”’

  ‘Did she, indeed? Has she ever been in America?’

  ‘Oh, yes – I knew that. She was visiting friends in Washington last year. You can ask her.’

  ‘I don’t think I’m likely to do anything of the kind.’

  ‘Is Maryland in Washington, dear?’

  ‘It isn’t quite like that. But go on.’

  ‘That’s about all, really. Mary didn’t seem anxious to announce the engagement, and I felt that perhaps I’d been tactless about it. Then she did say that about how she’d be glad to meet my son again. And then she rather hurried away.’

  No doubt other people hurried away from Cynthia Carson from time to time – for example, at parties when her conversation became too perplexing to cope with. And her husband himself hurried away now. He gulped a second drink, after all, muttered something about having letters to write before dinner, slipped out of doors, and lit a cigar.

  What, in heaven’s name, was to be made of this development? What was the truth about it, if any truth there was, and where did Cynthia’s imaginings begin? But was it a development? Was there any need to treat it as other than his wife’s quite familiar nonsense? He saw that the answer to both these questions was, unfortunately, ‘Yes’. The odd thing about the Robin business hitherto – he had to remind himself – was that Cynthia had always been so rationally persuasive about it. To what was, in fact, a tissue of untruths she customarily gave – and seemingly without effort – a convincing garment of commonplace family fact. People mightn’t particularly attend to her as she chattered about her son, but neither did they ever suspect that it was a pack of lies. It was unmemorable chit-chat, but nevertheless it had built up over the years, rather in the manner of regular small payments into a deposit account, quite a substantial capital in the way of unconsidered acceptance of fantasy as fact. Carson himself – to continue the metaphor – was banking on this (or proposing so to do in just a few days’ time). And now, in that luckless encounter with the Watlings’ girl, Cynthia had breached this defence by extending her detectable nonsense to their nebulous son.

  Or had she? It was perfectly possible to suppose that she had made up on the spur of the moment the entire conversation she had reported herself as holding with Mary Watling.

  But that wasn’t to be relied on. Prowling the grounds that he was so fond of recommending to the perambulations of his guests, pausing unconsciously here and there to puff cigar smoke at the greenfly on Lockett’s endless rows of roses, Carson saw this clearly enough. The encounter with Miss Watling had quite probably taken place. And Cynthia, with her head already full of the imagined home-coming of her imaginary boy, had with an equal probability embarked upon it. But there was at least one plain impossibility in her account of the conversation. Mary, Cynthia asserted, had ‘confessed’. But nobody can confess to being engaged to, or enamoured of, somebody who doesn’t exist.

  But what else was Mary asserted to have said? The answer – a vaguely reassuring one – was, ‘very little’. ‘I shall look forward to meeting your son again’ had been the total substance of it. This needn’t have been anything more than social tact. Finding herself suddenly confronted by an embarrassing delusion on the part of a woman known to be a little odd, the girl had offered this noncommittal but composing remark and then hurried away. Nothing had occurred to make her doubt the existence of Robin Carson. It was only the notion of his knowing her and being in love with her that was plainly moonshine.

  So things were still not too bad. One ominous fact, nevertheless, remained. For the first time at least to his certain knowledge, Cynthia had talked detectable nonsense about their supposed progeny. She had only to get into the habit of doing so and Robin’s entire credibility would vanish. He would become dead as a doornail in a disastrously premature fashion.

  Still pacing among the roses, but now expecting at any moment to be called to dine tête-à-tête with his wife, Carson was inclined to see the woman as a viper nurtured in his bosom. This was scarcely fair. A hazard Cynthia now undeniably was. But of Robin Carson she had been, after all, the sole begetter. And without this gift to him, where would have been his marvellous plan? As a reasonable and dispassionate man, Carl Carson saw this ironic paradox clearly enough.

  Lockett was working late in the garden, as he frequently did on summer evenings. He was an elderly man who had come with the house. This had been a little against Carson’s inclination, since he’d have preferred a clean sweep when he bought Garford. But there had proved to be a doubt whether the man could be turned out of his cottage: it wasn’t, it seemed, a ‘tied’ dwelling, and he might have successfully claimed the rights of a protected tenant. So it had seemed simplest to keep him in his job. Carson, who didn’t know the first thing about gardening, and Cynthia, who was ignorant at least of the second, had come to rely upon him to make an adequate show. This he did admirably, and on the occasions when he worked those long hours it seemed never to occur to him to claim overtime. Oddly enough, this didn’t wholly please Carson, since it had the curious effect of suggesting that much of the place was Lockett’s own property. He seldom spoke of the previous owners (perhaps, Carson thought, because they had been an effete and penniless crowd) but, at the same time, it was never clear that he regarded things as looking up at Garford now that there was a Rolls in the stable. He didn’t go in for the deeply spurious servility of the Punters, and although in general a somewhat crusty character he always spoke to his employer pleasantly enough. Carson, somehow, didn’t greatly care for this.

  Lockett was a widower, and shared his cottage with a young man called William, who was understood to be his stepson. Carson suspected William of really being a by-blow of Lockett’s own. But as a broad-minded man Carson naturally took no exception to this. William was quite useful. He had employment, seemingly of an undemanding sort, in the forecourt of a service-station, and was frequently available to lend his stepfather a helping hand in a horticultural way at Garford. About the money involved here Lockett was particular, frequently naming moderate sums that the young man ought to be handed in person. On these occasions Carson would seek out William and pay up willingly enough. He sometimes wondered whether William had then to disgorge part of these gains to his stepfather towards his keep. But that was no business of his. William was lowly, and therefore – Carson supposed – not too bright. But he was a useful bundle of muscles around the place.

  On his way back to the house and his dinner, Carson had a word with Lockett now. Lockett never asked gardening questions, since these were apt to leave his employer at a loss. Instead, he usually described what he was about. At the moment, he said, he was ‘pegging down those Ellen Willmott verbenas’.

  ‘Quite right, Lockett. Just the proper time for that.’ Carson knew that Lockett knew that he would have said precisely this had he, Lockett, gone off his head and pursued this mysterious activity in mid-December. But conventions of this sort of knowledge on the part of a townee employer were wholly in order, and Lockett acquiesced in them. Straightening his back, he then went on to a little general conversation.

  ‘I wouldn’t care to take a liberty,’ Lockett said. ‘But there’s been something the lad was asking me.’ The ‘lad’ was William, and Carson had heard of William’s inquiring mind before. Invoking it was, in fact, Lockett’s regular technique when he had himself a problem or project to advance. ‘Would you ever have thought, sir, of opening the gardens, maybe no more than a couple of times a year, in aid of the District Nursing, or such like? It w
as summat we did regular in the olden days.’

  ‘Did you, indeed?’ Carson prepared himself to be very short with this absurd idea.

  ‘Miss Judith, now – that was here a few weeks back. She put me in mind of it.’ Lockett had already forgotten his claim that the thought had been William’s.

  ‘And who the devil is Miss Judith?’ Carson asked.

  ‘Well, sir, it’s what they’ve called her since almost before I knew her. Mrs Appleby. Lady Appleby, as she is today. My first employment as a garden boy was at Long Dream. The Ravens’ place, sir. Lady Appleby was a Raven, as you know.’

  ‘Ravens? I never heard of them.’

  ‘Well, sir, that can only come of your not having been long in these parts. Quite a chat I had with Miss Judith – Lady Appleby, that is – when she and Sir John walked round the place. A noticing woman in a garden, she is – and good enough to say we ought to open the place now and then, just as we used to do at Dream.’

  ‘I’ll think about it, Lockett.’ Carson had no intention of thinking about it, and judged that its having been suggested to his gardener was impertinent. But if he asserted that to Lockett, he certainly wouldn’t go up in the man’s estimation. Lockett was touchy, and might start, like Punter, talking about good service. He might even declare that he intended to retire, and ask his employer to take a month’s notice. That would be a nuisance, particularly when Carson’s mind had to be much on other things. So Carson was about to break away, when Lockett started in again. He seemed in a talkative mood.

  ‘Very nice news, Mrs Carson has told me she’s had. About her son coming on a visit. Mr Robin, isn’t it – and from America? I wonder whether he has a fancy for English gardens. I’ve known them from those parts that have.’

  ‘Yes, yes – but I don’t know about Mr Robin, at all. We’ll see, Lockett, we’ll see.’

  ‘And I suppose it will be a pleasure for you to have him, too. Rather in the same situation there – you and me, sir – in a manner of speaking.’

  ‘Yes, we’ll see.’ Carson was no longer really attending to the boring Lockett – and fortunately he now heard the dinner bell. ‘Good night to you, Lockett,’ he said, and walked away.

  But again there was that fairly rapid drop of the penny, and it almost brought Carson to a halt before he hurried on to the house. What the man had said, exactly what he had said, had been uncommonly odd. He had said her son, not your son. And he had declared that he and his employer were rather in the same situation. Carson repeated this phrase to himself, not once but several times, and saw that it was definitive; that it turned Cynthia’s idle gossiping with the gardener from a mere annoyance into a definite threat.

  The lad William was, or was held to be, not Lockett’s son but his stepson, and Cynthia in talking to Lockett must have said that her son Robin was his, Carson’s, stepson merely. There was no other way of interpreting the thing. Cynthia, after years of persuasive consistency, had started tinkering with the basic essentials of the Robin Carson myth – shoving the tedious phantom, as it were, back into a nebulous past history. Robin wasn’t going to be steadily Robin Carson any longer. Every now and then he was to be Robin Something else.

  Carson tried to tell himself that it didn’t matter a damn; that his master plan wasn’t affected in any way. But he knew that it was, or at least that it might be. If Robin turned wavy – there was no better way to express it – if he lost his simple taken-for-granted identity, his very existence, his reality-status one might say, could vanish more completely than what’s-his-name’s Cheshire cat. Not even a grin would be left.

  Carl Carson had no doubt whatever that something disturbing had bobbed up.

  7

  On the following morning he rang up Pluckworthy.

  ‘Look here,’ he said, ‘things are turning urgent. It’s time we got down to details.’

  ‘Details, Carl? About what?’

  ‘About your being kidnapped, of course. And probably murdered, as well.’

  ‘I say – hold hard!’ Pluckworthy was very justifiably alarmed. ‘Where are you calling from?’

  ‘From Garford, of course. I’m in the garden.’

  ‘The garden! How can you be telephoning from the garden? It doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘It’s this cordless affair. There must be a bit of radio to it. I’m sitting in the middle of the lawn with it.’

  ‘Christ, Carl! You ought to be sitting in the funny farm. What about that brute Punter? Are you sure he isn’t lurking in the rhododendrons?’

  ‘There aren’t any. And don’t waste time. I say we’ve got to get on with it.’ As Carson said this, it did just occur to him that he had perhaps a little excessively parted with the bugging phobia. What he had now was conceivably a time phobia instead. ‘I suppose,’ he asked with a momentary return to common caution, ‘you’re alone yourself?’

  ‘Certainly I am. Except, that is, for a spot of homework.’

  ‘Of what? Oh, I see. Chuck her out.’

  ‘It would be uncharitable. She’s all snugged down in this very bed. Aren’t you, ducks?’

  ‘Very snug,’ a female voice agreed.

  ‘Damn your lecheries, Peter!’ Carson was suddenly furious. ‘Turn her out, I say, and call me back in ten minutes. And that’s an order.’

  ‘As your lordship pleases.’ Pluckworthy was amused. ‘And cool it, Carl, old boy. I don’t mind a crazy telephone chat, if that’s what you’re after. It’s your funeral, not mine.’

  ‘It’s certainly not yours, you young bastard.’ Carson was still somewhat mindlessly incensed. ‘You won’t have one. If only because the body will never be found.’

  ‘No more it will.’ There was a loud crackling on the line, which was presumably the telephone’s means of encoding robust laughter. ‘Call you later, alligator.’

  The instrument went dead, and Carson sat back in his garden chair. He cooled it. That gust of mirth, although insolent, had also been satisfactory. The more bizarre this or that aspect of the grand design, the more Pluckworthy was attracted by it. There was a trump card in that. Carson himself was inclined to be a little daunted by the very extravagance of his own conception, although he knew that it was in just that quality that its strength lay. He recalled the retired policeman – Appleford, or whatever his name had been – who had come with his stand-offish wife to Cynthia’s lunch party. Could you imagine an old buffer like that having the ability to rumble so exquisite a design? The idea was ludicrous.

  The telephone by Carson’s side gently whistled.

  ‘All clear,’ Pluckworthy’s voice said. ‘So now spill the nitty-gritty.’

  Carson rather disliked imported American slang. There was a decided lack of class to it. But as he was about to despatch his assistant to the United States there was no point in objecting to it now.

  ‘You’d better be off to New York in a couple of days’ time,’ he said. ‘No difficulty there. You won’t be missed, will you?’

  ‘Of course not. A wretch who spends half his life in bloody English trains in the interest of your rotten affairs isn’t likely to be, is he?’ Pluckworthy said this in quite a friendly way.

  ‘What about that girl?’

  ‘Girl?’ Pluckworthy seemed momentarily at a loss. ‘Oh, her! She has a small circle of gentlemen friends, old chap. She won’t go short of conversation for a week or two.’

  ‘It won’t be a week or two – or anything like. I tell you things are urgent. The day Peter Pluckworthy flies into New York, Robin Carson flies out of it again. It’s to be like that.’

  ‘I see. Carl, you’re not by any chance losing your nerve, are you?’

  ‘Certainly not.’ Carson felt a strong temptation to be furious again. ‘Why the devil…’

  ‘More haste, less speed, you know. No point in being panicked by time’s winged chariot.’ />
  ‘By what?’

  ‘Never mind. Just my education, old boy. You’re sure you’ve thought this thing through?’

  ‘Of course I have.’ Carson hesitated for a moment. ‘Or all but. One or two dodgy points remain. Cynthia may be turning a bit awkward. There may come a point at which she needs looking after.’ Carson paused again on this, but it evoked no response. He supposed that his words might have had a more sinister ring than was consciously intended, and that there were pitches on which his young assistant wouldn’t play. ‘Of course, no harm must come to her,’ he said. ‘She won’t really much mind being bereft of a husband.’

  ‘But isn’t she going to be bereft of a son as well? That may upset her rather more. Robin, you know, is probably a nicer chap than Carl.’

  ‘Damn your impudence! But, now, listen. You remember those tunnels at Heathrow?’

  ‘In and out? Of course I do.’

  ‘Fairly soon after you drive out, there’s rather a modest roundabout. You turn off it at one point or another for the motorway to London or to the west. It’s an oddly quiet little spot, and not much overlooked.’

  ‘So that’s the site of the kidnap? I see.’

  ‘That’s the site. Only, of course, it must be in the dark. If a man is to be kidnapped by nobody, it can’t very well be in daylight, can it? So you must arrive at Heathrow in the small hours, hire a car…’

  ‘Carl, I tremble for you. With the crack of the starting pistol still in our ears, you tumble straight into nonsense. Nobody arrives at Heathrow in the small hours. If you wanted darkness descending on the place with business as usual, you’d have to wait till winter comes. And by that time, of course, you’d be in the sin bin for quite a term. So think again.’

  ‘Of course you mustn’t take “small hours” too literally,’ Carson said hurriedly. He saw that it was necessary to recover himself. ‘Just a little dusk will do. You see…’