Carson's Conspiracy

by Michael Innes

  ‘Old boy, you make me tired. Take that idea of a kidnap by nobody. It’s attractive – but very great nonsense, all the same. And you’ve thought it up merely by way of keeping your precious self out of the fracas. Well, I’m not buying it. What’s the best evidence of a kidnap having taken place? The answer’s simple: a short physical struggle to which there happens to be a witness or two. That’s the specification we work to. Robin puts up a fight – and it’s going to be with you, old chap. And there had better be some bloodshed to it.’ Pluckworthy’s voice had ceased to be good-humoured and whimsically tolerant. It had turned abruptly arrogant. ‘I rather think,’ he said, ‘it will be a matter of punching you on the nose. And you can punch me back, if you like. Gore from two different blood groups will enchant the fuzz.’

  ‘There’s something in that.’ Carson, although a good deal alarmed by this sudden masterful behaviour on the part of his subordinate, could not but be impressed by the bright speed of it as well. ‘We must get together…’

  ‘Tomorrow, Carl – and over lunch at that same restaurant. I’ll have worked on it through the night, and got it all pat for you. I’ll also have cut out breakfast, and be ready for a good feed. Ciao, Carl!’ And Pluckworthy rang off.

  Carson found himself reflecting on both these telephone conversations with a good deal of resentment. He was prepared to admit that young Pluckworthy was likely to be useful with the detail of the thing, just as he was useful in a small-scale fashion in what Carson liked to think of as his industrial empire. But the industrial empire was already virtually a thing of the past, and what was going to remain of it would be of no concern to its architect when he had disappeared into the invisibility of a harmless expatriate in Brazil or wherever. Peter Pluckworthy would be of no concern to him either; he would have served his turn, and never be privileged to come face to face with his former employer again. He would, of course, have to be left without any dangerous grievance – and that meant a substantial payment for his services. For his services – Carson reiterated to himself – in all those matters of detail.

  His thought returned to the essentials: to the skeleton, the strong basic structure of the thing. Of certain aspects of this it probably wouldn’t be necessary to inform Pluckworthy at all. And certainly not yet.

  It could be anybody’s guess that kidnappings for ransom happen, and happen successfully, more frequently than one would gather from the press. The victim’s friends are always threatened with evil consequences if they contact the police; many pay up quietly; the kidnapped person is released in some unfrequented place; and that’s that.

  On the other hand – and this one does hear about – the criminals are caught. The police set some successful trap, baited with suitcases stuffed with bogus bank-notes or the like, and the victim is rescued more or less unharmed, although no doubt in for nightmares for a long time ahead. But sometimes the whole thing goes wrong. Whether under threat from the police or not, the criminals panic and throw in their hand. They vanish and are never heard of again. And occasionally their captive is never heard of again either. Perhaps he knows too much. And finally there isn’t even a dead body in a ditch.

  Such was to be the apparent fate of Carl Carson. Along with the ransom-money he had got together to free his son, Robin, he would have vanished for keeps. And (what was rather amusing) in a distinctly edifying way. People would say that the poor chap had met his end while behaving with the courage proper in an Englishman. And of course Robin Carson would be seen as having met a similar death at the hands of his unnerved captors. Robin’s total life span would have been short – a matter, indeed, of days merely. And Peter Pluckworthy, so briefly Robin, would clearly keep his mouth shut.

  That, in a nutshell, was Carson’s plan. The snag, perhaps, lay in the fact that it was a nutshell, and that the kernel was still to find – the kernel being not only the cash that was to be raised by a distressed parent, but also the larger strategies of the several phases of the campaign. To the abduction – even the adequately sensational abduction – of young Robin Carson on his visit to England he thought he saw his way. He had to admit that it couldn’t be contrived as he had originally (and elegantly) conceived it: strictly as a one-man show. With a little ingenuity, indeed, Pluckworthy might contrive, so to speak, to kidnap himself. But it was hard to see how such an episode could be mounted as to carry adequate conviction to sceptical minds. Without that spectacle of physical struggle which Pluckworthy had declared essential, it would be possible to believe that Robin, whether after an accident or otherwise, had simply lost his memory and was still roaming free about the land. Alternatively, it might be conjectured that he had disappeared because, for reasons unknown but probably disreputable, he had found it convenient to do so (which would be uncomfortably near the truth). Certainly people would want to pause and ask questions before organizing all that cash. And nothing could be more undesirable than that. So the charade had to be of an actual and brutal abduction carried out beneath the gaze of horrified citizens. Bloody noses would be needed, just as Pluckworthy had said. And unless accomplices were to be hazardously hired, one of the noses would indeed have to be his own.

  Still, that phase of the thing could be managed. And perhaps it was the crucial phase. Violence convincingly exhibited would breed the expectation, or at least further the acceptance, of more violence in, so to speak, the same story. Mere faked evidences of a struggle not witnessed by others might in this second instance, adequately fill the bill. A broken window, a disordered room, trampled grass, a hullabaloo in the dark contrived with deftly cut and spliced scraps of audio-tape: the possibilities of such ingenuity were virtually unlimited. And whatever was eventually fixed up, a certain amount of gore would certainly be in order.

  Carson, as he told himself this, had another of his wonderful thoughts. A long time ago, he had been involved in a street accident occasioning a severe loss of blood. An emergency transfusion had been necessary, and it had almost been a disaster because his had proved to be a rare blood-group. He now saw that when it was a question of the bogus kidnapping of the non-existent Robin his own nose had better not be tapped. It would be too much – he felt rather confusedly – like leaving a fingerprint behind him. But of course it was different when it came to fixing up his own supposed abduction. When that happened, he was himself going to be prominent in the heads of those investigating the thing. So if on this occasion he arranged to leave some of his own blood on the grass, carpet, or whatever it was going to be, they’d at once ask, ‘Can we tell if it may be Carson’s?’ At this, files would be consulted, and there would very quickly come the reply, ‘Strangely enough, we can be almost certain it is.’ So here actually would be a piece of refined corroborative detail!

  Carson felt pleased with this train of thought, perhaps it was artlessly. He was, after all, still an amateur in crime, and he had read a good many detective stories. But the severe intellectual labour involved in fabricating such rarefied designs was fatiguing, all the same, so that at this point he broke off and took a walk into the village of Garford. It was his intention to cash a small cheque at the Post Office Stores. He had no actual need of the money, since he always kept a reasonable supply of the stuff in a drawer at home. But he was observant of the habits of others, and was aware that this was a common pottering resource of several of his propertied neighbours. The idea seemed to be that you thus suggested yourself as a modest and unassuming person, in unexpected need of a couple of pounds to pay for the milk. That Mrs Rumble, the postmistress and shopkeeper, similarly cashed cheques for the simpler classes, or would have done so had they possessed such things, Carson had never thought to discover. There were commonly two or three female villagers in the place when he went into it, but they were gossiping with Mrs Rumble and with each other rather than engaging in financial operations. On this occasion the only client or customer in the shop proved to be Colonel Watling.

  The two men greeted one anothe
r with civility, although Colonel Watling’s civilities were barked out in a parade ground manner. (Or so Carson felt, being unaware that colonels don’t much bark out on parades.) Colonel Watling was the owner of a small estate not far from Garford House. Unlike Garford House, Upton Grange was a quite new, bogus-Cotswold-like affair, and this had made Carl Carson feel that the Carsons ought to be regarded as of greater consequence than the Watlings. But it seemed not to work out that way, perhaps because the Watlings themselves were quite old. They owned a tapestry in which an earlier Colonel Watling was being chummy with John Churchill on the field of Malplaquet, and other memorabilia of the same sort. That the Watlings were, as Carson averred, ‘stuck-up’ rested mainly on these evidences. Colonel Watling himself was always fairly cordial. It was said that he cherished some notion of standing for parliament in what his forbears would have called the landed interest, and he never spoke to Carson or his wife less agreeably than he did to Mrs Rumble and sundry juvenile Rumbles.

  ‘Ha!’ Watling said. ‘Carson! Your son – glad to hear about it! Soon to join you – eh?’

  Carson received this with mixed feelings. It was, of course, evidence of Cynthia’s chattering – probably on the disturbing occasion of that encounter with Watling’s daughter, Mary Watling, which Carson had already heard about. Over all such chattering there hung that air of hazard, and it made Carson wary at once. On the other hand, the spread of a persuasion that Robin was on his way was advantageous in itself. After all, Robin was coming home, and the more people were convinced of the fact the better. But this consideration failed quite to abate Carson’s uneasiness on the present occasion. At least as Cynthia had reported it, there had been something uncommonly rum about her conversation with the Watling girl – so rum that, as we have seen, Carson had been tempted to put his faith in the supposition that Cynthia had invented the entire episode. But that seemed even more improbable now. Mary must have gone home to Upton and reported on it. Only it looked as if she had omitted the embarrassing fact that Mrs Carson imagined that she and Robin were acquainted and in love.

  There was, probably, no more to it than that. Either from some well-bred reticence operative even within the family, or because it was nonsense which made Mary herself look rather ridiculous, she had curtailed Cynthia’s grotesque imagining. But what if she hadn’t? What if she had told the whole story, and her father was playing a deep game because unconvinced of his daughter’s candour and minded to test the thing out? This was a nebulous notion – of a sort, Carson might have reflected, well calculated to illustrate the fact that it is indeed a tangled web we weave when we start in on deception.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, playing for time, ‘Robin is certainly on his way back from America.’ He paused to collect himself further, and then asked, ‘Did your daughter, by any chance, make his acquaintance over there?’

  ‘No! No!’ The reply came from Colonel Watling as crisply as if he were rebutting an aspersion. But he immediately went on, ‘Yes! Yes, I rather think she did. Girl was staying with friends in Washington, you know. Yes! Certainly!’

  This was extremely upsetting – and the more so because of Watling’s explosive manner. (Among his intimates, Carson had been told, he was sometimes known as the Gatling Gun.) To believing that Robin and Mary had met, whether in Washington or anywhere else, there was what must be called a totally conclusive objection, and it was tempting to regard Colonel Watling as being about as dotty as Cynthia herself. But this – Carson quickly saw – was extravagant. In Watling’s inner mind all the Carsons were probably of very little account; Watling might easily get a trivial fact about one of them wrong; and it was no more than the explosive character of his speech that made this brisk contradicting of himself disconcerting. Watling had merely got things muddled. There was very little harm in that.

  ‘Come across one day for a spot of fishing,’ Watling was saying. ‘Bring the lad when he turns up on you. Eh? Eh? And, of course, your wife.’ This was distinctly an afterthought. ‘The womenfolk always delighted to see her. Delighted!’

  With this Colonel Watling gave a curt nod – conceivably a little suggestive of being directed at a subaltern – and left the post-office. For some moments Carson couldn’t remember what he himself was doing in the place, and it was only after an awkward pause that he was able to ask Mrs Rumble to cash his cheque. Then he walked rather slowly back to Garford House. The Watling slant on the thing was almost certainly no more than a vexatious irrelevance. But it oughtn’t to exist at all. And it worried him.

  ‘Petit salé aux lentilles vertes,’ Pluckworthy said easily. ‘And a salad: lettuce and chicory in a walnut oil dressing, please. What about you, old boy?’ Pluckworthy glanced up from the menu and took a critical look at his employer. ‘Something not too fatty, I’d say. They do a very decent Emmentaler Schafsvoressen. And there’s always their Turospalacsinta, although it’s sometimes served not quite hot enough.’

  ‘I’ll have turkey,’ Carson said rather shortly. ‘And I don’t see…’

  ‘Filetti di tacchino alla nerone for the gentleman,’ Pluckworthy said. ‘The wine list, please.’

  As Carson would once more be footing the bill – to say nothing of subsequently feeing his fellow-conspirator – he justly resented thus being taken charge of in the restaurant. If he didn’t have a care, he told himself, the young man would soon be running the show. So when the wine had been chosen he spoke out.

  ‘We’ll have nothing written down about this,’ he said. ‘Not so much as a scribble in a notebook or diary. That’s my first instruction to you. Just remember it. Everything’s to be under your hat.’

  ‘But I haven’t got a hat.’ Pluckworthy was amused. ‘And I doubt whether Robin has one either. Not that your point isn’t sound enough in its elementary way. And to show that I’m quite clear-headed, we’ll begin with a recap.’

  ‘We’ll begin just as I…’

  ‘Listen, for a start, to the heads of the thing. I fly to New York. I change into Robin Carson, and fly back here. You don false whiskers, or whatever, and kidnap me in some noticeable way. Still being, in fact, a free agent, I withdraw into a loo or similar place of seclusion, turn into myself again, and walk out with a certain sum in used banknotes in my pocket. And right out. I have nothing further to do with the thing.’

  ‘I haven’t decided about that.’ Carson failed to say this very robustly. He could see – although, oddly enough, it was a fresh perception – that Pluckworthy need not, it was true, bear any further functional part in the conspiracy. Unfortunately he was coming to rely on the young man, so that the thought of being on his own so early in the affair was disagreeable to him. He also had an obscure notion that it would be prudent to involve Pluckworthy in rather more than the mere peccadillo of having agreed to cross the Atlantic under an assumed name. He ought to be provided with a more substantial reason for keeping his mouth shut.

  ‘I haven’t decided,’ he amplified, ‘about the point at which you’ll have earned your keep. I may have some further use for you. And, in any case, you’d better be clear about the rest of the plan.’

  ‘I am – and it can be put in a few sentences. You raise money to ransom your supposed son. The supposed kidnappers supposedly panic or perhaps double-cross you.’ Pluckworthy paused for a moment on this. ‘They supposedly double-cross you first, and nobble both you and your cash. Then they supposedly panic, and in some never-to-be-disclosed hole there are supposedly two Carson corpses. It’s a shade, macabre, is it not? But so is the sequel: Carl Carson living out a furtive and purposeless life somewhere amid a crowd of dagoes. Any comment?’

  ‘Two comments, Peter.’ Carson pulled himself together, and endeavoured to maintain a firm line. ‘The first being simply that I don’t like your tone.’

  ‘As not being what ought to obtain between gentlemen? You make me laugh. And the second?’

  ‘The second is that I value your advice, my
dear Peter.’ Carson contrived to suggest a positive warmth of regard as he made this capitulation. ‘Over every stage of the thing. Just continue to give your mind to it, and I’ll make the cash half as much again.’

  ‘Double.’

  ‘Double.’

  ‘The fact is, Carl, that you don’t really see it. The large and nebulous conception, yes. The concrete action, or series of actions, no.’

  ‘You mean the details. I’ll admit there’s some truth in what you say.’

  ‘Good. I said I’d work it all out. And I have.’ Pluckworthy paused again, this time to apply himself to a dish the honest name for which was pickled pork. ‘I can go through it in ten minutes. Just listen.’

  Part Two

  JOHN APPLEBY

  8

  ‘Those people at Garford,’ John Appleby said. ‘I suppose we ought to be asking them to lunch or dinner.’

  ‘I’ve had it in mind,’ Judith Appleby said.

  ‘A bit out of turn, their inviting us first. But still.’

  ‘As you say, but still.’ Lady Appleby was always amused by her husband’s sense of the social punctilios. ‘One must be civil to one’s neighbours.’

  ‘Do you know, Judith, that I don’t think I’d call the Carsons neighbours – simply because I can’t see their chimneys from the top of the house? What constitutes one’s neighbourhood is an expansible and contractible concept.’

  ‘What a very philosophical idea! As a matter of fact, I encountered Mrs Carson yesterday. It was in Busby’s shop in Linger. She was trying to buy linen sheets, and rather creating because they hadn’t any.’

  ‘Quite right. Surely a linen-draper ought to have no end of linen sheets in his shop.’

  ‘Busby’s shop – linen?’

  ‘Well, yes. We sleep between linen sheets, don’t we?’