Carson's Conspiracy

by Michael Innes

  ‘I don’t think he said anything more. So it wasn’t a very communicative remark.’

  ‘I suppose not. But one never knows.’ Appleby looked thoughtfully at his companion. ‘Tommy Pride,’ he said inconsequently, ‘likes to talk about leaving no stone unturned.’

  ‘It must be easy enough when it’s just a question of a boulder or two. But what about a beach full of pebbles?’ Lely seemed rather pleased with this. ‘I’d have no notion where to start, myself. All seems bewilderment. But do keep me informed.’

  ‘I’m next to all bewilderment myself, Humphry. Through utter and through middle darkness borne: that’s me.’

  ‘Is that a way of saying there begins to be a glimmer – a chink of light, as they say, at the end of the tunnel?’

  ‘After a fashion, yes, Humphry. But I have an awkward feeling that what the glimmer may reveal is the existence in my ageing head of some radical misconception. It’s an almost purely intuitive feeling, and therefore thoroughly unsatisfactory. Shall I tell you what is my nastiest recurrent dream?’

  ‘Heaven forbid!’

  ‘But I shall. It’s of playing a game that’s all snakes and no ladders.’

  15

  ‘Is that you, John?’ It was Pride’s voice coming sharply over the line.

  ‘Yes, it’s me.’

  ‘Have Judith and you had your dinner?’

  ‘Yes. Roast chicken and some of those small sausages. Claret.’

  ‘Good! I’ve waited until you’d had a chance to fortify yourself. Before, you know, reporting a disturbing development.’

  ‘Not about the Carsons?’

  ‘Yes, indeed: your wretched Carsons.’

  ‘They’re as much your Carsons as they’re mine, Tommy.’

  ‘Fair enough. Well, now. I thought I’d look in here – at my confounded office, that is – on my way home from our jolly Garford party. And they had this thing waiting for me. Shall I recount it?’

  ‘Yes, of course. It’s why you’ve rung me up.’

  ‘I feel like the messenger chappie in those old plays. The Fall of the House of Aeschylus, and so forth. Know what I mean?’

  ‘Just.’

  ‘All violence takes place off stage, and one character passes it on to another in a cosy chat. This is our second. And it’s da capo, more or less.’

  ‘Not another kidnap?’

  ‘Just that – if it isn’t merely robbery with violence and a spot of murder thrown in. And the astonishing thing is they know about the blood already. Those back-room wallahs once more.’

  ‘Tommy, the messenger usually begins at the beginning. For instance, he may briefly sketch, or at least indicate, the location. Would it be near Heathrow again?’

  ‘Not. Very much not near anywhere at all. A blasted heath.’

  ‘In Scotland?’

  ‘The Berkshire moors – where the dons met the gipsy. Fly our greetings, fly our speech and smiles. An ideally secluded spot, they tell me, for a quiet hand over of assets. I’m being taken for a look-see at first light. Care to come?’

  ‘I think not.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Remember Mycroft Holmes, Tommy? He’s Sherlock’s lethargic brother. He sits at home and thinks things out, while young Sherlock scurries round in hansom cabs, or crawls about on carpets, brandishing a magnifying glass. In old age I’m going to be Mycroft. I’ve only just thought of it. But the decision is irrevocable.’

  ‘Calming me down, aren’t you, John?’

  ‘Well, yes. But go on telling me. How detailedly was it a repeat? Was there a little man in a Mini?’

  ‘Absolutely not. No spectatorship. Just signs of a stiff struggle, it seems. Including the blood. But it all mightn’t have been noticed for days if Mrs Carson’s car hadn’t been spotted overturned in a ditch a couple of hundred yards away.’

  ‘And two empty suitcases?’

  ‘Just that.’

  ‘Now tell me what they say about the blood.’

  ‘It’s absolutely amazing. Even after the stuff’s clotted, and so on, it appears they can do all their tests on it. So it was rushed to the appropriate boffin, and within ten minutes he knew there was something special about it. It belongs to an exceedingly rare blood group, or whatever the term is. Then they got on to Carson’s leech, who chose to see the thing as an emergency, and named Carson’s blood group at once. And the two match. That’s pretty conclusive, is it not?’

  ‘Yes… Yes, I rather think it is.’

  Appleby’s voice had changed oddly, and for some seconds there was silence on the line.

  ‘John?’

  ‘Sorry, Tommy. Just poor old Mycroft thinking like mad. Will you try to discover something for him?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I haven’t a notion whether it’s easy, or plain impossible. But I want to know whether, in the week or thereabout before Lely finished Carson’s portrait, Carson received a cable from America.’

  16

  For over a week nothing whatever happened that might throw light on the fate of Carl Carson. For two or three days his disappearance in sinister circumstances was a sensation, rating a middling-prominent spread in the popular newspapers. The police were reported as finding themselves ‘baffled’. And this didn’t mean, as it sometimes does, that the police knew all about the affair and were just waiting to pounce. It was literally true. The papers also announced that the police saw no reason to connect ‘the Berkshire mystery’ (as it was being called) with an earlier episode of obscure wayside violence also in Berkshire, but near Heathrow. This was a lie, although not a particularly useful one: it was given out in the persuasion that a few lies ought to be given out when anything rather ticklish is in question. One paper, more enterprising than the others, darkly hinted that what was involved was an episode of ruthless ‘gang warfare’. This was definitely taking a risk in the interest of a gratified readership, its underlying assumption being that Carson was dead. If he was alive and capable of turning up more or less blamelessly in one or another corner of the land, he would certainly be able to launch a libel action as having been aspersed as a gang-warfare type.

  Colonel Pride communicated with Sir John Appleby every day. He appeared to feel that, if not on Tuesday, then at least on Wednesday, the solution of the whole thing would emerge fully formed from Appleby’s head, much in the manner of whatever her name was from the head of Zeus. Appleby, on his part, from time to time suggested that Pride should attempt to find out this or that. Was Mrs Carson, for example, a woman with a substantial private fortune? It seemed unlikely. On one occasion she had offered Appleby some remark suggesting an almost imbecile ignorance of the difference between big money and petty cash. But one never knew. Perhaps quite long ago her husband had prudently managed to settle on her a large capital sum without her even having become clearly aware of the fact. Many men of his sort did something of the kind as a precaution against future drastic financial embarrassment.

  Pride quite understood this point. The kidnappers, he saw, had double-crossed Carl Carson. They had been able to do so because the man had behaved pretty well in as dotty a way as might have been achieved by his loopy wife. What commonly happens in such kidnapping cases is that the fellow who has to pay up is instructed to put the cash in his car, drive to a named public telephone kiosk, and await an incoming call at a definite hour. He is then told to move on to another telephone: and this happens several times, thus enabling the kidnappers to check on whether he is being trailed by the police. Finally, he is told to drive to some unfrequented spot, conceal the money, drive away, and hope for the best. But this hadn’t happened in the present case. The kidnappers had simply met the man, violently assaulted him, and made off with both him and his money-bags.

  Why? Either, Pride told himself, because Carson had somehow found out too much about h
is adversaries to be let go free, or because they hoped to begin the ransom racket all over again. In this latter case, they would sooner or later make some approach to Carson’s wife – but this they would do only if believing that there was still big money in the Carson kitty.

  Pride did see that there were difficulties in accepting this. He inclined to the view that Carl Carson was dead – and that the man’s unfortunate son was dead too. It wasn’t a nice picture. He was really hoping that Appleby would somehow wave a wand over it and produce something at least marginally less disagreeable.

  Appleby, it might be said, was doing his best. He paid a further call on Cynthia Carson, and tried to set her talking informatively on several subjects upon which he notably lacked information. Who were her husband’s chief friends and associates? Had any new ones turned up recently? Had she happened to notice him as worried or preoccupied when letters or telephone calls had come to him? Did she remember any previous occasions upon which he had absented himself from home suddenly and without explanation? Had he lately placed any emphasis on the desirability of domestic economies?

  None of this got Appleby very far. It couldn’t have been said of Mrs Carson that she was taciturn or reticent; she talked quite a lot; but the conception that questions were framed in the hope of eliciting answers seemed to be quite outside her grasp. But Appleby persevered. Inconsequence can sometimes be as revealing as relevance. It was in the middle of speaking (rather perplexingly) about a dairy herd that Mrs Carson mentioned as among her present anxieties the fact that she would have ‘nothing to fall back on’. And launched for the moment on this, she was further communicative. It had, she said, always been so. She had met Carl as a widow ‘not well left’, and he had been obliged to pay even for her wedding clothes. Carl, she explained with no particular enthusiasm, was a most generous man, and he had never required her ‘to have any dealings with the money’.

  So here was one question responded to beyond expectation – and to another, rather surprisingly, Appleby got a direct answer. Mrs Carson explained that, because Carl liked to have everything around him obviously in a prosperous condition, he had been a little inclined to suggest that his wife was something of an heiress.

  ‘It was a very generous attitude,’ Appleby said with aplomb. His past life, he reflected, was littered with just such ghastly professional prevarications. ‘But would it have become a general view of your circumstances? Let me see. Take a man like your butler. I forget his name.’

  ‘Punter.’

  ‘Of course – Punter. Would Punter be inclined to think of you as a wealthy woman?’

  ‘Oh, yes – I think so. Mrs Punter has said things rather suggesting that. But I don’t want to talk about Punter. He has been rather funny lately.’

  ‘Funny?’

  ‘Yes, nasty. Did I say funny? I meant nasty. As if he had something waiting for me.’

  ‘Would it be as if he were proposing to get you under his thumb?’

  ‘Oh, yes – just that.’ Mrs Carson gave this assent with alarming and senseless gaiety. ‘How interesting that you should know about Punter!’

  ‘I think I’d like to know a little more. I’ll drop in on him as I go out.’

  Punter was sitting in his pantry, with a glass of what might have been Madeira in front of him. He had admitted Appleby to the house with his normal comportment, but now he didn’t get to his feet. It was as if he had instantly sensed a changed relationship.

  ‘I intend to ask you some questions,’ Appleby said.

  ‘The hell you do! Who do you think you are? Pretending to be a policeman again?’

  This was interesting. Appleby decided that, so far as Garford House went, Punter was on the eve of asking for his cards. Presumably accompanied by his wife, he proposed to leave those proud towers to swift destruction doomed. But, first, he was going to treat himself to a little insolence all round. Appleby took no exception to this. It would make it the easier to get the man off-balance.

  ‘No,’ Appleby said. ‘You may reassure yourself I don’t intend to turn policeman again.’

  ‘Then you’ve no business here. Clear out, Mr Nosy Parker.’

  ‘If I clear out, the police move in. They’ll be interested in putting you in gaol, my friend. I am not. So you’re in luck that it is I who am in this room with you. I’m prepared to treat you as quite unimportant. And that’s generous, wouldn’t you say? But I do intend to have a little information from you.’

  Punter considered these propositions in silence for some seconds. They were having an effect on his complexion. And when he sought to recruit himself from the glass in front of him, his hand wasn’t quite steady. Appleby noted these signs with satisfaction.

  ‘So here goes, Punter. Just why did you contrive to bring that newspaper paragraph to Mrs Carson’s attention?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ Punter was clearly a startled man.

  ‘Come, come. We mustn’t waste time. You were under observation, Punter.’ Appleby said this as if an entire crime squad had been lurking round that arbour. ‘But, if you like, I’ll start elsewhere. You’ve only just discovered, haven’t you, that Mrs Carson isn’t worth a penny?’

  ‘No more she is, the old bag. Nor Carson either, by now, if you ask me.’

  ‘That is a most satisfactory reply. I’m pleased with you, Punter. And, now, an important question. You’ve been operating merely on the side, I take it? Yes or no.’

  ‘Yes.’ Punter’s reply, if sulky, had been immediate.

  Appleby had employed a technical expression, and the man had automatically responded to it.

  ‘In some eavesdropping way, you got hold of the notion that Mr Robin Carson has been kidnapped. You decided to panic Mrs Carson into paying out money that would free him – without consulting her husband, and in some fashion that would land it quickly in your own pocket. It’s a regular underworld trick, and it comes off surprisingly often. Speed and shock-tactics are, of course, the essence of it.’

  ‘You seem to know a bloody lot.’

  ‘Yes, I do. And what you didn’t know is that Mrs Carson on her own doesn’t command a bean. Right?’

  Punter considered this with an incongruous effect of leisure.

  ‘Yes’ he said.

  ‘In other words, you are an incompetent small-time crook. And that’s the whole story. You actually know nothing whatever about what has happened either to Mr Robin Carson or to his father. Right?’

  ‘Yes – Sir John.’

  ‘What you will now do is this: you will go to Mrs Carson and, with proper respect, say that you and your wife are obliged to leave her service at once. Without, needless to say, any further payment of wages. You will then pack up and quit – both of you. Incidentally, I am acting very improperly in making this arrangement. It is simply that I am disinclined to have Mrs Carson suffer the disturbing spectacle of policemen huddling her butler in handcuffs into a van. Good morning.’

  ‘So that’s Punter,’ Appleby said to Judith at lunchtime. ‘An irrelevance, essentially, and not a very agreeable one at that.’

  ‘And you’re just allowing him to fade away?’

  ‘Just that.’

  ‘Isn’t it rather letting him loose on society at large?’

  ‘I suppose it might be viewed as that. But I haven’t become an accessory after the fact, you know. There isn’t any fact. One couldn’t hope to make any charge stick on the man. It isn’t a crime to ensure that a daft woman sees something in a newspaper.’

  ‘So, in fact, your bullying him into confessing his design and agreeing to quit was just a bluff?’

  ‘Absolutely so.’

  ‘You’re to be congratulated, John. And now you can get on with it. After the irrelevant, the relevant.’

  ‘Yes, indeed. I wonder whether I might go over to Upton Grange and ha
ve a word with Mary Watling? I’ve rather hesitated about that. The Lelys brought the girl to tea, but we don’t really know the Watlings very well. And I have no real standing in the affair. Colonel Watling is rather a high-metalled old chap, and might consider it a damned impertinence. Perhaps it had better be one of Pride’s more tactful people.’

  ‘I doubt whether the Watlings would much care to have a superior bobby inquiring into their daughter’s behaviour. There seems to be a mystery about that, which the elder Watlings may be aware of and not greatly care for.’

  ‘Precisely my own condition. Robin’s mother told you that her son is engaged to the girl – whether formally or informally, we don’t know – and that the engagement was his main reason for coming to England. That was the way of it, wasn’t it?’

  ‘I think it was, more or less. But it was only a telephone call, you’ll remember. And the woman does talk in a wandering sort of fashion.’

  ‘She does, indeed. And Mary Watling doesn’t seem to talk at all. She said nothing whatever about it when the Lelys brought her here. She seemed not very much to like even a bare reference to Mrs Carson with her milk and superior potatoes, and the moment Robin himself was mentioned, she got up and wandered off into the garden.’

  ‘I noticed that. It all suggests, John, that she mightn’t greatly relish your politely inquisitive call.’

  ‘I don’t think I’d be worried by that. Here are grave matters more or less dumped on my lap, and here is young Miss Watling just possibly able to throw some light on them. Incidentally, if there’s any truth whatever in the story of an engagement, or even attachment, she must have heard enough by now to be a very worried child. She might welcome me.’

  ‘That’s true. And you’d be two worried people together.’

  Appleby appeared a little startled by this remark. He even got to his feet, walked to the window, and surveyed the garden. Solo was just visible, sitting on a barrow and waving his arms in the air. Did the boy want to be rescued from something? Was he, as in the poem, not waving but drowning? Appleby saw that Solo was merely at war with a wasp, bee, or harmless fly. He turned back to Judith.