Carson's Conspiracy (19 page)

‘I rather think…' he began.

‘Yes, of course. It's certainly me. Ages since we met.' Lely's cordiality seemed to Appleby a shade emphatic, and the consequence of a resolution quickly formed. ‘In the great world of business, Pluckworthy? Lucky chap.'

‘Lely and I were at school together.' Pluckworthy now offered this information easily and to the company at large, and then turned back to Mrs Carson. ‘Cynthia, darling, I've dropped in only for a moment. Just to see how you are, and find out if you have any news.'

‘Peter, it's too dreadful!' Mrs Carson was feeling for her handkerchief again. ‘These gentlemen think that Robin has been captured by bandits, and I think they may have killed him. And now Carl has gone away with a great deal of money without telling anybody, and taking my car too. We none of us know what to think.'

This last assertion failed to please Pride.

‘At least we are trying,' the Chief Constable said. ‘And perhaps, Mr Pluckworthy, you can help us. I gather that you have already discussed the situation with Sir John Appleby. But Sir John was left without any clear sense of what was in your mind.'

‘I'm sorry about that, sir. Perhaps I did rather change ground. I wanted to put the point that it might all be something of a false alarm. But then there was the possibility of a kidnapping. I wanted to emphasize that the police have to be very cautious in the face of that.'

‘It was most kind of you, Mr Pluckworthy.' The Chief Constable could not have been more frigid.

‘But now, I just don't know.'

Colonel Pride was plainly not interested in what Mr Pluckworthy didn't know. But Appleby was.

‘Could you possibly,' Appleby asked, ‘expand on that?'

‘Well, I don't know that I can.' Pluckworthy appeared distressed. ‘I'm in a bit of a muddle, really. But all that money! I can tell you – in confidence, of course – that the amount of cash Carl has been raising is really rather staggering. All that about the kidnapping: it seems pretty circumstantial, if you ask me. But I just wonder… I say, Cynthia, I must be off. I must, really.' And with this obscure speech, Peter Pluckworthy bolted from the room.

The conference broke up, and for a few minutes Appleby and Humphry Lely stood beneath the portico of Garford House together.

‘Altogether rather rum,' Appleby said. ‘That chap seems to specialize in disorderly retreats. And I have a notion, Humphry, that you know rather more about him than I do.'

‘We were at school together – as he told us. I was two or three years his senior.'

‘Well?'

‘I don't know that you need “Well” at me. That's all that's to it.'

‘It's nothing of the kind. Humphry. You had to decide to make friendly noises to him.'

‘Well, yes. One mustn't humiliate a chap, if one can help it. The school turfed him out.'

‘Expelled him?'

‘Just that. It was an archaic sort of school. They might well have birched him first.'

‘Had he seduced the matron?'

‘Lord, no! That wouldn't have worried anybody. He was a bit too interested in other boys' wallets and pockets in the changing-rooms. Squalid and petty, wouldn't you say?'

‘Definitely. But he may have been trading up since.' Appleby paused on this. ‘By the way, Humphry, I've had it in mind to ask you a question. It's about the occasion of Carson's last sitting for his portrait. He told you something about Robin's coming home. Just what was it?'

‘He'd had a cable about it, but hadn't yet told his wife.'

‘That was it. Thank you very much.'

‘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.'

 

 

‘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.'

 

 

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 his 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.'