Carson's Conspiracy (15 page)

‘Can you tell what newspaper it was?'

‘That I can not. I just wasn't that near. Not to speak of my nose being in a cobweb.'

‘Do you know what papers are taken regularly at Garford?'

‘No clue, mate. Sir. Mrs Rumble – her at the post-office – she'd know.'

Appleby accepted this point in silence. His situation was now slightly awkward, since this little interview hadn't at all developed on that level of harmless gossip. William Lockett, however, took this changed state of affairs in his stride.

‘You wouldn't be from the papers yourself?' he asked.

‘Certainly not.'

‘There's money, they say, in queer stories about the high-ups.'

‘I don't know that the Carsons can be called high-ups. And there's no money around, William. Put that right out of your head. As for where I'm from, as you put it, it's my guess you know perfectly well. There's no hiding under bushels in rural society.'

‘Scotland Yard, my dad says. Only, as you're getting on now, I thought you might be with a paper. A lot seem to end that way.' William said this on a note of disappointment.

‘What you've got in your head, William, is probably something called cheque-book journalism. It's not on.'

‘But dad says you ran the place. That right?'

‘Scotland Yard? Yes, I ran it.'

‘And having another go at that-like now?' William's eyes had rounded on Appleby. William wasn't at all dull. ‘Christ!' he added, and paused for thought. ‘Would it be Carson himself you're after? He's no better than his bloody butler, if you ask me.'

‘Never mind whom I'm after. Just keep your eyes open – and your ears too, for that matter. But your mouth shut.'

‘That's okay by me.'

‘Then off you go.'

‘Sir,' William Lockett said – and saw that Appleby had nodded towards his bicycle. So he mounted it and departed.

When Appleby returned to the house he gave a faithful account of this interview to his wife, and found that he had to encounter some displeasure.

‘You're incorrigible,' Judith said. ‘A sniff of crime, and you're like a bee going after honey. Or perhaps it's like a beetle after dung.'

‘When I ought just to sit in the garden and do the crossword in
The Times
.'

‘No, but seriously, John. You've got hold of this young man on false pretences, and are making a spy and an informer of him.'

‘Seriously, then, by all means. It's quite evident that there's some mischief going on at Garford – but just what, I can't make out. It may be no more than some commonplace rascality I'd be an ass to tangle with. I give you that. But it may well be something much more sinister: outright skulduggery that ought to be put a stop to. And as for young Lockett, he won't come to any harm.'

‘You're encouraging him to go peeping behind the gooseberry bushes instead of earning an honest living. That's harm.'

Judith, perhaps, was only half in earnest. Even so, she had a point. Appleby conscientiously endeavoured to persuade himself that he regretted the mysterious affair at Garford as having come his way. But it had. And there was nothing for it but to clear the thing up.

 

 

So on the following morning Appleby took his next step: a telephone call to the regional police headquarters and the making of an appointment with the Chief Constable at twelve noon. Tommy Pride was unlikely ever to have heard of Carl Carson. But he was the man who could quickly cause to be turned up a certain amount of peripheral information which Appleby felt increasingly anxious to acquire. Appleby had a high regard for Tommy's sagacity, as well as for the discretion that commended him to Dr Folliott. But what he chiefly esteemed, perhaps, was the strength of the machine on which the Chief Constable could press the buttons. It wasn't quite the machine which Appleby himself had ended up with – and, indeed, Appleby had at times made fun of what he called the Dogberry element in the forces under Tommy's command. But Tommy himself, although inclined to dissimulate any expertness in the techniques of criminal investigation, was no Dogberry, let alone a Verges. He was uncommonly astute. He was also a very busy man, which made all the more remarkable the effect of large leisure with which he greeted Appleby – who was, of course, an old friend.

‘Things not too good in London, John,' he said cheerfully, ‘since they handed you your cards. Large-scale robbery every thirty-six minutes, isn't it, right round the clock? Or something like that. Never good at holding figures in my head.'

‘They have problems there, without a doubt.'

‘Go back and lend a hand, eh? Who was that chappie the Wogs called back from the plough?'

‘Cincinnatus, I believe.'

‘That's it. Did the job, and then returned to the farm. Recommend it to you. Make a break from Judith's roses.' That much of Appleby's time had to be devoted to horticultural effort was a perennial joke with the Chief Constable. ‘Or, failing that, what about lunch? I can do you a quiet glass of sherry here, and then we could run over to Burford or Woodstock.'

‘I won't say no to the sherry, Tommy, but then I must get back home. I have my eye on a crime. Or on a crime
in posse
, as Cincinnatus' fellow Wogs used to say.'

‘God bless my soul! And you've come to tell me about it? Go right ahead.'

And Appleby went ahead.

 

‘It's about some people called Carson,' he said. ‘They're tolerably near neighbours of mine. The man has concerns in the City, and he and his wife have a son called Robin, who seems to have spent most of his young life in the States. But now he's come home on a visit. Or that was the idea. Only he seems to have got lost on the way.'

‘I see – but it doesn't sound terribly serious so far.' The Chief Constable was hospitably producing sherry from a cupboard. ‘On what sort of scale is neighbour Carson, City-wise?'

‘Moderately substantial, I imagine. A Rolls-Royce in the shed, and pictures by approved masters on the walls. Or that until just lately. Now they've got lost just like Robin.'

‘What the Capital Transfer chappies call a marked change in one's standard of living, would you say?'

‘It may stretch to that. What appears to me to be happening is that the fellow is going for sudden liquidity like mad. I believe that's the expression. Collecting simple and straightforward cash in a big way.'

‘Elementary, my dear John. Your friend is in trouble on the markets, and is preparing to do a bunk. Do I divine that you don't greatly care for him? He won't be troubling you for long. Dallas, or some such place, is his natural home. And he's on his way. May even take his wife. I suppose there is a wife?'

‘Yes – and she's a bit dotty. It's true that I don't greatly take to Carson. But I'm not sure he isn't to be sympathized with – and even given some cautious support.'

‘By the police, you mean?' Pride had sat back in his chair. ‘I'm to see to it in a quiet way that nobody quarrels with his passport, or holds him on some convenient trumped-up affair about his dog licence? Anything to oblige an old chum, of course.'

‘It's not quite that.' Appleby paused to let the Chief Constable's innocent pleasure in his own sense of fun subside. And when he did speak, it was with care. ‘There's a good deal that doesn't fit in with what I'm going to suggest. There's a butler who behaves in a mysterious way, and a nice girl – also a neighbour – whose conduct is equally odd whenever the name of the elusive Robin turns up. But what
does
fit in are certain peculiar undercurrents in the bearing of Carson himself. His wife is worried about Robin's non-appearance, but he declares he is not. But he
is
worried, all the same. I must say at once that there's a kind of sub-text to his professions that I just sense without managing to get the hang of. But the main
clou
in the whole affair, I'm coming to think I
have
got hold of. Robin's failure to turn up in the old home hasn't been a matter of Robin's own free will. It's my hunch that the young man has been kidnapped
en route
; that his father has been intimidated into not calling in the police; and that all the money being hastily got together is required to ransom him while keeping the whole thing dark. It's because of that possibility, Tommy, that I've turned up on you. Nothing's more delicate – is it? – police-wise than just that situation.'

‘True enough.' Pride spoke very quietly this time. ‘But, John, I wonder whether you ought to have come to me before going to Carson himself? Don't misunderstand me. I simply mean that perhaps you should have tried him out with what you believe to be the truth. And, if he admitted it, put to him the case for coming to me himself. Or going to the local copper, for that matter. That would have seen it on my desk – I can assure you – in no time at all.'

‘I can still do that: tackle Carson, I mean. But after something only you can do. Press the buttons, Tommy.'

‘Meaning just what?'

‘Check up, over the past fortnight, on anything that looks like a possible kidnapping affair and that hasn't been sorted out. The thing mayn't have happened at all, and I may be quite wrong. Or it may have happened efficiently and without leaving a trace. Or somebody may have seen, and reported, just something. And it's not a matter of every file in the country. We needn't bother with the Orkneys and Shetlands.'

‘Or the Outer Hebrides, I suppose.' The Chief Constable had reached for a telephone. ‘Computer boffins forward – eh, John? Can't say I understand their contraptions. Much like the ancient johnnies consulting oracles. Go to sleep inside the skin of a dead sheep, and the correct dream bobs up on you.' Tommy Pride, who seemed to favour somewhat cloudy analogies from classical antiquity, dialled a number. ‘But at least the boffins handle their hardware briskly. I'll sift through what they turn up myself, and get in touch with you either late this afternoon or early tomorrow.'

‘I'll be most grateful to you. And so – if things go well as a result of our mucking in – may those wretched Carsons be in the end.' Appleby got up to go. ‘But that puts one further thing in my head. I've been favoured with an odd yarn – reliable, I think, although perhaps a little spiced up in the telling – about something that happened to Mrs Carson only yesterday. She picked up a newspaper in rather mysterious circumstances, and was much upset by something she read in it. It's an episode I can't quite fit into the jigsaw, if jigsaw there be. But you might have somebody rake through the papers over, say, the past fortnight in search of anything likely to alarm a nervous lady with kidnapping or wayside violence or the like stirring in her head.'

‘At least that's an easy one.' The Chief Constable made a note. ‘Leaving no stone unturned is quite our sort of thing.'

 

When he got home Appleby was informed that a gentleman had called on what he declared to be urgent business. Told that Sir John was out but expected back shortly, he had said he would wait. The Appleby's home-help had disapproved of this – which hadn't even come in the form of a suggestion or request. But it hadn't occurred to her to require the caller's name, and she had simply shown him, if with some misgiving, into the breakfast-room. He was there now.

Appleby didn't care for anonymous visitors. They commonly turned out to want to sell something. If Judith hadn't happened to be on a shopping expedition, she'd have bowed this intrusive person out promptly enough. It was with a sense, therefore, of slight irritation that Appleby now made his way to the breakfast-room. What he found there was a young man comfortably disposed in an armchair. The young man got to his feet without haste.

‘Sir John Appleby?' he asked. ‘I must introduce myself. My name is Peter Pluckworthy.'

‘How do you do?' Appleby was not really much concerned about Mr Pluckworthy's health. ‘Can I help you in any way?'

Modern English usage has done a good job on this locution, since on its surface it is blameless and even benevolent, while a little lower down being as chilly as you please.

Pluckworthy seemed to receive it as a cordial expression of concern.

‘I'm Carl's secretary,' he said engagingly.

‘Carl?'

‘Carl Carson. I call him Carl because I'm also, you might say, a friend of the family.'

‘Then you know Robin?'

This question, crisply put, seemed slightly to disconcert Mr Pluckworthy. He answered, however, readily enough.

‘Well, no – I've never met Robin Carson. He lives, you see, mostly in America. But it's about him, as it happens, Sir John, that I've really come to see you.'

‘You surprise me. But explain yourself.'

‘I know it must seem odd – and odder when I say that I'm acting off my own bat. It's from anxiety about Cynthia – Mrs Carson, that is – that I've ventured to drop in. She's terribly worried, and I'm very fond of her.'

‘I am sorry the lady should be distressed, and I shall be most grateful to hear there is anything I can do about it. Just what?'

‘It does take a little explaining, Sir John, and I hope you will bear with me.' Pluckworthy appeared to be a young man as confident of his own good manners as of his own sharp wits. ‘I think you already know that Mrs Carson is very worried about what she feels to be an inexplicable delay in her son's turning up at Garford. We have to suppose he has been on his way for quite some time to pay a visit to his parents. But for days there has been no sign of him, or word from him either. So Cynthia's anxiety is understandable. Carl is much less worried. Perhaps he knows a little more about young men.'

Pluckworthy paused on this, as if expecting Appleby to produce some appropriate observation. But this didn't happen, and he continued.