Carson's Conspiracy (18 page)

‘Robin!' Mrs Carson cried. And on a lower note she repeated, ‘Robin, Robin!'

This was disconcerting. If the unfortunate woman was capable of mistaking for her errant son a retired policeman with a good deal of
gravitas
in his comportment she must indeed be in a bad way. But Appleby then saw that this was a misconception. Cynthia Carson was as yet scarcely aware of his presence. She had simply been calling out to empty air. It didn't greatly improve matters.

‘Good afternoon,' Appleby said, advancing into the room. ‘I do hope you won't consider my call intrusive. I happened to be with the Chief Constable when you rang up his office, and he explained the state of the case to me. Colonel Pride and I are old friends.'

‘How very kind!' Mrs Carson was, after a fashion, pulling herself together. ‘I have been sure from the first, Sir John, that you can help me. Having been the Commissionaire, you know. And the local policeman, too.'

‘We will do all we can.' Appleby rather doubted whether Tommy Pride would much care for this description of himself. ‘The Chief Constable is determined to take charge of the situation in person, and we may expect him to arrive here at any minute. And also Humphry Lely. I have an idea he may be able to help us.'

‘Mr Lely – the painting gentleman?'

‘Yes, the painting gentleman.' Mrs Carson, Appleby supposed, was, like her husband, from an unassuming background. Under stress it showed through. Appleby found himself, of a sudden, feeling extremely sorry for Mrs Carson – foolish though her talk could be about dear little spots near St Vincent. He had to remind himself that he felt sorry for her husband as well. The one anguished parent deserved as much sympathy as the other. In a very unofficial way, both of them were now in a sense his clients. It was up to him – or to himself and Tommy jointly – to deliver them the goods in the person of their abducted son. But Carson was on the job before them, and in a manner it would be a shade awkward for the police to know about officially. The whole affair was difficult.

And now Mrs Carson was weeping anew. She had returned, in fact, to what Punter termed a distraught condition. Appleby waited in silence. He couldn't, he had decided, put an arm round the woman's shoulders in a grandfatherly way. And presently she at least became articulate again.

‘Robin!' she cried. ‘Darling, darling Robin – what have they done to you? They've murdered you, they've murdered you! I
know
they have.' Mrs Carson wrung her hands. ‘And Carl too, of course.'

Appleby felt himself stiffen from top to toe. Than these last five words he positively felt that he had never heard anything odder in his life. Of course Mrs Carson was insane, and one must expect to be surprised by her. But what he had heard uttered with a complete naivety was simply an afterthought which the speaker judged that propriety required. And that telephone call to the police which Tommy had been apprised of while talking to Appleby was now instantly manifest as falling within the same category. It wasn't exactly that Cynthia didn't care two hoots for her Carl or what had happened to him. It was rather that her anxieties there were floating and uncertain; were active, it might be said, only at a superficial level of her mind. Her single deep and constant passion was that long-absent son who had failed to turn up on her. Appleby was still digesting this discovery when the door opened and Punter took a single step over its threshold.

‘Colonel Pride and Mr Lely!' Punter shouted. The effect was of a man participating in a moment of high drama. But what was actually in question was merely the routine beloved by all stage butlers and many real ones.

And Tommy and the painting gentleman entered the room.

These further callers had presumably arrived simultaneously, and were being admitted by Punter because Appleby had mentioned they were turning up. So poor Mrs Carson was now ‘receiving' in quite a big way. Commendably aware of social duty, she rang a bell and suggested to Mrs Punter that it might be nice to have a cup of tea. Appleby, who remembered the butler's wife only vaguely, took a searching look at her and – as it might be expressed – wrote her out of the story; something he was far from doing with Punter himself.

Humphry Lely, who had no idea why Appleby had telephoned asking him to turn up at Garford, was amiably silent. It was otherwise with the Chief Constable, who took charge at once. He might have been reflecting that although he would be unsurprised to find Appleby seeing a little further into this odd affair than he did, he himself had official responsibilities which, having taken them upon himself, he mustn't shirk. Tommy (Appleby thought) was rather like a consultant physician who, having been called in to a distressed household, mustn't forget to begin with routine reassurance before getting down to the job.

‘My dear madam,' Tommy said briskly, ‘I do greatly sympathize with you in your present anxieties. But I am confident – and am sure that Sir John agrees with me in this – that the situation can be controlled. Candour is what is essential. That achieved, we can see to it that neither your husband or your son comes to any serious harm.'

‘They've murdered my Robin. I'm sure of it.' Mrs Carson had produced her handkerchief again, and appeared to remember something. ‘And now Carl as well.'

‘I beg you to compose yourself. It is our opinion – for I must be entirely frank with you – that something very shocking and deeply criminal has occurred. But the very character of what is being attempted makes your son's safety virtually certain for the present. Nor, I believe, is your husband at any grave risk. And his safety will be similarly assured as soon as we are able to contact him and gain his co-operation.'

This was a somewhat formal speech, and remote from Tommy Pride's more familiar manner of address. He probably employed it when dealing with Watch Committees and their like. Appleby felt that poor Mrs Carson might be bewildered and intimidated by it. But in fact she had an ear for what could be called the sound of a thing, and she responded favourably to Pride's note of authority. It even made her acute.

‘So they haven't killed my Robin?' she asked. ‘He has just been kidnapped for money for something like that?'

‘As we see the matter, Mrs Carson, it is almost certainly so.'

‘Then what about…what about the other one?' For a moment Mrs Carson's intermittent vagueness appeared to have overtaken her: it was almost as if she had forgotten her husband's name. ‘What about my dear Carl?'

‘It is really a little soon to say. Mr Carson, after all, has not been absent from Garford for very long. But it seems likely that he is endeavouring to secure his son's freedom by what he conceives to be the quickest method available to him.'

‘And on that, it is very probable that Mr Lely can help us.' Appleby had interrupted with this, and he now turned to the painter. ‘Humphry, can you lead us to that drawer?'

‘That drawer?' It was only for a moment that Lely was at a loss. ‘The one, you mean, with all those bank notes in it? Why, yes. It's in a great big bogus Jacobean affair in the library.' Lely had the grace to look uncomfortable at having produced this derogatory description of what was perhaps a cherished Carson heirloom. ‘I never saw so much instant cash in my life, and I was far from quarrelling with it. I can take you to it straight away.'

‘Then – with your permission, Mrs Carson – we'll all move to the library.' As he said this, Appleby strode to the door and opened it – sufficiently rapidly to afford a glimpse of Punter withdrawing hastily round a corner. ‘Your butler,' he said dryly, ‘shows a very active concern in your family affairs. Let's go.'

So they all moved to the library. It was a large and oppressive apartment which turned more congenially into a billiard room at its far end.

‘Just like Castle Drogo,' Lely said cheerfully and admiringly. This was apparently by way of making amends for his previous remark. But he promptly added, ‘One of poor old Lutyens' more absurd wheezes, that.'

Mrs Carson plainly didn't make much of this. Whether there is something unholy in contriving wedlock between a library and a billiard room was a problem that would not have occurred to her. But she at once pointed to what they were looking for.

‘Would that be it?' she asked. ‘I don't know what Carl keeps in it. The big drawer is always locked, so perhaps it's money. But then why should he cash cheques with Mrs Rumble?'

‘Mrs Rumble?' Appleby repeated.

‘At the Post Office Stores. Mrs Rumble is a most obliging woman.'

‘I see.' Appleby reflected that this imbecile degree of financial ignorance must be an irritating thing to have around the house. It almost inclined him to what he thought of as the Pride Hypothesis: Carson had simply enlisted his son's help and bolted from the woman. But it was a moment at which whimsy was out of place. He walked over to the imposing piece of furniture indicated. ‘The bottom drawer's the biggest,' he said to Lely. ‘Was it that one?'

‘Yes – and absolutely stuffed.'

‘Locked?'

‘Yes. He produced a key, paid me out my whack, and then locked up again.'

‘We'll see if it's locked now. Handles a little tricky for a fingerprint wallah, wouldn't you say, Tommy?'

The Chief Constable agreed. The entire cupboard was in blackened oak, elaborately carved. On its two drawers the handles consisted of scowling lions' heads in deep relief, and one had to stick one's fingers within their maws to pull the drawers open. Appleby performed this operation on the deeper drawer at once. It opened easily. And it was quite empty.

‘As one expected.' Appleby turned to Mrs Carson. ‘May I explain this matter as I see it? Your husband had collected a very large sum of money in this drawer: almost certainly, many thousands of pounds. And bonds and the like too, perhaps, as well as currency. He may even have had similar caches elsewhere. Indeed, it's very likely; it would be the prudent thing to do. And yesterday he packed all this into suitcases and left Garford without telling you what he was about. Very thoughtfully, that is, he refrained from alarming you.'

‘About Robin having been, you say, kidnapped?' Surprisingly, Mrs Carson appeared to have arrived dead on the ball. ‘But ought Carl not to have gone straight to the police? Colonel Pride, isn't that right? Wouldn't you have got Robin back to us?'

Although this was a tricky question, with delicate issues involved, the Chief Constable hesitated only for a moment.

‘It would, I think, have been best. I've already said as much, you know. It's most desirable that we should act in concert.'

‘And not just pay up?'

‘Precisely so. At the same time, I do sympathize with your husband's difficulty. He has no doubt received threats from the kidnappers that going to the police might not be – well, in the interest of his son's safety.'

‘It's the obvious threat for kidnappers to employ.' Appleby took up this dire and awkward point forthrightly. ‘It's almost common form with them, one may say. But we mustn't take too dark a view of it. It usually, I can assure you, remains an idle threat merely. Kidnappers, unless they are very amateur and bungling ones, don't in practice proceed to homicide.'

There was a short silence here, with Mrs Carson no doubt extracting what dubious comfort she could from these assurances. It was broken by Humphry Lely.

‘What a ghastly mess!' Lely exclaimed impulsively. ‘I'd no idea what we were involved with. Isn't this chap – isn't Mr Carson, I ought to say – in a pretty vulnerable position – wandering the countryside trying to hand over bags of money to a lot of crooks?' The question was more cogent than tactful so far as the unfortunate Mrs Carson was concerned. Lely seemed suddenly to realize this. ‘At least I call it bloody courageous of him,' he added.

‘It certainly is that.' Appleby, although he couldn't quite have said why, offered this agreement a shade thoughtfully. And he turned to Pride. ‘I don't think I told you,' he said, ‘that I had a call from a young man called Pluckworthy. He seems to work for Carson in some sort of secretarial capacity. Would that be right?' Appleby had turned to Carson's wife.

‘Yes, indeed, Sir John. Dear Peter! He is quite devoted to Carl. I think he helps him a great deal with his affairs. He is very much a
confidential
secretary. And he has been extremely kind. Telling me not to be alarmed.'

‘It seems to be his line – or one of his lines.' Appleby had turned to Pride again. ‘As I've told you, I couldn't quite make him out. He ran the boys-will-be-boys notion: Robin will turn up on his parents when other attractions are exhausted – something like that. But there was an undercurrent to his talk. If the police – meaning you and me – barged in, there might be the hell of a mess. It was almost as if he were plugging at me the kidnapping situation we're now pretty clear about.'

‘And anxious we'd keep away from it?' Pride asked. ‘I don't know that I like the sound of him.'

At this moment the library door opened, and Punter again presented himself But, this time, he spoke wholly without enthusiasm. ‘Mr Pluckworthy,' Punter mumbled grumpily.

And Peter Pluckworthy entered the room.

 

It wasn't clear whether Carl Carson's factotum had been made aware that Cynthia Carson was entertaining visitors. Certainly he showed no sign of discomposure. He walked straight up to the lady and kissed her affectionately – a salute that she appeared to receive in good part. This achieved, he turned to Appleby with a familiar and cheerful nod, and then to Pride – clearly the senior of the two remaining men – as if waiting to be introduced. This ceremony, however, not coming into Mrs Carson's head, was performed by Appleby.

‘Colonel Pride, our Chief Constable.'

‘How do you do, sir?' It appeared that Pluckworthy was minding his manners, and he took no injudicious initiative in offering to shake hands. Then he turned towards Lely, whom he may only have glimpsed so far, and instantly – if only briefly – his self-possession appeared to desert him.