Carson's Conspiracy (6 page)

 

So the moment for giving Cynthia her treat had come. Affording the first news of Robin's supposed arrival casually to Humphry Lely had been harmless enough, but announcing it to Punter, who, unlike the painter, was permanently on the premises, was different. It would never do if it was one of the Punters who first announced the fallacious fact to Cynthia. Carson had thus, in a sense, jumped his own gun. If he mentioned the imaginary cable, his wife would want to see it. If he didn't, it might be mentioned in her presence on some further casual encounter with Lely. Reflecting on this, Carson roundly cursed the cable. In inventing it he had violated that Law of Parsimony which has become known to logicians as Occam's razor. Being no logician, Carson didn't actually call it this. He just told himself that one ought to be sparing with one's fibs. This trifling one had unexpectedly proved distinctly awkward. Then he remembered that cables, like inland telegrams when such things still were, frequently arrived by telephone. Perhaps he could get away with that. But there was something ominous about this small difficulty. It suggested that other difficulties, large as well as small, were bound to be on the way. The way was the way to freedom, nevertheless. He must simply drive ahead.

 

In the event, it didn't go too badly. It went rather well. It went rather too well, indeed, to be quite reassuring. This last feeling in himself Carson would have found it difficult to explain. It was partly a matter of Cynthia's having taken his news so very much in her stride. Of course she had lately been
expecting
Robin to turn up. Her conversation, both with her husband and others, had frequently been turning on the fact. At times it had been distinctly gushing conversation, as if the mere prospect of the event might at any moment induce a transport of excitement. But now she received what her husband had to announce much as if Robin were a regular weekend visitor. She asked no questions, whether about that cable or anything else. She had simply put down her knitting (she had never lost an early habit of knitting socks) and rung a bell.

Except in hotels and places, ringing a bell was an action Carson tended to avoid. He had a vague feeling that it was an archaic practice no longer followed except in classes of society in which it was easy to go wrong. If he wanted Punter, he would stick his head into the man's pantry, or even just give a shout, rather than tug at a rope or push a button. So only Cynthia ever rang a bell, and only Mrs Punter ever answered it. She did so now.

‘Mrs Punter, dear,' Cynthia said, ‘my son is coming on a visit. We must have a nice room ready for him. Perhaps the one with the big bow window.'

‘Yes, madam. The blue room.'

‘The blue room?' Cynthia repeated doubtfully. She could never remember that she had a blue room – perhaps because she associated the adjective not with the sky, the sea and the eyes of new-born babes, but with pills, nasty music, improper movies and dismal states of mind. ‘But, yes – of course. I'm sure it's not dusty, or anything of that sort. But do remember soap. It can be so awkward without soap. And I'll speak to Lockett about some nice flowers.'

‘Very good, madam. Will it be tomorrow that Mr Carson arrives?'

‘Mr Carson?' Suddenly Cynthia was at her most completely vague – and then, equally abruptly, decisive. ‘Thursday,' she said. ‘You will so like dear Robin.'

‘Thank you, madam.' And Mrs Punter went away.

Carson had said nothing about Thursday, and he ventured to point this out now.

‘Oh, it's sure to be Thursday,' Cynthia said calmly. ‘Thursday has been my lucky day ever since the tombola.'

Like so many of his wife's remarks, this one was meaningless to Carson. Perhaps the tombola had been some nonsense at a church fête or Women's Institute jamboree. Cynthia rather liked being a local lady of some consequence at that sort of thing. And the same underlying idea attended her next remark.

‘I wonder, Carl, whether Robin has been taking an interest in stock-raising. If so, our shorthorns ought to appeal to him, don't you think?'

Shorthorns weren't quite as mysterious to Carson as were tombolas. Gentlemen farmers, among others, went in for them. But he was no more a gentleman farmer than his wife was a lady one, and the shorthorns were as mythical as Robin himself. The thought came to him to imagine Cynthia in the witness box at any sort of criminal trial. (Not, he told himself parenthetically, that she could legally give evidence against
him
.) The judge would listen to her for five minutes, and then quietly suggest to counsel that she had enlightened the court enough. Although privileged to be his wife, Cynthia was definitely among the unimportant people. If she couldn't be relied on, neither had she to be reckoned with. He could forget about her, and get on with the thing.

Carson picked up the portable telephone, and made an appointment with Peter Pluckworthy.

 

 

‘A cat-nap,' Pluckworthy shouted. ‘Why the hell should I take a cat-nap? I don't want a cat-nap. I sleep perfectly well, thank you, at proper times.'

‘Kidnap,' Carson shouted back. ‘Not cat-nap, you idiot. Kidnap.'

The shouting was because of the traffic thundering by. For this most secret conference Carson had chosen a locale with meticulous care. He had reconnoitred the terrain the day before, and hit upon this kerb-side café where they were now sitting. As not in Paris and certain other continental cities, such ventures in London are commonly newfangled, skimpy, and comprehensively infelicitous. If you want to be deafened by every sort of vehicular outrage, you sit down at one of their nasty little tables. It is without even a newspaper on a stick being provided by the establishment. After some ten or fifteen minutes, you may be brought a cup of tepid coffee.

Carson didn't want coffee, and he didn't want to be deafened. But he did want to avoid the menace of the bugs. And this he was certainly achieving. Not the most refined acoustic device conceivable could have unscrambled a conversation from the din. Raising his voice still higher, he endeavoured to explain this wise precaution to his companion. What Pluckworthy immediately gathered from it was that his employer had gone nearly as dotty as his wife. Madness was infectious, no doubt. Yet it wasn't so much insanity of any recognizable sort as a mere crumbling of nerve. So, even more than commonly, he must mind his
p
's and
q
's with Carson. If the man had some outstanding villainly in mind, that might mean something exceptional in the way of bribe or bait for
him
. And be amusing as well. But, first, Carson needed to be recalled to his senses. This lunatic fit of jitters didn't augur well for his reliability in a tight spot.

‘See here, Carl,' Pluckworthy said. ‘It's nearly one o'clock, and what I need is a decent meal. You're going to give it to me.' He paused for a moment, and then named the most expensive restaurant that came into his head. ‘We'll go there.' With this, Pluckworthy jumped to his feet and flagged down a passing taxi. ‘Get in,' he commanded briskly.

And, obediently, Carson got in.

 

The change of setting was a success. Almost with his first glass of wine, Carson relaxed a little. When the bottle was finished, and brandy before them, confidence had fully returned to him. He even managed to see his fears about the bug as having been almost comically excessive. Nevertheless, when he judged the time had come to unfold his plan (or part of it, perhaps it should be said) he was unable to resist leaning confidentially over the table and dropping his voice almost to a whisper. But Pluckworthy, who at least for a space was continuing to control the situation, would have nothing of this.

‘Quit it, Carl,' he said, leaning back in his chair. ‘If you behave like all the conspirators in Rome, people will really start getting interested in you. Perfect strangers – those two fat men at the table in the window, for instance – will do their best to listen in, just as a matter of idle curiosity. Unwind, and keep it chatty, old boy.'

Carson, although resigned to his underling's use of his Christian name, resented ‘old boy' as intolerably familiar. ‘Chatty', however, reminded him that the occasion was eminently one on which Pluckworthy had to be chatted up. And, of course, bought, as well. There would be a haggle over the figure later. At the moment, he was relying chiefly on what he judged to be the young man's temperamental liking for a wild-cat scheme.

‘Cat-naps,' Pluckworthy said telepathically. ‘We'd got as far as cat-naps. Or, rather, we'd advanced from that to kidnaps. Carry on from there.'

‘You're
going to carry on from there, my boy.' Carson had resolved to be spirited. ‘You're going to be kidnapped, believe you me. But not as a mere nobody called Peter Pluckworthy…'

‘Thank you very much.'

‘Just keep your mouth shut for a minute, and listen. You're going to be kidnapped – at or near Heathrow, I think – as my son.'

‘Your son? Don't make me laugh.'

‘Yes – my son.' Carson, although he reiterated this firmly, was checked for a moment. There came back to him the suspicion that Pluckworthy
knew
. But that was really neither here nor there, since the fact of the non-existence of the person in question could be acquiesced in at once, if need be.

‘Robin?' Pluckworthy asked – surely teasingly. ‘The one Cynthia sometimes tells me you meet up with at that dear little Mustique?'

‘Yes – Robin. As Robin Carson you're going to be kidnapped. Kidnapped and held to ransom. Get?'

‘I get.' Pluckworthy's eyes had rounded in a fashion that Carson judged distinctly hopeful. ‘The hell of a big ransom, no doubt?'

‘Big, but not out of all reason big. Enough to set me up very comfortably elsewhere.'

‘Key Biscayne, perhaps? I seem to have heard of it too.'

‘Of course not. Somewhere, naturally, that I've never been to before.'

‘A new and purer life. But just where is the ransom-money coming from? A guild of philanthropists?'

‘The money will be my own, naturally.' Carson couldn't resist a note of modest pride as he said this. ‘But, of course, getting it together is the ticklish thing. If word were to get round that I was drastically increasing my liquidity ratio, the fat would be in the fire at once. You do see that?'

‘Yes, of course.' Pluckworthy was impatient before this elementary fact. ‘If a dubious character like you, Carl, suddenly exhibits a marked liquidity preference, the prison gates pretty well begin to yawn.'

‘You can put it that way, if you like.' Carson, naturally, wasn't too pleased by this unseemly expression. ‘But everybody knows that ransom-money has to be got together in the most hush-hush way. It has to be managed, for instance, so that the police can say they know nothing of your intention to pay up. So here will be me, going ever so quietly round, moaning “My son, my son!”…'

‘Moaning “Pluckworthy, Pluckworthy!”, you mean.'

‘I've told you to shut your trap, haven't I? Everybody will be tremendously sympathetic, and make no end of necessary transfers and cashing of cheques just as quietly as may be.'

‘You have a point there.' Pluckworthy glanced with a certain – and unusual – admiration at his employer. ‘But why pick on me to be the victim of this bogus kidnapping? Is it because I talked some nonsense about that portrait being a shade like me – and therefore your son and I having a possible lick of one another?'

‘It did cross my mind, Peter, as being conceivably useful. But it's not much of an idea, is it? I pick on you because you're a reliable man.'

‘Thank you very much. By the way, there isn't a real Robin Carson, is there?'

‘Of course not.' Carson – as he had resolved to do – took this point quite casually. ‘But everybody believes there is. It's quite extraordinary. And if you are an exception, it says something for your wits.'

‘The plan does say something for yours. The police can't rescue Robin, because Robin doesn't exist.'

‘And they can't capture the kidnappers, because they don't exist either.'

At this, Peter Pluckworthy laughed abruptly – and also rather loudly, so that the two fat men at the nearby table turned to stare at him.

‘I suppose,' he asked, ‘it has to be rather a spectacular kidnap – enough to engage at least a mite of attention by the media?'

‘Of course.'

‘Has it occurred to you, Carl, that to make the papers with the kidnapping of a non-person by other non-persons will be technically on the demanding side?'

‘That's where you and I put our heads together,' Carson said.

 

 

So it
was
a conspiracy. Carl Carson was well aware that ‘conspiracy' was a word much endeared to Attorneys General and Directors of Public Prosecutions. To be a conspirator was held – for some totally irrational reason – to be considerably more heinous than to be a crook on one's own. And, as soon as they began to move in concert, he and Peter Pluckworthy were conspirators.

Or were they? Carson had a great respect for the law. He liked, that is to say, to think of legality in generous and comprehensive terms. As spreading wide, in fact. A man mustn't be too ready to feel himself outside it. Lawyers themselves understood this, and plenty of them were prepared to exercise great powers of mind to make juries believe, and therefore judges declare, that their client's intentions, and even actions, had been as blameless as the skipping of lambs in spring. So although he and Pluckworthy were now undoubtedly cooking up something together, could it really be regarded as a course of conduct insusceptible of some sort of favourable interpretation in the hands of a wily chap in a wig and gown?

Carson spent a little time considering his position in this hopeful light. The money involved was, he reiterated to himself, his own – or at least it would be difficult to prove that any very substantial part of it was not. For his own legitimately private purposes – he heard this admirable barrister explain – Mr Carson had been obliged to make various redispositions which, if they became public, might readily be so misinterpreted as to occasion alarm and despondency among the minor investing classes. This he had been magnanimously prepared to go to considerable trouble to avoid. So, being a man of some imagination and resource, he had evolved a plan, in itself no more than a harmless and amusing prank…