Carson's Conspiracy

by Michael Innes

  ‘But, John, I am nothing of the kind. I am the clerk in holy orders here on the spot. And I don’t doubt that I ought to be thinking no evil.’

  Appleby supposed this to be, in a sense, a gentle rebuke. But he took it in good part.

  ‘And no more have I any business to be meddling,’ he said. ‘A restless retired old fogy, am I not? Only I have a feeling, you see – although a confused one – that the thing may somehow drive on to a thoroughly sinister conclusion. Unless something is done about it, that is.’

  ‘And that something you’d rather like to do yourself?’

  ‘Well, yes, Herbert – I do confess to that. Am I wrong?’

  For some paces Dr Folliott considered this question in a slightly disconcerting silence.

  ‘We are old friends, are we not?’ he then said.

  ‘Yes, indeed.’

  ‘And of Judith I am an older friend still. So I may be frank, John, and tell you how the thing strikes me. You are conceivably in some danger of barging in on a mare’s nest. We have reviewed certain rather unaccountable circumstances, and it may well be true that what you call something thoroughly sinister is incubating in them. But, equally conceivably, it is innocent – and also private – matters that are alone involved. If you turned out to be intruding on nothing more than that, you’d feel, you know, rather an ass.’

  ‘That’s perfectly true, Herbert.’ Appleby felt distinctly chastened. ‘On the other hand’ – and here Appleby rallied – ‘if I washed my hands of the nonsense and something uncommonly bad did ensue, I’d feel I had shirked a responsibility, if only’ – and Appleby added this humorously – ‘as a JP, you know.’

  ‘Very well. But why not have a word about it all with our friend Pride? He’s a discreet man, is Tommy Pride. I suppose him to be not far off retirement himself. But meantime he has, I suppose, an active duty to keep an eye on possibly fishy goings-on in the county. Or his men have. I’d have a chat with Tommy, if I were you.’

  ‘An excellent plan,’ Appleby said. ‘I’ll carry it out as soon as I can get hold of him. Busy fellows, chief constables, these days. But I can rely on Tommy to lend an ear.’

  Later that evening, Appleby reported to Judith on his encounter with the young man at the petrol-station.

  ‘William Lockett,’ he said, ‘lives with his stepfather, the gardener over at Garford, and lends him a hand with the job. But now the forecourt employment is folding up on him – and just at a time he has decided that Garford is a sinking ship and he’d better get out of that too.’

  ‘A sinking ship? Does that mean you take this William to be a bit of a rat?’

  ‘Nothing of the sort, or I’d hardly be thinking about him. He’s a little short of proper menial deference, perhaps’ – Appleby was rather fond of routine ironies – ‘but he strikes me as quite an alert lad with a noticing mind.’

  Judith took a moment to consider this.

  ‘John,’ she asked, ‘aren’t you becoming rather obsessed with Garford and those Carsons?’

  ‘Yes, I am. But just stick to William Lockett for a moment. It’s my idea that we might take him on – of course in an explicitly temporary way – full-time. There’s a good deal Hoobin and Solo will never get round to. All those saplings in the copse that have choked one another to death – and so long ago that you can snap them off like matches. Solo enjoys doing that. But of course they ought to be grubbed out, and the whole place given air. There would be a month’s work for William Lockett at that alone.’

  ‘Three weeks.’ It was Judith who had the more accurate sense of the conduct of economic affairs at Long Dream. ‘So why not?’

  ‘Of course the young man will have to pass a kind of viva voce examination with Hoobin. I’ll see to that, if William comes over to Dream. And Hoobin sounds not ill-disposed to the idea. Incidentally, William must be about ages with Solo, and might liven him up.’

  ‘It might work the other way – Solo and your William sitting down together by that pool and adoring the finny tribe. But I quite agree to giving it a go. And now, John, be a bit clearer about why you have this man Carson on your mind.’

  ‘The point is that I’m not clear. He perplexes me. I’ve been talking to Herbert Folliott about it, and Herbert has more or less told me to mind my own business. But I have an obstinate feeling that it is my own business – or what was my own business when I was in business.’

  ‘You mean there’s something criminal about it?’

  ‘In a hazy way – yes. Or at least fishy. Listen. This Robin Carson cables that he’s coming home, and then fails to turn up. His mother gets uneasy, but Carson himself asserts there’s no real cause for alarm.’

  ‘That’s natural enough. He doesn’t want to increase that silly woman’s anxiety, so he denies his own misgivings about it.’

  ‘It’s not so simple as that. Carson is worried – which is fair enough. But he goes out of his way to ensure that the fact seeps through his assertions of unconcern. It’s as if he wants observers to conclude that he has some very specific reason for being in great anxiety about his son. He’s being, you may say, covertly emphatic about that. And also about something else: a sudden need for a lot of money. Herbert Folliott suggests that this precious Robin may have got into a serious scrape, and that a great deal of hard cash is required to get him out of it.’

  ‘So that the father is conniving, perhaps, at his son’s escaping from the law? It does sound as if it may be like that.’ Judith Appleby paused for a moment. ‘But, John, if it is that, I’m quite clear that you ought not to be sticking your oar in. Doing a bloodhound act on a man who’s trying to get his son out of a mess! It just isn’t on.’

  ‘I suppose I need hardly say that I agree. Let Carl Carson get the better of my old chums the cops, and good luck to him. Only, you see, it’s mayn’t be like that. Not quite like that. Folliott may be in the target area, but the bull’s eye may have eluded him. And whether one ought to interfere or not simply can’t be decided until we know rather more than we do.’

  11

  On the following morning William Lockett turned up promptly on a bicycle. It wasn’t clear what arrangement, if any, he had made for the stray motorist to be provided with petrol at what was presumably still his place of employment, and Appleby didn’t inquire. Appleby acknowledged to himself that he was being a shade disingenuous over William, and that he wouldn’t have discovered in himself an urgent need for an under-gardener if the young man didn’t live where he did. But once a copper – he told himself – a copper for keeps. You find extra eyes and ears where you can.

  ‘You must understand,’ he said with some severity, ‘that Mr Hoobin has been in charge here for many years, and that you must recommend yourself to him if you are to have a temporary job. Can you use a scythe?’

  ‘One of those things?’ William stared. ‘Do you want me to cut my own legs off? Don’t make me laugh.’ William paused on this thought (which had been approximately Hoobin’s as well). ‘Sir,’ he then added, presumably as a precautionary dollop of what Appleby had called menial deference.

  ‘So far, so good, William. Mr Hoobin believes himself to be the last man left in the county who can command so much as a sickle. He also believes it to be dangerous to attempt to rouse his nephew Solo when the boy happens to have dropped off to sleep. Just remember that, and you may get along with Mr Hoobin agreeably enough. You’d better come and talk to him now.’

  There followed upon this an interview in the potting shed that went quite well. William Lockett was hired. Appleby – as if treating him for the last time as a guest – then walked with him some way down the drive.

  ‘And what about your stepfather?’ he asked. ‘Does he share your view that things are likely to go badly at Garford?’

  ‘He hasn’t got my sharpness, Dad hasn’t.’ As he offered this modest remark, William Lockett shot a
t Appleby a glance that his new employer found slightly disconcerting. It seemed to signal a persuasion that this elderly gent was a sucker for gossip about the neighbours. But that couldn’t be helped.

  ‘And has your sharpness,’ Appleby asked, ‘hit on anything new since I saw you yesterday?’

  ‘It bloody well has. The whole dump gives me the willies, it does. And them Punters!’

  ‘Those what – or who?’

  ‘Him that’s butler, and his wife that cooks and that. You must know Punter. Sir.’

  ‘Ah, yes – I know the man you mean. But I’ve never passed the time of day with him.’

  ‘Up to something, Punter is. Like the lot of them. Mad or bad: you can take your choice. I tell my dad he should pack up, even if it means going into a home for dotards. But he’s attached to the place, having known better days there.’

  ‘There’s much to be said for attachment to a house and gardens.’ Appleby produced this sententious remark while wondering how directly to go ahead. ‘What were you going to say about something happening since yesterday?’

  ‘It was like this, like. A hot day, wasn’t it? And what with your flat tyre and all, I thought I’d quit those bloody pumps in time to get home for a pint of tea. That was how I came to see that Punter up to something. There’s what’s called a pergola at the bottom of the big garden – just where I skirt it to keep away from the house and be properly respectful to my betters. You know?’

  ‘Well?’ Appleby had given a brisk nod by way of indicating his awareness of this foolish social observance.

  ‘It’s a kind of covered walk, the pergola – with clematis and that. And at the end of it there’s what they call an arbour – meaning a boarding-house for spiders and the like. But, this weather, Mrs Carson comes out regular before five o’clock, and sits in the thing with a bit of knitting – for all the world like an honest woman that has to keep the kids in socks. But this was a bit before that time, and what I saw was Punter.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘Coming along under the pergola, he was. Like a guilty thing.’

  ‘Do you mean that he was approaching this arbour in a stealthy manner?’

  ‘Just that. Sir. The old girl hadn’t arrived yet – but she might have, if she’d been a bit early. So here was this Punter, peering ahead and looking about him. Naturally like, I took cover.’

  ‘You constituted yourself an observer of this peculiar behaviour?’

  ‘Just that. The bastard was up to something, wasn’t he? He had a newspaper under his arm.’

  ‘Did that strike you as sinister?’

  ‘It was what he did with it, mate. Sir. He stopped and unfolded it and turned it back on a page that seemed to take his fancy. Then he crumpled it just a bit, and left it on the little wooden table in there – just as if it had been left careless like by my dad when he’d been in clearing up after the spiders. Then he went back to the house – as cautious as a cat.’

  ‘But you continued to observe?’

  ‘I didn’t hurry.’

  ‘Quite so, William. And was your patience rewarded by some further sensation?’

  ‘It was. Bang on time, out came Mrs C knitting and all. The programme would continue then minutes later with Punter’s wife bringing her out a cup of tea. But it didn’t happen that way this time. Presently Mrs C spotted the newspaper, as she couldn’t help but do. Then she picked it up and stared at it like the idle bitch she is. Beg your pardon. And the next moment or thereabout she was letting out a screech it might be like a tortured owl.’

  ‘A tortured owl?’ Appleby repeated doubtfully. He found this conception both unfamiliar and displeasing. ‘Mrs Carson had come on something by which she was extremely alarmed?’

  ‘You’re telling me. Scared, it might be, out of her knickers. Then she jumped up and bolted for the house, still hollering.’

  ‘Taking the newspaper with her?’

  ‘That and waving it.’

  ‘I’d rather she’d dropped it. You’d have had no means, I suppose, of retrieving it?’

  ‘Of course not. She was into the house with it, and that was that.’

  ‘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.

  12

  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.’