‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I’m more worried than I was. It comes of having a thought or two about what Tommy calls the second kidnap. There’s something wrong about it. On the strength of our slight acquaintance with him, would you be inclined to call Carl Carson a guileless character?’
‘Far from it.’
‘Exactly so. Yet here he is, behaving with a kind of imbecile innocence that would do credit to his wife. He piles into a car a small fortune in a highly negotiable form, and drives off with it to keep a lonely rendezvous with some crooks. I ask you.’ Appleby paused on this, rather as if surprised at having produced an uncharacteristic colloquialism. ‘And the blood, Judith. The bloody blood!’
‘Blood is bloody, I suppose – except on the stage, when it’s a little bag of suitably tinted vinegar, waiting to be pricked by the villain’s dagger.’
‘It’s that, is it? I’ve sometimes wondered. But the point about this blood is that it’s pretty well unique. Could anything be more pat?’
‘Be what?’
‘P-a-t: pat. It’s the sort of thing that just doesn’t happen. Or not in real life. You might find it in a roman policier. Like that haemophiliac’s blood somewhere in Dorothy Sayers.’
For a moment this reduced Lady Appleby to silence. It was the first intimation she had ever received of her husband’s having read a detective story. And before she could speak, there was the sound of a telephone bell.
‘That damned instrument’s beginning to plague us,’ Appleby said irritably. ‘I’ll take it.’
‘John?’
‘Yes, Tommy.’
‘That cable. They’ve just traced it. Or, rather they haven’t.’
‘Explain.’
‘It’s amazing – isn’t it – what the boffins can produce for one nowadays? Find a thing for you in no time. Find a non-thing in a matter of days. During the period you specified, Carl Carson received no cable, and no telephone call either, from America. What do you make of that?’
It was only for a second that Appleby had to search for an answer.
‘A lot,’ he said.
‘What’s that?’
‘I think I make quite a lot of it. Any further development?’
‘Not a thing. They’ve had a hundred men crawling over that patch of…’
‘Of course they have. But not including Mycroft.’
‘What’s that?’
‘No matter, Tommy. I’ll be in contact with you again soon. And thank you very much.’
17
William Lockett was now installed as Hoobin’s second assistant, and he turned up at Long Dream every day. That he bore at least a secondary character as what might be called a secret agent was a fact which had rapidly become barely dissimulated between his new employer and himself.
‘Chaotic,’ William reported to Appleby a couple of days after the disturbing discovery about the non-existent cable. ‘That’s us at bleeding Garford House. My dad’s given his notice to the old girl, and he’ll begin to draw his pension next week. We’ll be out of the cottage, I reckon, as soon as that Pluckworthy gets his paws on the works and his snout in the trough.’
‘Pluckworthy? Has Mrs Carson sent for him?’
‘Yesterday, she did. She told my dad so. The ruddy Punters have cleared out like the place had been hit by the Black Death, and Mrs C doesn’t know how to boil herself an egg. Forgotten about it, I suppose, since she joined the gentry. Born in a back-kitchen, is my dad’s notion of Mrs C. And the late C himself, like enough.’
‘Do you mean you think Mr Carson is dead?’
‘It’s the general notion, that. Pluckworthy’s arriving today. The sorrowing widow says he’ll pull things together. More likely he’ll pocket the ancestral Carson silver, if you ask me. I’ve had about six words with him in my life, and I didn’t like any of them. One of nature’s wide boys is Pluckworthy.’
‘There must be lawyers, William, who have some duty to protect Mrs Carson’s interests.’
‘They’ll have a hard row to hoe, my dad would say. The woman’s that moon-struck a man might be sorry for her.’
‘Yes, I think a man might be that. If there’s trouble about the cottage, William, let me know. There may be more law to that than they reckon on.’
‘Sir,’ William Lockett said, and went off to join Solo.
Peter Pluckworthy had been a good deal on Appleby’s mind, and he had been inclined to think it highly desirable to contact him. Now it appeared possible to do so before the day was out. So, after tea, Appleby got in the car and drove over to Garford. It was Pluckworthy himself who answered the bell.
‘Oh, hallo, Sir John,’ he said. ‘Do come in.’ And he drew the door fully open with what was perhaps designed as a symbolic unreserve. ‘Cynthia’s lying down. She’s in a sad way, poor soul. I’ve come over to help her if I can.’
‘Perhaps you can help me too.’
‘I’ll be delighted.’ Pluckworthy said this with a quick cordiality in which he himself appeared to be conscious of a false note. And he switched at once to something faintly sardonic. ‘Am I to understand, Sir John, that you are what’s called helping the police with their inquiries?’
‘After a fashion, yes. They may be asking you to do it, too.’
‘Then do come in.’ Pluckworthy’s eyes had narrowed. ‘Let me get you a drink, and we’ll have a chat.’
They went into the same small room in which Appleby had previously conferred on the perplexities of the Carson affair, and Pluckworthy at once fetched drinks. Appleby accepted this hospitality without demur, since to have declined might have seemed like a declaration of war which could yet prove wholly misconceived.
‘Any police developments,’ Pluckworthy asked easily, ‘in this wretched affair?’
‘I can tell you of one development at once. Your employer told a blank lie about Robin’s heralding his arrival in England. He told Humphry Lely, the man who painted his portrait, that he’d had a cable from his son. He hadn’t.’
‘And that’s important?’
‘To my mind, Mr Pluckworthy, it’s like the rotating of a kaleidoscope. The whole picture changes. I have concluded that the entire story of kidnap and ransom is moonshine.’
If Sir John Appleby was astonished to hear himself say this (and he was), he had the satisfaction of seeing that Peter Pluckworthy was at least equally startled. Nevertheless, the young man’s response was notably prompt.
‘I’m afraid,’ he said, ‘that I have, too.’
‘Then we can consider the matter together. Aren’t you, by the way, rather prone to shifting ground?’
‘I suppose one must follow the evidence as it discloses itself.’ Pluckworthy delivered this composed and unexceptionable response on a note of mild surprise. ‘About those kidnaps, you know: first one and then the other. I started off by judging the first of them perfectly genuine. Didn’t you?’
‘Yes.’ Appleby realized that if here was an adversary, he was a formidable one. ‘Go on.’
‘I knew, for a start, that Carl had suddenly started desperately searching round for money. No, that’s not quite right. Organizing the stuff. Of course, there was plenty of it there. But I saw that he wanted to get it on tap without attracting too much notice. There were reasons of simple commercial prudence for that.’
‘No doubt.’
‘But there was something more. There was something he didn’t want to bring into public notice. I was working fairly closely with Carl, you know, and that was a fact I became thoroughly conscious of. Then when the business of Robin Carson’s having failed to turn up became known to me, I felt the truth of the matter must be determined. So I tackled Carl about it. We had quite a tussle. But in the end I got the whole story. It was a pretty astonishing one. And what became chiefly clear to me was that, if it all came out, it was going to be un
commonly hard on Cynthia. I’m very fond of Cynthia. Cynthia’s been like a mother to me.’ Pluckworthy paused on this, as if wondering whether it sounded quite right. ‘Everything I’ve done or said since – and I’m afraid it has involved me in a certain amount of deception – has really been to protect her.’
Appleby received this in silence. He had been prompted to say something like, ‘That’s most edifying’. But he decided to keep mum.
‘About that cable,’ Pluckworthy said – apparently going off at a tangent. ‘You’ve discovered there was no cable. It’s unsurprising. You see, there’s no Robin Carson, either.’
This time, Appleby had no need to counsel himself to silence. He was literally dumbfounded.
‘Cynthia never had a son by Carl. Robin is a figment of her poor, disordered brain. And Carl – who’s something of a saint in his way – has always simply gone along with it. Isn’t that amazing?’ Pluckworthy scarcely paused on this question. ‘But there’s more amazement to come.’
‘I can certainly see a jury,’ Appleby said, ‘being astonished at such a yarn.’
‘I rather think there won’t be a jury. It seems to me – viewing the thing as a whole – that there won’t be anybody to put before one.’
‘I’ll have to be convinced of that. Continue.’
‘Carl’s plan, of course, wasn’t to ransom a non-existent young man. It was simply to get out of the country with as much cash as he could collect in a hurry. His affairs, you see, are in the hell of a mess.’
‘More than just Mr Carson’s affairs may be in a mess, if you ask me.’
‘But this later development – kidnapping himself as well, you may call it – is really pretty ingenious, wouldn’t you say? One sees the idea: an affair that went badly wrong, as kidnappings sometimes do. A regular balls-up: muddle, panic, murder and what have you. The villains, the fuzz will say, cut and run – but pleased enough since it was with the cash. We’ll have to mount a hunt, they’ll say, for a couple of bodies: father and son. But we shan’t find them. They’re down much too deep a well.’
‘And where, according to this account of things, is Carl Carson now, Mr Pluckworthy?’
‘Well on his way to Bolivia, or some such place. And with a pretty packet in his pocket.’
‘His pocket? It can’t be quite that.’
‘True enough. Carl will have made some previous arrangements there. In a modest way, you know, he exports this and that all over the world. It’s an area of British enterprise in which all sorts of funny business goes on. No problem.’
Appleby for some moments considered this extraordinary farrago or fandango in silence. Its strength, he saw, inhered in the fact that a good deal of it was probably true. But what it omitted was what he had to go for.
‘Mr Pluckworthy, you charged yourself a few minutes ago with what you called, I think, a certain amount of deception. Aren’t you doing yourself an injustice? You seem yourself to have provided nothing to the entertainment apart from a certain amount of generous feeling. Carson’s behaviour, as you describe it, was undoubtedly criminal. There need be no mistake about that. And there are points at which he undoubtedly had an accomplice or accomplices. It is now known to the police that somebody flew from New York to London under the name of Robin Carson. It is known that somebody made a telephone call to Mrs Carson from Heathrow. The first kidnapping may have been a charade, and I think that on scrutiny it distinctly lacks verisimilitude. But it was a charade with two actors. I wonder whether your recollection would be at fault if you were to swear that you were not one of them?’
‘And Carl himself the other one?’
‘I didn’t say so – and you make the point rather promptly.’
‘If I helped Carl…’
‘But you wouldn’t have helped him if your devotion, as you maintain, was to his unfortunate wife. She is now left destitute, is she not?’
‘If I helped Carl, you have to prove it.’
Pluckworthy had snapped this out to an effect of naked challenge which was perhaps a slip up on his part. He wasn’t looking too happy. Just find another chink in this fellow’s assurance, Appleby thought, and he’s as good as a gonner.
‘About that second affair, Mr Pluckworthy, in which Carson was to be supposed to have been double-crossed in some way, and then killed, I take it, in some not altogether plausible panic. We know, of course, that his wife’s car was found close to the scene of a crime, together with two empty suitcases which were undoubtedly Carson’s property. But we can’t be assured, can we, that that second charade wasn’t mounted with Carson himself, so to speak, in absentia, and Peter Pluckworthy rigging up the whole thing?’
‘Of course we can! ‘The blood…’ Pluckworthy checked himself, but a fraction of a second too late.
‘Yes, Mr Pluckworthy…the blood?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘That, Mr Pluckworthy, is your first wholly futile remark. You are rather cracking up, you know – as you are likely to do in a witness box one day. You were about to tell me that the blood found on the spot was Carson’s almost to a certainty. But that fact is most assuredly not common knowledge as yet. It can have come to you only from Carson himself: and a singularly foolish projected ingenuity it was. It’s of no vast importance, perhaps. But it does serve to show how closely involved you must have been with the whole bizarre and unquestionably criminal project from its inception. And now, I think you may expect matters to develop fairly rapidly. My friend Colonel Pride, who is Chief Constable of what I believe is now called the region, is dealing with the matter himself And he has a brisk military way with him.’
‘You can go to hell.’
‘That is less futile than merely bankrupt, is it not? Bankruptcy, incidentally, is what the disreputable Carl Carson, it seems, was on the verge of when he thought up all this nonsense. Where I shall now go, actually, is to the police. Later, I may return here, and have a difficult encounter with an unfortunate lady. In the interval, you will have to decide whether to make a bolt for it, or to stay put and try to brazen things out. A hard decision for you, is it not? Good evening to you.’
18
‘Extraordinary!’ Tommy Pride said. ‘Never heard anything like it.’
‘It certainly presents some unusual features.’
‘Dashed ingenious, I must say.’
‘Too ingenious to make much sense.’
‘Would you say, John, it was Carson’s plan – or essentially this fellow Pluckworthy’s?’
‘Carson’s, I think. Just as Pluckworthy represents it to have been.’
‘And Carson has got away with it?’
‘Literally that. Carson’s probably on the other side of the Atlantic by now. And the “it” includes a tidy little fortune following him by what’s called long sea.’
‘Most unfortunate. Caught with our pants down – eh? But I suppose we can nobble Pluckworthy.’
‘Almost certainly. He may have gone off to lie low for a bit, and think out his way round his more awkward corners. But I doubt whether he’ll decide to made a permanent fugitive of himself. It mayn’t be altogether easy to hit on just what to charge him with. And even if you manage that, and get a conviction, it mayn’t go very hard with him. And he has probably secured a modest rake off on the whole venture.’
The Chief Constable acquiesced in this with a nod, and devoted a few seconds to silent gloom.
‘Do you know?’ he said. ‘What worries me most is the position of Carson’s wretched wife. Of course, she must be as daft as a coot. Imagining she had a son! Quite an unheard-of thing.’
But here Appleby shook his head.
‘I believe not. It does occur – mostly with childless women who are otherwise unhinged as well. I believe the Carsons had a family. Girls, I seem to have been told, who died or were killed
in an accident. Something like that.’
‘I suppose the poor lady’s booked for the bin. Shocking thing, every way on. Mitigates Carson’s rascality in some degree, wouldn’t you say? The strain of it.’
Colonel Pride, a determinedly liberal-minded man, looked hopefully at Appleby.
‘I can’t say I see it just like that, Tommy.’ Appleby got to his feet. ‘Anyway, I’m going back to Garford now to see if I can be of any use to the woman.’
‘And I’ll get the hooks out for this bloody little Peter Pluckworthy Esquire. Know anything about his stable?’
‘Not much. Public school. Like the mythical Robin, who was a Groton and Harvard boy.’
‘Worse and worse, John!’ And Tommy Pride made a gesture of despair. ‘One just asks oneself: what are things coming to?’
Dusk had fallen by the time Appleby reached Garford House. Halfway up the drive, he braked abruptly and stared unbelievingly ahead of him. For a moment he thought the place was on fire. He even told himself with momentary conviction that Pluckworthy, as a valedictory gesture, had contrived arson on a large scale. Then he saw that it wasn’t quite so dramatic as that. It was simply that the house was a blaze of light. The stuff was streaming from a dozen tall, uncurtained windows. Incongruously into his head there came a memory of how, in the early years of his marriage, Judith and he would drive up at night to a house like this in which a ball was getting under way. Mrs Carson was putting on a turn; was endeavouring, so to speak, to illuminate in this random fashion her own darkened state of mind. Appleby drove rapidly on to the house, drew up, jumped from his car, and ran up a flight of steps. He had scarcely rung the bell before the front door was flung upon and the brightly lit hall was before him. He glimpsed the displeasing female statues in their niches. But immediately in front of him, momentarily unidentifiable because in mere silhouette, was a living woman, a breathless and excited girl.
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