Free Carson's Conspiracy by Michael Innes

the years, rather in the manner of regular small payments into a deposit account, quite a substantial capital in the way of unconsidered acceptance of fantasy as fact. Carson himself – to continue the metaphor – was banking on this (or proposing so to do in just a few days’ time). And now, in that luckless encounter with the Watlings’ girl, Cynthia had breached this defence by extending her detectable nonsense to their nebulous son.
    Or had she? It was perfectly possible to suppose that she had made up on the spur of the moment the entire conversation she had reported herself as holding with Mary Watling.
    But that wasn’t to be relied on. Prowling the grounds that he was so fond of recommending to the perambulations of his guests, pausing unconsciously here and there to puff cigar smoke at the greenfly on Lockett’s endless rows of roses, Carson saw this clearly enough. The encounter with Miss Watling had quite probably taken place. And Cynthia, with her head already full of the imagined home-coming of her imaginary boy, had with an equal probability embarked upon it. But there was at least one plain impossibility in her account of the conversation. Mary, Cynthia asserted, had ‘confessed’. But nobody can confess to being engaged to, or enamoured of, somebody who doesn’t exist.
    But what else was Mary asserted to have said? The answer – a vaguely reassuring one – was, ‘very little’. ‘I shall look forward to meeting your son again’ had been the total substance of it. This needn’t have been anything more than social tact. Finding herself suddenly confronted by an embarrassing delusion on the part of a woman known to be a little odd, the girl had offered this noncommittal but composing remark and then hurried away. Nothing had occurred to make her doubt the existence of Robin Carson. It was only the notion of his knowing her and being in love with her that was plainly moonshine.
    So things were still not too bad. One ominous fact, nevertheless, remained. For the first time at least to his certain knowledge, Cynthia had talked detectable nonsense about their supposed progeny. She had only to get into the habit of doing so and Robin’s entire credibility would vanish. He would become dead as a doornail in a disastrously premature fashion.
    Still pacing among the roses, but now expecting at any moment to be called to dine tête-à-tête with his wife, Carson was inclined to see the woman as a viper nurtured in his bosom. This was scarcely fair. A hazard Cynthia now undeniably was. But of Robin Carson she had been, after all, the sole begetter. And without this gift to him, where would have been his marvellous plan? As a reasonable and dispassionate man, Carl Carson saw this ironic paradox clearly enough.
    Lockett was working late in the garden, as he frequently did on summer evenings. He was an elderly man who had come with the house. This had been a little against Carson’s inclination, since he’d have preferred a clean sweep when he bought Garford. But there had proved to be a doubt whether the man could be turned out of his cottage: it wasn’t, it seemed, a ‘tied’ dwelling, and he might have successfully claimed the rights of a protected tenant. So it had seemed simplest to keep him in his job. Carson, who didn’t know the first thing about gardening, and Cynthia, who was ignorant at least of the second, had come to rely upon him to make an adequate show. This he did admirably, and on the occasions when he worked those long hours it seemed never to occur to him to claim overtime. Oddly enough, this didn’t wholly please Carson, since it had the curious effect of suggesting that much of the place was Lockett’s own property. He seldom spoke of the previous owners (perhaps, Carson thought, because they had been an effete and penniless crowd) but, at the same time, it was never clear that he regarded things as