Free Carson's Conspiracy by Michael Innes Page B

be a nuisance, particularly when Carson’s mind had to be much on other things. So Carson was about to break away, when Lockett started in again. He seemed in a talkative mood.
    â€˜Very nice news, Mrs Carson has told me she’s had. About her son coming on a visit. Mr Robin, isn’t it – and from America? I wonder whether he has a fancy for English gardens. I’ve known them from those parts that have.’
    â€˜Yes, yes – but I don’t know about Mr Robin, at all. We’ll see, Lockett, we’ll see.’
    â€˜And I suppose it will be a pleasure for you to have him, too. Rather in the same situation there – you and me, sir – in a manner of speaking.’
    â€˜Yes, we’ll see.’ Carson was no longer really attending to the boring Lockett – and fortunately he now heard the dinner bell. ‘Good night to you, Lockett,’ he said, and walked away.
    But again there was that fairly rapid drop of the penny, and it almost brought Carson to a halt before he hurried on to the house. What the man had said, exactly what he had said, had been uncommonly odd. He had said her son , not your son . And he had declared that he and his employer were rather in the same situation . Carson repeated this phrase to himself, not once but several times, and saw that it was definitive; that it turned Cynthia’s idle gossiping with the gardener from a mere annoyance into a definite threat.
    The lad William was, or was held to be, not Lockett’s son but his stepson , and Cynthia in talking to Lockett must have said that her son Robin was his, Carson’s, stepson merely. There was no other way of interpreting the thing. Cynthia, after years of persuasive consistency, had started tinkering with the basic essentials of the Robin Carson myth – shoving the tedious phantom, as it were, back into a nebulous past history. Robin wasn’t going to be steadily Robin Carson any longer. Every now and then he was to be Robin Something else.
    Carson tried to tell himself that it didn’t matter a damn; that his master plan wasn’t affected in any way. But he knew that it was, or at least that it might be. If Robin turned wavy – there was no better way to express it – if he lost his simple taken-for-granted identity, his very existence, his reality-status one might say, could vanish more completely than what’s-his-name’s Cheshire cat. Not even a grin would be left.
    Carl Carson had no doubt whatever that something disturbing had bobbed up.

 
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7
    On the following morning he rang up Pluckworthy.
    â€˜Look here,’ he said, ‘things are turning urgent. It’s time we got down to details.’
    â€˜Details, Carl? About what?’
    â€˜About your being kidnapped, of course. And probably murdered, as well.’
    â€˜I say – hold hard!’ Pluckworthy was very justifiably alarmed. ‘Where are you calling from?’
    â€˜From Garford, of course. I’m in the garden.’
    â€˜The garden! How can you be telephoning from the garden? It doesn’t make sense.’
    â€˜It’s this cordless affair. There must be a bit of radio to it. I’m sitting in the middle of the lawn with it.’
    â€˜Christ, Carl! You ought to be sitting in the funny farm. What about that brute Punter? Are you sure he isn’t lurking in the rhododendrons?’
    â€˜There aren’t any. And don’t waste time. I say we’ve got to get on with it.’ As Carson said this, it did just occur to him that he had perhaps a little excessively parted with the bugging phobia. What he had now was conceivably a time phobia instead. ‘I suppose,’ he asked with a momentary return to common caution, ‘you’re alone yourself?’
    â€˜Certainly I am. Except, that is, for a spot of homework.’
    â€˜Of what? Oh, I see. Chuck her out.’
    â€˜It would be uncharitable. She’s all snugged down in