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formulated, if only in a hazy way, a much more elegant proposal. Pluckworthy had been on to it with his talk of non-persons. Work it out properly – make it, for example, a nocturnal affair – and no bogus kidnappers need be brought in. The captors could be as phantasmal as their supposed captive. Pluckworthy was going to be kidnapped. Let Pluckworthy also do the kidnapping.
    A choreographer, supposing Carson to have had so unlikely an acquaintance, might have told him that he was here setting himself a pretty stiff problem in the contriving of a pas de deux . But Carson’s confidence was growing. What has been called by a poet the fascination of the difficult can – one has to suppose – beset quite other than poetic characters. Those are perhaps particularly vulnerable to it who have, in the old phrase, a good conceit of themselves.
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    Then, quite suddenly, Cynthia became a problem again. He had got home from a long day in town, and was applying himself rather fretfully to the cocktail cabinet in the drawing-room. It was an elaborate affair, the cocktail cabinet – all chrome and perspex and funny little concealed lights – and he had come to be a shade doubtful about it, and particularly about its location. There were plenty of advertisements – in the colour-supplements and such places – which showed prosperous and persuasively top people standing beside, or in the more elaborate examples even within, this particular prestige possession. But Pluckworthy had recently referred to the Garford one as the ‘bar’, and made fun of the natty little stools that had come along with it for free. Punter, too, could be detected at times as casting upon it a supercilious eye, as if it had never been his demeaning lot to keep company with such an object in all that long career in the best service which it had been his good fortune to share with his wife. This social dubiety could mar Carson’s pleasure in concocting himself even an unassuming Bloody Mary. He was concocting one when Cynthia came into the room.
    â€˜Do you know?’ she asked. ‘You’ll never guess!’
    â€˜I don’t want to. Have a drink.’
    â€˜Just the plain tomato juice, dear. Only fancy! I’ve discovered who it is.’
    â€˜Who who is?’ Carson moodily poured Cynthia her dismal draught. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
    â€˜That’s what I say. You’ll never guess.’
    Carson was, of course, used to this sort of conversation with his wife. It frequently veered into something fairly mad. And that was the way of it now.
    â€˜Robin’s friend,’ Cynthia said.
    â€˜Robin’s friend?’ Carson’s heart already foreboded ill as he repeated this. ‘Just what do you mean: Robin’s friend?’
    â€˜The romance, dear. We must be clear-sighted, you know. We must be realistic. Robin will love to be with us again, of course. But the main attraction is Mary Watling.’
    â€˜Mary Watling! You’re off your…’ Carson checked himself. He needn’t enunciate the obvious. ‘The daughter of those stuck-up people at the Grange?’
    â€˜The Watlings aren’t stuck-up, dear. Only very well-connected – which will be nice for Robin. Robin is just a little fastidious, don’t you think?’
    â€˜No doubt.’ Carson had never heard of Betsey Prig and her final courageous assertion that Mrs Harris existed only in Mrs Gamp’s mind. Nor, had he done so, would it any longer be feasible to emulate her now. He was stuck with a real Robin. ‘But why should you imagine…’
    â€˜Quite a long time ago, Mary had let something slip about Robin. Almost as if there were a secret! This time, she was a little evasive, and it was almost as if she didn’t know what to say. When I taxed her with it, that is. Of course, I oughtn’t to say taxed. I think congratulate would be