These he opened when he was seated comfortably before his fire. The diamonds were enchanting, they winked their ice-hard dynamics at him as he moved over to the window to see them better.
‘Blue as blue,’ he said, an hour later when he sat in the back premises of a high room in Hatton Garden.
The jeweller said nothing in reply. He had one eye screwed up and the other peering through his glass at the gems, each little beauty in turn. The Baron thought afterwards, as he always did, ‘I must make a new contract. This man swindles me.’ But then he remembered how terse and unexcitable the jeweller was, so different from those gem-dealers who, meeting with each other on the pavements at Hatton Garden, could not contain for two seconds their business verve, nor refrain from displaying there and then their tiny precious wares, produced out of waistcoat pockets and wrapped in tissue paper. It was inconceivable that the Baron’s silent dealer should ever be seen on the street; possibly he never went home, possibly had no home, but sat in vigilance and fasting from dawn to dawn, making laconic bargains with such people who arrived to sell diamonds.
Later that evening the Baron sipped Curacao in his flat and decided that doing business was exhausting. Once every three months, this trip to Hatton Garden and the half-hearted haggle with the jeweller exhausted him. He reclined as in a hammock of his thoughts, shifting gently back and forth over the past day, and before he went to bed he began to write a letter to Louisa.
‘The herring roes, my dear Mrs Jepp, have provided the most exquisite light supper for me after a most
What a day it had been, also, for Mervyn Hogarth, who had returned to Ladle Sands to find Andrew in one of his ugly moods. When he was in such moods Andrew would literally spit on everyone. Andrew had been left in charge of a village woman whom he had spat at so much she had gone home long before the arranged time, leaving the young cripple alone as darkness fell. When Mervyn at last got to bed he tried to read himself to sleep, but the ‘mistakes—’ of the day started tingling; he lay in darkness fretting about the cunning of Ernest Manders, the tasteless lunch, the blackmail; and he murmured piteously to himself ‘What a day, what a day’, far past midnight.
And what a day for Mrs Hogg, that gargoyle, climbing to her mousy room at Chiswick where, as she opened the door, two mice scuttled one after the other swiftly down their hole beside the gas meter.
However, as soon as Mrs Hogg stepped into her room she disappeared, she simply disappeared. She had no private life whatsoever. God knows where she went in her privacy.
EIGHT
It is very much to be doubted if Mervyn Hogarth had ever in his life given more than a passing thought to any black art or occult science. Certainly he was innocent of prolonged interest in, let alone any practice of, diabolism, witchcraft, demonism, or such cult. Nevertheless Baron Stock believed otherwise.
It was not till the New Year that the Baron was able to assemble his evidence. He confided often in Caroline, for since her return to London they met as frequently, almost, as in earlier days. She lived now in a flat in Hampstead, quite near the Baron, with only a slight twinge in her leg before rainy weather to remind her of the fracture, and in reminding her, to bring the surprise of having had a serious accident.
‘It is strange,’ said the Baron, ‘how Eleanor left me, her reasons. Did you ever hear?’
Caroline said, ‘I know she had suspicions of your participating in Black Masses and what not.’
‘I’m not surprised,’ the Baron said. ‘A woman of Eleanor’s limited intellig-ence is incapable of distinguishing between interest in an activity and participation in it. I am interested, for instance, in religion, poetr-ay, psycholog- ay, theosoph-ay, the occult, and of course demonolog-ay and diabolism, but I participate in none of them, practise none.
‘And your chief interest is diabolism,’ Caroline observed.
‘Oh yes, utterly my chief. As I tried to explain to Eleanor at the time, I regard these studies of mine as an adult pursuit; but to actually take part in the absurd rituals would be childish.’
‘Quite,’ said Caroline.
‘I have, of course, attended a few Black Masses and the ceremonies of other cults, but purely as an observer.’
Caroline said, ‘Um.’
It was a gusty day, and from the windows of Caroline’s top-floor flat, only the sky was visible with its little hurrying clouds. It was a day when being indoors was meaningful, wasting an afternoon in superior confidences with a friend before the two-barred electric heater.
‘Eleanor would not be reasoned with,’ the Baron went on. ‘And for some reason the idea of living with a man whose spare-time occupation was black magic appalled her. Now the curious thing is, I’ve since discovered that her former husband Mervyn Hogarth is a
‘Never mind, Willi. You’re as well apart from Eleanor, and she from you.—’
‘I’ve got over it. And you,’ he said, ‘are as well without Laurence.’
‘Our case is different,’ she said snappily. ‘There’s love saved up between Laurence and me, but no love lost between you and Eleanor.’
‘No love lost,’ he said, ‘but still it hurts when I think of her.’
‘Of course,’ she said nicely.
‘But not enough, my Caroline,’ said he, ‘to induce me to give up these investigations. People are unaccountable. One finds barbarity and superstition amongst the most unlikely. The subject, the people, excite me in-tensely. At present my attention is almost entirely on this Mervyn Hogarth. He is, I assure you, Caroline, the foremost diabolist in the kingdom. I go so far as to employ agents. I have him watched.’
‘Oh, come!’ Caroline said.
‘Truly,’ said the Baron. ‘I have him watched. I get reports. I have compiled a dossier. I spend a fortune. The psychology of this man is my main occupation.’
‘Dear me. You must miss Eleanor more than I thought.’
