The Comforters

typewriter. Now she has developed the idea that these voices represent the thoughts of a disembodied novelist, if you follow, who is writing a book on his typewrite-r. Caroline is apparently a character in this book and so, my dears, am I.—’

‘Charming notion. She doesn’t believe it literally though?’

‘Quite literally. In all other respects her reason is unimpaired.’

‘Caroline, of all people!’

‘Oh it’s absol-utely the sort of thing that happens to the logical mind. I am so fond of Caroline. I think it all very harmless. At first I thought she was on the verge of a serious disorder. But since the accident she has settled down with the fantasy, and I see no reason why she shouldn’t cultivate it if it makes her happy. We are all a little mad in one or other particular. ‘‘Aren’t we just, Willi!’

Laurence was out of hospital some weeks before Caroline.

‘I can’t think what possesses you,’ he said, when at last he was able to see her, ‘to confide in the Baron. You asked me to keep your wild ideas a secret and naturally I’ve been denying all the rumours. It’s embarrassing for me.’

‘What rumours?’

‘They vary. Roughly, it goes that you’ve dropped Catholicism and taken up a new religion.’

‘What new religion?’

‘Science Fiction.’

She laughed then winced, for the least tremble hurt her leg.

‘Sorry,’ said Laurence who had promised not to make her laugh.

‘I never expected the Baron to keep his peace on any subject,’ she said. ‘I rather like talking to him, it amuses me. I’ve been lonely here, sick as well.’

She could see that Laurence was more niggled by the Baron’s attentiveness than by her actual conversations with him.

To return to that afternoon in the New Year when Caroline unwittingly hurt the Baron by comparing him to an African witch-doctor.

After tea, which she made in two pots: green for the Baron and plain Ceylon for herself, the Baron attempted to compensate for his anger. He told her a story in strictest confidence which, however, she repeated to Laurence before the day was out.

‘Once, on Eleanor’s behalf — shortly after her divorce from her daemonical Hogarth, and in connexion with a financial settlement, I went to call on him at his house in Ladle Sands. I had not informed him previously of my intention to call, believing that if I did so he would refuse to see me. I hoped to catch him by chance — Many were such services, I assure you, Caroline, that I performed for Eleanor. Well, I called at the house. It is fairly large with some elegance of frontage, Queen Anne; set well back from the road and concealed by a semi-circle of plane trees within a high hedge that had not been trimmed for months. The garden was greatly neglected. The house was empty. Peering through the letter-box I could see a number of circular letters lying on the hall table. From this I assumed that the Hogarths had been absent for some weeks, having arranged for their personal letters to be forwarded. I went round to the back of the house. I was curious. At that time, you must understand, I was greatly in love with Eleanor, and the house where she had lived with Hogarth inter-ested me in the sense that it gave me a physical contact with a period of Eleanor’s past which I knew only from what she had chosen to tell me.

‘The back premises were even more untidy than the front. The kitchen garden gone to seed and stalk, and an important thing that I am going to tell you is this. At the door of an outhouse lay a pile of junk. Empty boxes, rusty broken gardening tools, old shoes. And amongst these a large number of broken plaster statuettes — religious objects of the more common kind that are sold by the thousand in the repositories attached to the Christian shrines. These were hacked about in a curious way. The heads were severed from many of them, and in some cases the whole statue had been reduced to fragments. There were far too many of these plaster pieces to be accounted for by accidental breakage. Even at that time — I knew nothing of Hogarth’s occult activities then — I assumed that there had been a wholesale orgy of deliberate iconoclasm. In cases where the body was intact, only the head or limbs being severed, I noticed how cleanly the cleavage occurred, as if cut by an instrument, certainly not smashed by a fall, not that.

‘Then I must tell you, Caroline, what happened while I was engaged in examining these extraordinary bits of clay. The back premises were skirted by a strip of woodland. This was about thirty yards from the outhouse where I was standing. The sound of a dog growling caused me to turn and observe this direction, and soon I saw the dog emerge from the wood towards me. It was a black spaniel, very well cared for. I picked up a stick in case it should attack me. It approached with its horrid growling. However, it did not make straight for me. As soon as it got within five yards it started to walk round me in a circle. It encircled me three times, Caroline. Then it bounded towards the heap of broken statues and sat, simply sat, in front of the heap as though defying me to touch them.

‘Of course I went away, walking casually in case the dog should leap. But what I am trying to tell you, Caroline, is that the black dog was Mervyn Hogarth.’

‘What did you say?’ said Caroline.

‘I did not realize at the time,’ said the Baron, stirring his green tea, ‘I merely thought it an uncommonly behaved dog. Of course I am speaking to you confidentially, it is not the sort of thing one can tell one’s acquaintances, however intimate. But I feel you have an understanding of such things, especially as you yourself are supernormal, clairaudient and —’

‘What was that you said,’ Caroline said, ‘just now, about the dog?’

‘The dog was Mervyn Hogarth. Magically transformed, of course. It is not unknown —’

‘You’re mad, Willi,’ said Caroline amiably.

‘Indeed,’ said the Baron, ‘I am not.’

‘Oh, I don’t mean mad, you know,’ Caroline said. ‘Just a little crazy, just a little crazy. I think of course it’s a lovely tale, it has the makings of a shaggy dog.’

‘I wouldn’t have expected you to be incredu-lous of all people.’