The Comforters

‘Well, Willi, I ask you!—’

He was serious. What,’ he said, ‘do you make of the broken saints?’

‘Maybe they had a house-full and then got fed up with them and chucked them out. Maybe they break up the statues for pleasure. After all, most of those plaster saints are atrocious artistically, one can well understand the urge.

‘For pleasure,’ the Baron repeated. ‘And how do you account for the dog?’

‘Dogs are. One doesn’t have to account for dogs. It must have been the Hogarths’ dog —’

‘It wasn’t the Hogarths’ dog. I inquired. They possess no dog.’

‘It must have been a neighbour’s dog. Or a stray, looking for something to eat.’

‘What do you say to its having encircled me three times?’

‘My dear Willi, I’m speechless.’

‘True,—’ said the Baron, ‘you have no answer to that. Not that I have formed my opinion that Hogarth is a black magician solely from the experience which I have just described to you. I haven’t told you yet about the carrier-pigeons, and many subsequent phenomena. Are you free to dine with me tonight? If you are I can tell you the whole story, and then, my Caroline, you will no longer say Willi’s mad.’

‘We’re all a little mad, Willi. That’s what makes us so nice, dear. No, I’m not free tonight, I’m sorry to say. It would have been pleasant really. …

He planted a friendly kiss on her cheek when he said good-bye. As soon as Caroline heard him descending in the shaky lift she went into her bathroom and taking out a bottle of Dettol poured rather a lot into a beaker of warm water. She saturated a piece of cotton wool with this strong solution; she dabbed that area on her face where the Baron had deposited his kiss.

‘The Baron is crackers.’

It gave Laurence pleasure to hear Caroline say these words, for he had been lately put out by the renewed friendship between Caroline and the Baron.

‘The Baron,’ she declared, ‘is clean gone. He came to tea this afternoon. He related the most bats tale I’ve ever heard.’

So she told Laurence the Baron’s story. At first it amused him. Then suddenly his mild mirth changed to a real delight. ‘Good for the Baron!’ he said. ‘He’s actually stumbled on a clue, a very important one, I feel.’

‘Clue to what?’ she said.

‘My grandmother.’

‘What has the black dog to do with your grandmother?’

‘The clue is in the broken statues. Why didn’t I think of it before?’

‘Your grandmother wouldn’t break anything whatsoever. What’s the matter with you, dear man?’

‘No, but Hogarth would.’

‘You’re as bad as the Baron,—’ she said, ‘with your obsession about Hogarth.’

Since their motor accident Laurence had been reticent with Caroline. She saw that, because he was partly afraid, he could not keep away from her, but it was not at all to her taste to nourish the new kind of power by which she attracted him. Laurence’s fear depressed her. For that reason she stopped altogether discussing with him the private mystique of her life. Only when she was taken off-guard in conversation did she reveal her mind to Laurence, as when he innocently inquired, ‘How is your book going?’ meaning her work on the structure of the modern novel.

‘I think it is nearing the end,’ she answered.

He was surprised, for only a few days since she had announced that the work was slow in progress.

Another thing had surprised him.

They had planned a holiday together abroad, to take place in the last two weeks in March.

At first Caroline had objected that this was too early in the year. Laurence, however, was fixed on this date, he had already applied for leave before consulting Caroline. She thought it rather high behaviour, too, when he announced that they would go to Lausanne.

‘Lausanne in March! No fear.’

‘Do trust me,’ he said. ‘Have I been your good friend?’

‘Yes, yes, but Lausanne in March.’

‘Then believe that I have my reasons. Do, please.’

She suspected that his choice of time and place was connected with his intense curiosity about his grandmother’s doings. Ernest and Helena had come to believe that the danger was over. Any illicit enterprise the old woman had been engaged in was squashed by Ernest’s interference and bluff. They hardly cared to think there had been any cause for anxiety. But Laurence, who had made several week-end trips to the cottage during the past winter, seemed convinced that his grandmother’s adventures were still in hearty progress. Arriving unexpectedly one recent week-day evening Laurence had found her little ‘gang’ assembled as before, the cards in play as before, Louisa unconcerned as always. From her own lips he learned that the Hogarths had twice been abroad since January.

For his failure to pull off a dramatic swift solution of his grandmother’s mystery Laurence blamed the car accident. He bitterly blamed the accident. At the same time he felt stimulated by his discovery that Ernest and Helena had between them succeeded only in putting the gang on its guard. It still remained for him to search out the old woman’s craftiness. That was what he mostly desired, and not content merely to put an end to her activities, Laurence wanted to know them.

Throughout the winter his brief trips to the cottage tantalized him. He snooped round Ladylees and Ladle Sands with blank results; he had a mounting certainty that the gang was lying low. Ernest had bungled the quest. Most of