that but it seems the sort of incident which winds up a plot and brings a book to a close. I shan’t be sorry.’
‘But they haven’t been abroad since January. They hadn’t planned to leave until the middle of March, at least so I understood. I have reason to believe the Hogarths are diamond smugglers, don’t you understand?’
‘Ask your mother,’ Caroline said. ‘She knows all about it. She’s brimming full of it.’
‘I don’t see,—’ said Laurence, ‘much point, now, in going to Lausanne in March.’
‘Absolutely perfect … A pass back there — a foul tackle and the whistle … the sun has come out, everything looks
Louisa Jepp sat beside the wireless cuddled in the entranced caress of Laurence’s voice.
Much later in the day, after he had braked up loudly outside the cottage in his new car, and had settled into a chair by the stove with a newly opened bottle of beer, he said, ‘Is it true about young Hogarth?’
‘He is receiving physiotherapeutic treatment,’ she said, with correctness, for she used and pronounced her words, however unlikely, accurately, or not at all.
‘And he has actually started to use his legs?’
‘Yes. He totters a little. It’s too soon to say “he walks”.’
‘He was absolutely paralysed before.’
‘My, yes. The trips abroad did him good. I always knew they would.’
‘I suppose,’ said Laurence, ‘that the Hogarths have cancelled their holiday in Lausanne?’
‘Oh yes. There’s no need for them to go wandering in March. It’s very chilly. Much better at home. Andrew is getting his treatment.’
‘I suppose,’ said Laurence, ‘they will be off again in the early summer?’
‘Not abroad,’ said the old lady. ‘Somerset or Cornwall I should say, if the boy’s fit enough.’
‘I suppose that means,’ said Laurence, ‘that your game is up, Grandmother?’
‘Why, dear,’ she said, ‘I was thinking, as I listened to you on the wireless today, how much I wished for your sake, dear, that you could have caught us red-handed. It must be a disappointment, love. But never mind, we all have our frustrations and you were lovely on the wireless, you were
‘I had every clue, Grandmother. I only needed the time. If I hadn’t had the smash I’d have got you last autumn, Grandmother.’
‘There, never mind.’
‘But you’re in danger. An acquaintance of ours is on your trail. I heard by chance through Caroline. His name’s Willi Stock, a phoney Baron —’
‘No, he is quite authentic a Baron.’
‘You know Baron Stock, then?’
‘I have met the Baron,’ she said.
‘Well, do you know,’ he said, ‘Caroline told me last November, just before the smash, that the Baron had been seeing you last year. He described a hat you wore. Caroline recognized it, and inferred —’
‘That was very stupid of the Baron, but typical, though he is nice —’
‘But I didn’t,’ said Laurence, ‘place much faith in what Caroline said. I thought she was sort of dreaming.’
‘Why, you can’t be clever at everything.’
‘It was a good clue,’ said Laurence. ‘I ought to have followed it up. I might have got you right away. Have you any fears of the Baron? —Because if so —’
‘No, no. He’s my London party. Or was.’
‘The
‘There are only four of us. Baron Stock was only our London agent.’
‘You’ve packed up the game, then?’
‘Now, which game?’ she said, puckering a smile as if to encourage him to recite a lesson.
‘Smuggling diamonds through the customs,’ he said, ‘concealed in plaster figures.’
‘And rosary beads at times,’ said Louisa. Her whole body seemed to perk with delight, and to further signify her sense of occasion she passed Laurence a glass and a bottle of stout to open for her. She watched him pour the brown liquid and she watched the high self-controlled froth as one who watches a scene to be preserved in memory.
‘You took a risk, Grandmother.’
‘There was very small risk,’ she said. ‘What there was, the Hogarths took, as I see it.’
She drew up to the stove and sipped warmly.
‘I had many a smile,’ she said, ‘considering how they came through with the merchandise.’
‘Several times a year,’ said Laurence, ‘at a guess.’
‘It has varied,’ she said, ‘over four years and eight months. Some trips were better than others. It depended so
