‘Which friend?’ said Laurence.
‘Haven—’t you heard about it? Helena rang me this morning, very excited, and from what I can gather it’s most remarkable —’
‘Which friend?’
‘One of those concerning whom you entertain your daft suspicions. Andrew Hogarth. Apparently he was paralysed, and his father took him off to some little shrine of Our Lady in the French Alps. Well, he was brought back yesterday and he’s actually started to move his paralysed limb. Helena says it’s a miracle. I don’t know about 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 absolutely perfect with the red coats of the band … that feeling of— of tenseness … and now again for the second half … the first dramatic … absolutely perfect … it’s a corner, a goal to Manchester City … a beautiful, absolutely …
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 absolutely perfect.’
‘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 Baron has been in with you! I thought there were only the four of you.’
‘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 much on our continental parties. It was difficult for that end to get the right moulds for the statues. The beads were easier. But Andrew preferred the statues.’
‘I should have thought the customs would have got suspicious with all that coming and going. Very risky,’ Laurence said.
‘Everything’s risky,’ she said. ‘Many a laugh I had to myself when Mervyn told me about the customs men passing remarks. Mervyn didn’t laugh, he didn’t like that part of it. You see they went as pilgrims looking for a cure, Andrew in his invalid chair, you can picture him, hugging his statues with a long churchy face. So as to deceive the customs, don’t you see. Each time they went to some shrine of the Virgin Mary and our contact would meet them in the town, who was a gentlemanly party I believe. But I made Mervyn and Andrew visit the shrines properly, in case they were watched. You can’t be too careful with the continental police, they are very deceitful and low.’
‘Are the Hogarths Catholics?’
‘Oh, no. Not religious at all. That was the pose, you see. Many an entertainment I had, love.’
‘Mother has heard about Andrew Hogarth’s recovery,—’ Laurence said.
‘Yes, I wrote and told her. I thought it would be of interest to her that the young man, being a neighbour of mine, had got a cure at a Roman Catholic shrine. She likes those stories.’
‘Do you think it was a miracle, then?’
‘Oh yes,’ she said, ‘I do believe in lucky places if your luck is in. Indeed Andrew was unlucky before. He got a cold in the bladder at Lourdes two years back, but Myans has brought him luck, where there’s a black Madonna, I believe. And indeed I once knew a gentleman very up in history and fond of the olden days who had a stammer which he lost in the Tower of London.’
‘That sounds psychological,’ said Laurence.
‘Oh, it’s all what I call luck,’ Louisa said.
‘You don’t think Andrew’s case is clearly a miracle, then?’
‘Oh, quite clear a miracle, as I see him now. He can move his legs from the knees, sitting in his chair. He couldn’t do that before.’
‘What do the doctors say?’
‘They say he has to have physiotherapy. He’s improving already.’
‘How do they explain it?’
‘They say it’s a marvel but they don—’t make mention of miracles. They brought a great crowd of students to look at Andrew up at the hospital. Andrew put an end to it, though, by swearing and spitting. He has such a temper. —’