Reflected Glory

by John Russell Fearn

  “Because it’s dangerous. My father screwed it up and I left it that way to save the accident of opening it by mistake and fal­ling down the steps into the cellar. It used to be the coal-hole, until an outhouse was built.”

  “I see....” Calthorp looked at the screws as the sergeant drove them home. “How long since your father screwed it up, Miss Farraday?”

  “Oh—two years, maybe. It was just before he died.”

  “Mmmm.... Well, now I would like to see that room with the miniature furniture—”

  “Why?” Elsa demanded in surprising anger. “What are you pok­ing and prying about for? I know I can’t stop you because you have the authority, but what are you looking for?”

  “Since you force my hand, Miss Farraday, I’m looking for the body of Clive Hexley,” Calthorp told her coldly.

  She stared at him, wide-eyed. “What? Here? In this house?’

  “If not his body, then some clue as to his whereabouts, living or dead. Believe me, you’d help yourself and the police quite a lot if you’d drop this evasion of yours. We know that Mr. Hexley’s disappearance is definitely connected with you in some way. It is for you to say whether we find out by the usual methods, at the cost of considerable nerve strain to yourself—or whether you prefer to explain matters in your own way.”

  “If—if I were to give you the facts would you—leave that little room of mine unexamined?” Elsa asked, with an almost pit­iful pleading.

  Calthorp frowned. “I can’t guarantee that, Miss Farraday. It depends on what you have to say.”

  “I have this to say....” Elsa hesitated, biting her lip and looking at the chief inspector under her eyes. “I—I killed Clive Hexley.”

  A gleam came into Sergeant Dixon’s eyes but Calthorp remained impassive. He nodded to a chair and the girl seated herself slow­ly. Settling opposite her he looked at her steadily.

  “When?” he asked quietly. “How? And take your time, Miss Farraday. I want every fact...sergeant, take this down.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “On the Friday I returned here from London, Clive—Mr. Hexley—­followed me,” Elsa said, low-voiced, her fingers clenched in her lap. “When you said you had information that he had been seen at Midhampton station you were quite correct. He walked from there to here. I got quite a surprise when I found him on the doorstep.”

  “Then?”

  “He wanted to come in. I told him I didn’t want him to, that my association with him finished when I gave him back the ring. Instead of going away, however, he pushed into the hall, and then the lounge, and made himself thoroughly objectionable. I had to do something to defend myself so I made a grab at my handbag on the table. In it was my automatic, but I hadn’t the time to get at it. So I did the only other thing I could: I hit Clive again and again across the head with my bag, the automatic inside making it pretty heavy. I landed one blow at the base of his skull, which, I suppose, must have been fatal. Anyway, he fell— Then when he didn’t move and I examined. him, I found his heart had stopped.”

  “And what happened to his body?” Calthorp asked.

  “When I found he was dead I became frightened,” Elsa said, breathing quickly. “Then I remembered—you can only prove murder if you can find the body, so my instinct was to put the body where it could never be found. Perhaps it was a panic reaction; I don’t know. But I did spend all that Friday night dragging Clive’s dead weight from here to Barraclough’s Swamp.”

  “Where’s that?” Calthorp asked shortly.

  “Half a mile or so from here. It looks like ordinary land unless you’re acquainted with the district. Actually, it’s deadly bog.”

  “I might have guessed, had I known of that earlier,” Calthorp muttered. “So you dragged him to the swamp and his body sank into it?”

  Elsa nodded slowly, saying nothing. Her grey eyes were filled with an abject horror

  “I didn’t mean to kill him, inspector!” she burst out. “He behaved so abominably and I was so frightened I just struck, and struck, and struck.”

  “I assume,” Calthorp said after a while, “that you can show us where the body was thrown in?”

  “Quite easily, but it won’t do you any good, inspector. Nothing is ever recovered from Barraclough’s Swamp. It swallows everything completely.”

  “Just the same we’ll investigate,” Calthorp said, rising. “And I’d like to see that handbag you mentioned.”

  “That? Oh, yes—” Elsa got to her feet and went to a cupboard in the sideboard. She took out the bag and laid it almost gingerly on the table. Then she looked away sharply.

  “I just don’t like looking at it,” she explained, her eyes avert­ed. “It’s just as it was after I’d struck him down with it, even to—to traces of blood on it.”

  Calthorp looked at the bag pensively with its heavy chrome bar on the top, upon which were definite signs of brown smears. The bag was heavy, especially with the automatic in it. Carefully he unclipped it, tipped the contents on the table, then re-clipped the bag and handed it to Dixon. He slipped it into a large cellophane wrapper.

  “I shan’t require these,’” Calthorp said, motioning to the auto­matic, cosmetic case, and odds and ends. “Just the bag for examination, that’s all.”

  Elsa nodded slowly. There was look of dawning wonder in her eyes.

  “I would like to know,” Calthorp continued, why you are so anxious that your—er—miniature room should not be disturbed?”

  “It just happens to be sacred to me, that’s all. It’s sacred for reasons that you would never understand.”

  “So sacred that, in the belief that confession would leave it untouched, you have admitted to killing Mr. Hexley?” Calthorp asked.

  “Yes...since you put it that way.” Elsa clenched her hands. “I’ve told you everything, inspector: there’s nothing more to be said, is there—beyond my showing you where the body was put? I shall plead self-defence, for I swear that is what it was.”

  “I’m afraid you are a little ahead of the situation, Miss Farraday,” Calthorp said. “I’m not going to arrest you.”

  “But—” She stopped, her mouth a little open and her eyes wide. “But you must, surely? I’ve confessed to the crime! What more do you want?”

  “The body.” Calthorp looked at her pensively. “If it is found in the swamp and the injuries coincide with the attack described by you, then I’ll have no other course than to formally charge you with the murder of Clive Hexley. Until that time I can do nothing. As for your confession, it is not uncommon to receive admissions of guilt in a murder case. I should have thought that you, as a crime writer, would have known that.”

  “Of course I know it, but this is different! I tell you I killed Clive Hexley, and I’ve no doubt but what the forensic de­partment will find enough proof on that bag to convince you of it....” Elsa shook her head bewilderedly. “You mean, then, that until you recover Clive’s body I’m free, even though I am his self-confessed killer?”

  “That’s exactly what I mean. I don’t make the laws; I simply help in administering them.... Now, if you will be good enough to show us where you dragged the body, and the spot at which you submerged it?”

  Elsa inclined her head briefly and frowned to herself. From the hall she took her dustcoat and slipped into it; then returning to the lounge she unfastened the French windows and led the way into the untidy weed-covered back garden.

  “There,” she said, pointing, as the two men accompanied her. “You can see Barraclough’s Swamp from here.”

  They looked and Calthorp nodded. “I shouldn’t have known it had you not told me, Miss Farraday....”

  Elsa led the way to the bottom of the garden and indicated a broken piece in the wooden palings.

  “I dragged him through here,” she explained, “and across this field. You can see the ruts left by his shoes.”

  She indicated them and Calthorp saw that they trailed across the almost grassless stretch ahead of them and then vanished in
the weeds of the back garden. Without commenting he followed the girl, the uneven ruts clearly visible all the time, together with high heel marks in the soft earth which were presumably her own—until at length the half mile had been covered and the ground had changed from normal soil and rank grass to a dark, sinister expanse.

  “There are two paths through this swamp,” Elsa said. “One true and the other false. Just here is the true one—so follow me. It’s only a narrow track so watch yourselves.”

  The gouge marks went through the midst of the dark, evil mass and then suddenly stopped. Here there was a churning of the muddy earth with high heel marks mainly predominant.

  “I pushed him in—there,” Elsa said, and pointed to a spot perhaps three feet away from them. “It looks like ordinary ground—but just watch this.”

  She looked about her until she found a fair-sized stone. Tossing it lightly she, the chief inspector, and Dixon watched it come to rest on what appeared to be solid ground—then gradually it sank and vanished.

  “Conclusive enough,” Calthorp agreed, nodding. “Thanks, Miss Farraday. For the moment I think I’ve seen all I need to see around here. I’ll have men over to dredge this part of the swamp at the earliest moment. In the meantime I must ask you to remain in the district.”

  “The law is a strange mass of paradoxes, inspector,” Elsa sighed, shaking her head. “Here am I, freely confessing to having murdered Clive and thrown his body in this swamp, and yet you do not arrest me. It would almost be a relief if you would. Keeping the secret to myself for so long has been a tremendous physical and mental strain.”

  “To say nothing of obstructing the law,” Calthorp reminded her dryly. “However, I’ll go into the matter again, Miss Farraday, when the body has been recovered.... Let’s be on our way, sergeant.”

  The two men accompanied the girl back as far as the house, took their leave of her, and then returned to their car. Dixon aimed a questioning eye as he settled at the wheel.

  “The Yard,” Calthorp told him, and sat back in the bucket-seat to muse.

  The journey was half completed before he roused himself to start speaking.

  “What do you make of it, sergeant? Any ideas? I’ve got my own, of course, but they’re not necessarily correct. I’d like to check them against yours.”

  “Well, sir, I don’t quite see why you can’t arrest her on suspicion, without actually charging her with murder. You could have done that.”

  “Yes, I could, had I wished to cling to the exact letter of the law. Only...only,” Calthorp finished, running a finger over his mouth pensively, “I find it confoundedly hard to believe that confession, Dixon.”

  “You do? It seemed straightforward enough to me.”

  “Maybe, but consider certain factors. That screwed-up door, for instance. She said that it had been done by her father—two years ago! How have the screws remained shiny for two years? They’re ordinary steel and I think that in two years they’d have gone far duller than they are. The implication being that she put them in the door herself. Why, I don’t know.”

  “Queer, sir,” Dixon admitted. “No doubt of it.”

  “She also said that Hexley made himself objectionable and that to protect herself she hit at him with her handbag. I am inclined to question both those factors. Remember, Hexley had only one arm he could use, which would not have been much use if he really did struggle with Miss Farraday. Secondly, she says that she struck him several blows, one at the base of the skull, which killed him. Well now, in the course of my career I’ve come across many people who have had the base of the skull fractured, but invariably the blow had been wielded by a strong man using a heavy instrument. The skull-bone, next to the sternum, is about the hardest bone in the anatomy. I find it hard to believe that a slimly-built young woman like Miss Farraday could have struck with sufficient force to kill a young man like Hexley—who, except for his injury, was quite strong. Nor do I think the small-sized automatic would have added sufficient extra weight to the handbag.”

  “Mmm...,” Dixon murmured, thinking—and he switched on the headlights in the darkening twilight.

  “Add that to her story of dragging Hexley to the swamp and there disposing of him,” Calthorp concluded. “I’ll grant that the lonely district in which she lives would prevent anybody being likely to see what she was up to—but do you think she could do it? Dragging a man’s dead weight for over half a mile in sloppy ground would take a good deal of doing, and most certainly it would for a woman of Miss Farraday’s build. She’s not an amazon by any means.”

  “Then what do you think did happen, sir? Those gouge marks from Hexley’s shoes, for instance—”

  “Oh, those could have been made deliberately, same as her own shoe marks. The trouble is this business just doesn’t make sense,” Calthorp muttered. “It’s hard enough to get a confession out of a person when they have a crime on their conscience: for one to confess to it when all the external factors are against it is well nigh incredible. And for such a trivial, irrelevant reason, too—just because I was on the point of examining that room with the miniature furniture.”

  “Do you think it might have revealed anything to help us?”

  “I very much doubt it. I’m more inclined to think that that room is simply a private den of Miss Farraday’s, something she cherishes so much that she resents strangers looking at it. In any case, the local inspector saw it and there was certainly no body.”

  Dixon negotiated a corner and thought for a while as he drove steadily onwards.

  “If she didn’t murder Hexley, sir, who do you think did? And where is his body actually?”

  “I’ll have the swamp dragged and see if it turns up,” the chief inspector answered. “If it doesn’t, then I’ll have to investigate in other directions. If it does, then maybe the marks of injury on Hexley’s body will give us some clue. In the meantime we’ll get this handbag examined and see if it has anything to tell us.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  The following morning the chief inspector received two things at once, finding them on his desk at nine o’clock when he arrived at his office in Whitehall. One was a complete statement from Terry Draycott containing a list of his movements as far as he could recall them—and the other was a report from forensic on the hand­bag. Calthorp tackled this first, throwing up his hat on to the peg and then settling at his desk.

  “Bloodstains on the bag are in Group AB,” he murmured. “Mmmm—the rare group. That may be a help. Hair definitely male, black, and from the head. Small sized medulla. Regular cuticular mar­gins. Hair lodging in parts of the bag clasp....”

  “Begins to look as though Miss Farraday might have been telling the truth after all, sir,” Dixon commented.

  “We can get nearer to proving it when we have samples of Hexley’s hair, either from his recovered body or from combings taken from his flat,” Calthorp replied. “The blood-group will be more dif­ficult to identify without his body, or at least something he may have used which has a bloodstain of his upon it.”

  “Then what about his hand? Surely he must have used something at his studio to stop the blood flowing when he cut himself? It might still be there.”

  “Yes, that’s a good idea,” Calthorp admitted. “I think we’ll pay a call there later—and at his flat, and see what we can find. Now, let’s see what Draycott has to say for himself.”

  He read through the itemized list carefully. Certain notations were ticked, and could be verified by witnesses. Where this was not possible the items were left blank.

  “Four occasions where he can’t prove where he was,” Dixon pointed out. “If things start narrowing down to him again those four periods aren’t going to look too good for him. He could have done just anything in those times—including murdering Hexley and cleverly concealing his body.”

  “Yes, he could have done,” Calthorp assented. “We’ll keep the fact in mind, anyway. At the moment we have more pressing problems.” He put the statement away in
the file and then said, “You take the necessary men with you, sergeant, and have that swamp dredged. You had also better see the district coroner. Since Hexley was last seen in the Surrey area that coroner will be the one to hold an inquiry. It won’t get us anywhere, but the law has to be covered. I’ll tackle Hexley’s flat and studio. It’ll probably take both of us best part of to day to do our jobs so we’ll meet here again tonight and exchange notes.”

  “Right, sir.”

  Neither of them, however, was looking particularly pleased when they met that evening for their conference. Calthorp had already returned—indeed had been back some time judging from the tea things on a tray beside him—and was making notes at his desk when Dixon came in. The sergeant hung up his uniform-cap and then turned his thumb downward significantly.

  “Might as well try dredging the Sargasso for buried treasure, sir,” he said, sighing as he sat down. “I’ve had a party of the best men on the job all day and we got precisely nothing. We covered an area of about half a square mile from that indicated by Miss Farraday. In fact she came out to watch us at work.”

  “Did she have anything to say?” Calthorp asked quietly.

  “Nothing significant, if that’s what you mean. Of course, she could have told us the body was there whereas it may really be in some other part of the swamp. Candidly, sir, I don’t think we’re going to have the slightest luck in scooping that morass. It’s next to impossible to touch bottom, and the lower we get the more we stick. If Hexley’s body is in there I think it will stay there—for good.”

  “And so hamstring us in bringing any charge against anybody,” Calthorp said, thinking. “Did you see the coroner?”

  “I did, and he’ll hold a routine inquiry; then whatever else happens will be up to us.”

  The chief inspector nodded, then got up and went to a steel locker. From it he produced two hairs, both set in a base of Canada balsam. He put them on the desk and studied them thought­fully.

  “Forensic have been working on these since eleven this morning,” be said. “Just brought them in—set. One is a hair from the hand­bag and the other is from Hexley’s hairbrush, which I got from his flat. They are identical in every detail.”