Reflected Glory

by John Russell Fearn

“Yes, Miss Taytham. To—tomorrow, then. About what time?”

  “Would eleven o’clock suit you?”

  “That will suit me fi—fine thanks. I’ll be there. And—and I’ll ask for you. That will give me con—confidence.”

  “Good!” the secretary laughed. “Tomorrow then, Miss Prentiss.”

  Elsa rang off, waited for a. moment or two, and then dialled the number of Castle’s home. The voice of the maid, answered her. Put­ting two of her fingers over the mouthpiece to distort the sound Elsa said:

  “Mrs. Castle, please. This is Miss Taytham speaking.”

  “Oh yes, Miss Taytham. Just a moment.”

  Elsa waited, making up her mind what she was going to say, then as Mrs. Castle’s familiar voice came over the wire Elsa said experimentally:

  “Hello, Mrs. Castle—”

  “Good morning, Miss Taytham.” Elsa breathed in relief as she realized there was evidently no other designation for the secretary. “Is there anything wrong?”

  “No, nothing wrong, Mrs. Castle. I have a message here that the doctor has left. I’ve only just come in; been out on a special call. It says— ‘Telephone home and have my daughter come here by eleven o’clock if possible.’”

  “Brenda?” Mrs. Castle sounded surprised. “You’ve no idea why, I suppose?”

  “Not officially, but I think it has something to do with that Clive Hexley business which the doctor is working on. I have the details, of course—confidentially.”

  “Oh well, then, in that case I’ll see she comes right away. She has only just got time. Fortunately, she’s at home. Thanks, Miss Taytham; I’ll see to it.”

  “Right. Goodbye, Mrs. Castle.”

  Elsa put down the telephone and hurried out of the booth. The elevator took her to the floor on which her room was situated, and five minutes later she was in a taxi speeding towards Harley Street. Her calculations, that she would be there before Brenda could ar­rive from Hampstead, were correct. It was ten minutes after she had arrived within a few yards of Mordaunt Chambers before the youthful figure of Brenda tumbled from a taxi and paid the driver.

  Elsa moved forward silently, her hand closing round the small automatic in her loose topcoat. Just as Brenda was about to go up the steps to Mordaunt Chambers, Elsa arranged the “collision.”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry—” Brenda began, then she gave a start of amazement. “Why, it’s Elsa Farraday! Of all people! I am glad to see you again.”

  “Are you?’ Elsa asked coldly. “It isn’t mutual, Brenda. I have not much regard for daughters who help their fathers to spy!”

  Brenda was far too inexperienced to tackle this statement offhand. She just stared, gradually realizing that her father’s ac­tivities were no longer a secret.

  “Then—you know?” she asked uneasily.

  “I do. And you needn’t waste your time going in here, either. It was not Miss Taytham who phoned your mother; it was I.... I think you and I should have a little chat, Brenda.”

  “But—but I—”

  “Now!” Elsa added flatly, and, for a moment withdrew her hand to disclose the automatic. “I’m not going to pull my punches, Brenda,” she added. “Do as I tell you or it will be the worse for you.”

  Brenda descended the steps again and Elsa took hold of her arm firmly, leading her up the street until they reached a taxi stand.

  “Get in,” Elsa ordered, motioning to the vehicle, and, to the driver she gave the name of her hotel.

  “What are you going to do?” Brenda asked anxiously, fear plainly visible in her wide blue eyes.

  “I want you to come with me to Midhampton,” Elsa responded. “To my home. I’ve got something there that I think you should know about. In fact, it is hardly a case of my wanting you to: you have no choice. We are going to my hotel, where I intend to collect my things and pay my bill—and if you know what’s good for you, you’ll stay right beside me.”

  “But you can’t mean you’d shoot me if I don’t? In a crowded hotel?”

  “I would if necessary and take the consequences,” Elsa replied coldly. “If you don’t believe it, just disobey orders.”

  Brenda slowly relaxed, staring worriedly in front of her. Not knowing what kind of a mood Elsa was in, she was afraid to take a chance—and Elsa knew it. Where an adult would have called her bluff, and probably overpowered her, this sixteen-year-old was in a complete daze, and because of it she did as she was told, never making a single wrong move when the hotel was reached and she went into the lounge ahead of Elsa.

  Fifteen minutes later they were in a train bound for Guildford with connections to Midhampton—and it was only as the train drew out of London with steady speed that it dawned on Brenda Castle that she had been abducted.

  * * * * * * *

  It was early afternoon when, after a lunch in Guildford—an exceedingly strained affair—Elsa escorted Brenda up the front path of Tudor Cottage. Twice during the mile walk from the village Brenda had thought of making a dash for it, and then had changed her mind. Here, in the deserted countryside, there would be nothing to stop Elsa doing just as she pleased, and in her plainly vindictive mood Brenda had little doubt that she would perhaps shoot, perhaps even to kill.

  “What is this something you want me to know about?” she demanded in sudden desperation, as Elsa put down her suitcase in the porch and took a key from her pocket. “Do you realize what you’re doing, Miss Farraday? This is kidnapping, and there’s a big pen­alty for that!”

  Elsa only gave her a contemptuous glance, opened the front door, and motioned her into the hail. She put down her suitcase just inside the doorway, snapped the catch on the front door as she closed it, and then nodded toward the lounge.

  Brenda went in alone, gazing anxiously around her upon the quietness and the soft rays of the summer afternoon sunlight.

  “So you’re anxious to know why you’re here, are you?” Elsa asked, throwing off her hat and taking the automatic from her pocket but retaining it in her hand. “Well I’ll tell you.... I’m going to kill you!”

  Brenda sat down heavily, staring up at her. The statement did not seem to so much shock her as amaze her. She looked as though she just could not credit it.

  “But why?” she asked. “What have I done? Just because I helped my father?”

  “That’s one reason, but there’s a better one. I don’t like you, Brenda—and I never have, from the moment I first met you. You are carefree, irresponsible; you’ve never known what it is to suffer anything. You, who cannot know the first thing about a person like me, dared to come into my home to find out what you could about me! You, who hardly know yet what life is about! If you think I’m going to let you got away with that, you’re vastly mistaken.”

  “What you really mean is that you’re jealous!” Brenda declared boldly. “Yes, that’s it! You’ve had a rotten life up to now and you don’t see why I should have a good one. That’s it, isn’t it?”

  “If you like to look at it that way,” Elsa assented. “However, I do not see why your father, after the trick he played on me, poking and prying and doing his best to discover all he could concerning me, should have the pleasure of your society any longer. Nor do I see why you, who don’t know what unhappiness is, should go on living in such blissful ignorance to perhaps help your father in further underhand schemes. With your disappearance, Brenda, your father will come straight here. It won’t take him long to guess who it was who spoke to your mother on the phone. When he comes I’ll deal with him as I intend to deal with you. He’ll walk straight into the trap and I’ll be ready for him.”

  Brenda said nothing. She still sat and stared, half wondering, half horrified.

  “I could have shot you at any time on the journey here,” Elsa continued, “only it would simply have meant that I’d have been immediately arrested and your father would have escaped. As things are going to be he’ll be one of the first people here, looking for you. And your body,” Elsa finished, “will not van­ish in a swamp as Cli
ve Hexley’s did. You see, without the body being found I can’t be charged with murder. Nor, for that matter, does it seem I can even be arrested. I had expected that I would have been. All the country would have talked about me; and then,” Elsa added. slowly, half smiling to herself, “I would have been released because of no corpus delicti. Think how much attention I would have got, how I would have beaten the law at its own game! But I was cheated out of it. Inspector Calthorp did not arrest me after all.”

  “No,” Brenda whispered, “I know he didn’t. Dad told me about that.”

  “This time the body—your body—will be found. And, if my plan is right, so will your father’s. I’ll be arrested for murder, of course, but I don’t mind. There is no death sentence any more, remember. I shall spend fifteen years in jail, I expect, but since I have nothing left to live for anyway that doesn’t worry me in the least. Interest in living vanished for me when Clive Hexley died.”

  “You didn’t love him!” Brenda declared. “My father told me as much, and he told my mother so as well. You couldn’t have done because you broke off your engagement to him when he cut his hand with that dagger—”

  “Yes—because he could not give me the fame in a portrait which I had expected. But other things happened after that, Brenda—things your father has never known about, or that Scotland Yard inspector either. You see, Clive Hexley really loved me and, deep down, I loved him—in spite of the thing that had happened to his hand. He followed me here to this house. He talked, he pleaded, he explained. Then it was that I realized how much I really meant to him. He even said that, difficult though it might be at first, he would learn to paint with his left hand. He cared that much for me. He could still give me that fame, that reflected. glory, for which I longed—and still long. Now I can only gain it by making Calthorp arrest me for a genuine murder. My notoriety will be that of being a jailbird perhaps, but it will be better than nothing at all.”

  “You’re crazy!” Brenda breathed. “My father said you were—and he was right.”

  “Because I try and seize on the opportunities and joys which a thrashed and beaten childhood never gave me?” Elsa demanded venomously. “Yes, if that’s craziness, I am crazy! But I was telling you,” she resumed, speaking as though the memory haunted her. “Clive Hexley came back here and we patched up our differences. It was agreed that I should return to London and that he would get the best surgeon possible to see what could be done about his hand. I was to return on the Saturday, the day after he came here. I would then become re-engaged to him. He was going to give me my engagement ring back but I wouldn’t take it: I thought it was unlucky and asked for a new one. Then he left here....”

  Elsa was silent for a long time, reflecting. Brenda did not dare to utter a word. Fascinated, she waited for the next.

  “I can see it now,” Elsa mused, pressing finger and thumb to her eyes for a moment. “I can recall every horrible incident. He was late for his train arid decided to take the short cut across Barraclough’s Swamp. I explained to him as he stood facing me at the back gate of the garden that the left path was the safe one and the right one the false— But don’t you see,” she breathed, “he had his back to the swamp when I gave him those directions, so that when he turned round left became right and right became left. It was too late to stop him. He ran because he was in a hurry, and sank into the mire!

  “I dashed after him and did all in my power to save him—but I could only just reach him from the safe part where I was stand­ing. It was no use. I shouted for help; I screamed for it—but out here nobody heard me. He went down. I was left with nothing but the few hairs that had caught under my nails when I’d made my last desperate effort to save him.... I don’t know how long it was before I came back here—stunned, unable to think. I kept looking at those hairs, which had caught in my nails. I realized that everything had gone—Clive, my chances of fame, my future, his life....”

  “And so, Miss Farraday, in your insane search for reflected glory you hit on the idea of making it seen as if you had killed Mr. Hexley and thrown him in the swamp?”

  Elsa twirled round violently and stared at the doorway. The vast, looming figure of Castle was standing there, and behind him the figure of Chief Inspector Calthorp.

  “How did you get here?” Elsa shrieked, whirling up her automatic.

  “It is really quite simple.” Castle advanced slowly, staring at the girl and ignoring the automatic. “The inspector and I found the last positive links this morning to prove that you did not kill Clive Hexley as you said—and we decided to come here and inform you that you had ceased to be of interest to the police in that respect—but we were going to find out the real circumstances concerning his disappearance. Now that no longer signifies, either. Since you have told everything to my daughter, in the belief that she would never have the chance to repeat it....”

  “If you come any closer I’ll shoot you!” Elsa snapped.

  “No you won’t,” Castle told her. “You are not a murderess at heart, Miss Farraday; there’s far too much buried generosity in your nature for that. You’re simply embittered and profoundly unhappy because of it. Marry a man who has your interests at heart and who will take good care of you. You do not really want fame by becoming a murderess. You know you don’t. You only think of achieving it that way because there seems to be no other.”

  “Why can’t you leave me alone, Dr. Castle—?”

  “Put that gun down, Miss Farraday,” Castle ordered, his voice quiet, as be paused a yard away from her. “Go on—put it down.”

  Elsa hesitated for quite half a minute, then at the steady compulsion in the psychiatrist’s blue eyes she complied. She threw the gun on to the table where it rattled noisily. Sinking into a chair she ran her hands through her thick dark hair.

  “You still haven’t explained how you come to be here,” she muttered.

  “I rang up my wife just before setting off from London to tell her that I would not be home for lunch—my usual procedure,” Castle responded. “She told me my secretary had telephoned con­cerning Brenda. I checked back on my secretary, and guessed the remainder. So the inspector and I came on here ahead of you, let ourselves in with a master-key, and waited. I was pretty sure that, convinced you were alone with Brenda, you would probably break down and tell everything. It’s a common practice of an egocentric to explain every detail to an intended victim, knowing that the victim cannot—or would not be able—to repeat it. And you ran true to form.”

  “How on earth did you get here before us?” Brenda asked in amazement. “We came straight away by train.”

  “We chartered a police plane from London to Guildford which gave us an hour’s advantage over you,” Castle explained. “Nor did we stop to have lunch, as you probably did.”

  “All right,” Elsa said bitterly, “so you’ve definitely proven that I didn’t kill Clive—and you overheard the truth as to how he died. That means the police have nothing more to do with me, doesn’t it?”

  “It does,” the chief inspector told her quietly. “Your word alone would never have been accepted, of course. It was the checking of the blood-groups which did it. You deliberately used your own blood on that bag.”

  “Yes, because I was sure you couldn’t check it without Clive’s body. It was simple. I purposely pricked my finger—”

  “As I made you prick it again on the rose thorns,” Castle commented, and he smiled blandly at the girl’s angry look; then, serious again, he went over to her and put an arm about her should­ers. “Listen to me, Miss Farraday,” he continued. “I’m old enough to be your father, and in that capacity I’m going to talk to you. You have not, throughout this whole business, performed one really vicious act. Even breaking the engagement was not vicious, because you were impelled by something greater than yourself. The reaction of realizing that you would not achieve your object blind­ed you to everything else. You have admitted that you saw the error of your ways when Hexley followed you here. You lost him in t
ragic circumstances—that I know. You have tried by various escapisms—such as dressing and behaving as a child, writing thrillers under a pseudonym, and maybe other means which I have not been at pains to find—to break away from the rigours and terrors of your childhood. Don’t you understand one thing, Miss Farraday? You are not a child any longer! The terror of those days has gone, and it will never return. You are free to live as you wish, to be loved, to be taken notice of....”

  “...Will never return,” Elsa repeated, staring at him. Then she said the words over again in something like awe. “Why, of course! It can’t return, can it? Somehow I had always thought—”

  “That it would? Naturally you have. That has been the mental reaction of the years of terror you endured. Believe me, Miss Farraday, for just one moment— You are perfectly free! Childhood has gone, but you can perhaps give to children of your own all the care and happiness which you yourself missed.... Murder, revenge, those morbid crime thrillers—are not for you. The answer is simple: write by all means, but do away with the horrors and write of life as you find it. It has its sweet side as well as its bitter. And call yourself Elsa Farraday. Then you will achieve that glory you’ve been looking for—but as yourself, and not as a tragic, furtive, alias.”

  “I could, I suppose,” Elsa mused.

  “You must,” Castle answered. “Don’t become jealous of the happiness of my daughter here. Be like her. It’s within your power. One man is waiting to make you happy—more so than Clive Hexley could perhaps ever have done. I mean Clem. Hargraves, of course.”

  “If—if I should try this method you suggest, and struggle to outlive the old, would you help me,” Elsa pleaded. “I feel sure that you could. When you were in my home here I felt safe for the first time in my life; then when I realized why you had been here I—”

  “Forget that,” Castle suggested, smiling. “And I will help you with pleasure. But you must come to me at my chambers. That is if, on reflection, you think you need me.”

  He said no more. Straightening, he withdrew his hand from the Elsa’s shoulder and motioned silently to Brenda. She rose and followed him and the chief inspector out of the room.