Читать книгу Reflected Glory - John Russell Fearn - Страница 7

CHAPTER THREE

At four o’clock the rattling local train, which formed a connection from Guildford, had brought Elsa and Clive to the rural station of Midhampton with its profusions of summer flowers. Here Clive chartered the solitary horse-drawn cab and, since he clearly knew Elsa well, the driver had only to be told to take her home.

“Quaint place you live in, anyway,” Clive commented, looking out on to the sun-drenched and completely inactive village street.

“If you only knew how much I hate it!” Elsa clenched her fists in her lap. “I’ve seen it for as long as I can remember. It is one of the earliest of my recollections. It holds nothing for me except unpleasant memories—of scolding, of being told not to do this and not to do that.”

Clive gave her a serious, half puzzled glance.

“You mean your parents were strict? That it?”

“That’s it. They believed in the policy of a child being seen and not heard, but they carried it to excess, and being an only child I received the brunt of everything. I think,” Elsa fin­ished moodily, “I only started to live when they died. And twenty-five is a pretty late age to start living isn’t it?”

“Not if you do it properly,” Clive murmured, and patted her left hand on which was the clawed bulging diamond he had purchased for her in London prior to lunch.

Since she said nothing further he spent his time gazing out of the window again. The cab left the village presently and fol­lowed a solitary tree-lined road. On one side of it were meadows, golden with the summer light, stretching away to the distant blue line of the Hog’s Back. On the other side there was a peculiar darkness in the grassless soil. It looked as though an evil hand had spread itself over the landscape and commanded that no green thing should grow.

“That’s Barraclough’s Swamp,” Elsa explained, noticing Clive’s rather mystified expression. “It extends for about five square miles, and unless you know it thoroughly—as I do—it’s a death trap. There are two paths across it, one of them true—which I use sometimes myself as a short cut to my home—and the other false, which leads right into the mire. Get on that, and you never get out!”

“Charming thought,” Clive murmured, with a little shiver. “And where’s your place? Can we see it yet?”

“In a moment, when we’ve rounded the next bend.”

He looked ahead with interest and after a little while there came into view, well back from the road and completely isolated, a detached house in perfect replica of Tudor style, low-gabled, slanting-roofed in red tiles, with—he noticed as they came nearer—diamond-shaped window panes. It was evident, however, that the gardens needed attention. Cultivated flowers were foundering in a choking wilderness of weeds.

“I’ve no time to bother with gardening,” Elsa said, seeing Clive’s look. “And I don’t like a gardener prowling about the place when I’m all alone.”

The cab stopped and Clive sat looking at the house pensively. “Nice place,” he said approvingly. “Once it’s tidied up.”

Elsa stirred as he opened the door for her. As he alighted beside her in the road he asked a question.

“Do you want the cab to wait for us, or what?”

“No; that won’t be necessary. We can walk back to the village when we’re ready. At the same time I’ll call on the estate agent. He’s a sort of jack-of-all-trades who’ll handle everything.”

Clive nodded, paid off the driver, then followed the girl along the front path to a portico of rustic-faced stone. She removed a key from her big, chrome-topped handbag and opened the front door.

Clive walked behind her into a square, tastefully furnished hall and then into a lounge leading from it. There was nothing unique about the room. It was light and sunny, windows at each end looking on to the back and front gardens, and comfortably furnished.

“Sit down, Clive,” Elsa said. “I’ll fix up some tea and sandwiches for us—”

“But surely I can help you?”

“There’s no need. Really.”

But since he was insistent, she said no more and he wandered after her into the kitchen. He stood against the doorway, watching her make preparations, unable to help her because he did not know where to find anything. Then he frowned a little as he caught sight of the big cupboard doors over the stove. They were firmly closed and secured with six shiny-headed screws down the sides.

“That’s a queer idea, isn’t it?” he asked, and Elsa glanced above her head.

“Oh, you mean the doors? That was my father’s idea. They used to keep swinging out a lot and he was always banging his head on them. One day he got really mad and screwed them up.”

“And you’ve left them like that? They only want new catches. Think of the cupboard room you’re losing.”

“I’m not bothered. One person doesn’t need a lot of cupboard room, anyway.”

Elsa completed the sandwiches and made tea without explaining matters any further. As she and Clive drank it in the lounge Clive glanced about him.

“Seems a pity to have to sell this place up,” he mused. “So quiet and restful. I believe I really could paint masterpieces here. So much better than in that rather squalid studio of mine.”

“My only wish,” Elsa answered quietly, “now I’ve got the oppor­tunity is to get away from this place. I know every stick and stone of it. As I told you, I was born in it. I must get away from it, Clive. To settle down here to married life would be just too much for me.”

He smiled. “Okay. We’ll use my London flat until we can find something larger. Now, what things do you want to keep, and what to sell? You’d better make an inventory, then the estate agent will know what he’s doing.”

Elsa nodded and reached out to the bureau near her elbow. Drawing a sheet of paper from it she began to jot down items as they occurred to her. Clive watched her for a moment, then with a sandwich halfway to his mouth he paused, looking at a door in a corner of the room. He had noticed it when he had first entered the room, but at that time the angle of sunlight had cast it somewhat in shadow. Now it was perfectly clear, and the brilliant sunshine was playing on eight shiny-headed screws, similar to those in the kitchen cupboard, four driven home on each side.

“Great Scott, don’t tell me that door swings too!” he exclaimed.

“Door?” Elsa looked at him, rousing herself from meditation; then she turned her head. “That? There’s a cellar beyond that. It used to be for coal, then my father had an outhouse made for it. In consequence that door, on the other side, drops down into a dangerous well—so it’s sealed up. You may have noticed how the house juts on one side. That’s the empty area behind that door.”

“Oh, I get it,” Clive acknowledged, resuming eating—but he rather wondered, deep down, if he really did. The passion Elsa Farraday’s father seemed to have had for screwing up doors had had something of the quality of a mania.

“There, I think that’s everything,” Elsa said finally, con­sidering the list she had made and tapping her teeth with the pen­cil. “Typewriter, manuscripts, blank paper, clothes and other necessities, of course— Yes, that’s the lot.”

Clive looked at her and then glanced sideways at the list.

“There’s far more on that sheet than just those items,” he remarked in surprise. “What else is there?”

“Oh, just odds and ends.” For some reason she coloured hotly and a defensive light glinted in her grey eyes. With a quiet pos­sessiveness Clive ignored her obvious emotion and took the list from her.

“What’s this?” he asked, frowning. “The entire contents of the small room over the hall to be kept intact and stored until you give further instructions....”

“It’s private,” she said, her mouth very firm.

“Okay, I don’t want to pry, but it’s hard to find flats these days and a whole extra room full of stuff is going to be a tough proposition. What’s in the room?”

“Oh, things. Personal.”

“Furniture, you mean?”

“Well, yes,” Elsa admitted.

Clive got to his feet. “We’d better see,” he decided. “I want to be knowing what I’m doing. Lead the way.”

She rose, shaking her head.

“I don’t want you to see those things,” she said earnestly. “In that room is something which is very dear to me. You’d just call it junk and probably laugh at me too. Please, Clive—don’t ask me to explain. If it comes to it I’ll find an extra room somewhere myself for them. I don’t want it to be your responsibility.”

He hesitated, driven by the masculine urge to demand a better reaction from his wife-to-be; then his good nature settled the issue.

“All right, if you want to have secrets, have ’em! I wouldn’t spoil your fun for worlds! Come to think of it, I have a secret too.”

“You have?” Her eyes were startled. “What?”

“Oh, nothing very terrible,” he assured her, laughing. “Gosh, what a nervy girl you are sometimes! My secret is a slit in the bathroom wall of my flat into which I push my old razor blades. Ssssh! Don’t tell a soul!”

“Oh, you—you idiot!” she exclaimed, laughing somewhat uncomfortably. “I thought for a moment it was going to be something really important.”

“Like your mysterious furniture?” he asked dryly. “And how are you going to do about your various things? Pity I didn’t bring the car.”

“It doesn’t signify,” she answered. “Ted Husting, the estate agent, knows me well enough, and he’s an auctioneer, real estate agent, remover, and heaven knows what else. I’ll simply tell him what I want done and where to send everything, and that will be that. He’ll find storage space for the stuff in—that room.”

“Uh-huh,” Clive agreed, and they were both silent for a moment.

Clive, indeed, was conscious of a grim impasse. Though he had tossed the matter off lightly his mind was still drifting in vague perplexity to whatever “secret” the girl had.

“I take it that everything can go to your flat except the furniture?” she asked, picking up her handbag.

“Surely— Which reminds me, you haven’t even seen it yet!” Clive gave a start. “Hmm—we’ll remedy that the moment we get back to the city. The address is Grant Apartments, 18a, Marton Street, West Central.”

“I’ll remember,” Elsa said; then after a final glance about her she added, “Well, that’s all for now. Let’s be going. Tomorrow I’ll telephone my bank and have them transfer my account to the nearest London branch.”

Clive followed, her out of the room and across the hall. She made sure the front door was securely locked and together they went down the pathway.

“I still like this district,” Clive said, giving his head a little admiring shake as he glanced about the hot countryside. “All except the swamp, of course.... Anybody ever get lost in it?”

“Plenty of people,” the girl answered quietly. “Strangers as a rule who lost their way in the mist which settles at night around these low-lying parts. Far as I know about a dozen people have gone down at different times. Once, even, I heard one of them scream as he sank. It was in the winter— I never quite for­got it,” she finished, with a little shudder.

Clive glanced at her and gripped her arm reassuringly.

“This is daylight, and summertime,” he said gently. “There’s no earthly good can come of remembering those kind of happenings. Candidly, Elsa, I think you let your mind brood far too much on the unpleasant things of life. Maybe that’s why your thrillers are so horrific.”

“No, that isn’t the reason,” she answered, with a strange little smile. “It’s because—”

She stopped, glancing up, and Clive drew her to the side of the road as a two-seater open car came into view round the bend. The driver sounded the horn once and then applied the brakes. A dark, homely-looking young man with brown eyes, a soft hat push­ed up on his forehead, contemplated the two seriously.

“Clem!” Elsa exclaimed, and for some reason there was look of consternation on her face. “Where on earth did you spring from?”

“Not a matter of springing. I was just coming along to take you out in the ordinary way. It’s Thursday evening, remember—and that’s my usual time for calling.”

“Thursday?” Elsa repeated vaguely. Then she seemed to remem­ber. She glanced at her watch. It was ten minutes to six.

“At six o’clock on Thursdays I always call,” the young man said, a harshness in his deliberate voice. “Why should this Thursday be any different?”

“I’d—forgotten,” Elsa said, making an effort to get herself in hand. She turned to Clive. “This is Clem Hargraves, Clive, a very good friend of mine. This is Clive Hexley, Clem....”

“Also a very good friend of yours?” Clem Hargraves asked.

“As a matter of fact I am,” Clive responded, his jaw hardening. “I can’t say I altogether like your attitude towards my fiancée, either.”

“Your what?” Clem Hargraves gave a start, and Elsa gave an anx­ious glance from one man to the other.

“Fiancée,” Clive repeated deliberately.

“That,” Clem Hargraves said, “definitely does it! Of all the cheap, low-down tricks! I’d never have thought it of you, Elsa.... Oh, congratulations,” he added sourly, and raised his soft hat to a needless height. Then reversing the car swiftly, he aped back up the lane and vanished in clouds of dust.

“Who is that character?” Clive demanded, as the girl stared helplessly after him.

“I was going to become engaged to him,” she responded, after a pause. “Each Thursday evening he used to call for me in his car and we’d go out somewhere together—to Kingswood, or Guildford, to a show of some kind. Only with so many other things happening I’d completely forgotten all about him.”

“You had, eh?” Clive took her arm as they resumed walking. He had the feeling that there was something wrong here. Surely no girl could completely forget the man to whom she was all but engaged? It was more suggestive of her so timing things that they had been bound to meet him, which had given her the chance to snub him. Which seemed to throw a not altogether pleasant side­light on Elsa’s character.

“He’s a commercial,” Elsa explained presently. “Grocery, or something. I’ve known him for years, and since I’ve lived a pretty secluded sort of life he seemed to be about the only man near my own age with whom I came in contact. He used to call at the house when my parents were alive, for grocery orders. We became friends and....” She raised a shoulder negatively. “Well, I really had seriously considered becoming engaged to him. He’d asked me often enough. Then I met you and he went clean out of my mind.”

“Uh-huh,” Clive murmured, and be was perfectly willing to admit that the emotional impact could have banished all other thoughts from Elsa’s mind.

“He’s a dull chap,” Elsa sighed. “Incredibly dull. He plods, whereas I like to trip. I don’t think you can ever escape from yourself by just plodding, do you?”

“Having never tried to escape from myself—which seems to be a passion with you—I can’t say,” Clive answered. Then he laughed slightly. “Y’know, Elsa, come to think of it, we seem to have upset two people with our affairs. Babs Vane, and now this chap. Too bad, of course, but after all they shouldn’t take so much for granted.”

They both became silent again, and it was a quietness in which they finished their journey to the village, Elsa leading the way along the high street to the estate agent’s office. Across his window was a string of qualifications which in any modern town would have excited amusement—AUCTIONEER, REAL ESTATE, REMOVALS, PORTERING, DECORATING.

“Apparently the ‘Admirable Crichton’,” Clive commented, grinning.

Elsa smiled and seized the knob of the office’s front door; then she frowned in annoyance, studying a card behind the glass. It stated briefly: AWAY ARRANGING FUNERAL. BACK FRIDAY.

“Which,” Clive sighed, “seems to be that! Now what do you do? Leave him a note?”

“I can’t do that; there are too many items. I’d be here all night writing them out.... No,” Elsa decided, “I’ll telephone him from London tomorrow. That’ll be good enough.” She glanced at her watch. “And if we want to catch that six-forty train for Guildford with the London connection we’d better hurry. Come on—the station’s half a mile up the street yet.”