In Spite of Thunder

by John Dickson Carr

  “Yes, my dear?” the older man demanded. He was like a sharp if indulgent uncle. “What is it? What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing at all. I was thinking—well! Of Berchtesgaden. Can that be seventeen years ago?”

  “Just over seventeen years. In those days they called you the Infant Prodigy of Fleet Street, didn’t they?”

  “Yes; that’s what I was thinking. My God!”

  Paula made a wry mouth and shivered and retreated.

  “In ’39,” she went on, “I had just published my first travel-book. I wrote the most horribly inaccurate descriptions, I fired off silly-clever political views, in a way that turns me hot and cold when I think of it today. And yet I wonder if any of us, really, is a bit more grown up now?”

  “I wonder too,” Hathaway said sharply. “You know why I’m here?”

  “Of course I know.”

  “Well, then! It’s about Mrs. Ferrier. Didn’t she ask you to give her an alibi in the murder of Hector Matthews?”

  “We can’t talk here,” Paula said after a hard-breathing pause. “Come with me, please.”

  “If we go into the bar …?”

  “No! Not in the bar, or I shall have too many. This way.”

  At the front of the foyer, facing the quai, glass doors in a glass façade glittered open as a party of guests laughed their way back to the hotel. To the right of the front doors, down two steps and past a newspaper-kiosk, the marble floor had been set out with easy-chairs for a lounge. Paula led them there.

  “You see, Sir Gerald, I’m afraid it wasn’t only your distinguished name that brought me from Stockholm. I had to see you before you saw Eve.”

  “Yes, dear lady?”

  “The Infant Prodigy of Fleet Street was a very silly person. But I was very lucky in one way. I must have had a guardian angel, or an innate sense of decency, or something else I haven’t got now.” Paula straightened up. “When that man Matthews went head-first over the parapet, and Eve screamed as she saw him fall, I didn’t use it as a news-story. I didn’t do what I’m afraid you’re trying to do now. I couldn’t hurt her that much. Don’t you understand? I saw it happen.”

  “You saw her push him?”

  “She didn’t push him. She wasn’t anywhere near him.”

  “Ah!”

  They stood amid leather chairs, with a sofa on which Hathaway softly put down hat and brief-case. Echoes struck and rattled back.

  “I saw it through a window. The others, those fat officers who were ogling her so much I was jealous: maybe they saw it, maybe they didn’t. I don’t know. But I was looking out of a window towards the terrace.—Don’t you understand what I’m telling you? I saw it happen!”

  “What did happen?”

  “Eve didn’t, that’s all. She wasn’t within twelve or fifteen feet of where he was standing. She called to him, I think. There was a little wind. All she did was bend forward at the parapet, and turn slightly to the left, and point at something on a hill below.”

  “Ah!” said Hathaway.

  That one syllable, so often repeated, might have been comic without its sudden note of enlightenment. Paula Catford stood motionless. Glass cases for luxury-goods, set round the walls with little lights inside them, silhouetted her soft slender figure and threw a glow on the dark hair.

  “The Infant Prodigy of Fleet Street, Sir Gerald, is telling you the truth and the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Don’t you believe it?”

  “Dear lady! Of course I believe it. As far as it goes.”

  “As far as it goes?”

  “Dear lady! If I do our friend an injustice—”

  “Oh, stop this!”

  “Mrs. Ferrier had no need to touch her victim. She was used to being stared at; she expected to be stared at; she would never have dared touch him. He did turn faint, I grant you; but not from the altitude. I am now quite convinced she had drugged or poisoned him. And I think I see how she did it.”

  IV

  HATHAWAY, PEERING ROUND the side of his beard and moustache as though half triumphant and half defiant, bent forward to unfasten the clasp of the brief-case.

  “I’ve got an album of photographs here,” he continued, “which may convince both of you. Hector Matthews was a very tall man: six feet three inches, to be exact. A fairly low parapet, to him, could be a death-trap. Once you’ve drugged or poisoned him (eh?), you make him lean forward by pointing out and down.—Stop!”

  Brian, with bursting lungs, had been about to comment.

  The other man wouldn’t hear of it. Out of the brief-case on the sofa he took a large cardboard album, much thumbed and time-battered.

  “You have seen this before, I think?” And he held it up. “To keep any sort of photograph album is a loathsome and provincial habit. I don’t recommend it, except for a scientific (a purely scientific!) study of crime.”

  “Did you say scientific?”

  “I did.”

  “What else?”

  “Every photograph pasted in here, with the exception of the first one, was taken by the official Ministry of Propaganda in Germany. Pay no attention to the first one. That doesn’t concern us.”

  But it did concern them.

  “Hathaway, shall I tell you something about yourself?”

  The other man, as though struck in the face, opened the album so violently that he all but tore it apart. When it opened at the first page, a large full-face photograph of Eve Ferrier looked out with a glossy vividness as though alive in black and white.

  “Look at that!” Brian said. “Look at her. Then listen to yourself speak.”

  “Well?”

  “To anyone who didn’t know you, you’d sound like an obnoxious bounder with a personal spite against Mrs. Ferrier. But you’re not that. You’re a thoroughly good fellow.”

  Hathaway’s voice went high.

  “‘Obnoxious bounder.’ Confound your pompousness.” Breathing thinly, he flung the album on the sofa. “And don’t stand there and boom at me; this is insufferable; I won’t have it.”

  “Very well. I am as pompous and stuffy as you think I am. But somebody has got to be. We’re not the police, and Mrs. Ferrier is no case-history in a prison-record. You’re forgetting that; I was in danger of forgetting it myself until Miss Catford said what she did say.”

  “Thanks!” whispered Paula, who had taken a step forward. “Thanks!”

  Hathaway ran round behind the sofa, facing them over the back of it as though he were being physically attacked.

  “There’s no case against Mrs. Ferrier? Is that what you say, Innes?”

  “That’s it exactly. This talk of drugs or—”

  “Oh, no! I’ll remind you of what you yourself heard at the Hotel Metropole tonight. Desmond Ferrier says his wife is trying to poison him.”

  Back they swung in the old, ugly circle.

  “Poison: that’s the operative word. I overheard it at the door, so don’t deny it. That’s why I didn’t intrude. I ‘hid,’ as you so sneeringly put it, because I wanted time to think. And in a telephone-box, just remember, because I had to put off a dinner-engagement with this lady here. That’s a part of the case; don’t think it’s not. And I shall be very happy to take it to Mrs. Ferrier herself.”

  “Yes, Sir Gerald, I’m quite sure you will,” said Paula. “So I think you ought to hear there’s not a word of truth in it.”

  “Madam, the value of your opinion …!”

  “It’s not my opinion. Please! I can show you proof, but I don’t even ask you to accept my word or anybody else’s.”

  “Indeed? Whose testimony is being offered?”

  “Your own. You were with us. You were one of the party that spent one night at the guest-house; and then, next morning, we all drove on up to Hitler’s lodge for a lunch we never had. If Eve drugged or poisoned Mr. Matthews in some way, how did she do it?”

  “Madam, we’re here to determine that point!”

  “I couldn’t agree more. How did she do it? And when?
And where?”

  Here Paula lifted a trembling hand as though to shade her eyes.

  “I don’t understand that part about Mr. Ferrier,” she cried. “I don’t even think it matters. Whatever he said, you can put it down as a joke. How stupid people are! They’re always associating Mr. Ferrier with Shakespeare. And yet, if they’ve ever seen him as Shaw’s Caesar in Caesar and Cleopatra, or as Higgins in Pygmalion, they should know he’s best in satiric comedy. He’s like that in real life. No, no, I can see what you’re going to ask. I don’t know him well, though I’ve met him often. Eve says he’s like that; so does everyone else.”

  “Go on, dear lady,” Hathaway cried in sudden suavity. “Continue my interesting conversation with yourself.”

  “Wait, please! I was thinking. …”

  Paula’s eyes, of that luminous and disturbing quality, looked past Brian as though she had observed something in the foyer. But she did not even see the marble-floored foyer, or the colours of cream and orange and black, or the glittering glass doors to the street.

  “The Gasthof züm Türken! That was the name of the guesthouse, or hostel, or whatever it was, where our party spent the night. Do you remember?”

  “All too well. I have a photograph here—”

  “Never mind the photograph! Next morning the four of our particular group, you and Eve and Mr. Matthews and I, all had breakfast at the same table. There was nobody else at the table. It was just eight o’clock. Is that true?”

  “Granted, granted!”

  “Mr. Matthews wouldn’t have a mouthful to eat or drink. He said he never did at breakfast. You called him a food-faddist; you urged him to have a cup of coffee at least, because you said we shouldn’t get lunch until half-past one. Is that true?”

  “I don’t deny. …”

  “From that moment onward the four of us stayed together in a very close little group. That’s natural; people do; Eve was the only one of us who spoke German. We sat on the terrace together. We waited for the cars together. We drove up to the Eagle’s Nest in the same car. Between eight o’clock and at least a quarter past one, we were closer together than I am to you now. Do you agree?”

  Hathaway stood motionless, his eyes searching.

  “Sir Gerald, do you agree?”

  “In candour and honesty: very well. Yes!”

  “At a quarter past one, as soon as we had reached the Eagle’s Nest, Eve and Mr. Matthews went straight out on the balcony-terrace? And it was only a matter of seconds, thirty or forty for all I remember, that Eve screamed? You’re nodding, aren’t you? Then when and where and how was the poor man poisoned?”

  “I might remind you, dear lady! The victim was showing signs of this ‘altitude’ giddiness by one o’clock. If the dosage occurred before eight in the morning …”

  “Five hours?” Paula breathed. “Honestly; five hours? I’ve known a lot of amateur detectives, believe me; every paper has one. Can you name any poison or drug, even the slowest on earth or one in capsule form, that would hold off for five hours?”

  “No. There is none. I concede it.”

  Hathaway strode round from behind the sofa.

  “Stop!” he added. “I further allow that the victim took nothing to eat or drink between eight o’clock and one-fifteen. What is more, with all of us so close at all times, the murderer could not have used a hypodermic needle or any form of subcutaneous injection. By the same token we may rule out a chloroform sponge or its equivalent. The whole thing, I grant you, seems flatly impossible. And yet—!”

  “And yet?”

  The photograph album, where it had been thrown down on the sofa, still lay open at a full face of Eve Ferrier yearning upwards. Hathaway pointed.

  “A minute ago,” he said, with malevolent eyes on Brian, “you told me to look at that. All right, my fine friend. You look at it.”

  “I’m looking! What about it?”

  “Between eight o’clock and one-fifteen,” announced Hathaway, “she killed Hector Matthews.”

  “How? Do you mind telling me how?”

  “By God,” said Hathaway from deep in his throat, “I do indeed mind telling you how.”

  “Do you intend to tell anybody?”

  “At the proper time, yes.”

  He was still pointing at the photograph. By this time neither Brian nor Paula could look at anything else.

  Brian had almost forgotten this woman’s striking beauty. The picture suggested colour without showing it. Eve Ferrier’s heavy fair hair, done in a style of the nineteen-thirties, surrounded a face redeemed from classic regularity by heavy-lidded eyes and a full mouth. The eyes were wide-spaced, the nose short. You might fancy a hint of mockery or cruelty round that mouth; but it was only your own imagination. Whether or not Eve Ferrier had a sensual nature, few women knew better how to express it with a look. She was not quite smiling.

  “You see?” inquired Hathaway.

  “See what?” Brian was beginning. Then he caught himself up, and wouldn’t be drawn.

  For Gerald Hathaway was really triumphant. Nor was this all.

  At the other side of the foyer, towards the east, the orchestra in the dining-room began to play a popular air. These three scarcely heard it.

  During a space of perhaps ten seconds, while certain forces were locked and fighting above the photograph, Brian became aware with heightened senses of all visual shapes and colours: of Hathaway in full formal evening clothes with a crumpled shirt-front, whereas neither he nor Paula had troubled to dress formally; of the big windows to the Quai Turrettini, and the night-porter hailing a taxi outside; but, in an impressionistic sense beyond these, of the change in Paula Catford.

  Paula, who had been standing close enough to brush his shoulder, suddenly drew back. She was no longer quite the ‘gentle’ figure of the vicar’s daughter.

  “I can’t force you to talk, Sir Gerald. I’m only a humble member of the press.”

  “It is wise of you, dear lady, to accept that fact.”

  The voices flew out and clashed.

  “But you can’t mind telling me,” retorted Paula, “what anybody can find from the record. Wasn’t there a post-mortem examination of Mr. Matthews’s body?”

  “If they held one, Miss Catford—”

  “‘If?’ By German law, even under the Nazis, wasn’t it necessary to have a full post-mortem in all cases of violent death? And, if Mr. Matthews was poisoned, wouldn’t they have discovered it?”

  “That’s exactly what I mean. They never published the results. You may draw your own conclusions.”

  “Then what was the poison? Or have you made all this up? And why do you hate Eve as much as you do?”

  Hathaway went rather white behind beard and moustache.

  “I have not made it up,” he answered clearly. “You may call me a busybody, as Innes does. But I am neither a knave nor a liar, and I don’t make dupes of people. If this is a journalistic trick to make me speak …”

  “It’s not. I swear it’s not!”

  “Hate Mrs. Ferrier? I don’t hate her. You seem to think this extraordinary character, who conveniently inherited a great fortune when Matthews died, somehow needs to be treated with kid gloves or at least the greatest kindliness.”

  “I do think so. And she hasn’t any ‘great fortune’ now; she and—and Mr. Ferrier are flat broke. But that isn’t the point. How well do you know Eve? How long has it been since you last talked to her?”

  “Talked to her?”

  “Yes! Please tell me!”

  “My dear young lady, I have not set eyes on Mrs. Ferrier in seventeen years. The last time I talked to her was at Berchtesgaden on the day we’ve been discussing just now.”

  Paula whispered a curse.

  But she did not speak. She was looking past Hathaway towards the entrance of the hotel Hathaway swung round to follow her glance, and so did Brian.

  The night-porter outside, first saluting, pushed open one big glass door. Into the foyer, amid a backwash of perfum
e, swept a woman wearing a shimmering blue-and-silver evening gown curved to make the most of a magnificent figure.

  The woman halted just inside, head raised, every gesture of an unconscious graceful fluency larger than life. If she had turned her head to the left, she would have seen Paula and Hathaway and Brian. But she did not turn. Instead she looked towards the dining-room at the opposite side. You would have guessed her suppressed rage or fear even without a glimpse of her face.

  Gerald Hathaway, incredulous, suddenly cast a glance at the open photograph album—and back again.

  “That’s not …?”

  “Shut up!” Brian said under his breath.

  The woman in blue and silver, shoulders moving and fingers with red-varnished nails gripping round a handbag, hurried towards the dining-room. There, at the doorway, she seemed to be asking questions of a head-waiter. Then, with the same unconscious if exaggerated grace, she swept back across the foyer in the direction of the three who waited. What warned her to look up they never learned. But again she stopped.

  The hands of the clock stood at twenty minutes to eleven.

  “Well?” asked Paula Catford in a ventriloquial tone. “She can’t avoid meeting us now. What about it, Sir Gerald. Are you going to accuse her of murder?”

  Hathaway did not reply.

  “Are you?” whispered Paula, tugging at his sleeve. “Or, as Mr. Innes says, is it the business of the police and not yours?”

  Still he did not reply.

  Eve Ferrier, caught off guard, regarded them with a dismay she could not hide. But they were not now concerned with her mission here. The light lay too clearly on her features.

  It is hardly a tragedy that the face of a once-famous beauty is no longer its smiling image of twenty years ago. Only the too-romantic could expect it to be. On the other hand, the face that looked at them should not have been as nerve-ravaged and sagging as this one. The shock was there; Eve had seen it.