In Spite of Thunder

by John Dickson Carr

  “Oh, I think I know what I’m saying!”

  Paula, all slenderness, her clear complexion flushed under steady hazel eyes, got up from the sofa and addressed Dr. Fell.

  “You saw poor Eve in a raging fury, didn’t you? She had put on a blue-and-silver evening-gown. She absolutely reeked of perfume, as she usually does nowadays. Probably she’d rung for a taxi without even telling you. The taxi had driven up, and she ran out and drove away. Isn’t that so?”

  Dr. Fell leaned forward.

  “Bull’s-eye!” he said. “Whang in the centre of the target. Now, then! Can you draw any further inferences from the facts?”

  “The time of night,” declared Paula, with the startled look of one remembering, “the time of night was about ten-thirty. Wasn’t it? Eve took a taxi and drove straight from here to the Hotel du Rhône, where the rest of us saw her.”

  “Good! I was not at the Hotel du Rhône, but I have no doubt you are right. Anything else?”

  “Eve did that because she had just thought of something—or, more probably, had just discovered something or got proof of something that sent her into such a rage. Of course! We should all have seen it for ourselves, last night, if we hadn’t been arguing so much about how a murder could have been committed at Berchtesgaden!”

  “Well, well, well,” observed Desmond Ferrier. He flung away his cigarette into the fireplace. “Don’t stop there, sweetie-pie. Don’t turn it up now. Go just a little step further, Paula, and you’ll land me in more trouble than Job ever knew with all the boils on his bottom.”

  Paula started back. “What on earth are you talking about? Trouble? How?”

  “Ask Dr. Fell.”

  “Sir,” Dr. Fell said with fiery embarrassment, “I take no pleasure in all this.”

  “Ask him, Paula!”

  “Yes? What is it?”

  “No sooner had Mrs. Ferrier driven away in the taxi,” said Dr. Fell, “than her husband here came roaring back in the Rolls-Royce. He could scarcely have missed her by a minute. Those two cars must have passed each other close to this house. I encountered new surprises and had new glimpses into the artistic temperament.”

  “In what way?”

  “When I told Mr. Ferrier what had happened, he went off the deep end too. He insisted on driving straight back to Geneva, and taking me with him. He would answer no questions or meet no objections. He said that Miss Audrey Page was at a night-club off the Place Neuve; he left me at the night-club, ostensibly to ‘watch’ Miss Page, while he followed his wife to the Hotel du Rhône.”

  Paula’s eyes first widened and then narrowed.

  “But that’s absurd!”

  “What’s absurd about it?” inquired Ferrier. “There are some things so obvious I didn’t even see them when I was gassing about them. Just ask yourself some of the questions the coppers are bound to ask me.”

  After a moment of being shaken, it was plain he had begun to take heightened and super-theatrical pleasure in his own position.

  “How did I know Eve had gone to the Hotel du Rhône? That’s one question. What had Eve discovered, undoubtedly in my bedroom, which made her run to that same hotel in pursuit of me? Above everything else, if I really believed Eve might try to kill Audrey Page because Audrey and I were having a roll in the hay, why did I let Audrey come to this house last night?”

  Outside the windows of the drawing-room, above a formal rose-garden, the sky had become so dark that it was barely possible for them to see each other’s faces by the little yellow light over the portrait.

  Thunder-thick air pressed down the heat and would release no burst of rain. Paula Catford pressed her hands against her cheeks.

  “Audrey Page?”

  “Don’t be wilfully obtuse, Paula.”

  “I am not being obtuse, wilfully or otherwise. I am asking—”

  “The cops’ answer,” Ferrier said brutally, “may well be murder. Eve thought, or told me she thought,” and his eyes speculated, “I was trying to beat Phil’s time and marry the girl myself. I wasn’t supposed to be in love with her, but then I never am in love with ’em, am I? So Audrey and I got together and settled Eve’s hash. It’s happened before, once or twice in this world. Isn’t that the position, Dr. Fell?”

  “Oh, ah! Yes. I greatly fear they may have some such notion.”

  Paula’s tongue crept out and moistened her lips.

  “But you—you didn’t do it, did you? My God, you didn’t?”

  “No, I did not. I hadn’t a damn thing to do with it. The point is, how do I answer the charge when they say I did?”

  “You—you weren’t having an affair with her? Audrey Page? That over-intense and over-romantic young lady who’s so mad about Brian Innes that she let herself be persuaded to come here in the hope he’d follow and take her away?”

  Nobody spoke for fully ten seconds.

  Dr. Fell, leaning back, was watching Desmond Ferrier with absorbed attention. Ferrier’s smile had grown broader and more than a little cruel. But Brian, who hardly saw either of them, strode towards Paula. And she turned to face him.

  “Now really, Mr. Innes!”

  “Yes? You were saying?”

  “Do I have to say it? Aren’t you, who must be a reasonably civilized sort of person, the one who’s being a little obtuse now? That’s what the girl did, you know. Every word she said about you, and I daresay every word she said to you as well, made that plain to anyone. When she ’phoned this morning and actually asked you to take her away, surely you guessed it for yourself?”

  X

  “DIDN’T YOU GUESS it, then?” Paula insisted in a louder voice.

  It was though she talked less at him than at herself, a lonely and slender figure, outlined against a long window. But she met Brian’s gaze steadily.

  “Forgive me if I sound rude,” she begged. “It happens to be true. A woman like Audrey Page can’t really fall for anyone except someone older than herself and someone she can glamourize. Like you. Or like that man over by the fireplace who thinks everything so very funny. Didn’t it ever occur to you: about yourself?”

  “Yes, it occurred to me,” Brian said honestly. “It occurred to me more than once. I hoped it was true; I’m still hoping so. But it seems to me the person who gets the poor deal in this business is Philip Ferrier.”

  The man by the fireplace laughed.

  “Never try to be a gentleman, old boy. It doesn’t pay. Take what you can get and be thankful you can get it.” His tone changed. “Marriage is a different thing, though. We’ll have to prevent you from marrying her.”

  “You think you can?”

  “I think I can try.”

  Paula, as though she found all men past hope when their vanity or arrogance happened to be roused, went on to something that appeared to concern her more.

  “Desmond, stop this! If poor Eve thought you wanted Audrey Page, it explains a lot I couldn’t understand. I couldn’t understand why the girl was so frightened. I couldn’t understand why Eve was so sweet about her until Audrey actually walked in here. But stop acting, please! This isn’t funny in the least.”

  “Acting, eh? Do you imagine I think it’s funny?”

  “You seem to.”

  “Then think again, angel-face. I’m laughing, if you could call it that, because my story is bloody silly and yet every word of it is the truth. I’ve played parts like this; I never expected to do a real one. Question me yourself: why don’t you?”

  “Desmond, I …”

  “Come on, Paula! Those big eyes of yours don’t fool anybody. You’ve pried some statements out of people who never knew how indiscreet they were being until they saw themselves quoted on the front page. Have a whack at it; try your technique on me!”

  “Desmond, I can’t! Not now.”

  “Then somebody ought to do it, just to see how I behave.” Ferrier turned a savage face towards Brian. “What about you, old boy? Care to question me?”

  “There’s nothing I should like bette
r.”

  “Then fire away. That is, unless Dr. Fell …?”

  But Dr. Fell was saying nothing. Absorbed, intent, a trifle eerie-looking, his gaze moved from Ferrier to Paula and back to Ferrier again. If it badly disturbed Paula, it had no effect at all on the latter. Ferrier’s personality, brocaded dressing-gown and all, dominated the room like Othello’s.

  “The oracle and augur is silent. He won’t be drawn. The field is clear for the paint-mixers and the lesser amateurs. That is, if you know how to question a witness.”

  “I’ll try.” Whereupon Brian, in rage and haste, blundered at the very start. “Were you, or weren’t you, having an affair with Audrey?”

  “Ho! That’s all he can think of!”

  “Were you, or weren’t you?”

  “No, I was not. Anything else?”

  “Yes. Mr. Ferrier, do you keep a diary?”

  There was a silence as sudden as the stroke of a gong. Paula looked up quickly. Dr. Fell’s eyes moved back and forth.

  “Yes, I keep a diary. I’ve kept one for twenty years. Why do you ask?”

  “Are you willing to hand that diary over to the police?”

  “No, naturally I’m not. Any more than I want it published in the Continental edition of the Daily Mail. Who would?”

  “You left this house just before seven o’clock yesterday evening, and didn’t return until half-past ten. Where did you go?”

  “As I told Dr. Fell, I was having dinner alone. If you can call it a dinner.”

  “Where were you?”

  “At the Cave of the Witches.”

  “The Cave of the Witches? What’s that?”

  “Oh, no! I’m answering questions, old boy. I’m not teaching you what you already ought to know.”

  “Why did you suddenly decide to have dinner alone?”

  “Because I couldn’t take my dear wife’s affectations any longer. Or her jaw. Besides, I wanted to think about somebody.”

  Paula, clenching her hands and with a little gasp as though she saw only hopelessness in his attitude, turned away and hurried to the sideboard between the two front windows. There, reaching out towards a decanter of brandy, she stopped before touching it. Ferrier watched Brian with a fixed, agreeable smile.

  “At half-past ten, when you heard Mrs. Ferrier had rushed away in a taxi, you drove straight to the Hotel du Rhône. Please answer your own question: how did you know she had gone there?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Oh?”

  “But it was a natural enough assumption,” Ferrier retorted swiftly. “Eve went to the dining-room, they tell me. I frequently had dinner there; so did all the rest of us. It was the natural place for her to look for me.”

  “And you to look for her? When she’d already had dinner at this house?”

  “Why not?”

  “That was the only reason you went to the hotel?”

  “Yes!”

  “Very well. If you thought Audrey was in danger, why did you let her come here?”

  “Because I was pretty sure my dear wife was bluffing. I didn’t think there was any real danger. Audrey herself didn’t think there was any real danger; ask her!”

  “How do you know what Audrey thought?”

  “Ask her, I tell you! Well, we were both wrong: my dear wife killed herself and tried to put the blame on Audrey. Eve hadn’t any cause for being suspicious, but she believed she had.” The same fixed look, almost a glare, returned to Ferrier’s eyes. “Their so-called murder was a suicide; the only crime those cops will ever find.”

  And Brian, on horns and hooks of doubt, couldn’t make up his mind.

  “By the cream-faced loon of Dunsinane,” Ferrier exclaimed softly, and snapped his fingers, “I’m getting rather good at explanations. Leave the police to me.”

  Paula whirled round from the sideboard. “Desmond, for heaven’s sake be careful!”

  “Leave ’em to me, I tell you!”

  “Look here,” said Dr. Gideon Fell, “this has got to stop.”

  The sharpness of that common-sense voice, falling on heated nerves, brought silence without bringing peace. Slowly, with infinite labour, Dr. Fell rose to his feet.

  “Sir,” he said with thunderous earnestness, “you had better face the fact that your wife’s death was murder. I cannot help you, nor can anyone else, if you brought me all the way from London to practice a piece of deception. Have you anything to tell me now?”

  “No.”

  “Let me repeat,” said Dr. Fell, caught between wrath and deep worry, “your wife’s death was murder.”

  “Sweet Christ,” Ferrier breathed, “I didn’t want her to die!” Very briefly his self-control skidded; tears sprang into the eyes of Paula Catford; afterwards Ferrier had himself in hand again, urbane as ever.

  “Your wife’s death was murder. …”

  “Have you got to go on saying that, magister?”

  “I fear so. The police are a deadly enough danger, to begin with, if you care for your neck at all. You walk amid other dangers too. They are not the only persons threatening you.”

  “Who else is?”

  “Sir Gerald Hathaway. Or, at least, he is threatening me. I am almost sure he knows how this murder was committed. Do you know how it was committed?”

  “No. I’ll work that one out in good time. Besides, what has Hathaway got against me? I never saw the bloke in my life until last night.”

  “He has not necessarily got anything against you. But if he can show me up for the fool and the duffer I undoubtedly am …!”

  “Magister, are you sure he’s not bluffing? Look here!”

  Moving away from the fireplace, Ferrier looked round him and discovered the table which had served as a sort of fire-screen when Brian first entered the drawing-room. Pulling the table back to its former position, he took the photograph album from Dr. Fell’s hands and put it down on the table. On the floor beside another chair he found a large book of press-cuttings, which he set beside it. Plucking Hathaway’s hat from the edge of the mantelpiece, he dropped the hat beside both.

  “Hathaway is quite a card, isn’t he? Until three o’clock this morning he stood just here and lectured us like a professor before a class.”

  “I need no reminding,” said Dr. Fell.

  “He very coolly accused Eve of poisoning that rich boy-friend, Hector Matthews, and assumed she wouldn’t kick him out of the house for saying so. In which, to do the old girl justice, he was right.” Ferrier gnawed at his under-lip. “You say you agree with him?”

  “About what?” Dr. Fell asked sharply.

  “He showed,” retorted Ferrier, “all the ways in which Matthews couldn’t have been poisoned. Matthews couldn’t have swallowed poison, to begin with, because he took nothing to eat or drink. Matthews couldn’t have been injected with poison, because witnesses were standing or sitting beside him all the time. Matthews couldn’t have inhaled poison, because it would have affected others too. In short, there wasn’t a way left.”

  “So it seems.”

  “And yet, if we’re to write down Matthews’s death as murder, we’ve got to cover and explain all those points against it?”

  “Sir, need you belabour the obvious? Yes! We must do just that.”

  Ferrier pointed, like Mephistopheles at Faust.

  “So if you’re thinking they’re certain to pitch on me as the murderer of my wife, don’t be so afraid for my neck. They can’t see through a millstone. They can’t see what isn’t there. I wasn’t at Berchtesgaden in ’39.”

  “Tut! The murderer of your wife was not necessarily at Berchtesgaden either. You know that as well as I do.”

  “What do you mean, I know it?” The blood jumped into Ferrier’s forehead-veins. “If I killed Eve, it must have been for the sake of Audrey Page. I made out the case against myself. Don’t be misled, any of you,” and he looked at Brian, “by a pleasant house or an easy style of living or two expensive cars in the garage. The house runs on credit; the Rolls w
as bought on credit; the Bentley’s mine, but I’ve had it since I played Hamlet at the old Royalty Theatre in ’26. That’s why—”

  Ferrier stopped abruptly.

  Dr. Fell, with the expression of one struck across the back of the head with a fairly heavy club, was staring at a corner of the ceiling.

  “The motor-cars,” he breathed, in a hollow voice. “The motorcars! Hour after hour in a spiritual abyss, endless searching of rooms and even of a cellar, and all because I neglected to think of the motor-cars.”

  Here Dr. Fell, fastening on his eyeglasses more firmly, blinked round towards Brian and made incoherent noises, both of thanks and apology.

  “You must forgive me,” he said, “for not being alert to your hint. You yourself reminded me of the motor-cars earlier in the day. Once upon a time, incredible at this may seem, I owned a car too. I could get inside it; I could even drive it. I might not understand the mechanism, but at least I owned a car.”

  “Is this supposed to mean something?” asked Ferrier, who clearly did not understand. “It would be more interesting to see the mechanism in your head.”

  Dr. Fell’s mood changed.

  “You are welcome to see it, insofar as it concerns you. By thunder, you’ve got to see it! Time is running out. We can’t wait much longer.”

  “For what?”

  “For a little frankness on your part. First, look out for Hathaway in more respects than one. It’s true he gave us a lecture publicly. You also observed, no doubt, he had something of a conference with Mrs. Ferrier in private?”

  “With Eve? When was this?”

  “Shortly before we all turned in. They were in the dining-room there, having an earnest talk and not too much at daggers-drawn. Come! Surely you noticed it?”

  “I wasn’t myself, magister. I’d taken a good many drinks.”

  “In candour, so had I. Hathaway and Mrs. Ferrier were stone-cold sober. I strongly suspect Hathaway’s errand in Geneva this morning has something to do with a cable-office. He may be trying to get some information which I obtained, before I left London, from Scotland Yard.”

  Paula Catford, plainly puzzled as well as startled out of her wits, straightened up at the sideboard. The effect on Ferrier was even more pronounced.