In Spite of Thunder

by John Dickson Carr

  “Remember what has just happened to her. She has just stormed out of her own house, this house, after summoning a taxi. She has just read someone’s diary; it has broken her soap-bubble universe and brought the illusions tumbling down. She has left this villa in a state of both fear and fury. Why?

  “All three of you saw her, at a quarter to eleven on Thursday night, when she stormed into the hotel. Nothing, to me at least, has been more vivid than the various descriptions you reported to the police. She wears unbecoming finery, dressed for conquest. She wears even more perfume than usual. She goes straight to the dining-room. Why?”

  Still Dr. Fell held up his hand.

  “Again before you answer,” he said in a bitter and despairing tone, “think of one more indication. Up to the time she saw Audrey Page, later that same night after reading the diary, she has shown no hatred towards Miss Page. Everything centres and burns round that diary, wherever it is or whoever has it now. And so, having read the diary, she goes straight to the dining-room of the Hotel du Rhône.

  “All may not be lost, she thinks. She lives on illusion, even when her mind and heart both know better. ‘I want to be friends with everybody!’ Hear her cry that, as she said it to all of you; and remember that Eve Ferrier, like most other women amid the ruin of a dream, still hoped. Having remembered all that …”

  Hathaway thrust out his beard.

  “Having remembered it,” he snapped, “are we meant to draw some deduction from it?”

  “By thunder, you are!” said Dr. Fell, blowing out his cheeks. “Eve Ferrier had committed no crime, but she had committed what old-fashioned people still consider an offence. In the light of these facts, ask yourselves what offence Eve Ferrier had committed? And what was it she most wanted to do?”

  “Well?”

  “She had committed adultery, which had been going on for some time,” said Dr. Fell. “She was mad-determined to divorce her husband, and marry the man with whom she was in love.”

  Hathaway’s voice went up to a croak.

  “What hell’s nonsense is this? She was in love with her husband.”

  “Sir,” said Dr. Fell, “are you sure?”

  “She told us—”

  “Oh, yes. In keeping up the pretence she and her lover had been maintaining for some time, she was obliged to say that. But you have all commented, I think, on her utter dismay when she turned away from the dining-room at the hotel—where she had been inquiring for a certain person—and saw the three of you standing there?”

  “She was inquiring for her husband!”

  “Oh, no,” corrected Dr. Fell.

  If Hathaway did not understand, it was plain that Paula Catford understood only too well. Paula, corpse-white, turned away and put her face in her hands.

  “I respectfully submit,” said Dr. Fell, glancing towards the partly open door, “that this could not have been so. If she had really been looking for her husband, she would never have gone straight to the Hotel du Rhône. I submit this on evidence which is certainly known to Brian Innes.”

  Then his voice boomed out in the quiet study.

  “It is not easy to rattle Desmond Ferrier. I tried it, with deplorable results. Desmond Ferrier became rattled only yesterday afternoon, when Aubertin was pressing him too hard. Desmond Ferrier blurted out the fact that his favourite place to eat is the Béarn, and he prefers always to go there. He made a further slip when he added the name of the person who does prefer the Hotel du Rhône. It’s bad luck, after all his frantic efforts to shield the real murderer.”

  Dr. Fell now spoke as though addressing someone downstairs.

  “We need not go on with this. The police have the murderer’s diary. Since obviously it was not Desmond Ferrier’s diary, and since only one other man lives at this villa, it requires little shrewdness to see …”

  Outside, in the hall, somebody shouted a command in French.

  The door to the hall banged wide open. Somebody, running hard for the left-hand window of those two full-length windows, plunged past Dr. Fell. The centre-table, with all its exhibits, went over with a crash.

  Gustave Aubertin, in the doorway, called out another command. Two policemen, each appearing on an opposite side of the balcony, caught the man who had run for the balcony in an attempt to jump to death in the way Eve herself had gone. Brian Innes does not like to remember the thrashing and screaming afterwards.

  “Our strategy, it seems,” observed the Director of Police, “was well pursued after all.”

  “Don’t call it our strategy,” said Dr. Fell. “For God’s sake never call it our strategy.”

  And he stood for a moment breathing hard amid the debris of a rubber mask, an automatic pistol, two books, and a shattered bowl of roses.

  “Oh, yes,” he added to the others. “The murderer is Philip Ferrier.”

  XIX

  TWO NIGHTS LATER, in the restaurant called L’Or du Rhône in the rue du Stand, four persons had finished dinner. They sat in that back room where chicken is so admirably prepared at an open fireplace; and, if you are sufficiently favoured a guest and the night is hot enough, the management will put you close enough to the fire to make your head reel.

  The night of Monday, August 13, however, had turned cool. Dr. Fell, Audrey Page, Brian Innes, and Sir Gerald Hathaway were in a mood as subdued as the evening by the time coffee and brandy were set before them.

  “Do you still think, Sir Gerald,” inquired Dr. Fell, “it is a pleasant pastime actually to deal with criminal cases?”

  “In candour,” replied Hathaway, who had lighted a cigar but did not look any too well, “in candour—no.”

  Brian glanced sideways, rather hesitantly, at Audrey.

  “But Philip Ferrier?” He spoke incredulously. “Philip Ferrier?”

  “You thought he could not act?” asked Dr. Fell. “He is Desmond Ferrier’s son. This young man who claimed not to understand artists, believe me, is in some ways “a better artist than any of you.”

  Audrey spoke without looking up. “What will happen to him?”

  “Life imprisonment,” answered Brian. “As I told his father, in the Canton of Geneva there is no death-penalty for murder at the moment.”*

  “Stop!” Hathaway said irascibly. “I will eat humble pie, if you insist. But I want to be clear about this. Did his father know he was guilty?”

  Dr. Fell upreared above the meerschaum pipe he was lighting.

  “Great Scott, no! But his father most horribly feared he might be, and feared at the start there was some relationship between his son and his wife. When he finally realized his son must be a born criminal, it was too late. Murder had been committed. The matter had been taken out of amateur hands (mine) where Desmond Ferrier could control it, and put into the hands of the police: where he could only try to smother it. In doing so, you will note, he was compelled to play a part of weirder irony than most of those he had played on the stage. And the father did not relish it.

  “Indeed, it is an understatement to say he did not relish it. There were times when he was in a frame of mind near delirium. If I were to explain …”

  Hathaway rapped on the table.

  “Please do so!” he said. “Explain. From the beginning.”

  Reflections of firelight danced across the ceiling in the back room. Dr. Fell, a shaggy figure who looked cross-eyed and almost witless as he at last lighted the pipe to his satisfaction, blew out smoke and muttered to himself.

  “Well. From the beginning,” he conceded.

  “A month ago, then, Desmond Ferrier paid a special visit to London to see me and beg me to come to Geneva for a visit. He said he was badly worried. He told me the story of his wife at Berchtesgaden seventeen years ago; he added (always in a joking way, so that he could retract if necessary) the hint of fears his wife would poison him.”

  “But Ferrier didn’t honestly believe that, did he?” asked Brian. “I remember your telling him straight out he didn’t believe it.”

  “Wai
t!” urged Dr. Fell. “If you allow me to continue, the sequence of events should become clear.”

  Once more Dr. Fell drew reflectively at the pipe.

  “Quite plainly, even to these dull eyes and ears of mine, he was on edge about some situation in his household. He was not telling the full truth; he was shielding someone for some reason. Several years before that, as you know, I had learned of the Berchtesgaden episode from Sir Gerald here—”

  “Bah!” said Hathaway.

  “At the same time Desmond Ferrier visited me, as we afterwards learned, Mrs. Ferrier began her agitation to prove her own innocence in the Berchtesgaden matter by summoning Miss Catford and Sir Gerald. (But she had invited you too, Miss Page; why?) Meanwhile, I was faced with this odd, uneasy tale from Desmond Ferrier. What situation did upset him in his own household? Whomever he was attempting to shield, it was not really his wife. On the contrary, he was making these remarks about possible poisoning. He was not even being reticent in any way about her: except on one point. He had not told me she had been twice married before. And, when I discovered certain facts about these two husbands …”

  Dr. Fell paused, uneasily. Audrey flew out at him.

  “Will you please tell me,” she said, “why you attached so much importance to these two husbands? Was it because both of them died violent deaths?”

  “No,” said Dr. Fell. “That was important, admittedly. But it was important as showing how events had run. Beautiful women, professional charmers, and especially women of more than neurotic type, do tend to attract men of the same type. They do tend to walk in an atmosphere of disquiet and sometimes of violence.

  “On the other hand, it can’t be held against them as potential murderesses. It can’t be held against Eve Ferrier that her first husband, an analytical chemist of unstable mind, committed suicide when she divorced him. The death of her second husband, a fighter-pilot during the Battle of Britain, was only a normal war-risk. It was another fact which made me wonder. …”

  “What other fact?” insisted Audrey. “And what made you wonder?”

  “Each of her two previous husbands,” replied Dr. Fell, “had been younger than herself.”

  “Younger?”

  “Oh, ah. And the second husband, whom I heard described as the great love of her life, had been considerably younger.

  “She married this second husband in 1937. At that time, even if her age was no greater than she said it was, she must have been twenty-five or twenty-six years old. Two years later, at the outbreak of war, this man joins the R.A.F. and is presently made a fighter-pilot.

  “Two years later; consider that! I might have investigated no deeper if the very dates had not been revealing. If this great love had been the same age as herself or older, was it likely he would have been accepted and trained as a fighter-pilot in a service where newcomers are old at twenty-eight?

  “In point of fact, I learned he had been nineteen when they were married. If I practised a certain deception by not revealing all I knew,” and he looked at Brian, “it was because I was obliged to question Desmond Ferrier discreetly while others were listening.”

  “Did you know about the first husband too?” Brian demanded.

  “I fear I did. But then so did you.” Dr. Fell ruffled his big mop of hair. “Sir Gerald, I understand, sent a cablegram to Deputy Commander Elliot in my name. It did not surprise Elliot to get an urgent request for information which he had already given me. After all, I once did send a telegram announcing I was at Market Harborough and asking where I ought to be. So Elliot replied in all good faith about the young man who had been her first husband.

  “And then, when I arrived in Geneva at noon on Thursday, then I began to learn things which most of you have also learned at different times. Desmond Ferrier, who is badly upset about something, has a son of twenty-four. This son shows by every word he speaks that he has much on his mind. He maintains a very curious attitude towards his father and his step-mother; certainly they maintain a curious attitude towards him. For instance!”

  Though addressing Brian, Dr. Fell blinked in a distressed way between Brian and Audrey.

  “For instance, did Philip tell you he never dreamed Eve Ferrier had been concerned in any awkward accident at Berchtesgaden in 1939?”

  “Yes,” replied Brian. “He said so at the Hotel Metropole when I first met him.”

  “Harrumph, yes. He made the same statement to me. Now was that really possible? Archons of Athens! Since Desmond Ferrier and the former Eve Eden had been married since 1943, was it possible he had never heard a word of any kind?

  “There is more than this. Desmond Ferrier swore to me they had carefully kept it from the son all those years. He said they; he almost insisted too much on the fact, when I asked him the direct question. The father adopted, indeed, a strange attitude towards the son’s possible marriage to Audrey Page. The father lets us think, a little too obviously, that he himself could easily be smitten with Miss Page. Is he concealing something else, drawing fire on himself? Of what does he really want to warn Miss Page?

  “I ask you to think over every word Desmond Ferrier said. Interpret these words in a different way from their surface or apparent meaning. Philip Ferrier—as anyone can see—really is deeply in love with Miss Page. More than this, she has money; she is suitable.”

  Audrey spoke in a low voice.

  “Don’t carry this too far,” she said. “If you’re talking of Phil, don’t carry it too far!”

  Dr. Fell regarded her gravely.

  “Of myself I need carry it little further,” he said. “But I must draw your attention to certain incidents which took place under the eyes of one or the other of you. And I must mention a possibility which occurred to me soon after I arrived here.

  “Desmond Ferrier’s affairs with women, in the past, have been many and notorious. Even now he is half-ready to accuse himself of designs on a young lady, Audrey Page, very much younger than himself. It would be a comment on human nature, I thought, if the real designs were the other way round: that is, the designs of his once-beautiful wife on a step-son very much younger than herself.

  “And, as we now know from so many details of the confession made by Philip Ferrier, that is precisely what had happened. With a character like that of the woman, and a character like that of the boy, it led to disaster.

  “Their affair began nearly two years ago. It demoralized Eve Ferrier. In this handsome youngster, with a surface charm but an inner hardness which perhaps only his father suspected, she believed she had found the reincarnation of her ‘great love,’ the young fighter-pilot killed in the Battle of Britain.

  “Philip played up to her. It flattered his vanity, as it so often does. Whereupon he grew bored just as she grew more intense. In January of this year, ’56, Desmond Ferrier and his wife visited London; their son was with them, and he met Audrey Page. I regret that this part must be told,” and Dr. Fell looked at Audrey, “because it will be told in court.

  “Now Philip is a very vain young man. If you had ever seen that—”

  “I did see it,” Brian interrupted curtly. “But I didn’t let the impression register strongly enough.”

  Dr. Fell blinked at him.

  “You did see it? When?”

  “The same Thursday night, at the Hotel Metropole, when Philip called to take Audrey out to dinner. That young fellow’s manner when he spoke just four words, ‘Who’s that with you?’ should have suggested more than it did. He saw me standing beside a window with Audrey; he didn’t even know who I was. But a good deal was expressed at that moment. Anyway, go on about—about the confession.”

  “Shall I go on, Miss Page?”

  “Yes! Yes! I’m sorry I said that.” Audrey stared at the table. “Because I shall have to make a confession too.”

  “Oh, ah. In London, last January,” Dr. Fell resumed, “Philip Ferrier met this young lady here. He wanted her, very much, and he thought she wanted him. He was in no enviable position, with the e
lder woman at his side and doting on him. Momentarily he got out of the difficulty, he has told the Director of Police, with an inspiration which could have come only to a potentially first-rate criminal.

  “Eve, now living in her world of dreams, has been speculating further. ‘Is it possible we can ever acknowledge our great love?’ she has been saying to an impatient and desperate young man. ‘If we were to admit it and marry, what would the world think? Could we ever do that?’

  “Hence the inspiration. Of course they could, Philip suggests. He is not really interested in Miss Page, he tells Eve Ferrier, but it must be plain that his father is. If the son lets the father cut him out with Audrey Page, then the way will be clear. The father marries a younger woman, and the son in turn will be happy to seek consolation with Eve herself.

  “It was the very basis of all stage-intrigue, by which some of these people lived and one of them died. Eve Ferrier, not a criminal but a born intriguer, saw nothing strange in it. She was dazzled. She was overjoyed. Philip would ‘pretend’ to be interested in the girl and she would ‘encourage’ it. At the proper time, when they can discard all masks, Philip will reveal that his real love is for Eve.

  “Of course Philip never meant to do that. To get what he really wanted, he knew he would have to kill his step-mother.

  “And the father, no fool, partly guessed what might be going on. He could not guess all of it, or what form its explosion would take. He could only stand by in horror, wondering what he ought to do.

  “If you have ever felt less than charitable towards Desmond Ferrier, I ask you to be charitable now. His many, his notorious affairs are boomeranging back in the worst possible way. If he is wrong, and it is only his own evil mind which makes him suspect all this, there will be hell to pay in the event he accuses his wife or his son. If he stays silent, and he happens to be right, what sort of catastrophe may overtake them?”

  Dr. Fell paused. His pipe had gone out; his red face was heavy and lowering.

  “Well—!” he added reflectively.