In Spite of Thunder (13 page)

Though Madame Duvallon’s nerves must have screamed with curiosity, you would never have told it from her poised voice.

“Very well understood, monsieur! That is all?”

“Except this. Should you ever be questioned about the young lady, you never saw her and you have never even heard of her. That is all, thanks.”

Brian sat back.

His next call, to the police, took him surprisingly little time. For all the delay he expected, he was soon speaking to a sharply intelligent voice whose suavity changed to concern. Afterwards he hurried downstairs. What he heard from the drawing-room, before he could see anyone, halted him in the middle of the staircase.

“—and that, sir,” said the voice of Dr. Fell, “is a reasonably full account of Miss Page’s and Mr. Innes’s testimony. That is what they saw from the window of the bedroom.”

Desmond Ferrier, though shaken, uttered a ringing oath.

“So that’s it! Just like old Hector What’s-his-name at Berchtesgaden?”

“Apparently, and I stress the word apparently, that is the case.”

“Eve was alone?”

“In a certain sense, yes.”

“So the poor old girl committed suicide? Chucking herself off the balcony?”

“At first glance, and also let us stress at first glance, your wife could have killed herself in that particular way.”

“Then why do you want to question
me
? Anyway, I can’t tell you anything about this morning. I was sound asleep until Paula knocked on the door and said she thought there was something wrong.”

“That’s true,” cried the voice of Paula Catford.

“Sir,” roared Dr. Fell, “I am not much concerned with this morning or even late last night. I am concerned with certain events from yesterday afternoon to yesterday evening. Above all I am concerned with certain diversions (let us politely call them affairs of the heart!) which have been occupying a number of people.”

Dead silence.

The drawing-room, in semi-darkness except for the yellow light above the portrait of Desmond Ferrier as Hamlet, had taken on a somewhat wild quality like that of storm-clouds outside the eastern windows.

Ferrier, nervous and drawn of countenance, stood beneath the portrait with his back to the fireplace. Paula stood at one side of him. Dr. Fell, throned in an overstuffed chair whose white slip-cover stood out against gloom, sat partly facing them and held an album of photographs. On the mantelpiece lay Sir Gerald Hathaway’s hat.

Brian’s footfalls were distinct on hardwood as he entered. Dr. Fell addressed him without turning round.

“Did you reach Aubertin?”

“I did. M. Aubertin presents his most distinguished compliments, and says he’ll be here in half an hour.”

Ferrier snatched his hands out of the pockets of the brocaded dressing-gown.

“Half an hour? They’re really going to—?”

“Why shouldn’t they?” asked Brian. “He also presents
you
his most distinguished compliments, and his condolences on the death of … the rest of it.”

“I’m a bastard and I admit I am,” said Ferrier, looking straight at Brian. “But there’s no need to stress it as much as that.”

“Nobody is stressing it. Nobody is even saying it.”

“Have a drink?”

“Not now, thanks.”

It was Dr. Fell who intervened at this point.

“Let us return,” he suggested, “to Mrs. Ferrier. And to a certain flaming love-affair. And to what happened yesterday that led towards an explosion. We have just half an hour for talking frankly among ourselves.”

“All right, if you insist.” Ferrier took a packet of cigarettes out of his dressing-gown pocket. “Is it important?”

“Is it important? Oh, my eye! You are an intelligent man, my dear sir. You know it is.”

“Well?”

“What happened yesterday,” said Dr. Fell, “I have tried to piece together from various matters that were told me and others I overheard and some I saw. I need not detail them. But much of it is still dark and o’ermisted.

“Indulge me, now! I arrived at this house about noon. You and your wife and I, only the three of us, had an excellent lunch at half-past one. Your wife was then in the gayest of spirits. She was almost radiant. You remember?”

Ferrier nodded. He took out a cigarette, but did not light it.

“Some time afterwards you made your excuses, without saying where you were going, and drove away in the big car. I believe,” Dr. Fell raised his eyebrows, “I believe you drove to the airport and met Miss Audrey Page?”

“Yes.”

“You also asked whether you might drop in at Miss Page’s hotel, about midnight the same evening, so that you could talk to Miss Page about your wife?”

“Yes.”

Taking a lighter out of his pocket, Ferrier snapped it on and touched it to the cigarette and inhaled with a great gust: all in one flashing movement, his face illumined under the illumined portrait.

“This was, in fact, to warn Miss Page that Mrs. Ferrier was in a dangerous mood of jealousy?”

“Yes.”

Paula, in a primrose-yellow dress contrasting with a curious steely expression about her face, went over and sat down on the sofa opposite Dr. Fell. Ferrier did not even seem to see her.

“But you did not keep your appointment for midnight? You did not warn Miss Page?”

“No. You know damn well I didn’t. I was with you at midnight, and I told you about it anyway.”

“Good!” said Dr. Fell.

“The rest of that same afternoon,” he went on gently, “I myself spent here in the drawing-room with Mrs. Ferrier. She remained in the best of spirits. She brought down her press-cutting books; one of them is still here in the room.

“You returned before six o’clock. Your son, Philip, had already returned from Dufresne’s Bank. Officially, neither you nor your wife was supposed to know of Philip’s plan for taking Miss Audrey Page to dinner. Now Mrs. Ferrier knew it; she confided it to me, with much pleasure and some archness, in the course of the afternoon. Did
you
know of it?”

“My dear old boy,” said Ferrier, with a broad and curling grin, “I hardly see how it matters.”

“Then let me refresh your memory. I am leading up to the explosion.”

The glow of Ferrier’s cigarette pulsed and darkened.

“Let us imagine,” said Dr. Fell, his eyes unwavering, “that it is yesterday evening at shortly before seven. Philip has gone upstairs to dress. You and Mrs. Ferrier and I are not changing: no, we are having dinner at home. We are here in the drawing-room, again the three of us. You and Mrs. Ferrier are having a cocktail, and I a glass of sherry.”

“Speaking of that point—”

“No!”

Dr. Fell’s uplifted hand halted Ferrier as he started for a sideboard between the two front windows. The latter remained where he was, still smiling.

“I will drop the present tense,” said Dr. Fell. “Quite suddenly you put down your cocktail glass on that coffee-table over there. You said to your wife, ‘My dear, I have just remembered that I must go out.’ She cried at you, ‘You must go out before dinner?’ ‘Alas,’ you said, ‘I must go out for dinner itself.’

“There then followed,” pursued Dr. Fell, “what I shall be forgiven for describing as a blazing and embarrassing family row. You were accused of deserting your guest. I protested, with truth and vehemence, that it did not matter.

“Philip, on his way to the Hotel Metropole, attempted to intervene and was sent packing in the Bentley. Your wife asked you flatly where you were going. You smiled, as you are smiling now, and said you meant to have dinner alone. Presently you drove away in the Rolls-Royce. Where did you go, by the way?”

Ferrier drew deeply at the cigarette.

“I had dinner alone,” he answered.

“Where?”

“I’m afraid I’ve forgotten. By the way, Fell, was this when I decided to murder my wife?”

“Oh, no,” said Dr. Fell.

He sat back in the chair.

“If we adopt a joking tone, sir,” he added politely, “the others must still understand we are both deadly serious. You and I know that, don’t we?”

“We do.”

“Your wife was not yet angry. Not really angry. Not raging, and half out of her mind. That had yet to come. When Mrs. Ferrier and I sat down to another admirable meal prepared by the maid, she was under a strong nervous tension: no more than that. I beg you to observe she did not really hate anyone, including Miss Audrey Page.

“But she was wondering. She was speculating. I wished I could read her eyes. As we sat here having coffee after dinner, I in this chair and she on the sofa where Miss Catford is sitting now, something else occurred to her. She sprang up without a word, and walked out of the room.

“I was not disturbed. Life among artists can be a fascinating business. How long a time elapsed, while I sat and mused in my customary half-witted fashion, it is impossible to estimate. It may have been an hour, or it may have been very much longer. But I was somewhat startled to hear high heels rapping down the stairs where informal low heels had gone up. I glanced round towards the hall there. Need I tell you what I saw?”

Two voices spoke out.

Paula Catford said: “No; it won’t be necessary to tell us.”

Desmond Ferrier snapped: “Paula, my sweetie-pie, you’d better take a little care. You may not know what you’re saying.”

“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.