In Spite of Thunder (16 page)

“How?”

“You talk about being hypnotized by—by ghosts or whatnot. Do you know what I first thought, when Eve began raving at me? I thought
she
was hypnotized. That’s what she looked like and sounded like.”

“After everything else we’ve been exposed to, you’re not bringing in murder by hypnosis?”

“I wonder.”

“There is enough of weird-sisters atmosphere already, believe me, without importing more of it. Let’s forget that, shall we?”

“Brian, listen! If you just say ‘murder by hypnosis’ and don’t add anything else, of course it sounds silly. But that isn’t all.”

Audrey straightened up.

“I’ve been very silly, you know, and I’ve behaved about as stupidly as anyone could behave. I’ve given you an awful lot of trouble because I was trying to prove something to myself and to you too. All the same, there’s one thing you’ve
got
to understand whatever else you think as long as we’re both alive. There never has been any kind of affair, any kind, between me and Desmond Ferrier.”

Here her voice went up.

“Oh, I know!” she added before he could speak. “I know what you’re going to say. You’ve told me before it doesn’t matter if there is. You’ve said that so often I can quite believe it doesn’t matter to you.”

“Audrey, stop this blasted coquettishness. It means everything in the world to me, and very well you know it. I’ve been in love with you for years.”

“No, don’t come near me. Don’t touch me. Not now! I’ve got
some
little vestige of pride left, even if nobody could possibly think so.”

“I don’t mean to touch you. Not until this business is over. And then, damn your soul, I’ll touch you and more than touch you with a thoroughness you’ve probably not experienced in your life.”

“Well, I hope you do. But can’t you even s-say you love me,” Audrey cried out at him, “without swearing at me and looking as though you wanted to strangle me?”

“No, I can’t. That’s how you affect people.”

“All right. I don’t mind; I love it. But you say ‘people,’ and that’s what I mean too. I’m going to prove to you there’s nobody else and never has been. So
will
you listen?”

In another instant the emotional temperature would have been out of all control. Brian finished the whisky and whacked down the glass on top of the bar.

“I am all attention, madam. As Hathaway would phrase it.”

“If you’re making fun of me again—!”

“Will you get it through that pretty little head, my dear, that nobody is making fun of you? Or has ever wanted to? You’re a female devil, a succubus of near-thirty masquerading as nineteen.”

“That’s not a very nice thing to say, now is it?”

“Who cares whether it’s a nice thing to say? We’re beyond that; I love you; I’ve been looking for you all my life. Now what is it you wanted to explain about the murder of Eve Ferrier?”

The word ‘murder’ fell between them and stayed there.

Audrey, her colour high, turned away from him and then turned back.

“Eve,” she said, “was raving at me about—about stealing somebody. Naturally I thought she meant her present husband. But she never actually mentioned a name; a lot of what she told me didn’t make much sense. Suppose she meant a previous husband?”

“A dead one?”

“Presumed dead, then. And there was a first husband, according to you. What did Dr. Fell learn about him?”

“Not a great deal. You can ask him.” Brian began to reflect. “Anything is possible, admittedly. He thinks the question of the second husband is the most important factor of all. So does Ferrier, though neither of them will say why. And, since Dr. Fell’s helping Ferrier as well as helping you—”

“Brian, why should Dr. Fell be helping me?”

“Because he doesn’t want to see you get arrested for something you didn’t do. He’s like that. The weakness of the first-or-second husband theory, if we’re looking for a murderer, is that Eve seems to have gone off the deep end because of something she read in a diary.”

“Well, why shouldn’t that be?
I
keep a diary. So does everyone else at that house. Everything you write in a diary isn’t necessarily a confession about yourself. Mr. Ferrier could have written information about somebody else.”

“Meaning yourself? The information concerned you, remember.”

Audrey went pale.

“So you think I did kill her after all?”

“I don’t think anything of the kind!”

“And, of c-course, Mr. Ferrier and I …?”

“Stow it, will you?”

“If you don’t think that,” Audrey said suddenly, “there’s only one other possibility.” It was as though inspiration came to her. “Maybe I
can
help you! Maybe I
can
justify myself!”

He seized her by the shoulders; and then, warned by the hysterical look of determination in her eyes, he remembered overwrought states of mind and released her. The ticking of the clock on the bookshelves drew his eyes.

“There’s no need to justify yourself. You’re tired; we’re both tired. Do you see what time it is?”

“T-twenty minutes to nine? What about it?”

“Near here, in the rue du Stand, there’s a quiet restaurant where they serve very good food. We’re going there, and we’re going to try to forget murder for a while.”

“Yes. You’re right. I’m sorry.”

“Then get ready. After we’ve had a good dinner, with enough wine to aid it, we may be able to think rationally about a problem that seems to have no meaning at all. We’ll also drop your suitcase at the Metropole.”

“Suitcase?”

“You haven’t forgotten you left a suitcase, only half unpacked, in the room they gave you at the villa? I brought it with me. It’s downstairs in the car.”

“But, Brian—!”

“Is anything wrong?”

“Not wrong, exactly. Only I can’t go back to the Metropole! Or, at least, I don’t want to. It would look awfully funny.”

“Why? Haven’t you still got your room there?”

“Not now. When you sent me here this morning, by way of the hotel, I was still badly upset. I thought you just wanted to hide me until I could get out of the country. So I gave up my hotel-room and sent the rest of my luggage on to the airport. Now I don’t want to go. Will the police think I’ve run away?”

“You can’t have run away, my dear, if you’re still very much present. But you’ll need that suitcase. I’d better go down and bring it up.”

“Brian, darling, I can’t stay with you here! I mean …!”

He made no comment on Miss Audrey Page, would-be woman of the world. She was too deadly serious, and so was he. Brian did not even smile.

“Yes; I know what you mean. And yet it might be the best way of preventing more trouble. In any event you’ll still need the suitcase. Half a minute, now!”

The outer door of the flat slammed after him. He took the lift downstairs. But he was not to be free, even for thirty seconds, from forces that had begun to gather for a last evil pursuit.

The block of flats lay almost in the shadow of the Pont de la Coulouvrenière, a grey-white shape amid the Rhône’s seven bridges. Against a fine clear night, not too warm, its lamps threw reflections into rushing water.

But the little side-street was almost dark. A street-lamp on the quai showed him that someone, a mere furtive-looking shadow, had opened the back door of his car and appeared to be groping in the back seat.

Brian charged. He gripped somebody’s wrist, heaving the intruder out and round towards the street-lamp as though in a game of crack-the-whip.

“Now what the devil,” cried a familiar rasping voice, “do you think you’re doing?”

Brian dropped the wrist, cursing in a discovery of anti-climax, as the tubby little figure staggered and almost fell. Gerald Hathaway, hatless against the glow of the lamp, stared at him in bouncing exasperation.

“Yes, my fine friend? What do you think you’re doing?”

“What do you think
you’re
doing, if it comes to that?”

“You live here, don’t you? This is your car, isn’t it?”

“Yes to both questions. How do you know so much?”

“I know you live in these flats,” Hathaway retorted, “because I called here last night A Madame Duvallon or Duvallet, who said she was ‘opening’ the flat for you, told me you would be back from Paris. And I know it’s your car because this morning, before I could call out and stop you, I saw you drive away in it. But do my eyes deceive me?”

“How?”

“Is this the ultra-conservative and pompous Mr. Brian Innes? Behaving as though he saw a gangster behind every bush? It’s that girl, I imagine?”

“Yes. I suppose it is. As for the skittish Sir Gerald Hathaway—”

Only Hathaway’s own dignity prevented him from doing a kind of dance on the pavement.

“You ruddy idiot,” he raved, “I was going to wait for you because I’m a fellow of some considerable delicacy. You’ve got her upstairs, no doubt.”

Though these words had the inflection of a question, they were rather a statement than a question. Brian met them as an attack.

“What makes you think she’s there?”

“Don’t be evasive, my friend! She’s not at the Metropole; she’s not at the Villa Rosalind. There’s nowhere else she could be.”

“Deducing again? Hathaway, just why were you waiting for me?”

“For one thing, to warn you. If you’ve got any fondness for that girl, you’ll be careful. Have you seen the evening newspapers?”

“No.”

There was a folded newspaper in Hathaway’s pocket. He took it out and waved it, though Brian could see nothing except the outline of his bald head and his bristling beard.

“It’s splashed all over the place. The press here,” Hathaway said bitterly, “seem to have almost as few inhibitions as they have in France.”

“I still don’t understand—”

“De Forrest Page is a friend of mine too. You were asked to take care of his daughter, not get the police after her. This won’t make pleasant reading for her father when the news gets to London.”

“Audrey’s name isn’t mentioned in the press?”

“Isn’t it? Take a look at this! And that’s not all. Don’t trust Gideon Fell too far. To judge by the reports you can read anywhere, he’s talking nothing but riddles and he’s concealing a lot of vital information.”

“Whereas a fellow named Hathaway never does that? And forget what the newspapers say. What do they say at the Villa Rosalind?”

“I don’t know what they say at the Villa Rosalind. I haven’t been there.”

“Since when?”

“Since I left very early this morning.”

“Hathaway, who’s scatty now? Do you want the authorities after you too?”

The other man drew himself up, shivering with excitement. His high, harsh voice sang out in triumph.

“I have beaten Gideon Fell. I have beaten him all hollow. Part of this case may be explained by one substance: oil of vitriol. The other part of the case may be explained by another substance: oil of bitter almonds.”

“Oil of bitter almonds? What’s that?”

“The poison that killed Mrs. Ferrier. Come here!”

U
NPREDICTABLE, BETWEEN TRIUMPH
and obscure fear, Hathaway darted across the road to the quai-side above the river. Brian followed him. There Hathaway stood fully under a street-lamp, holding up the newspaper.

“If you will read this description,” he began with some vehemence.

“I don’t want to read anything. What’s oil of bitter almonds?”

“It’s also called nitrobenzene.”

“It sounds like a prussic-acid derivative. Is that what it is?”

“Tut! Your ignorance of criminology! Read Murrell on Poisons. The point I want to make,” enunciated Hathaway, holding the newspaper rather like the Statue of Liberty with her torch, “is that Gideon Fell has been telling us lies.”

“About what?”

“If you had been at the villa late last night,” snapped Hathaway, “you would have heard him say (well! you would have heard him intimate) he first learned of Hector Matthews’s death from Mr. Desmond Ferrier a comparatively short time ago in London.”

“But he didn’t?”

“He heard it from
me
. And at a meeting of the Murder Club some years back.”

“Will you try to make sense?”

“The Murder Club,” Hathaway spaced his words, “is a discussion-group which meets at Beltring’s restaurant in Soho. I was once its guest. When I attempted to interest your elephantine friend in the story of Hector Matthews, he pretended there was little in it.”

“So your vanity was scratched?”

“Young man, I resent that.”

“Thanks for the ‘young.’ Isn’t that what happened, though?”

“I refuse to listen to mere insults. Still!” Hathaway swallowed hard. “Could I have expected Mrs. Ferrier would be killed this morning? Hardly. The most astute man alive could never have expected it. Therefore—”

“Now look here,” Brian interrupted in some desperation. He nodded towards the block of flats across the street. “Audrey’s over there alone; I must get back. But you came to me for reassurance, and I’ll try to reassure you. Just tell me what’s on your mind.”

“This morning (do you follow me?) I sent a cablegram from the Hotel du Rhône.”

“No; I don’t follow you.”

“It was well known at the Savage Club,” Hathaway cried, “that Ferrier had consulted Gideon Fell. If Fell wanted more facts, about Mrs. Ferrier or about anyone else, where would he have gone? To Scotland Yard; any fool could have guessed as much. His colleague Hadley has retired. Almost certainly he’d have spoken to Deputy Commander Elliot. Agreed?”

“Well, that’s what he did.”

“Ah! Fell admitted this?”

“There’s no question of admitting it. He told us so this morning.”

“Ah! But they’d not have been so indulgent with
me
. So it seemed better to wait until Fell was here in Geneva, and then send Elliot a cable of inquiry signed with Fell’s name.”

“Holy God! This is better and better. You’ve been sending fake cablegrams to Scotland Yard?”

“
A
cable.
A
cable! I could make certain, at the hotel, of having any reply delivered to me. Admittedly there was a certain amount of risk.”

“I’ll bet there was. They’re supposed to take a fairly poor view of forgery.”

“This childish sarcasm …!”