In Spite of Thunder (18 page)

“It was a favourite place of Eve’s. They even modelled a mask of her face. Mr. Innes, have you told anyone about this?”

“No; I’ve just discovered it. Everything’s happened in less than half an hour.”

“Then don’t tell anyone! Will you promise?”

“Why?”

“I can’t tell what sort of mood Desmond may be in. Your Audrey Page seems quite a pleasant sort of person; I’m sure she is, and I know you’re very fond of her.” Paula’s voice rose up. “But she
has
caused quite a lot of trouble. It may be Desmond is—is trying to punish her by frightening her a little.”

Brian’s tone changed. “Is he, now? And that’s his idea of a joke too?”

The words held a compressed, controlled violence; it was as though he had struck her in the face. For once the alert and fragile-seeming Paula, so sensitive to the reactions of others, must have misjudged the effect she wanted to produce. It was evident that she knew it. Paula sprang forward.

“Wait! Where are you going?”

“You know where I’m going.”

“No. You mustn’t. I won’t let you.”

The outer door of the flat still stood wide open, admitting more reminders of past meals. The television set talked distantly and hoarsely. Paula, running to the door, slammed it shut and set her back against it.

“Brian, I beg and plead with you! You don’t understand everything!”

“I don’t understand anything. Get away from that door.”

“The police—”

“Never mind the police. Last night, when oil of vitriol splashed the floor, I had to pick you up bodily and swing you round from it. Must I do the same thing now? Get away from that door!”

“I hate saying this, please believe I hate saying it. But you’ve got to mind the police, after the plain, simple untruths—there’s no other word for it!—you and Dr. Fell have been telling M. Aubertin about Audrey Page.”

“What do you mean?”

“Have you forgotten I was upstairs at the villa this morning, and very much alive and awake, when you were in Sir Gerald Hathaway’s room with Dr. Fell? And you confided in him what really happened in the study before Eve fell to her death? If the police hear what did happen, and what Eve said to Audrey just then, won’t Audrey go to prison as perhaps she ought to go?”

A
ND IT STOPPED
Brian in his tracks. It was the only check which could have held him back.

He looked at Paula, studying her.

As though challenging him, she had twisted the knob of the spring-lock and pulled the door a few inches open: still holding it behind her, guarding it, while he heard the familiar noises from the corridor outside.

Paula’s expression grew even more intent.

“You’re going to call this blackmail I can’t help that. Yes! I did listen outside Sir Gerald’s room this morning. No! I haven’t told the police and I don’t want to, though I did ride to town in the same car with M. Aubertin and Dr. Fell and Phil Ferrier a little while ago. Call me anything you like! I’m fighting for something that’s very dear to me; I’ll do whatever I must.”

Brian did not reply.

“What is it?” she asked suddenly. “What are you doing?”

Still without speaking, he hurried away into the living-room. This had a broad doorway; and, beside the doorway, an arched opening through which you could see the whole of that room from the entry.

He felt an inexorable sense of time rushing past, of minutes falling into eternity while Audrey was being “punished” and frightened by some grotesque claptrap in a cellar of the rue Jean Janvier. The knowledge of this did not soothe his wrath.

From the portable bar he picked up Madame Duvallon’s latch-key. It was as though, by turning away, he had yielded and lost the game. Paula knew he hadn’t.

“
What are you doing now?
”

Brian put the key in his pocket and returned.

“Once before, when I went out of here, I forgot this key. Now I’m going out again.”

“You’re not!”

“All I propose,” he said, “is a visit to a public night-club in a public street. Is there any reason to use such heavy threats in trying to stop me?”

“Yes; I’m sorry to say there is. Your precious Miss Audrey Page, as though you didn’t know it, has caused far too much trouble already. She must have threatened and devilled Desmond Ferrier until he hadn’t any choice but to meet her there.”

“At the Cave of the Witches? Audrey asked him to do that?”

“What else?”

“My dear Paula, come off it. I’ll give you ten to one Audrey’s never even heard of the place.”

“Well, she was the one who rang him up! She was the one who made him look like death when he left the villa. I tell you, I won’t see him unhappy any longer! He’s suffered far too much already.”

“Suffered? That fellow?”

The lash of contempt sent Paula momentarily out of all control.

“My God, how stupid you are! How little you understand! With an out-and-out nymphomaniac like Eve—”

“Nymphomaniac?” There was a dead silence as Brian interrupted. “Isn’t that a change from your tune last night? Isn’t it a considerable change from being the woman’s greatest friend and champion?”

“I am her friend. I always have been. Eve was never,
never
like that in the old days before she lost her looks.” Paula flung back her head, hands clenched. “Did you ever notice that the truly beautiful women in this world, and often the ones who seem to put the most accent on sex, are the very ones who aren’t much interested in sex after all? They can’t be; they’re too vain; they’re interested only in themselves. Oh, God, what am I saying?”

“Not much that’s relevant. Will you answer the question?”

“What question?”

“Why do you want to keep me away from the Cave of the Witches? And keep the police away too?”

“I—”

“Is it because I might ask questions? And the police certainly would ask questions? And discover Ferrier wasn’t anywhere near the place yesterday evening?”

“That’s it, yes. But that’s only partly it. You don’t understand!”

“Then tell me something else. I had intended to ask Hathaway, but you’ll do just as well. It’s been understood you were to have dinner with Hathaway yesterday evening, but somebody put off that engagement. You didn’t see Hathaway until you met him with me, in the foyer of the Hotel du Rhône. Isn’t that true?”

“Of course it’s true. I don’t see what. …”

“You will. Hathaway said he telephoned you at the hotel and cancelled the dinner-date. Did you actually speak to him, or did he only leave a message?”

“He left a message. I wasn’t in my room. I was downstairs buying cigarettes.”

“You weren’t in your room. Were you even at the hotel?”

“At the …?”

“Yes! When Desmond Ferrier can’t account for a blank of several hours yesterday evening, isn’t it because he was with you?”

All the colour receded from Paula’s face, making her vivid eyes enormous. The door, two inches open behind her back, swayed in a gentle draught,

“Mr. Innes, this is the most sickening and insufferable thing I ever heard! Do you accuse
me
of—of being concerned in poor Eve’s murder?”

“No,” roared Brian.

“Then what are you saying?”

“You’re a Thoroughly Nice Girl in capital letters. You’re whirling along in a rat-race of journalism when all you really want is a husband and a home.”

Paula Catford went as white as though he had accused her of an act much worse than murder. She stood very straight, lips parted.

“Your conscience
has
bothered you about Eve,” Brian said. “Very probably Ferrier
is
in love with you. Otherwise I can’t see him telling lies so gallantly about a mere episode in his amiable young life. If you don’t mention Audrey’s lies, I don’t mention yours or Ferrier’s. Now get away from that door. I’m going out to find him and do something about it if he’s been frightening Audrey.”

“Oh, I’ll be quiet! Do you imagine that will help you?”

“Why shouldn’t it?”

“Listen!” And Paula held up her hand.

Moving aside from the door, she pushed it wide open. Through the corridor, from beyond a door with a glass panel at the far end, rose the wiry hum of the lift ascending from the ground floor.

“You’ve left it too late,” said Paula. “That’s the police.”

One long step carried him into the passage. Beside the lift-door, a little to the right, he could see another door to the enclosed staircase. The lift, slow and asthmatic, would take thirty seconds to reach the sixth floor. He could be on his way down, completely unseen, long before then.

Her next words, in a hurt and hating voice, briefly stopped him again.

“If you think you’re going to hurt Desmond or make more trouble for him, I don’t think they’ll let you. It certainly won’t help when they arrest Audrey.”

“Arrest Audrey? Are you crazy?”

“Oh, I don’t think she did it! But Aubertin does. I can tell.”

“Because you’ve been listening at doors again?”

It was even more brutal than his last attack, but Paula did not flinch.

“Yes, if you must know! Who’s had more experience with the ways the police question people in any country, you or I? Dr. Fell’s shielding Audrey too much. He’s given her an alibi; he says he was with her before breakfast this morning.”

“Before breakfast this morning? What’s that go to do with it?”

“I’m afraid I haven’t the least idea. It doesn’t sound true, though. If you want to take care of her, you’d better stay and do it. You can’t avoid Aubertin now.”

“I think I can,” Brian retorted—and was off down the passage as the hum of the lift rose to a singing whine that drowned out even the hoarseness of the television set.

The light inside the glass panel, to show the presence of the lift, was not yet in sight when he caught the heavy staircase-door beside it

A last glance over his shoulder gave him a glimpse of Paula, the back of her hand pressed hard against her teeth, as she stood in the entry. He would have given much to recall his words; the hurt, hating look on her face was one of a woman wounded and in despair. The memory of it stayed with him on his way downstairs.

So did other memories: of Hathaway on the quai-side, of Hathaway’s bewildered air and sagging shoulders when he realized a murder case in real life was different from an academic one.

Brian tried to drive away fancies. He couldn’t tell Paula that Dr. Fell had been doing fully as much to protect Desmond Ferrier (why: damn Ferrier’s hide, why?) as he had been doing to protect Audrey. An image of Ferrier’s countenance, Mephistophelian yet feverish, crowded out all other images except that of Audrey.

So this distinguished gentleman was “punishing” Audrey, was he? Gently punishing her, with a light and expert touch, by arranging for her to be frightened?

The enclosed staircase, a concrete shell round concrete metal-bound treads, set up a clatter of echoes as Brian ran down. Wrath had become fury. The echoes rained round him in hollow din, past each little landing-window.

He mustn’t let this cloud his judgment, though. He mustn’t. …

Steady.

He reached the lowest step, beyond whose landing a heavy door with a head-high glass panel led out to the ground-floor passage and the entrance. He seized the knob of this door, began to open it—and came almost face to face with Gustave Aubertin, Director of Police for Geneva.

Some other tenant must have been using that lift when he and Paula thought they heard the police. In front of the lift-shaft, ground-floor level, stood Sir Gerald Hathaway, Philip Ferrier, Dr. Gideon Fell, and Aubertin himself.

That he could hear their voices, as well as see them through the panel like faces in an aquarium, was due to the compressed-air device which kept these doors from slamming. The piston of the air-lock, above the door, held it not quite closed.

Aubertin, a thin-faced greying man, very well-tailored, stood in the background with his eyes on the glass panel as though he could see Brian. But he was preoccupied, the latter realized; he was listening to the others, poised and waiting.

“Sir,” Dr. Fell was thundering to Hathaway, “let us hope you are being no more inconvenienced than the rest of us.”

“Less,” Aubertin said softly.

“The question,” and Dr. Fell reared up, “most vitally concerns all of us who were at breakfast this morning. You must be aware of that?”

“Indeed and I am aware of it,” Hathaway said in a cold and bitter voice.

“Oh, ah! Now the dining-room at the villa is on the east side of the house, as the drawing-room is. Both of them overlook the garden. You are in a position to help us. Who went into the garden at shortly past seven o’clock in the morning?”

“I’ve already told you. Mrs. Ferrier herself. She went for a stroll there.”

“Was Mrs. Ferrier the only person?”

“She was the only person I saw,” replied Hathaway, peering up sideways. “Does that tell you nothing?”

“Sir, we would have
you
tell us something.”

“What, for instance?”

Over all that little group, quiet and as though huddled by the lift-shaft, hung the tense air of men expecting some kind of explosion. There was a policeman on duty at the entrance to the flats: Brian could see his silhouette against a street-lamp.

The lift-shaft was silent, because the lift itself had stopped at some upper floor. Dr. Fell reached out and pressed the recall-button. Its buzz echoed out resonantly and ended in a whir as the lift began to descend; but Dr. Fell, a mountain of worry with a red face, kept on fiercely pressing the button after this ceased to be necessary.

“Yes?” prompted Hathaway.

“Harrumph, hah! Am I correct in assuming, Sir Gerald, that you yourself were a trifle excited when you took the Rolls and drove to town after breakfast?”

“Excited? I? Tut! Who says I was?”

They were barks like a terrier’s. Dr. Fell blinked at him.

“I referred merely,” he said with some politeness, “to the fact that you left your hat behind. You have not got it even yet. When a man neglects even so fine a property as that hat, on which I congratulate you and even envy you, it is safe to assume he is as excited as is Mrs. Ferrier (for instance) in wearing slacks and high-heeled shoes.”