In Spite of Thunder (22 page)

Some thirty feet away, under another arch, Brian could see the five steps leading up to the corridor by which he had entered. Despite the bad light he could see Paula with reasonable clearness. There was nothing furtive about her leaving; she hurried up the steps and was gone.

“Of course,” Brian began, “it might be—”

“If you’re thinking of the ladies’ room, no. That’s in the other direction.”

“Where’s Ferrier?”

“I don’t know. I can’t see him.”

It should have been easy to see him, since the cave was only sparsely filled. But they had little time to think even of this. The hollow shuffle of dancing feet, the dedication of faces swirling past, grew into something like an act of worship as the band’s tempo became faster. What little light remained sank away until it was totally dark except for a vague phosphorescent glow round the pictures.

The music soared up and ended with a triumphant drum-roll. Yet no applause followed; only an excited whispering from dancers and spectators.

“Brian, I don’t like this. What’s happening?”

“Well, the music’s stopped. People seem to be going back to their tables. We’d better go back to ours.”

“But what is it?”

“Probably some kind of floor-show. You’ll seldom find a night-club without one. Take my arm.”

A man’s harsh voice, from the direction of the orchestra, had in fact begun to speak at that moment, though the continuing drums obscured what he was saying. These words were also blurred by the rustle of murmurs rising hollowly under the roof. Holding Audrey’s arm, Brian guided her in the other direction: towards a faint luminousness which marked the vampire-painting above their table beside the wall.

He now had no doubt it would be a floor-show. Vague shapes, spectators standing up and pressing a little forward round the circle of the arches, seemed to be staring towards the band-leader while Brian pushed Audrey past them and through the ranks towards what he imagined as the shelter of their table.

On the table, when they reached it, had been put down an opened bottle of brandy and two clean glasses. But Ferrier wasn’t there.

“He’ll be here,” Brian assured Audrey. “Or, at least, I hope he will be. Whatever night-club we go to, we never seem fated to finish the drinks somebody’s ordered. Not that I particularly look forward to anything to drink. I’m too hungry.”

“Darling, are you really hungry?”

“No. To tell the truth, I’m not. There’s only one consolation: they’ve stopped that blasted mechanical laughter.”

They had stopped the mechanical laughter, it was true. He had not expected other ingenious devices, and Audrey had not experienced them before.

The vividness of the artificial lightning, opening in a dazzling white series of winks, was followed by thunder-peals which exploded as though close above their heads. Brian’s first feeling was irritation, then wrath at such tomfoolery.

“Ferrier ought to be here,” he said. “He’d enjoy it. This is like the witches’ cavern in the fourth act of
Macbeth
. I never saw Beerbohm Tree’s famous production at Her Majesty’s; it was before my time. And there doesn’t seem to be any boiling cauldron. Otherwise it’s reminiscent. ‘Thrice the brinded cat hath mewed—’”

“Brian, let’s get out of here.”

“It’s all right!”

“I daresay it is. But let’s get out of here. It’s too much like this morning, with the thunder over the balcony when Eve …”

They stood alone by the table, in an aisle of pillars with deserted tables covered in red-and-white cloth. Again Brian swore it was all right. At the same time, the thought darted into his brain, he was much too angry at a mere stage-device. If you became as furious as all that, if you cursed it too much, it was because your wrath hid some creeping tentacle of fear.

Then Audrey screamed.

The lightning held too long, like a frozen dazzle, before the stunning reverberations of the thunder. He and Audrey were standing close together. That was when they both saw the face of Eve Ferrier looking at them round the side of a pillar.

He knew it was only a mask, of course. At least, he knew this after the first blankness of the shock. He did not expect to see someone’s hand, in a glove, rise up and point at them.

Three shots, from some very small-calibre weapon, were fired at them from a distance of less than ten feet. Even Brian did not hear the shots, whip-lashes lost under the ensuing thunder-noise; nobody else heard them at all.

He did not see the figure behind the pillar as the cave went dark. But he did see, by the evil luminescence round the vampire-painting, one result of those shots.

Audrey reeled and fell across the table. An empty wine-bottle, jarred by the fall, rolled off and smashed on the floor.

“…
Thou shalt not live!

That I may tell pale-hearted fear it lies

And sleep in spite of thunder.
”

—
MACBETH

B
RIAN INNES DREAMED
a dream.

Instead of being asleep at his own flat in the Quai Turrettini, in the early hours of the morning on Saturday, August 11—which was actually the fact—he dreamed he still stood in the Cave of the Witches when those shots were fired.

Perhaps it was right that the dream should have been so much like reality. For, in that cellar on Friday night, reality had been so much like a dream.

In a nightmare, no matter what happens, nobody around you is ever surprised at it. You yourself may feel all sorts of emotions, from anger to terror; but nobody else seems to feel any emotion, or even much notice what is occurring.

You stand in a crowd, beside the girl with whom you are in love. Commonplace circumstances, a rather tawdry night-club which puts on a show you know to be a show, have dissolved into grisliness because of one extra touch.

A real human being, wearing a mask of rubber or papier-mâché, has altered that pattern by trying either to kill you or to kill the woman beside you.

Nobody turns round to look. And you, though you may feel the wind of fear, yet you aren’t surprised either. Is it because, subconsciously, you have half recognized who the murderer is?

Brian knew he was dreaming. But that doesn’t help, in the eerie morning hours when sleep wears thin and sweat starts out on the body.

In his dream, somebody screamed.

Startled awake, he sat up. It might have been yesterday morning. The telephone was ringing.

“Yes?” he said aloud, to the air.

He wasn’t in the bedroom. He lay stretched out, leg-and-neck cramped, in pyjamas and dressing-gown, on the sofa in the little living-room with its cream-coloured stucco walls. Clean sunlight flooded the room, where curtains blew at open windows.

Brian picked up the ’phone with the effect of strangling it; at least it gave him silence. His, “Hello,” in a tentative voice, was greeted by a throat-clearing of worry and ominousness both together.

“Sir—” began the voice of Dr. Fell.

“Sh-h-h!” urged Brian.

“What’s that?”

“Sh-h!”

“I trust,” observed Dr. Fell, “you are quite sober?” Brian could imagine the doctor’s countenance, half ferocious and half pitying, close against the other mouthpiece. “Yes? Then may I ask what happened to you and Miss Page last night? Aubertin and I called on you.”

“I know you did.”

“Oh, ah? You will remember, perhaps, that the door of your flat was wide open? But nobody was there, and no message had been left?”

“There was a little trouble.”

“There may well be more. Where were you?”

“Sh-h!” Brian glanced round the room, where his clothes lay scattered on the furniture. “I haven’t time to tell you all of it over the ’phone. Briefly, Paula Catford and I went to a night-club called the Cave of the Witches.”

As he sketched the rest of the story, Dr. Fell’s breathing over the ’phone became more laboured and more wheezing.

“It wasn’t Mrs. Ferrier’s ghost or her corpse. It was an unpleasantly lifelike head-mask with fair hair, shoved round the side of the pillar and looking through eye-holes. I couldn’t see anything at all of the figure, especially in that light.”

“Who was hit?”

“Nobody. Three bullets went wild, diagonally, through a painting above our heads. The marks looked very small, about the size of a .22.”

“And Miss Page collapsed, you say?”

“Audrey fainted. Less from fear than from shock on top of complete exhaustion. I didn’t think she had been hit. There seems to be a general impression, from films and television,” snarled Brian, “that you’ve only got to point a weapon in the general direction of someone, and pull the trigger. Presto! Some magic of firearms lets you kill at any distance, with any kind of snap-shot, and in any kind of light. It’s a little more complicated than that.”

“Where is Miss Page now?”

“Sh-h! She’s here. She’s asleep; she’s in my bedroom. Just a minute.”

“Sir—”

“Just a minute, confound it!”

Carefully Brian put down the ’phone. Groping for his slippers, he looked at the clock as he tiptoed out into the little hall. The white-painted door to the bedroom, where Audrey lay in exhausted sleep, was still reassuringly closed. At ten minutes past nine, on a fine Saturday morning, it was as though you could taste the sparkle of the air.

He returned to the ’phone.

“I’ll answer your next question, Dr. Fell, before you even ask it. No, I did not set up a hue and cry after the person who fired the shots. Under the circumstances, would you have? I picked Audrey up and carried her out of there.”

The telephone was silent, as though pondering.

“Did you hear?” Brian asked.

“Sir, I heard.”

“Nobody in the place had seen what happened. The only person who approached was a hostess-waitress who rather gleefully said. ‘Ah, the poor little one,’ and indicated that people were constantly fainting at such a delightful show. As for Paula and Desmond Ferrier …”

“Oh, ah?” The other voice was casual and poised.

“They’d already gone. Both of ’em. Paula was the only one we saw go. When Audrey and I went back to the table, we’d found an open bottle of brandy and two clean glasses. Under the bottle was a note from Ferrier, though I didn’t notice it until Audrey fell across the table.”

“A note?”

“Paula was more upset than she’d admit. The note just asked us to excuse them; it said the brandy had been paid for, and wouldn’t we drink a toast to them
in absentia
?”

“Is Miss Page all right now?”

“Yes, I’m glad to say. But it wasn’t likely I’d let her spend the night alone at any hotel.” Brian’s conscience, never far from haunting him, intruded like the vision of the face round the pillar. “Anyway, whether I acted rightly or wrongly, it’s done. There it is.”

“As you say, sir, there it is. Now tell me: was the weapon used by the masked figure by any chance a Browning .22 automatic, of the sort which used to be manufactured in Belgium?”

“It could have been. I didn’t get a close look at it.”

“And was the mask,” Dr. Fell spoke with muffled thunder, “one designed for Mrs. Ferrier by a man named Lafargue, the owner of the night-club? Showing her face as it looked in the days of her beauty?”

“Paula said there
was
a mask of some sort. That’s all I know. Where did you hear about the mask and the pistol?”

“Aubertin found them yesterday morning when he made a search of the study. Both mask and pistol belonged to Mrs. Ferrier herself. They were identified, also yesterday morning, by her husband.” Dr. Fell groaned. “Since then, it would appear, somebody stole them. We should have paid more attention to the Cave of the Witches. One last point. How did you learn Miss Page had gone to this curious night-club?”

Brian told him.

“Indentations? On the sheet of a note-pad?” Dr. Fell spoke even more heavily. “You put the sheet of paper in your pocket, you say. Have you still got that sheet of paper?”

“I imagine so. There’s no reason—”

“Will you kindly look and see?”

Once more Brian put down the telephone. The jacket of the suit he had worn was hanging over the back of a chair close at hand. After groping in the side-pocket and finding nothing, he searched the other pockets with care.

“It’s gone,” he reported, picking up the ’phone. “I must have dropped it. I can’t remember when or where.”

“Oh, ah. I rather expected it would be gone. Now heark’ee!” Dr. Fell addressed the ’phone with toiling lucidity. “I am at the Villa Rosalind, as you may guess. Can you drive out here within the next hour or so, and bring Miss Page with you?”

“If it’s necessary, yes.”

“It may be very necessary. Aubertin means to make an arrest. This news of the attack last night will spur him on, as it should. Meanwhile, Sir Gerald Hathaway must be prevented from causing trouble, as I fear he means to do.”

“Hathaway? He’s not at it again?”

“Oh, yes. He is very much at it. Take good care of Miss Page, and walk very warily yourself. Before this day is ended, you may meet far more unpleasantness than you expect. Until I see you, then.”

The line went dead.

Brian replaced the ’phone, and sat studying it as though it could tell him what he most wanted to know. What roused him was the noise of the doorbell, whose buzz had a rattlesnake insistence like that of the single word ‘unpleasantness.’

It was Madame Duvallon, cheerful and hearty as usual: now deprived of her key, but arriving punctually at nine-thirty. Brian held the door open for her while she beamed her greeting on the threshold.

“And the young lady? She is still here? She goes well, I hope?”

“Not very well, madame. But you had better prepare a cup of tea and wake her up with it.”

“And, after that, the English breakfast?”

“The very large English breakfast, madame. I am so hungry that—”

Brian paused. There was someone else in the corridor, standing a dozen feet away and watching him. Conscious of nerves not at their best, he just stopped himself from snapping, “Who’s there?” although he could see very well who it was.

Desmond Ferrier, in grey slacks and a chequered sports-coat, but having nothing else that was festive about his appearance, loomed up with his fists dug deeply into his pockets.