In Spite of Thunder (3 page)

“All I can t-tell you,” cried Audrey, who in moments of great earnestness had a tendency to stammer, “is what Eve wrote in her last letter. Sir Gerald Hathaway said he’d be delighted to accept. Do you imagine she’d have written one name and really meant somebody else?”

“No, I suppose not.”

“There can’t be any such great mystery about it, you know. Couldn’t he be just as curious about Eve as he once was about Hitler?”

“You take grisly suggestions in your stride, don’t you?”

“Well, couldn’t that be it?”

“Yes, it could be. Probably it is. All the same, I wish I knew more about the lady’s motivation.” Brian, staring out of the window, hardly saw the street-lamps or the ordered quiet of the Grand Quai. “Audrey, hold on! How many people are coming to this house-party of hers?”

“It’s not a house-party, really. There’s only one other person.”

“Only one, eh? Who is it?”

“I don’t know. Eve didn’t say.”

“No; I’m wool-gathering. It can’t possibly be what occurred to me. But I don’t like this situation one little bit. Why not obey your father and take the next plane back to London?”

“Obey! Obey! Will you try to stop me if I do go to Eve’s?”

“No, I will not.” He spoke formally, but with anger kindling. “You’re over twenty-one; you must please yourself.”

“Thanks
so
much for making it clear. In that case, I’d better tell you—”

Audrey never finished what she meant to say, if in fact she meant to say it at all.

The head-lights of a car, driven fast, brushed their dazzle outside curtains of velvet and lace just before a Bentley two-seater pulled up outside the hotel. Audrey drew a deep breath and ran across to stand in the window beside Brian. But she did not look at her companion; it was plain that she had forgotten him.

Out of the car climbed a hatless, dark-haired young man in a white dinner-jacket. Audrey flung the lace curtains wide open.

“Phil! Phil, dear!”

The young man, who could be nobody but the son of Desmond Ferrier, stopped short.

“I’m here,” Audrey said rather unnecessarily. “I’m waiting for you! I’m here!”

“Yes. I see you are. Who’s that with you?”

The voice, though pleasant enough, held sudden hostility and suspicion. Audrey tried to laugh. Still she did not look at her companion, but Brian could almost feel the lift of her eyebrows.

“Oh, Phil, don’t go on like that again. It’s nobody! It’s nobody at all!”

Brian said nothing.

“I mean,” cried Audrey, turning out her wrist, “I mean, Phil, it’s nobody you need think about. It’s only an old friend of mine from home, Brian Innes, and I don’t know why—”

Again she stopped. The pronouncing of Brian’s name had a curious effect in that quiet street.

The name meant nothing to Philip Ferrier; Philip merely nodded and entered the hotel. But it had a very definite meaning for someone else. On the opposite side of the street, in the shadow of the English Garden, a shortish and tubby man with an intent manner had been stumping along the pavement as though talking to himself. Here he stopped, peered round, and instantly crossed the road towards the Hotel Metropole.

“Ha!” breathed the tubby man.

He was the more striking a figure in that he wore a close-cut greyish beard and the sort of steeple-crowned hat which used to appear on figures of Guy Fawkes. This disreputable dark hat contrasted with full and formal evening-clothes.

A flicker of heat-lightning paled and pulsed in the sky towards the lake. Audrey, for all her preoccupation, could not help staring at this newcomer.

“Brian, look! The odd-looking man with the hat. He seems to be coming straight over here!”

“So he does. Your odd-looking man, though, isn’t in the least odd; and he’s got a good reason for everything he does. That’s Gerald Hathaway.”

“
Sir Gerald Hathaway?
”

“In person.”

“But what does he want here? What’s he doing in Geneva so soon?”

“I haven’t any idea. All the same … you remember I said there were two English guests at Berchtesgaden on the famous occasion? Two guests, that is, besides Eve Eden and Hector Matthews?”

“Well?”

“One was Hathaway. The other was some newspaperwoman named Paula Catford. Ever since you mentioned Hathaway, I’ve been wondering if history would repeat itself and Paula Catford would turn up too.”

Another flicker of heat-lightning lifted beyond motionless trees. But they had no time to consider this. A voice called out from the door. Into the lounge, conspicuous in white dinner-jacket, strode Philip Ferrier.

He did not resemble his father, Brian noted. The Desmond Ferrier of legend had been as long and lean as Brian himself, with a booming voice and deplorably frivolous ways. The son, at twenty-four, was stern and earnest to the verge of pompousness. He was also a trifle chunky. But Philip’s striking good-looks, from dark curling hair to classic profile and wide nostrils, carried an intense vitality.

Audrey almost yearned at him.

“Mr. F-ferrier, may I present Mr. Innes?”

One glance, raking Brian with powerful scrutiny, had shown Philip he need fear no rival here. His hostility vanished.

“How do you do?” he said. “Er—Aud and I are having dinner at the Richemond and then going on to a night-club. You won’t mind if we push off now?”

“No, not at all.”

“Thanks. We’re very late.” Relief whistled through the wide nostrils. “I’m late, Aud, and I apologize. Our two geniuses have been throwing fits of temperament again.”

“Phil, I wish you wouldn’t talk like that. It’s not fair!”

Philip bit his lip.

“Maybe it’s not. I dunno. I’m fond of the old man and of Eve too. But you don’t have to nurse ’em.”

Whereupon something new, something intensely human and very likeable, peered out from an apparent stuffed-shirt. Worry surrounded Philip Ferrier like an aura.

“The trouble is,” he said, “that you can’t tell what’s real and what isn’t real. They can’t tell either; they don’t know. Stage-people! Screen-people!
You’re
not connected with the stage or the screen, sir?”

“Not in any way.” Brian laughed. “Do I look as though I were?”

“Well, no,” Philip said seriously. “But there’s something about you: what is it? Anyway,” and he made a gesture and turned back to Audrey, “now that they’re both writing their reminiscences, and trying to beat each other to a publisher, and getting out their books of press-cuttings at every other word, it’s quite a wing-ding.”

“I—I daresay it is,” Audrey agreed.

“You bet it is. See what James Agate wrote about me in ’34? And I forget: wasn’t it Old So-and-So who played Lord Porteus in Binky Beaumont’s production of
The Circle
in ’36? And Old So-and-So is a grand person and a wonderful person and we love him very dearly, but just between ourselves he’s the world’s lousiest actor. Stage-people!”

Brian, listening hard for the approach of Sir Gerald Hathaway through the foyer, turned his attention back. Audrey moistened her lips.

“Phil, do you mean to say you don’t like it?”

“I’ve never been sure whether I like it. I do know it’s getting me down.”

“Why are you telling me this? There isn’t anything wrong, is there?”

“My poor girl, there’s never anything actually
wrong
!”

“Well, then?”

“But you’re coming to visit us, Aud. When the old man tells you Eve is trying to poison him, try not to take it too seriously. Now come along and let’s get some food.”

Footsteps echoed in the marble foyer; the lift hummed. But one set of footfalls had stopped short.

“Mr. Ferrier! Just a moment!” Brian said sharply.

“What is it?”

Philip had picked up Audrey’s wrap from the table and was holding it out for her. Audrey, her sex-appeal never more vivid than with heightened colour, lifted her arm as though to ward off a blow.

“Your father says Miss Eden is trying to poison him in the literal sense? With arsenic, strychnine, something of that sort?”

“No.
No
. That’s not it at all. That’s why I say: deliver me from people with temperament! That’s why I’m here.” Philip struggled for words. “I wanted to warn Aud—”

“Of what?”

“It’s the old man’s idea of being funny; and Eve’s too, recently. He’ll explain how she would like to poison him or creep up and stab him, and describe this in all apparent seriousness. Once or twice Eve’s got back at him in the same way. Unless you know they’re both playing the fool, it can be hair-raising. A reporter from
Woman’s Life
was so shocked I had to talk to her for an hour afterwards at the airport. And it isn’t funny in the least. Or it isn’t funny to me. Can’t you understand all this?”

“I can understand it, Mr. Ferrier. I wonder if they do.”

“Meaning what?”

The conjectures that floated in Brian’s mind …

From the corner of his eye he could see the door of the lounge, opening on a little passage that ran to the foyer. Though no light burned in the passage, it was floored with marble and lined with mirrors. He could see reflected outlines in a cuff, a shoulder, the edge of a hat. Gerald Hathaway, that distinguished man, was frankly if grotesquely listening.

A car hooted in the street.

“Mr. Ferrier, will you answer me just one question?”

“Yes, if I can.”

“There are to be two guests in your home besides Audrey. One is Sir Gerald Hathaway. Do you know who the other is?”

“Yes, of course. I’ve never met her—”

“‘Her?’”

“Yes; what’s so peculiar about that? She’s another journalist, a very big wheel. Writes books about the celebrities she’s met, and she’s promised to help Eve with the memoirs.”

“Is her name Paula Catford?”

“Yes. Now forget Paula Catford. We were talking about Eve and the old man. They’re artists; I don’t understand artists. But they’re human beings, for God’s sake. Whatever they say or however they show off, they don’t really do the things people keep doing in plays.”

“Are you sure? Has Miss Eden, for instance, never been involved in a case of violent death under suspicious circumstances?”

“No. Of course not. Never.”

“Suppose she has been? Suppose I brought a witness to prove the fact here and now? What would you say then?”

“I wouldn’t believe a word of it.” Philip let out his breath with a gasp. “You’re talking about my father and a decent woman he’s been married to for years.”

“Nobody is saying anything against your father. On the contrary! It may be very unpleasant for him if the same sort of ‘accident’ should occur again. And what about Audrey?”

“Audrey?”

“You haven’t thought about that side of it, and neither has she. I ask you to think of it now.”

Brian spoke steadily, his eyes on the younger man’s.

“A former fiancé of Eve Eden fell to his death from a balcony-terrace in the Alps when she was alone with him. Miss Catford and Gerald Hathaway were in an adjoining room at the time this happened. Years later, many years later, she invites both of them to a villa in the hills south-west of Geneva. We don’t know why she issued that invitation; probably they don’t know either.

“The point is that Audrey, who was only a child when Hector Matthews died,
Audrey
has been carefully brought here as well. Why? These may only be suspicious circumstances, like all the other facts, and yet they yell to high heaven for some kind of explanation. How does Audrey fit into the pattern? Are you so very happy to see her here?”

“Look—!” Philip began.

“Just a moment!”

It was so quiet that they could hear Philip’s wrist-watch ticking.

“Eve Eden inherited a fortune. If that wasn’t sheer accident, it was part of a campaign in murder. Hathaway and Miss Catford
can’t
be here by accident. Neither can Audrey. If I convinced you of all this, would you keep her present to see what happens? What would you do?”

“May
I
say something?” cried Audrey.

“No, you may not. Mr. Ferrier, what would you do?”

“I’d send her home,” Philip said, “and I’d send her home damn quick.”

“Then you’d better begin preparing her mind. The witness I can produce is just outside that door.—Hathaway!”

Philip, in a bursting kind of pause, threw down Audrey’s wrap on the table. This too-solemn, over-dignified young man, as Brian quite correctly felt, was deeply and sincerely in love with Audrey Page. And Audrey (this part, at least, he believed at the time) would throw herself into agreement with the least request of Philip Ferrier.

And yet even as he thought this, even as he called for his witness, an enigmatic expression in her blue eyes baffled him again as it had made him wonder once before.

“Hathaway!”

There was no answer. Brian went to the door of the lounge, confronting only his own image in the mirrors that lined the passage outside. A marble floor stretched away to the foyer on the right. His witness wasn’t there.

N
EARLY TWO HOURS
later, in the modernistic bar of a very different hotel on the north bank instead of the south bank, two men sat facing each other across a table beside the French windows to the
terrasse
.

They had dined here at the Hotel du Rhône, and adjourned to the bar. Their brandy-glasses were long empty; dregs of cold coffee congealed in the little cups. But a good dinner had not brought peace or stopped a violent argument.

“You say you were hiding in a telephone-box?” Brian Innes demanded.

“In effect,” confessed Gerald Hathaway, taking the cigar out of his mouth, “in effect, yes.”

“Well, well! For how long?”

“Until those two young people had cursed you and departed. Then, you may recall, I stood up and pushed the door open and said good evening?”

“Curiously enough,” Brian told him with powerful restraint, “I do recall it.”

“Tut, now! There is no need—”

“There is every need. A sense of the picturesque,” said Brian, “is an excellent thing. But I don’t feel this was carried far enough. If you wanted to avoid being my witness, couldn’t you have adopted some even subtler course? Couldn’t you have slipped out of the Metropole mysteriously disguised in a false nose and a crêpe-paper wig?”