In Spite of Thunder (4 page)

Hathaway, short and tubby, appeared to bounce in his chair.

“Oblige me,” he said testily, “by refraining from this childish sarcasm. We are not amused.”

“Neither are we.”

“More and more,” said Hathaway, pointing the cigar at him, “you begin to sound like your friend Gideon Fell. Fell? Bah! The man is no such great hand at solving murder mysteries. I will beat him yet.”

“What’s Dr. Fell got to do with it? Would you mind explaining any of this hocus-pocus?”

A distant church-clock sounded the quarter-hour past ten. The Hotel du Rhône, raising a vast elegance of chromium and glass on the Quai Turrettini above the Pont de la Tour de l’Ile, seemed as somnolent as its austere bar.

“My dear fellow—!” began Hathaway.

He took out a large watch and consulted it. He peered round the room, deserted except for these two and for a white-coated young barman drowsing against a wall of bright-labelled bottles.

Indirect lighting lent a spectral air to Hathaway’s bald head and his close-cropped beard and moustache. His Guy-Fawkes hat, together with an old leather brief-case, lay beside him. Frowning, he stubbed out the cigar in an ashtray. Then Sir Gerald Hathaway—fashionable portrait-painter, ladies’ man, amateur criminologist—regarded Brian with an air in which amiable cynicism blended in a frantic preoccupation with his hobby.

“My dear fellow, I apologize if I caused you embarrassment. Especially,” he added with a faintly malicious twinkle, “in the presence of Miss Audrey Page. But it’s your own fault.”

“It is, eh?”

“Yes, it is. You wouldn’t tell her not to visit this damned villa of Mrs. Ferrier’s. You were too proud to forbid her in so many words; you wouldn’t admit you were interested. If anything happens to her within the next week, it will be your responsibility.”

Brian struck the table with his fist. The barman opened drowsy eyes but did not stir.

“Listen to me!” said Hathaway, also striking the table. “We are dealing with a murder mystery far more curious than it appears to be. And with a woman far more clever than
she
appears to be.”

“Eve Eden?”

“I prefer to call her Mrs. Ferrier.”

“Call her what you like. Have you made up your mind whether she did or didn’t kill Hector Matthews at Berchtesgaden?”

“Oh, she killed him. But not in the way we thought.”

“Not in the way we thought? If it was deliberate murder, she must have given him a shove or toppled him over in some way when he turned faint?”

“No. She chucked him over, and yet she didn’t touch him.”

“What the hell is all this about? And who’s talking like Gideon Fell now?”

“Ah!” murmured Hathaway. “You’ll see. As for the reasons why I am here a day early, and staying at this particular hotel, and constructing (if you will pardon me?) a scheme on which I rather flatter myself …!”

Once more Hathaway consulted his watch. Once more he looked towards the door leading to a foyer so large and lofty that voices were toned to murmurs there.

“By the way,” he added abruptly. “You once told me you never met Mrs. Ferrier, or saw her except in films. Did you ever see her on the stage before she took up film work?”

“No. Was she good on the stage?”

“Oh, the lady was competent. Especially in emotional parts. That means nothing: every young hopeful at Rada wants a stab at Ibsen or Chekhov. If you go still further and cast any actress as a glamourous trollop with a hundred lovers and a misunderstood heart: cripes, how they all love it! And every woman in the audience, even the most respectable, sees herself as potentially the same character.”

“Well, what’s wrong with that?”

“I don’t say there’s anything wrong with it. I do say that Mrs. Ferrier, at heart, is a thoroughly respectable woman who nevertheless wouldn’t stick at murder to get what she wanted. And that’s the most dangerous kind of all.”

“Look here, isn’t this a change of view since we talked about it last?”

“Agreed. It is.” Hathaway brooded. “Just four weeks ago, out of the blue, she wrote me a letter care of the Savage Club. I didn’t bring the letter with me; one day it may be needed. But I can give you the exact terms of it.

“The whole thing was a cry of horror. Recently in Geneva, she said, she had heard a rumour so appalling that she couldn’t believe her ears. Certain people appeared to be whispering that the death of poor Mr. Matthews, at Berchtesgaden in ’39, hadn’t been an accident and
she
, she of all people, was suspected of dirty work. Not once in seventeen years had she ever dreamed of this possibility.”

Brian stared at him. “She said …?”

“Yes!”

“But she couldn’t have believed that!”

“Couldn’t she? I wonder. Now oblige me,” and the pudgy hands made a fussed gesture, “by letting me repeat her story in the letter. On that dreadful day at Berchtesgaden (I quote her own words) she had been standing at least a dozen feet away from Mr. Matthews when he cried out and fell. Scharführer Johst and two other men immediately said they saw it happen. How could she anticipate suspicion? It
did
happen.

“This was all past and gone; it might be very laughable. But it troubled her. She was writing to ‘that nice girl,’ Miss Paula Catford, in care of Miss Catford’s publisher. Meanwhile, couldn’t I (strictly between ourselves), couldn’t I reassure her and say
I
saw it happen? And she was, mine sincerely and with a passionate flourish of the pen, Eve Ferrier.”

There was a pause.

Hathaway made a face and spread out his hands.

“Well, I couldn’t say that. I rather doubted Miss Catford could say it. So I wrote to Mrs. Ferrier and told her so.”

“And then?”

“Her reply, by air-mail return, was more passionate still. Why, she asked, hadn’t I said as much at the time? She was in a frightful position; her good name might be at stake. Could I possibly arrange to visit her for the week beginning Friday, tenth August, so that we might talk the matter over? She would try to get Miss Catford too.

“In my letter of acceptance (and who wouldn’t have accepted?), I refrained from pointing out a few obvious things. When you are the guest of a roaring Nazi amid his hatchet-men, and he declares somebody fell over a parapet by accident, you’re apt to remain discreetly silent. You don’t say, ‘My dear Scharführer, draw it mild; that’s only another of your thumping lies.’ Or
I
don’t say it, anyway. I also refrained from asking Mrs. Ferrier what there was to talk over. But I did make one obvious move.”

“Oh? What was that?”

“Why, curse it,” retorted Hathaway, “I tried to get in touch with
you
. I tried it as soon as I received her first letter. And you weren’t in Geneva.”

“I was in Paris.”

“Yes; so I eventually discovered. The point is, who started that rumour about a suspicion of murder? I’m not proud of visiting Berchtesgaden; I told the story to nobody except you. And—and one other person. How many people have you told?”

“Only Audrey Page. Tonight, and at her father’s insistence.”

“You’re sure of that?”

“Absolutely. Even then—”

“Even then, am I to assume, you told her only because you have fallen for the young lady?”

Brian smiled, though he was smiling against his feelings and arguing against his convictions.

“That doesn’t matter.”

“Indeed? What spirit you have!”

“I mean the question doesn’t arise even if it were true. Audrey has fallen very hard for someone else.”

“For young Philip? H’m.” Hathaway struck one finger on the table. “Then you’re not at all alarmed about her safety?”

“There’s no actual reason to be. Mrs. Ferrier’s letters to you may be those of an innocent woman trying to protect herself from slander. She invited Audrey as long ago as last winter, a casual invitation to a casual friend; and she made it definite about a month ago, at the same time—” Brian stopped abruptly.

“A casual invitation, eh? And Mrs. Ferrier made it definite a month ago, when she couldn’t think about anything except a rumour of murder? And there’s nothing suspicious in that circumstance either? Don’t make me laugh!”

Hathaway, a humped interrogation-point with a bald head, had bounced to his feet. Brian also jumped up. And then, in a heavy silence while the minute-hand clicked on a big electric clock, they looked at each other unmirthfully. Hathaway seized hat and briefcase.

“Come along,” he said. “Come along, now!”

“Where are we going?”

“Don’t ask questions. If you are not interested in protecting Miss Page, I am. I have some information still to get. And we will beat Gideon Fell at his own game.”

Restraint was abandoned.

“Will you tell me,” Brian demanded, “why you keep dragging Dr. Fell into this? He isn’t concerned in the matter, is he? Eve Ferrier hasn’t invited
him
for a pleasant week at the villa?”

“No,” Hathaway said curtly, “but Desmond Ferrier has.”

Chairs scraped on a hard-rubber floor.

“Yes!” continued Hathaway, jamming the Guy-Fawkes hat on his head and immediately snatching it off again. “That was what I said: Desmond Ferrier. He whistled to your elephantine friend; Fell has been at the Villa Rosalind since noon today. Now pay our bill and follow me.”

Brian put a bank-note on the table. He acted slowly, to gain time for thought. Past open French windows, past the
terrasse
and the Quai Turrettini, he could hear the River Rhône foaming at its narrowest round the island bridge. Its sound, unnoticed by day, grew loud in the quieter hours. Brian stalked after Hathaway into the foyer.

Few of the hotel’s guests had yet returned from theatre or restaurant or night-club. The dining-room was still open. Chromium clock-hands above the reception-desk, in a foyer resplendent with colours of cream and orange and black, pointed to nearly half-past ten. Hathaway dragged his companion over towards the lifts.

“We are shortly to discover,” he announced, “whether my careful planning is better than Gideon Fell’s scatterbrain. By the way! Did you ever meet Miss Paula Catford?”

“No.”

“But you’ve seen a photograph of her, perhaps?”

“Not to my knowledge.”

“Ah! Then if you will glance where I am pointing—so!—you may get something of a surprise.”

One of the lifts had swooped down and rolled open its green metal door. Brian stopped short. Hathaway was right: he had half-expected any globe-trotting woman journalist to be a tough and strident egomaniac with elaborate gestures and too much make-up. Astonishment, when he saw Paula Catford, took him in more ways than one.

Out of the lift stepped a gentle, modest, well-rounded girl, tall and slender, with black hair and a sympathetic manner. You thought ‘girl’ rather than ‘woman,’ though she must have been in her middle or later thirties. Though she was not exactly pretty, a clear complexion and large eyes made her seem so. And, except for her very fashionable clothes, she might have been the vicar’s daughter on holiday.

She hurried up to Hathaway, putting away a room-key in her handbag.

“Am I late, Sir Gerald?”

“On the contrary, dear lady, you are five minutes early. And here and now I apologize for all.”

“Well, I do wish you wouldn’t. You’re rather an overpowering person, and I’m not all that used to so much attention.”

Hathaway’s beard vibrated with gallantry.

“Dear lady, it was bad enough to drag you here from Stockholm without one proper word of explanation. But to offer you dinner, and then ’phone and put you off because of this miscreant Innes …!”

Paula, smiling, extended a warm and friendly hand.

“Mr. Innes? It’s a great pleasure. Sir Gerald couldn’t seem to find you.”

“At his flat,” and Hathaway pursued a grievance, “they said he was due back by a plane arriving at seven o’clock. By eight o’clock, when he still hadn’t turned up, I was unfit for human company until I had tramped the streets to work off steam. Even then, when by sheer accident I met him at the Hotel Metropole, he delayed me another half hour by going home to change his clothes.”

Brian bowed.

“Sir Gerald is quite right, Miss Catford. You must never put your faith in temperamental people.”

“I—I beg your pardon?”

“Beware of these painters, as Hathaway says. They insist on changing their clothes; they hide in telephone-boxes; you can’t trust ’em an inch.”

“Oh, you’re all guilty of great enormities. I’m sure of that. I …”

Suddenly Paula woke up. So did Brian.

All this time he had been holding her hand. Her eyes, large and luminous hazel, looked straight into his as though rapt at every word he said. And yet she had not heard him, Brian thought; behind that gentle barrier lurked some emotion he sensed rather than defined. Hathaway sensed it too; a spark flicked the group; all gallantry dropped away.

“Yes, my dear?” the older man demanded. He was like a sharp if indulgent uncle. “What is it? What’s the matter?”

“Nothing at all. I was thinking—well! Of Berchtesgaden. Can that be seventeen years ago?”

“Just over seventeen years. In those days they called you the Infant Prodigy of Fleet Street, didn’t they?”

“Yes; that’s what I was thinking. My God!”

Paula made a wry mouth and shivered and retreated.

“In ’39,” she went on, “I had just published my first travel-book. I wrote the most horribly inaccurate descriptions, I fired off silly-clever political views, in a way that turns me hot and cold when I think of it today. And yet I wonder if any of us, really, is a bit more grown up now?”

“I wonder too,” Hathaway said sharply. “You know why I’m here?”

“Of course I know.”

“Well, then! It’s about Mrs. Ferrier. Didn’t she ask you to give her an alibi in the murder of Hector Matthews?”

“We can’t talk here,” Paula said after a hard-breathing pause. “Come with me, please.”

“If we go into the bar …?”

“No! Not in the bar, or I shall have too many. This way.”

At the front of the foyer, facing the quai, glass doors in a glass façade glittered open as a party of guests laughed their way back to the hotel. To the right of the front doors, down two steps and past a newspaper-kiosk, the marble floor had been set out with easy-chairs for a lounge. Paula led them there.