In Spite of Thunder (14 page)

“Now really, Mr. Innes!”

“Yes? You were saying?”

“Do I have to say it? Aren’t you, who must be a reasonably civilized sort of person, the one who’s being a little obtuse now? That’s what the girl did, you know. Every word she said about you, and I daresay every word she said to you as well, made that plain to anyone. When she ’phoned this morning and actually asked you to take her away, surely you guessed it for yourself?”

“
DIDN’T YOU GUESS
it, then?” Paula insisted in a louder voice.

It was though she talked less at him than at herself, a lonely and slender figure, outlined against a long window. But she met Brian’s gaze steadily.

“Forgive me if I sound rude,” she begged. “It happens to be true. A woman like Audrey Page can’t really fall for anyone except someone older than herself and someone she can glamourize. Like you. Or like that man over by the fireplace who thinks everything so very funny. Didn’t it
ever
occur to you: about yourself?”

“Yes, it occurred to me,” Brian said honestly. “It occurred to me more than once. I hoped it was true; I’m still hoping so. But it seems to me the person who gets the poor deal in this business is Philip Ferrier.”

The man by the fireplace laughed.

“Never try to be a gentleman, old boy. It doesn’t pay. Take what you can get and be thankful you can get it.” His tone changed. “Marriage is a different thing, though. We’ll have to prevent you from marrying her.”

“You think you can?”

“I think I can try.”

Paula, as though she found all men past hope when their vanity or arrogance happened to be roused, went on to something that appeared to concern her more.

“Desmond, stop this! If poor Eve thought you wanted Audrey Page, it explains a lot I couldn’t understand. I couldn’t understand why the girl was so frightened. I couldn’t understand why Eve was so sweet about her until Audrey actually walked in here. But stop acting, please! This isn’t funny in the least.”

“Acting, eh? Do you imagine I think it’s funny?”

“You seem to.”

“Then think again, angel-face. I’m laughing, if you could call it that, because my story is bloody silly and yet every word of it is the truth. I’ve played parts like this; I never expected to do a real one. Question me yourself: why don’t you?”

“Desmond, I …”

“Come on, Paula! Those big eyes of yours don’t fool anybody. You’ve pried some statements out of people who never knew how indiscreet they were being until they saw themselves quoted on the front page. Have a whack at it; try your technique on me!”

“Desmond, I can’t! Not now.”

“Then somebody ought to do it, just to see how I behave.” Ferrier turned a savage face towards Brian. “What about you, old boy? Care to question me?”

“There’s nothing I should like better.”

“Then fire away. That is, unless Dr. Fell …?”

But Dr. Fell was saying nothing. Absorbed, intent, a trifle eerie-looking, his gaze moved from Ferrier to Paula and back to Ferrier again. If it badly disturbed Paula, it had no effect at all on the latter. Ferrier’s personality, brocaded dressing-gown and all, dominated the room like Othello’s.

“The oracle and augur is silent. He won’t be drawn. The field is clear for the paint-mixers and the lesser amateurs. That is, if you know how to question a witness.”

“I’ll try.” Whereupon Brian, in rage and haste, blundered at the very start. “Were you, or weren’t you, having an affair with Audrey?”

“Ho! That’s all he can think of!”

“Were you, or weren’t you?”

“No, I was not. Anything else?”

“Yes. Mr. Ferrier, do you keep a diary?”

There was a silence as sudden as the stroke of a gong. Paula looked up quickly. Dr. Fell’s eyes moved back and forth.

“Yes, I keep a diary. I’ve kept one for twenty years. Why do you ask?”

“Are you willing to hand that diary over to the police?”

“No, naturally I’m not. Any more than I want it published in the Continental edition of the
Daily Mail
. Who would?”

“You left this house just before seven o’clock yesterday evening, and didn’t return until half-past ten. Where did you go?”

“As I told Dr. Fell, I was having dinner alone. If you can call it a dinner.”

“Where were you?”

“At the Cave of the Witches.”

“The Cave of the Witches? What’s that?”

“Oh, no! I’m answering questions, old boy. I’m not teaching you what you already ought to know.”

“Why did you suddenly decide to have dinner alone?”

“Because I couldn’t take my dear wife’s affectations any longer. Or her jaw. Besides, I wanted to think about somebody.”

Paula, clenching her hands and with a little gasp as though she saw only hopelessness in his attitude, turned away and hurried to the sideboard between the two front windows. There, reaching out towards a decanter of brandy, she stopped before touching it. Ferrier watched Brian with a fixed, agreeable smile.

“At half-past ten, when you heard Mrs. Ferrier had rushed away in a taxi, you drove straight to the Hotel du Rhône. Please answer your own question: how did you know she had gone there?”

“I didn’t.”

“Oh?”

“But it was a natural enough assumption,” Ferrier retorted swiftly. “Eve went to the dining-room, they tell me. I frequently had dinner there; so did all the rest of us. It was the natural place for her to look for me.”

“And you to look for her? When she’d already had dinner at this house?”

“Why not?”

“That was the only reason you went to the hotel?”

“Yes!”

“Very well. If you thought Audrey was in danger, why did you let her come here?”

“Because I was pretty sure my dear wife was bluffing. I didn’t think there was any real danger. Audrey herself didn’t think there was any real danger; ask her!”

“How do you know what Audrey thought?”

“Ask her, I tell you! Well, we were both wrong: my dear wife killed herself and tried to put the blame on Audrey. Eve hadn’t any cause for being suspicious, but she believed she had.” The same fixed look, almost a glare, returned to Ferrier’s eyes. “Their so-called murder was a suicide; the only crime those cops will ever find.”

And Brian, on horns and hooks of doubt, couldn’t make up his mind.

“By the cream-faced loon of Dunsinane,” Ferrier exclaimed softly, and snapped his fingers, “I’m getting rather good at explanations. Leave the police to me.”

Paula whirled round from the sideboard. “Desmond, for heaven’s sake be careful!”

“Leave ’em to me, I tell you!”

“Look here,” said Dr. Gideon Fell, “this has got to stop.”

The sharpness of that common-sense voice, falling on heated nerves, brought silence without bringing peace. Slowly, with infinite labour, Dr. Fell rose to his feet.

“Sir,” he said with thunderous earnestness, “you had better face the fact that your wife’s death was murder. I cannot help you, nor can anyone else, if you brought me all the way from London to practice a piece of deception. Have you anything to tell me now?”

“No.”

“Let me repeat,” said Dr. Fell, caught between wrath and deep worry, “your wife’s death was murder.”

“Sweet Christ,” Ferrier breathed, “
I
didn’t want her to die!” Very briefly his self-control skidded; tears sprang into the eyes of Paula Catford; afterwards Ferrier had himself in hand again, urbane as ever.

“Your wife’s death was murder. …”

“Have you got to go on saying that, magister?”

“I fear so. The police are a deadly enough danger, to begin with, if you care for your neck at all. You walk amid other dangers too. They are not the only persons threatening you.”

“Who else is?”

“Sir Gerald Hathaway. Or, at least, he is threatening me. I am almost sure he knows how this murder was committed. Do you know how it was committed?”

“No. I’ll work that one out in good time. Besides, what has Hathaway got against me? I never saw the bloke in my life until last night.”

“He has not necessarily got anything against you. But if he can show me up for the fool and the duffer I undoubtedly am …!”

“Magister, are you sure he’s not bluffing? Look here!”

Moving away from the fireplace, Ferrier looked round him and discovered the table which had served as a sort of fire-screen when Brian first entered the drawing-room. Pulling the table back to its former position, he took the photograph album from Dr. Fell’s hands and put it down on the table. On the floor beside another chair he found a large book of press-cuttings, which he set beside it. Plucking Hathaway’s hat from the edge of the mantelpiece, he dropped the hat beside both.

“Hathaway is quite a card, isn’t he? Until three o’clock this morning he stood just here and lectured us like a professor before a class.”

“I need no reminding,” said Dr. Fell.

“He very coolly accused Eve of poisoning that rich boy-friend, Hector Matthews, and assumed she wouldn’t kick him out of the house for saying so. In which, to do the old girl justice, he was right.” Ferrier gnawed at his under-lip. “You say you agree with him?”

“About what?” Dr. Fell asked sharply.

“He showed,” retorted Ferrier, “all the ways in which Matthews
couldn’t
have been poisoned. Matthews couldn’t have swallowed poison, to begin with, because he took nothing to eat or drink. Matthews couldn’t have been injected with poison, because witnesses were standing or sitting beside him all the time. Matthews couldn’t have inhaled poison, because it would have affected others too. In short, there wasn’t a way left.”

“So it seems.”

“And yet, if we’re to write down Matthews’s death as murder, we’ve got to cover and explain all those points against it?”

“Sir, need you belabour the obvious? Yes! We must do just that.”

Ferrier pointed, like Mephistopheles at Faust.

“So if you’re thinking they’re certain to pitch on me as the murderer of my wife, don’t be so afraid for my neck. They can’t see through a millstone. They can’t see what isn’t there.
I
wasn’t at Berchtesgaden in ’39.”

“Tut! The murderer of your wife was not necessarily at Berchtesgaden either. You know that as well as I do.”

“What do you mean, I know it?” The blood jumped into Ferrier’s forehead-veins. “If I killed Eve, it must have been for the sake of Audrey Page. I made out the case against myself. Don’t be misled, any of you,” and he looked at Brian, “by a pleasant house or an easy style of living or two expensive cars in the garage. The house runs on credit; the Rolls was bought on credit; the Bentley’s mine, but I’ve had it since I played Hamlet at the old Royalty Theatre in ’26. That’s why—”

Ferrier stopped abruptly.

Dr. Fell, with the expression of one struck across the back of the head with a fairly heavy club, was staring at a corner of the ceiling.

“The motor-cars,” he breathed, in a hollow voice. “The motorcars! Hour after hour in a spiritual abyss, endless searching of rooms and even of a cellar, and all because I neglected to think of the motor-cars.”

Here Dr. Fell, fastening on his eyeglasses more firmly, blinked round towards Brian and made incoherent noises, both of thanks and apology.

“You must forgive me,” he said, “for not being alert to your hint. You yourself reminded me of the motor-cars earlier in the day. Once upon a time, incredible at this may seem, I owned a car too. I could get inside it; I could even drive it. I might not understand the mechanism, but at least I owned a car.”

“Is this supposed to mean something?” asked Ferrier, who clearly did not understand. “It would be more interesting to see the mechanism in your head.”

Dr. Fell’s mood changed.

“You are welcome to see it, insofar as it concerns you. By thunder, you’ve got to see it! Time is running out. We can’t wait much longer.”

“For what?”

“For a little frankness on your part. First, look out for Hathaway in more respects than one. It’s true he gave us a lecture publicly. You also observed, no doubt, he had something of a conference with Mrs. Ferrier in private?”

“With Eve? When was this?”

“Shortly before we all turned in. They were in the dining-room there, having an earnest talk and not too much at daggers-drawn. Come! Surely you noticed it?”

“I wasn’t myself, magister. I’d taken a good many drinks.”

“In candour, so had I. Hathaway and Mrs. Ferrier were stone-cold sober. I strongly suspect Hathaway’s errand in Geneva this morning has something to do with a cable-office. He may be trying to get some information which I obtained, before I left London, from Scotland Yard.”

Paula Catford, plainly puzzled as well as startled out of her wits, straightened up at the sideboard. The effect on Ferrier was even more pronounced.

“Lord of high hell!” he said, as though addressing a prayer. “A month ago I went to England especially to see you. I told you several things in confidence when I asked you to visit us. And you repeated ’em to the police?”

“No, I did not. Nobody has betrayed you. It might have been better if someone had.”

“I am asking …!”

“So you are. Actually, you told me very little except the story of Berchtesgaden and a hint that your wife might try to poison you. You were not being frank then. You are not being frank now.”

“Will you tell me how?”

“I intend to do so. Sir, you never feared your wife would try to poison you. That was childish; the whole approach was childish. There was no need to shield Mrs. Ferrier (yes; shield her!) by what at first sight seemed to be an accusation. Nor is there any need to blacken your character in order to whitewash hers.”

Ferrier appealed to the ceiling. “Paula, do you understand what this maniac is talking about?”

“No! Do you?”

“I think he does,” interposed Dr. Fell. And he looked at Ferrier. “Your statement a moment ago, that you might have designs on Miss Page because of her father’s money, is less childish than grotesque. Your reputation, let’s face it, is as notorious as it is well-deserved. You would cut the throat of an actor or actress who stepped on your lines or spoiled a scene. You would cheerfully seize any woman from fifteen to fifty, and think it a good day’s work. But marry for money you would not do.”