Read Online In Spite of Thunder by John Dickson Carr - Free Book Online Page A

the moment. I said your future might depend on it. That happens to be true. He’s in love with you.”
    “Whereas you’re not, are you?”
    “Certainly I’m not. What makes you think I should be fool enough for that?”
    “ Oh! ” said Audrey, and clenched her fists. But she had never been more attractive or desirable than as she said it. “You wouldn’t forbid me to go to Eve’s, would you, when we talked about it earlier tonight? Why are you doing it now?”
    “I’ll give you just one of the reasons first.”
    “Just one?”
    “Yes. Sit still.”
    Briefly but vividly, he sketched out the meeting with Hathaway, the meeting with Paula Catford, the aching reasons why a man couldn’t have been poisoned at Berchtesgaden, the entrance of Eve Ferrier, the appearance of a perfume-bottle and a letter from a German surgeon.
    “Oil of vitriol?” echoed Audrey. “The stuff they throw in people’s faces?”
    “It’s been known to happen.”
    “But Mr. Matthews couldn’t have been killed with it, could he?”
    “Oh, no. Think of what I’ve been saying.” Brian rapped on the table and spoke in the manner of a stage-direction. “Thunder and lightning. Enter Desmond Ferrier, slightly drunk and full of the devil. When he ripped out that line from Macbeth , the bottle jumped out of his wife’s hand and smashed either by accident or design.”
    “By design?”
    “Yes. It could have been a stage-effect; Eve herself could have planned it. That’s why I don’t know where to look.”
    “Haven’t you got a horrible mind?”
    “Possibly. We all have. Now consider the sequel. Nobody else had seen it happen; we bribed the night-porter to hush it up and get rid of the evidence. Mrs. Ferrier used the incident as a reason why Hathaway and Miss Catford should leave the hotel, luggage and all, for her villa. They didn’t seem to be thinking very straight; they agreed. She next suggested we should get you too.”
    Audrey, in the act of lifting her glass, set it down that time untasted.
    “But Eve Ferrier didn’t know I was in Geneva a day early! Don’t you remember? Phil hadn’t let them know!”
    “Well, Mrs. Ferrier knew. She said she’d heard it, and that it didn’t surprise her. Did you tell anyone besides Phil himself?”
    “No.”
    “Sure of that, Audrey?”
    “Of course I’m sure!”
    Brian watched her. The big room, after emptying of its first guests, had begun to fill again. Experimental squeals and plunks shook the orchestra-platform as the band tuned up. At the table behind Audrey, alone in vastness, with a fiercely apologetic look on his face and six bottles of beer in front of him, was Dr. Fell. A crutch-headed stick had been propped up against the table; waiters backed slowly away from him.
    “Of course I’m sure!” Audrey repeated in a louder voice. “What was Mrs. Ferrier doing at the Hotel du Rhône?”
    “Looking for her husband.”
    “And Mr. Ferrier?”
    “He didn’t say. Anyway!” Brian seemed to dismiss the point. “There were the five of us, in a sort of pandemonium. Mrs. Ferrier, I repeat, immediately wanted to take you with ’em. Since Hathaway was able to say you were putting up at the Metropole, I had to stop that one. I said you and Phil had gone to dinner, but that I hadn’t any idea where you could be found afterwards or what time you would return.”
    “Oh?”
    “Off they drove, with four or five hundredweight of luggage, in one private car and one taxi. Mrs. Ferrier ’phoned the Metropole at least twice before they left. By this time they’ll have reached home; she’ll be ’phoning the Metropole again.”
    “Well, why shouldn’t she?”
    The house-lights began slowly to dim. Brian raised his hand to a flying waiter.
    “More champagne!” he said in French. “I take it,” he added politely, “you can bear to sit through the show again? Usually there are eight or ten turns, some of them very good.”
    “If you think you’re making me do something against my