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

will,” cried Audrey, “then you’d better think again. They are good, yes! Even if they’re not very nice and my father wouldn’t approve. You—you simply don’t expect to find anything like it here. I always associate Geneva with John Calvin and righteousness.”
    “This is the French part of Switzerland. People tend to forget that. Look here, Audrey: do you seriously maintain you’re in love with young Philip Ferrier?”
    There was a pause. The blue eyes opened wide.
    “I most certainly do maintain it,” Audrey exclaimed, with every evidence of sincerity, “because it’s true. Is there any reason why I shouldn’t be?”
    “I can think of a lot of reasons why your conduct is very peculiar if you are.”
    “Name one of them, please.”
    “With pleasure. When I got back from Paris this evening, I took a taxi straight from the airport to your hotel. I didn’t even stop at my flat on the way.”
    “Dear, dear! That was very kind of you, I’m sure. But, as I said at the time …”
    “Audrey, do you remember what you did say at the time? Stop and think. I was paying off the taxi when you came charging out of the hotel in a fine old stage of rage and near-panic. Before you realized you’d mistaken me for somebody else, you asked me what on earth I thought I was doing. You said I was too early, and I’d spoil everything.”
    “All right! What about it?”
    Brian answered her without raising his voice.
    “This about it,” he retorted. “Admittedly you were waiting for Philip Ferrier to take you out to dinner. But any woman who’s expecting to be called for, even by her best boy-friend, waits in the foyer until he goes in to collect her. Or else she stays in her room until the reception-desk ’phones to tell her he’s downstairs. She doesn’t do what you did and she doesn’t say what you said.”
    “I was only—”
    “Shut up.” And he rapped his knuckles on the table. “The implication was that you had mistaken me for Philip, wasn’t it?”
    “Of course! That’s what happened.”
    “Oh, no. It couldn’t have happened. I’m just over six feet tall, and nobody could possibly call me a heavyweight. Philip is more than half a head shorter, and he’s on the chunky side. All you could see was the outline of a tall, rangy bloke in a Homburg hat, paying off a taxi in a semi-dark street. But it was enough to upset you badly.”
    And then, as he studied a face growing ghostlike in the dwindling lights, all Brian’s anger began to change to a deep and desperate concern.
    “Didn’t you mistake me for somebody else? Didn’t you mistake me for Desmond Ferrier, turning up at the hotel a good many hours before you expected him? And, if that’s so, can you honestly claim to have any great affection for his son?”

VI
    E VERY LIGHT IN the room went out.
    The thud of a tom-tom was joined by others, hammering in barbaric rhythm and swelling to a thunder that drowned out his voice. In total darkness he could not even see the white of Audrey’s dress.
    The beams of two spotlights, springing up at either side of the waxed floor, converged on the closed curtains of the stage. Of Audrey’s expression, as the diffused glow touched her dark brown hair and set a mask on her face, he could read nothing.
    It was perhaps ten seconds later, while tom-toms banged at the nerves, that Audrey began to slap at the table like a woman in a frenzy or a child in a tantrum.
    “Oh, God save the lot of us and you most of all! You think I’m having an affair with Mr. Ferrier. Is that it?”
    “It doesn’t matter if you are.”
    “It does matter! It matters a great deal! Is that what you’ve been thinking?”
    “Yes.”
    “And you were carrying a suitcase, so you imagined that meant …?”
    “We can’t get anywhere if you slide away from every question. Did you expect Desmond Ferrier at the hotel? Was he supposed to be there at some time later tonight?”
    “Yes, I did. Yes, he was. But it wasn’t for that reason.