In Spite of Thunder

by John Dickson Carr

  You stand in a crowd, beside the girl with whom you are in love. Commonplace circumstances, a rather tawdry night-club which puts on a show you know to be a show, have dissolved into grisliness because of one extra touch.

  A real human being, wearing a mask of rubber or papier-mâché, has altered that pattern by trying either to kill you or to kill the woman beside you.

  Nobody turns round to look. And you, though you may feel the wind of fear, yet you aren’t surprised either. Is it because, subconsciously, you have half recognized who the murderer is?

  Brian knew he was dreaming. But that doesn’t help, in the eerie morning hours when sleep wears thin and sweat starts out on the body.

  In his dream, somebody screamed.

  Startled awake, he sat up. It might have been yesterday morning. The telephone was ringing.

  “Yes?” he said aloud, to the air.

  He wasn’t in the bedroom. He lay stretched out, leg-and-neck cramped, in pyjamas and dressing-gown, on the sofa in the little living-room with its cream-coloured stucco walls. Clean sunlight flooded the room, where curtains blew at open windows.

  Brian picked up the ’phone with the effect of strangling it; at least it gave him silence. His, “Hello,” in a tentative voice, was greeted by a throat-clearing of worry and ominousness both together.

  “Sir—” began the voice of Dr. Fell.

  “Sh-h-h!” urged Brian.

  “What’s that?”

  “Sh-h!”

  “I trust,” observed Dr. Fell, “you are quite sober?” Brian could imagine the doctor’s countenance, half ferocious and half pitying, close against the other mouthpiece. “Yes? Then may I ask what happened to you and Miss Page last night? Aubertin and I called on you.”

  “I know you did.”

  “Oh, ah? You will remember, perhaps, that the door of your flat was wide open? But nobody was there, and no message had been left?”

  “There was a little trouble.”

  “There may well be more. Where were you?”

  “Sh-h!” Brian glanced round the room, where his clothes lay scattered on the furniture. “I haven’t time to tell you all of it over the ’phone. Briefly, Paula Catford and I went to a night-club called the Cave of the Witches.”

  As he sketched the rest of the story, Dr. Fell’s breathing over the ’phone became more laboured and more wheezing.

  “It wasn’t Mrs. Ferrier’s ghost or her corpse. It was an unpleasantly lifelike head-mask with fair hair, shoved round the side of the pillar and looking through eye-holes. I couldn’t see anything at all of the figure, especially in that light.”

  “Who was hit?”

  “Nobody. Three bullets went wild, diagonally, through a painting above our heads. The marks looked very small, about the size of a .22.”

  “And Miss Page collapsed, you say?”

  “Audrey fainted. Less from fear than from shock on top of complete exhaustion. I didn’t think she had been hit. There seems to be a general impression, from films and television,” snarled Brian, “that you’ve only got to point a weapon in the general direction of someone, and pull the trigger. Presto! Some magic of firearms lets you kill at any distance, with any kind of snap-shot, and in any kind of light. It’s a little more complicated than that.”

  “Where is Miss Page now?”

  “Sh-h! She’s here. She’s asleep; she’s in my bedroom. Just a minute.”

  “Sir—”

  “Just a minute, confound it!”

  Carefully Brian put down the ’phone. Groping for his slippers, he looked at the clock as he tiptoed out into the little hall. The white-painted door to the bedroom, where Audrey lay in exhausted sleep, was still reassuringly closed. At ten minutes past nine, on a fine Saturday morning, it was as though you could taste the sparkle of the air.

  He returned to the ’phone.

  “I’ll answer your next question, Dr. Fell, before you even ask it. No, I did not set up a hue and cry after the person who fired the shots. Under the circumstances, would you have? I picked Audrey up and carried her out of there.”

  The telephone was silent, as though pondering.

  “Did you hear?” Brian asked.

  “Sir, I heard.”

  “Nobody in the place had seen what happened. The only person who approached was a hostess-waitress who rather gleefully said. ‘Ah, the poor little one,’ and indicated that people were constantly fainting at such a delightful show. As for Paula and Desmond Ferrier …”

  “Oh, ah?” The other voice was casual and poised.

  “They’d already gone. Both of ’em. Paula was the only one we saw go. When Audrey and I went back to the table, we’d found an open bottle of brandy and two clean glasses. Under the bottle was a note from Ferrier, though I didn’t notice it until Audrey fell across the table.”

  “A note?”

  “Paula was more upset than she’d admit. The note just asked us to excuse them; it said the brandy had been paid for, and wouldn’t we drink a toast to them in absentia?”

  “Is Miss Page all right now?”

  “Yes, I’m glad to say. But it wasn’t likely I’d let her spend the night alone at any hotel.” Brian’s conscience, never far from haunting him, intruded like the vision of the face round the pillar. “Anyway, whether I acted rightly or wrongly, it’s done. There it is.”

  “As you say, sir, there it is. Now tell me: was the weapon used by the masked figure by any chance a Browning .22 automatic, of the sort which used to be manufactured in Belgium?”

  “It could have been. I didn’t get a close look at it.”

  “And was the mask,” Dr. Fell spoke with muffled thunder, “one designed for Mrs. Ferrier by a man named Lafargue, the owner of the night-club? Showing her face as it looked in the days of her beauty?”

  “Paula said there was a mask of some sort. That’s all I know. Where did you hear about the mask and the pistol?”

  “Aubertin found them yesterday morning when he made a search of the study. Both mask and pistol belonged to Mrs. Ferrier herself. They were identified, also yesterday morning, by her husband.” Dr. Fell groaned. “Since then, it would appear, somebody stole them. We should have paid more attention to the Cave of the Witches. One last point. How did you learn Miss Page had gone to this curious night-club?”

  Brian told him.

  “Indentations? On the sheet of a note-pad?” Dr. Fell spoke even more heavily. “You put the sheet of paper in your pocket, you say. Have you still got that sheet of paper?”

  “I imagine so. There’s no reason—”

  “Will you kindly look and see?”

  Once more Brian put down the telephone. The jacket of the suit he had worn was hanging over the back of a chair close at hand. After groping in the side-pocket and finding nothing, he searched the other pockets with care.

  “It’s gone,” he reported, picking up the ’phone. “I must have dropped it. I can’t remember when or where.”

  “Oh, ah. I rather expected it would be gone. Now heark’ee!” Dr. Fell addressed the ’phone with toiling lucidity. “I am at the Villa Rosalind, as you may guess. Can you drive out here within the next hour or so, and bring Miss Page with you?”

  “If it’s necessary, yes.”

  “It may be very necessary. Aubertin means to make an arrest. This news of the attack last night will spur him on, as it should. Meanwhile, Sir Gerald Hathaway must be prevented from causing trouble, as I fear he means to do.”

  “Hathaway? He’s not at it again?”

  “Oh, yes. He is very much at it. Take good care of Miss Page, and walk very warily yourself. Before this day is ended, you may meet far more unpleasantness than you expect. Until I see you, then.”

  The line went dead.

  Brian replaced the ’phone, and sat studying it as though it could tell him what he most wanted to know. What roused him was the noise of the doorbell, whose buzz had a rattlesnake insistence like that of the single word ‘unpleasantness.’

  It wa
s Madame Duvallon, cheerful and hearty as usual: now deprived of her key, but arriving punctually at nine-thirty. Brian held the door open for her while she beamed her greeting on the threshold.

  “And the young lady? She is still here? She goes well, I hope?”

  “Not very well, madame. But you had better prepare a cup of tea and wake her up with it.”

  “And, after that, the English breakfast?”

  “The very large English breakfast, madame. I am so hungry that—”

  Brian paused. There was someone else in the corridor, standing a dozen feet away and watching him. Conscious of nerves not at their best, he just stopped himself from snapping, “Who’s there?” although he could see very well who it was.

  Desmond Ferrier, in grey slacks and a chequered sports-coat, but having nothing else that was festive about his appearance, loomed up with his fists dug deeply into his pockets.

  “’Morning, old boy. And you needn’t look so surprised.” Ferrier showed his teeth. “You’re in the telephone-book, you know.”

  “I’m also in the flat. If you want to see me, you’ve only got to ring the bell. If you want to see anyone else …”

  “I want to see you. Mind if I come in?”

  “The breakfast, Madame Duvallon.”

  Brian waited until Madame Duvallon, whipping off her coat and hat, had gone into the little kitchen. Then he motioned Ferrier inside, and closed the door. Ferrier, at a not very convincing swagger, strode into the living-room.

  “Yes?” Brian prompted. “Have you any particular reason for being here?”

  “For one thing,” returned Ferrier, taking his hands out of his pockets, “I’ve been kicked out of my own house. Or practically kicked out. And to think I was the one who asked Dr. Fell to clear up this business!”

  Brian waited.

  “I asked him,” repeated Ferrier, with a bitterness which seemed almost past bearing. “I told everyone all about him. I spread the good word. I thought his presence would be a warning. I—” Ferrier stopped. “Now he’s working hand in glove with the police. Aubertin seems to have a high opinion of him, which is more than I’m beginning to have. He even defers to that little swine Hathaway; he’s been doing it since Thursday night.”

  “Hathaway’s all right; he’s just a little above himself, that’s all.

  “Ah, yes. I forgot Hathaway’s a friend of yours too.”

  Abruptly, bristling, they faced each other fully.

  “Now what if he is?” Brian demanded. “Did you come here just to tell me all this?”

  “No.”

  “Well, then?”

  “I wanted to see you,” Ferrier replied, after a pause and a faintly deprecating gesture, “because Paula asked me to.”

  Whereupon he dropped his guard.

  “Innes, I’m serious about Paula. I’m as serious about her as you are about Audrey.”

  “Serious?”

  “Why can’t I say it straight out? Why do all of us (you too!) pretend we think honest feelings are infra dig? In the nineteen-twenties, when I was still young, a lot of people in the theatre began jeering that all the old plays were funny. If you took a part with real guts in it, if you cut loose and gave it the works, they said you were funny too. They tried to scare you with the word ‘ham.’ And why? Because they couldn’t do a part with guts in it, so they knew they’d better not try.

  “The theatre’s changed now, thank God. Or at least it’s changing. Even then I thought, ‘To hell with this mealy-mouthed stuff. Play it in the grand manner or don’t play it at all. If a line’s difficult, show you know your job by getting away with it.’ I mean—”

  Ferrier stopped.

  “Look here, Innes. Do you understand what I’m talking about, or don’t you?”

  “Yes. I understand.”

  Every time you tried to be hostile towards this man, Brian was thinking, he disarmed you with an honesty and even a naïveté that had its own appeal.

  “This is real life, old boy; it’s not the stage. What I’m trying to say …”

  “What you’re trying to say,” Brian interrupted, “is that you really were with Paula for three hours on Thursday night. Paula doesn’t cheat. She’s never cheated or tried to take you away from Eve. But you think it would sound uproariously funny if you said so.”

  “Yes!”

  “Why should it sound funny?”

  “Well, it does. I’m really in love with that damn woman, though I’m a good deal older than she is. You can’t understand that, Innes. …”

  “I can’t, eh?”

  “But that’s not the point. You guessed I was with her. Did you tell the police about it?”

  “No. I promised her I wouldn’t, and I’ve kept the promise.”

  “Then what did you tell Hathaway?”

  “Hathaway? Not a thing. Hathaway doesn’t have any concern in this.”

  “He oughtn’t to have, maybe, but he’s pulling strings. Last night, when we left you and Audrey at the Cave of the Witches, we drove straight home. Hathaway got back half an hour afterwards, with ‘inspiration’ written all over him. He began questioning Paula. She won’t even say what she told him, but I don’t like it.”

  “If you’re worried about yourself …”

  “For the sweet love of the sweet so-and-so,” yelled Ferrier, with another of those elaborate Biblical oaths which were as much a part of his mind as of his speech, “do you think I’m worried about myself? Or ever have been? It’s Paula.”

  That was when the telephone rang again.

  The effect on their nerves was not helped by the noise of a tea-kettle, which had begun to scream in the kitchen before Madame Duvallon twitched it off the gas-burner. Nor was it helped by the voice Brian heard when he answered the ’phone.

  “Forgive me for troubling you,” begged that familiar voice. “But is Desmond there? He said he was going to see you. May I—?”

  The sound of the voice, if not the actual words, reached Ferrier.

  “That’s Paula, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. She wants to talk to you.”

  Handing the ’phone to Ferrier, Brian went over and looked out of one window so as pointedly to avoid listening. Under soft sunshine Geneva wore its usual pastel colours of grey and brown and white. By craning out of the window and sideways, he could see the lake stretching deep grey-blue with the white of an occasional sail.

  “But that was seventeen years ago,” he heard Ferrier objecting. “It can’t make any difference what you failed to tell him then! I don’t see it makes any difference now.”

  The faint drone of the voice went on. Less than thirty seconds later Brian gave up all pretence of disinterest.

  “Cornered? What do you mean, he’s got you cornered?”

  Ferrier, with a face of incredulity and collapse, listened to six more words.

  “Oh, I shall be there,” he said. “That’s my house; they can’t keep me out of it. I shall be there.”

  The ’phone went down with a bang.

  “What is it?” Brian demanded. “What’s the trouble?”

  “Excuse me, old boy. I must take off in a hurry.”

  You would not have believed that a man who called himself elderly could have moved so fast. Big shoes thudded across the living-room and the entry. The front door opened and slammed.

  Brian, with a sense of approaching catastrophe, had to adjust his wits so as to remember French speech when he also hurried out into the hall.

  “Madame Duvallon!” he called. “You had better wake up Miss Page as quickly as possible. There may not even be time for breakfast. You had better—”

  He stopped. The bedroom door was wide open. Madame Duvallon, carrying a tray with a tea-service and an enormous cup and saucer, emerged from the doorway. China skittered on the tray as it slid in her hands.

  “M. Innes, I cannot wake her up. The young lady is not here.”

  Neither of them spoke for the next few seconds. A clamour of thickening morning traffic rose
from the quais.

  “M. Innes,” cried Madame Duvallon, seeing his face, “the young lady has gone out. I cannot help it if she has gone out. Look for yourself!”

  Brian looked.

  Audrey’s nightgown, a flimsy and transparent affair, had been thrown down across the foot of a tumbled bed. Her small suitcase, brought up last night from his car, again lay open on a chair. Across the mirror of the dressing-table, still unerased, mocking him, ran those words she had written in lipstick when she left the flat earlier last night instead of (presumably) early this morning.

  ‘I love you too.’ ran the words. ‘Please forgive what I’m going to do.’

  Whether they applied to this morning as well as last night, or whether Audrey had simply forgotten to erase them, he couldn’t tell. But she was gone.

  The ringing of the telephone, dinning in his ears immediately afterwards, should have brought an eagerness of hope. Instead, human nature being what it is, most comprehensively he cursed that noise because its suddenness made him jump. Madame Duvallon, a practical woman, set the perspective right.

  “M. Innes,” she proclaimed with cold dignity, “this is not good sense. The telephone: it sounds. Please to answer it.”

  Brian did so. The voice of Dr. Fell, hoarse and very disturbed, for the first few words was incomprehensible. Afterwards it sharpened.

  “I greatly fear—” said Dr. Fell.

  “Yes?”

  “Matters have got out of hand. Archons of Athens! I didn’t anticipate the man would carry anything so far, or lead us to so lunatic a pass. Is Mr. Desmond Ferrier still with you?”

  “No; you must have guessed he isn’t. Ferrier left a minute or two ago. And where’s Audrey? Have you any idea what’s happened to Audrey?”

  “Oh, ah. I—er—have just discovered that. It would be neither quite fair nor quite accurate to say Miss Page is under arrest. …”

  “Arrest?”

  “Pray accept my word,” roared Dr. Fell, “that you have little cause for worry. I beg you to follow Mr. Ferrier; to overtake him and stop him if you can. If not, come on to the villa by yourself. Do not argue with me; stop him!”