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

close at all times, the murderer could not have used a hypodermic needle or any form of subcutaneous injection. By the same token we may rule out a chloroform sponge or its equivalent. The whole thing, I grant you, seems flatly impossible. And yet—!”
    “And yet?”
    The photograph album, where it had been thrown down on the sofa, still lay open at a full face of Eve Ferrier yearning upwards. Hathaway pointed.
    “A minute ago,” he said, with malevolent eyes on Brian, “you told me to look at that. All right, my fine friend. You look at it.”
    “I’m looking! What about it?”
    “Between eight o’clock and one-fifteen,” announced Hathaway, “she killed Hector Matthews.”
    “How? Do you mind telling me how?”
    “By God,” said Hathaway from deep in his throat, “I do indeed mind telling you how.”
    “Do you intend to tell anybody?”
    “At the proper time, yes.”
    He was still pointing at the photograph. By this time neither Brian nor Paula could look at anything else.
    Brian had almost forgotten this woman’s striking beauty. The picture suggested colour without showing it. Eve Ferrier’s heavy fair hair, done in a style of the nineteen-thirties, surrounded a face redeemed from classic regularity by heavy-lidded eyes and a full mouth. The eyes were wide-spaced, the nose short. You might fancy a hint of mockery or cruelty round that mouth; but it was only your own imagination. Whether or not Eve Ferrier had a sensual nature, few women knew better how to express it with a look. She was not quite smiling.
    “You see?” inquired Hathaway.
    “See what?” Brian was beginning. Then he caught himself up, and wouldn’t be drawn.
    For Gerald Hathaway was really triumphant. Nor was this all.
    At the other side of the foyer, towards the east, the orchestra in the dining-room began to play a popular air. These three scarcely heard it.
    During a space of perhaps ten seconds, while certain forces were locked and fighting above the photograph, Brian became aware with heightened senses of all visual shapes and colours: of Hathaway in full formal evening clothes with a crumpled shirt-front, whereas neither he nor Paula had troubled to dress formally; of the big windows to the Quai Turrettini, and the night-porter hailing a taxi outside; but, in an impressionistic sense beyond these, of the change in Paula Catford.
    Paula, who had been standing close enough to brush his shoulder, suddenly drew back. She was no longer quite the ‘gentle’ figure of the vicar’s daughter.
    “I can’t force you to talk, Sir Gerald. I’m only a humble member of the press.”
    “It is wise of you, dear lady, to accept that fact.”
    The voices flew out and clashed.
    “But you can’t mind telling me,” retorted Paula, “what anybody can find from the record. Wasn’t there a post-mortem examination of Mr. Matthews’s body?”
    “If they held one, Miss Catford—”
    “‘If?’ By German law, even under the Nazis, wasn’t it necessary to have a full post-mortem in all cases of violent death? And, if Mr. Matthews was poisoned, wouldn’t they have discovered it?”
    “That’s exactly what I mean. They never published the results. You may draw your own conclusions.”
    “Then what was the poison? Or have you made all this up? And why do you hate Eve as much as you do?”
    Hathaway went rather white behind beard and moustache.
    “I have not made it up,” he answered clearly. “You may call me a busybody, as Innes does. But I am neither a knave nor a liar, and I don’t make dupes of people. If this is a journalistic trick to make me speak …”
    “It’s not. I swear it’s not!”
    “Hate Mrs. Ferrier? I don’t hate her. You seem to think this extraordinary character, who conveniently inherited a great fortune when Matthews died, somehow needs to be treated with kid gloves or at least the greatest kindliness.”
    “I do think so. And she hasn’t any ‘great fortune’ now; she and—and Mr. Ferrier are flat