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

broke. But that isn’t the point. How well do you know Eve? How long has it been since you last talked to her?”
    “Talked to her?”
    “Yes! Please tell me!”
    “My dear young lady, I have not set eyes on Mrs. Ferrier in seventeen years. The last time I talked to her was at Berchtesgaden on the day we’ve been discussing just now.”
    Paula whispered a curse.
    But she did not speak. She was looking past Hathaway towards the entrance of the hotel Hathaway swung round to follow her glance, and so did Brian.
    The night-porter outside, first saluting, pushed open one big glass door. Into the foyer, amid a backwash of perfume, swept a woman wearing a shimmering blue-and-silver evening gown curved to make the most of a magnificent figure.
    The woman halted just inside, head raised, every gesture of an unconscious graceful fluency larger than life. If she had turned her head to the left, she would have seen Paula and Hathaway and Brian. But she did not turn. Instead she looked towards the dining-room at the opposite side. You would have guessed her suppressed rage or fear even without a glimpse of her face.
    Gerald Hathaway, incredulous, suddenly cast a glance at the open photograph album—and back again.
    “That’s not …?”
    “Shut up!” Brian said under his breath.
    The woman in blue and silver, shoulders moving and fingers with red-varnished nails gripping round a handbag, hurried towards the dining-room. There, at the doorway, she seemed to be asking questions of a head-waiter. Then, with the same unconscious if exaggerated grace, she swept back across the foyer in the direction of the three who waited. What warned her to look up they never learned. But again she stopped.
    The hands of the clock stood at twenty minutes to eleven.
    “Well?” asked Paula Catford in a ventriloquial tone. “She can’t avoid meeting us now. What about it, Sir Gerald. Are you going to accuse her of murder?”
    Hathaway did not reply.
    “Are you?” whispered Paula, tugging at his sleeve. “Or, as Mr. Innes says, is it the business of the police and not yours?”
    Still he did not reply.
    Eve Ferrier, caught off guard, regarded them with a dismay she could not hide. But they were not now concerned with her mission here. The light lay too clearly on her features.
    It is hardly a tragedy that the face of a once-famous beauty is no longer its smiling image of twenty years ago. Only the too-romantic could expect it to be. On the other hand, the face that looked at them should not have been as nerve-ravaged and sagging as this one. The shock was there; Eve had seen it.
    Charm remained to her, or would remain when she recovered her poise; and a still-handsome if somewhat overblown body; and a personality better than pretty looks. Something else, Brian was thinking, something indefinable, something beyond beauty-parlours, had blurred the image and muddled its edges. The tragedy might be in Eve Ferrier’s mind if she were not emotionally mature enough to accept facts.
    Only a flash; it was gone. She laughed, nearly herself again, and moved forward in an almost-convincing lightness.
    “Paula, my dear! It’s good to see you, and it’s extremely kind of you when I was so foolish as to write that letter.”
    “It’s not foolish at all.” Paula hurried up the two little marble steps. “Who wants people screaming a lot of ridiculous nonsense and making it unpleasant for everybody?”
    “For me, certainly. Yes; there I must agree. I can’t help it. It may be foolish,” the fine voice rang out, “but there it is. How good to see you, or did I say that? And isn’t that Mr. Hathaway? I do so beg your pardon! I mean Sir Gerald now, don’t I?”
    Hathaway looked up.
    “What you like, madam,” he said.
    He was still pale. Eve, making an entrance of the two steps, poised there an instant more.
    “I can rely on you, I hope?” she suddenly asked Paula.
    “Of course! You know it!”
    “Yes. To be sure. Dear Sir Gerald.” Glitter and