In Spite of Thunder Read online

  “His hosts laughed at him and slapped him on the back and welcomed him. You’ll see his bowler hat at the edge of every photograph. When they presented her with a bouquet of flowers or a consecrated flag, he carried it for her. When a brown-shirt or a black-shirt got too attentive towards her, his jaw was there too.

  “He was the most devoted of her worshippers. He was also the richest. It was known he had followed her to Germany because she begged him to. However, few people knew that before leaving England he had made a will in her favour.”

  Audrey took a step back beside the table.

  “A will? Are you insinuating …?”

  “No. I’m telling you what happened. At Munich, where she ended her tour, Miss Eden said that she and Mr. Matthews were engaged to be married.

  “Though the hosts may not have been too pleased, they slapped her on the back and shouted congratulations. Were they to announce this? Not yet, she said: she and Mr. Matthews were being reticent for the moment. Well, then! She had done great service for the New Order: couldn’t they give her an engagement-present or show their gratitude in some way?

  “Oh, yes, please! She said there was the very best of presents. Could she and Mr. Matthews pay their respects to the Führer himself? They were at Munich, no great distance away. Might they visit Hitler himself in his mountain-eyrie at Berchtesgaden?

  “That did it. The Führer, much flattered, invited them to lunch.

  “Fourteen guests, escorted by Scharführer Hans Johst, made up a party for that visit. With the exception of the engaged couple and of two additional guests (both reluctant guests, both British too), the names of the other ten visitors don’t matter. All were Nazi security-police who later died by violence. You need picture them only as gaudy uniforms and would-be jovial smiles.

  “But we can follow every detail of what happened.

  “A fleet of cars carried them to the Gasthof züm Türken, Hitler’s guest-house partway up the mountain. They spent one night there. Next morning they drove on up a winding road to the Wendeplatte. When they got up inside the Eagle’s Nest, taking the famous lift built smack through a mountain, they found it wasn’t cold at that season. Clear sunlight, exhilarating air, rolling ridges of trees spread out below: you picture it, don’t you?

  “Everybody was in excellent spirits except Hector Matthews, who seemed to be distressed by the thinner air at that altitude. The camera (eternally the camera!) shows a very tall man with scanty hair blowing, and an unhappy look on his face.

  “No matter! It was all in fun.

  “While the guests waited for Inimitable Adolf in a big room overlooking a part of the terrace, Miss Eden seized her fiancé by the hand and dragged him out on the terrace to admire the view. They were all alone there, some say out of sight and some say not, beside a rather low parapet above a sheer drop.

  “Then somebody screamed. It may have been the woman, or it may have been Matthews himself when he went over.

  “Anyway, he pitched over head-first and was smashed to death in a pine-tree some hundred-odd feet below. They could see what remained of him when they ran out on the terrace and looked down.

  “Scharführer Hans Johst supported Miss Eden, who was leaning against the parapet in a state of near-collapse. One witness, not a Nazi sympathizer and not precisely a strong admirer of the lady herself, is inclined to think her shock and horror were quite genuine. At that moment she hadn’t any affectations, or seemed to have none.

  “‘I did not know,’ she kept saying. ‘Dear God, I did not know. It was the altitude. He turned white and dizzy. I could not help him. Dear God, it was the altitude!’

  “Scharführer Johst, portentously solemn and tender, spoke out and said of course it was the altitude. He said this was a most regrettable accident; he said he had seen it happen. Two other voices chorused out and said they had seen it happen. Eve Eden fainted in Scharführer Johst’s arms. Then nothing moved on the terrace except a big flag, a black swastika on a red-and-white ground, curling out above them and throwing shadows.

  “I think that’s all.”

  II

  “ALL?” ECHOED AUDREY, in a whispery kind of voice. “All?”

  “Officially, yes.”

  “But that’s what happened, isn’t it? I mean, that’s what really happened?”

  “Please explain your definition of the event that really happened.”

  “Brian Innes, stop being cynical and tormenting me. You know perfectly well what I’m talking about. Those three officials did see the poor man fall?”

  “No. They lied. Not one of them was even looking in that direction.”

  “But—!”

  In his mind, as he shook his head to clear it, the vivid picture faded.

  He was back in a thick-carpeted lounge, airless despite full-length windows open behind curtains of lace and dusty green velvet He was back in the present of 1956, troubled by the fleshly presence of Audrey Page as once Hector Matthews had been troubled by the presence of a younger Eve.

  Audrey stood behind the table, her fingers touching a china ashtray. Even now she had that look of innocence, of too-great innocence, which in some fashion suggested wantonness instead. She saw him look straight at her, and dropped her gaze.

  “Listen!” Brian insisted. “I don’t say it wasn’t an accident. I only say they didn’t see it happen. Nobody saw it.”

  “Then why should they say …?”

  “I can’t tell you. Medically speaking, it’s not very likely a man blacked out so as to tumble over a waist-high parapet. Not likely, and yet it’s possible. On the other hand, if he did feel faint and she gave him only a sharp push …”

  The china ashtray rattled across the table.

  “In any case,” he continued, “you’d better hear the end of it.”

  “They didn’t arrest her, or anything?”

  “No; how could they? The press published an official story: Mr. Hector Matthews, an English tourist, had met with an accident while rock-climbing in Bavaria. No mention of Eve Eden; or, naturally, of the Eagle’s Nest either. However, since he was well known as a ‘friend’ of hers and he didn’t have any living relatives, she was permitted to ship his body home. It’s the least she could do. After all, she was his heir.”

  Audrey opened her mouth, and shut it again. Her companion began to pace up and down the lounge.

  “Afterwards,” he said, “the war caught everybody. All interest in Hector Matthews was washed out, which may have been just as well. She never returned to Hollywood; her contract with Radiant Pictures wasn’t renewed, as she must have known before she went to Germany. Financially it didn’t matter. When Matthews’s will was admitted to probate, she inherited everything except some bequests to charity.”

  Audrey spoke in a sudden forlorn voice.

  “You know, this is rather awful. I wouldn’t admit it before, but it is rather awful.”

  “A striking coincidence, at any rate.”

  “It doesn’t mean anything, of course—!”

  “No. Still, young lady, I can understand why your father doesn’t want you to visit her.”

  “Wouldn’t you visit her?”

  “Certainly. With pleasure. But then virtuous people never interest me, and the other kind always do.”

  Audrey turned her head to watch him. A strange look flashed through her strangely shaped eyes and was gone in an instant; it may only have been a trick of the light above one bare shoulder.

  “Brian, how much does De Forrest know? And, if it comes to that, how can you repeat every word that was said? Were you there? Did you see it happen?”

  “Hardly. In ’39 I was a struggling young painter, of even less importance to the world than I am now. In a sense I’m betraying a confidence in telling you this, but I felt I had to tell you. I wasn’t there, no; but a great friend of mine was. Gerald Hathaway.”

  Audrey uttered an exclamation.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Sir Gerald Hathaway? The Director o
f the Something-or-Other Gallery?”

  “He’s that, yes. He’s also a remarkably fine painter. I’ve known him for a good many years, though I haven’t seen him in quite some time.”

  “Well, you may see him sooner than you think. He’s here.”

  “Here?”

  “Oh, not here at the hotel or even in Geneva! But he’ll be here tomorrow. Eve’s invited him too.”

  Brian, with something of a shock at his heart, paused beside one long window and swung round towards her.

  “Audrey, that can’t be.—No; wait; listen to me!” It was a tone of desperate reasonableness. “Hathaway’s curiosity got the better of him when he was asked to have lunch with Hitler at Berchtesgaden. He’s ashamed of having gone there; he’s concealed it ever since. He only talked about it to me because we talk so much about crime and detective stories. Even if your friend Eve had the nerve to invite him here, he’d never have agreed to come. You must have made some mistake.”

  “All I can t-tell you,” cried Audrey, who in moments of great earnestness had a tendency to stammer, “is what Eve wrote in her last letter. Sir Gerald Hathaway said he’d be delighted to accept. Do you imagine she’d have written one name and really meant somebody else?”

  “No, I suppose not.”

  “There can’t be any such great mystery about it, you know. Couldn’t he be just as curious about Eve as he once was about Hitler?”

  “You take grisly suggestions in your stride, don’t you?”

  “Well, couldn’t that be it?”

  “Yes, it could be. Probably it is. All the same, I wish I knew more about the lady’s motivation.” Brian, staring out of the window, hardly saw the street-lamps or the ordered quiet of the Grand Quai. “Audrey, hold on! How many people are coming to this house-party of hers?”

  “It’s not a house-party, really. There’s only one other person.”

  “Only one, eh? Who is it?”

  “I don’t know. Eve didn’t say.”

  “No; I’m wool-gathering. It can’t possibly be what occurred to me. But I don’t like this situation one little bit. Why not obey your father and take the next plane back to London?”

  “Obey! Obey! Will you try to stop me if I do go to Eve’s?”

  “No, I will not.” He spoke formally, but with anger kindling. “You’re over twenty-one; you must please yourself.”

  “Thanks so much for making it clear. In that case, I’d better tell you—”

  Audrey never finished what she meant to say, if in fact she meant to say it at all.

  The head-lights of a car, driven fast, brushed their dazzle outside curtains of velvet and lace just before a Bentley two-seater pulled up outside the hotel. Audrey drew a deep breath and ran across to stand in the window beside Brian. But she did not look at her companion; it was plain that she had forgotten him.

  Out of the car climbed a hatless, dark-haired young man in a white dinner-jacket. Audrey flung the lace curtains wide open.

  “Phil! Phil, dear!”

  The young man, who could be nobody but the son of Desmond Ferrier, stopped short.

  “I’m here,” Audrey said rather unnecessarily. “I’m waiting for you! I’m here!”

  “Yes. I see you are. Who’s that with you?”

  The voice, though pleasant enough, held sudden hostility and suspicion. Audrey tried to laugh. Still she did not look at her companion, but Brian could almost feel the lift of her eyebrows.

  “Oh, Phil, don’t go on like that again. It’s nobody! It’s nobody at all!”

  Brian said nothing.

  “I mean,” cried Audrey, turning out her wrist, “I mean, Phil, it’s nobody you need think about. It’s only an old friend of mine from home, Brian Innes, and I don’t know why—”

  Again she stopped. The pronouncing of Brian’s name had a curious effect in that quiet street.

  The name meant nothing to Philip Ferrier; Philip merely nodded and entered the hotel. But it had a very definite meaning for someone else. On the opposite side of the street, in the shadow of the English Garden, a shortish and tubby man with an intent manner had been stumping along the pavement as though talking to himself. Here he stopped, peered round, and instantly crossed the road towards the Hotel Metropole.

  “Ha!” breathed the tubby man.

  He was the more striking a figure in that he wore a close-cut greyish beard and the sort of steeple-crowned hat which used to appear on figures of Guy Fawkes. This disreputable dark hat contrasted with full and formal evening-clothes.

  A flicker of heat-lightning paled and pulsed in the sky towards the lake. Audrey, for all her preoccupation, could not help staring at this newcomer.

  “Brian, look! The odd-looking man with the hat. He seems to be coming straight over here!”

  “So he does. Your odd-looking man, though, isn’t in the least odd; and he’s got a good reason for everything he does. That’s Gerald Hathaway.”

  “Sir Gerald Hathaway?”

  “In person.”

  “But what does he want here? What’s he doing in Geneva so soon?”

  “I haven’t any idea. All the same … you remember I said there were two English guests at Berchtesgaden on the famous occasion? Two guests, that is, besides Eve Eden and Hector Matthews?”

  “Well?”

  “One was Hathaway. The other was some newspaperwoman named Paula Catford. Ever since you mentioned Hathaway, I’ve been wondering if history would repeat itself and Paula Catford would turn up too.”

  Another flicker of heat-lightning lifted beyond motionless trees. But they had no time to consider this. A voice called out from the door. Into the lounge, conspicuous in white dinner-jacket, strode Philip Ferrier.

  He did not resemble his father, Brian noted. The Desmond Ferrier of legend had been as long and lean as Brian himself, with a booming voice and deplorably frivolous ways. The son, at twenty-four, was stern and earnest to the verge of pompousness. He was also a trifle chunky. But Philip’s striking good-looks, from dark curling hair to classic profile and wide nostrils, carried an intense vitality.

  Audrey almost yearned at him.

  “Mr. F-ferrier, may I present Mr. Innes?”

  One glance, raking Brian with powerful scrutiny, had shown Philip he need fear no rival here. His hostility vanished.

  “How do you do?” he said. “Er—Aud and I are having dinner at the Richemond and then going on to a night-club. You won’t mind if we push off now?”

  “No, not at all.”

  “Thanks. We’re very late.” Relief whistled through the wide nostrils. “I’m late, Aud, and I apologize. Our two geniuses have been throwing fits of temperament again.”

  “Phil, I wish you wouldn’t talk like that. It’s not fair!”

  Philip bit his lip.

  “Maybe it’s not. I dunno. I’m fond of the old man and of Eve too. But you don’t have to nurse ’em.”

  Whereupon something new, something intensely human and very likeable, peered out from an apparent stuffed-shirt. Worry surrounded Philip Ferrier like an aura.

  “The trouble is,” he said, “that you can’t tell what’s real and what isn’t real. They can’t tell either; they don’t know. Stage-people! Screen-people! You’re not connected with the stage or the screen, sir?”

  “Not in any way.” Brian laughed. “Do I look as though I were?”

  “Well, no,” Philip said seriously. “But there’s something about you: what is it? Anyway,” and he made a gesture and turned back to Audrey, “now that they’re both writing their reminiscences, and trying to beat each other to a publisher, and getting out their books of press-cuttings at every other word, it’s quite a wing-ding.”

  “I—I daresay it is,” Audrey agreed.

  “You bet it is. See what James Agate wrote about me in ’34? And I forget: wasn’t it Old So-and-So who played Lord Porteus in Binky Beaumont’s production of The Circle in ’36? And Old So-and-So is a grand person and a wonderful person and we love him very dearly, but
just between ourselves he’s the world’s lousiest actor. Stage-people!”

  Brian, listening hard for the approach of Sir Gerald Hathaway through the foyer, turned his attention back. Audrey moistened her lips.

  “Phil, do you mean to say you don’t like it?”

  “I’ve never been sure whether I like it. I do know it’s getting me down.”

  “Why are you telling me this? There isn’t anything wrong, is there?”

  “My poor girl, there’s never anything actually wrong!”

  “Well, then?”

  “But you’re coming to visit us, Aud. When the old man tells you Eve is trying to poison him, try not to take it too seriously. Now come along and let’s get some food.”

  Footsteps echoed in the marble foyer; the lift hummed. But one set of footfalls had stopped short.

  “Mr. Ferrier! Just a moment!” Brian said sharply.

  “What is it?”

  Philip had picked up Audrey’s wrap from the table and was holding it out for her. Audrey, her sex-appeal never more vivid than with heightened colour, lifted her arm as though to ward off a blow.

  “Your father says Miss Eden is trying to poison him in the literal sense? With arsenic, strychnine, something of that sort?”

  “No. No. That’s not it at all. That’s why I say: deliver me from people with temperament! That’s why I’m here.” Philip struggled for words. “I wanted to warn Aud—”

  “Of what?”

  “It’s the old man’s idea of being funny; and Eve’s too, recently. He’ll explain how she would like to poison him or creep up and stab him, and describe this in all apparent seriousness. Once or twice Eve’s got back at him in the same way. Unless you know they’re both playing the fool, it can be hair-raising. A reporter from Woman’s Life was so shocked I had to talk to her for an hour afterwards at the airport. And it isn’t funny in the least. Or it isn’t funny to me. Can’t you understand all this?”

  “I can understand it, Mr. Ferrier. I wonder if they do.”

  “Meaning what?”

  The conjectures that floated in Brian’s mind …

  From the corner of his eye he could see the door of the lounge, opening on a little passage that ran to the foyer. Though no light burned in the passage, it was floored with marble and lined with mirrors. He could see reflected outlines in a cuff, a shoulder, the edge of a hat. Gerald Hathaway, that distinguished man, was frankly if grotesquely listening.