Corpus Christmas by Margaret Maron Read Free Book Online

later marked his business dealings, Mr. Breul immediately grasped the situation and hastily captured
     the little dog by its collar before it could hurl itself beneath an oncoming carriage.
    His quick action secured the young woman’s gratitude, but when he insisted that she take his coat as protection against the
     falling snow, he won her heart from that moment forward.
    E RICH B REUL —T HE M AN AND H IS D REAM ,

PRIVATELY PUBLISHED 1924 BY THE F RIENDS AND
T RUSTEES OF THE E RICH B REUL H OUSE .

III
    Sunday, December 13
    E VEN BEFORE SHE WAS FULLY AWAKE, SIGRID sensed a difference in the December morning light. And it wasn’t just the difference between rural Connecticut and urban
     Manhattan either. She snuggled beneath a down comforter with her eyes half focused on one of Nauman’s early oil paintings
     and drowsily noted a new clarity in the shifting planes of color, a new vibrancy.
    A part of her brain cataloged the variance. The other part was still too drugged by sleep to care or analyze.
    She yawned, turned over in the king-size bed, and abruptly caught her breath at what lay outside.
    Oscar Nauman’s house sprawled along the edge of a steep, thickly wooded hillside. With no near neighbors on that side, he
     had replaced his bedroom wall with sheets of clear glass so that nothing blocked her view of a tree-filled ravine that had
     transformed itself into a Currier and Ives print.
    Yesterday’s heavy gray sky was clear blue now and last night’s thin flakes must have thickened sometime during the early morning
     hours because snow capped each twig and limb, softened the craggy rocks, and shone with such dazzling purity that sunlight
     was reflected inside to intensify Nauman’s paintings and light up the room from unfamiliar angles.
    A thoroughly urban creature, Lieutenant Sigrid Harald, NYPD, knew almost nothing about nature in the raw and, on the whole,
     rather mistrusted unpaved lanes and trackless forests. She cared little for wildflowers or for knowing the identity of birds
     hopping mindlessly around in treetops. An occasional
National Geographic
special on Channel 13 was her nearest link to wild animals.
    Moreover, snow was usually an annoyance, dirty slushy stuff that got inside her boots or lay too long in messy heaps and,
     by alternately melting and refreezing, made city sidewalks treacherous for walking.
    But to gaze out for the first time in years upon a virgin snowfall unsullied by any footsteps filled her with unexpected wonder.
    She pushed herself upright in bed with Nauman’s down comforter wrapped around her bare shoulders and watched a small black-capped
     bird try to perch on an ice-crusted twig just outside the window. It misjudged the ice’s slickness and seemed startled when
     its feet slid out from under its first attempt at perching; but it recovered, settled onto the twig, and hunched into its
     gray feathers much as Sigrid hunched into the bedcovers.
    Her breath puffed in visible little clouds and she felt a momentary twinge of solidarity with the bird. If it was cold in
     here, what must it be out there? And how did birds keep their unfeathered feet from freezing anyhow?
    On the end wall opposite the bed, the stone hearth was black and lifeless. Nauman liked to sleep in an unheated room and last
     night’s fire had already burned down to glowing embers before they fell asleep. She shivered and sank a bit deeper into the
     covers.
    No sign of Nauman, of course. He was an early riser and had probably been up for hours.
    According to the clock on the mantel, it was a quarter past eleven. Were she in her own apartment, Sigrid would have stretched
     contentedly and gone back to sleep. A weekends’ greatest luxury was her freedom to drift in and out of sleep for several hours
     and she seldom rose before noon.
    Nauman’s Connecticut retreat offered better incentives to rise; nevertheless it took all the willpower she could muster to
     leave the warm bed and snatch up jeans and