The Wind Chill Factor by Thomas Gifford Read Free Book Online Page B

revealing a navy-blue fisherman’s sweater underneath and a yellow shirt collar poking up against his chin. He had a very short, thick neck.
    “Your brother,” he said.
    I nodded.
    “You found the body,” he said. “You didn’t move anything.”
    I nodded.
    “Miss Smithies—” He paused. He looked at Bradlee. “What was her late husband’s name? Phillips?”
    Doctor Bradlee nodded.
    Peterson walked closer to the table at Cyril’s side, stared down at the snifter and the corked bottle of Courvoisier. He knelt and looked at the lamplight through the bottle of Courvoisier. He pursed his lips and began to think out loud, a quality to which I became inured. “For the sake of argument, let’s say he opened this bottle—that it was a fresh bottle. This house has no regular, full-time occupants drinking a bit of brandy now and then, so we have the odds with us there. There is very nearly half a bottle of brandy that has been drunk.” He looked up smiling broadly, incongruously, reminding me of a standup comic delighted by his own old and weary joke, laughter in the audience. “Now, there is either a hell of a lot of Courvoisier inside Cyril Cooper or”—he paused for some kind of effect—“or there was someone else sitting here drinking it with him. And if there was someone else here, I’d like to talk to him.” He beamed and then immediately dropped his smile and scowled at me: “This is the part of being a detective I simply love. The easy part, Mr. Cooper. Obviously, you’ve had a nasty shock tonight. You didn’t kill him yourself, did you? No, I didn’t think so.”
    “I’ve driven all the way from Boston in answer to a telegram from him,” I said. “He wanted me to meet him here on the twentieth.”
    “You’re late, Mr. Cooper.” He wasn’t looking at me anymore. He jammed the poker into the ashes, clanged it against the grate.
    “No, as a matter of fact, I wasn’t late. I arrived last night, late last night.”
    “And why didn’t you find him then, I wonder?”
    “Because he wasn’t here. At least—”
    “You were in this room last night, then?”
    “No, I—”
    “But you were in the house last night? You slept here?”
    “No.”
    “No? I thought you said you arrived last night. Perhaps I am merely confused. …” His back was to me. Bradlee was extracting a cigarette from a gold case, tapping it on the lid.
    “I did arrive last night. I came into the house about eleven o’clock, poked around downstairs for a few moments, then took a bottle of brandy from the library and drove down to the cottage by the lake and slept there.”
    “And you didn’t see your brother?”
    “Obviously not.”
    “Was it snowing hard, Mr. Cooper?”
    “Yes, very hard, and blowing.”
    “And you saw no automobile tracks leading to the house?”
    “No, it was flat snow, drifted.”
    “But it was very dark?”
    “Yes, very. No moon, no light.”
    “Well”—and he finally turned around to face me—“you didn’t see any signs of your brother’s arrival because, I suspect, he had arrived earlier, Mr. Cooper, and whatever signs there might have been were no longer visible.” He grinned. “And please understand that I am theorizing, merely theorizing.” Then the grin disappeared. “On the other hand, I’ll bet I’m right.” He turned to Bradlee, who was watching him with a hint of a smile. “I’ve seen a hell of a lot of corpses, Doctor, and I’d say this one has been dead a good twenty-four hours.” He looked at his watch, a small, delicate gold square against the black hair. “You, Mr. Cooper, have been home just about twenty-four hours. It’s all very ironic, isn’t it? You drive all this way, through all the snow, and you may have arrived here within—what?—minutes of your brother’s death.” He shook his head. “Where was your brother coming from, Mr. Cooper? I know he hasn’t been back here in a long time, but where was he coming from?”
    “Buenos Aires,” I said.