White Death: An Alex Hawke Novella by Ted Bell Read Free Book Online Page A

ordered from the barman. They’d managed to snag the last two spots left at the heavily carved mahogany bar. A buoyant hum of conversation was audible over the happy tinkling of ice cubes in crystal glasses. A very civilized Friday night in one of Europe’s most beautiful capitals.
    “Exhilarating up there, wasn’t it?” Ambrose said, casting a glance at an extraordinarily beautiful ash blonde who’d just entered the room and was glancing their way. She was resplendent in a grey-and-red Chanel suit, loops of white pearls around her neck, and hair sculpted into a chignon held by a diamond pin.
    “Rather exhilarating in here, too,” Hawke said, watching her every move through the crowded bar before she found a small table alone in the corner. She found his eyes again, and hers lingered on his a moment too long. Hawke added, “I’m sorry, what did you say, Ambrose?”
    “I didn’t say anything. I’m speechless. Good heavens, that’s a work of art.”
    “You don’t suppose she’s staying here, do you? She wasn’t wearing the mink on her arm when she came in.”
    “Oh, come on, Alex. Don’t even get started with that foolishness.”
    “Foolishness? Are you quite mad? I’m a free man, you know. Over twenty-one.”
    “Drink your drink and mind your own business. Don’t embarrass yourself any further. And close your mouth, it’s hanging open.”
    Hawke reluctantly swiveled back to face the long mirrored wall behind the bar and changed the subject. “Let’s talk about Wolfie. I find him a bit of a gent, don’t you? A bit over the top. But in a good way.”
    “Looks like we’ll be working with him. He grew on me after a while. In a good way, of course. But still something not quite . . . Don’t listen to me. I’m being too harsh on him.”
    “Fancies himself a gentleman warrior of the first stripe.”
    “Still, we could do a helluva lot worse,” Hawke said, “I saw you speaking briefly about one of his men finding the murder victim in the snow. Anything interesting?”
    “Very odd, the whole thing is interesting,” Congreve Said. “The victim’s head was found by a Lieutenant Hartz, one of von Stuka’s grenadiers, while he was on the mountain engaged in a search-and-rescue last week. The man thought he’d found a decapitated head, frozen on top of a snowbank at around eight thousand feet. Frozen stiff. Oddly enough, a pair of horn-rimmed eyeglasses were stuck in the snow not a foot from his head! No tracks, no signs of foul play. They finally found a corpse connected to the head and dug it out. Chap seemed to have suddenly appeared there, out of the blue.”
    “It happens,” Hawke said.
    “Of course it does. But does this happen? The victim was a good looking, well-dressed, mustachioed man in his late forties. At the instant of his high-altitude fall, our doomed alpinist was wearing a three-piece Hardy Amies suit, an Hermes tie, and a pair of Lobb chestnut brogues. Does that happen often in the Alps?”
    Hawke was astonished. “Impossible. He would have been in mountain gear, the full rig, oxygen, et cetera.”
    “I quite agree. I’ve turned it over and over in the nerve center and have come up empty. Anything occur to you? Anything even plausible?”
    Hawke paused a moment to consider. “Just one. The victim was thrown out of an open helicopter flying above the Alps.”
    “Please, spare me. I’ve already considered that. Do you really think a passenger in an open helo, flying over the highest mountains in the world in the dead of winter, with temperatures hovering around zero degrees centigrade, would have been dressed in a chalk stripe Savile Row suit and wearing a pair of thousand-dollar lace-up brogues from Lobb of Piccadilly?”
    “Good point.”
    “My specialty.”
    “Fine. You’re the murder specialist. So how do you think he got there?”
    “He just dropped in after a day of shopping in London?”
    “Spare me,” Hawke said.
    “Okay. One, he was killed elsewhere and the