White Death: An Alex Hawke Novella Read Online Free

Service.”
    “With all due respect, I’d intended to spend the day at the golf course, not in a London gentlemen’s club, sir.”
    Trulove waved the excuse away.
    “Time is wasting,” he said. “Sit down, both of you, and have a drink. You both look like you could use one. A pair of drowned rats, soaked to the skin!”
    “Rats?” Congreve whispered out of the corner of his mouth, certain he’d misunderstood the word.
    “What can I offer you, Inspector Congreve?” C said. “I caught you looking rather longingly at the barman over there.”
    “Oh. Was I really?”
    “Name your poison, Chief Inspector.”
    “Macallan’s single malt, if you have it, if not, Dewar’s, please,” Ambrose smiled. “It never varies, you know. Believe me, I speak from vast experience.”
    “And for you, Alex?”
    “Rum, please. A tot of Gosling’s Black Seal if you don’t mind. The 151 proof.”
    Sir David repeated their requests to the club steward and added a glass of Margaux for himself. When the drinks were in hand, he raised his glass and said, “ Slange var ! A Gaelic toast meaning ‘Get it to the hole!’ ”
    “Slange var !” his guests said, raising their glasses and sipping.
    C crossed his legs and said, “Despite your appalling taste in haberdashery, you are looking fit, Alex. Two weeks at your Teakettle Cottage in Bermuda seems to have agreed with you.”
    “Thank you, sir. But despite my much younger age and condition, I still can’t beat this wily sportsman over here at the game of golf.”
    Trulove chuckled and gazed up at a grand painting of Admiral Lord Nelson’s Victory at Trafalgar.
    “Now, Alex, let me get to the reason I called you both down to London on a Saturday. There’s been a bizarre murder in Zurich, according to our chief of station there. A crime that is of great interest, not only to MI6, as you’ll soon understand, but to the Crown as well. Spent much time in Switzerland, have you?”
    Hawke thought about it. “Well. Let me see. Went to school there briefly, Le Rosey, before transferring to Dartmouth Naval College, sir. Later on, the odd business trips to Zurich, ski holidays in St. Moritz or Gstaad, that sort of thing. Done a bit of mountain climbing there in my younger days, as you may remember. The tragedy on Der Nadel was the beginning of the end of all that foolishness.”
    “Yes, a tragic event, Alex, tragic. But you did have another go, correct? One more? You almost conquered that mountain a few years ago, as I recall. That’s quite a conquest for a semiprofessional climber coming out of retirement.”
    “Thank you, sir. I won’t claim it wasn’t a bit daunting in the doing. A bit creaky for that sort of thing now. Oh, and I fell.”
    “Ambrose? How about you?”
    “Mountain climbing ? Me? Good Lord, no!”
    “He doesn’t even ski,” Hawke put in, quite unnecessarily.
    “I refer only to Switzerland, Chief Inspector. Spent much time there?”
    “Ah. Yes, a good bit, actually. The usual thing. Mostly business in Zurich, but in Geneva and Bern as well. You know the drill, sir. Intricate financial cases involving British clients and old Swiss banks, neither of whom want their names in the papers. Private family matters . . . the odd murder. Investigated a crime involving a lesser-known British royal recently. Lord Emsworth of Blandings Castle, one of Her Majesty’s lesser nephews. A kidnapping, just last year. A horse, as a matter of fact, yes.”
    “Horse?” Trulove said. “Extraordinary!”
    “Long story, sir.”
    “Well. At least you’ve both been there enough to know your way around. Good contacts, I would say. Knowledge of the history and customs and so on.”
    “We’re going to Switzerland, I take it,” Congreve said.
    “You are indeed. Something has come up.”
    Hawke and Ambrose eyed each other across the table. That phrase “Something has come up!” was C-speak for “the poop has hit the poopdeck again.”
    “Pray tell, Sir David,” Congreve