The Wind Chill Factor

by Thomas Gifford

  “That’s all right,” I said. I yawned.

  “Have you had a long journey?”

  “Rather. From Buenos Aires.”

  “Oh, my! That is a long way.” He made an effeminate gesture with pink, pointed little hands. “I thought I’d come far … from Rome and Madrid. But you’ve beaten me with Argentina, haven’t you?” He smiled. “Oh my, yes.”

  I nodded. I was hoping he wouldn’t try to pick me up. He pulled a pigskin briefcase from beneath his seat and straightened it on his lap, across his fastened seat belt. I fastened my own and he stuck out a pink, soft hand.

  “MacDonald.”

  “Ah, yes,” I said hesitantly. “Cooper.”

  “Well, it’s nice to meet you, Mr. Cooper. I always like to meet people I travel with—it’s a superstition, I realize, but I always think of the chance of dying, a plane crash … it’s a good idea to know who you might die with, don’t you see?” He smiled at me brightly and withdrew the little hand. “Is that too awfully morbid? I suppose it is. Well, so be it, so be it … it’s my way.” He patted his moist shining forehead with a handkerchief.

  The 707 was dropping lower through the rain. I was conscious of the engines throttling, the vibrations of the fuselage.

  “Staying in Glasgow long?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I shouldn’t think so.”

  “Not a terribly cheery place, Glasgow. Awfully commercial, industrial, not at all like Edinburgh. On business I suppose?”

  “No, no. No business.”

  “Well, if it’s a holiday you’re on, Glasgow is bound to be a disappointment, Mr. Cooper. Edinburgh, now there’s your tourist spot.”

  The plane was coming in much lower now, gliding over a deep serene blackness, landing lights ahead of us.

  “I’m on a personal matter, Mr. MacDonald,” I said wearily. “No vacation, no holiday.” My eyes burned from the stifling air in the cabin.

  “Insurance, myself. Business, business, always business.” He shrugged narrow shoulders and brushed a hand nervously across his egglike cranium, eyes squinting behind his plain plastic spectacles as if he were about to receive a blow. There was perspiration on his forehead. It finally occurred to me why he’d begun the conversation. He was afraid. Taking off probably affected him the same way. Now, waiting for the wheels to touch down, his pink little hands gripped the armrests, knuckles blanching. Then came the thud, the slight jolt, and we were earthbound. MacDonald released his grip, wiped his forehead again, and I saw color returning to his face.

  I saw him again at the baggage pickup. He smiled with the camaraderie of the born insurance salesman, made his way to where I waited.

  “Where are you staying?” he asked, now full of relief and not so worried about dying. I suddenly found myself enjoying this harmless man after the fellows I’d been running across.

  I named the hotel and he nodded approvingly. “Top of the heap.” Our bags came down and we hoisted them. “Well,” he said before climbing into a taxi, “we must have a drink. I can unhesitatingly recommend a pub I’m sure you will enjoy.” He waved and was gone, the image of his bee-stung lips lingering in my mind.

  The wind blew the February rain in slanting sheets, cold and penetrating. Ground fog clung in patches to the tarmac. I wrestled my own bag into a taxi and we swung off into Glasgow. Cold and wet and shivering, I could not have been farther from Buenos Aires.

  When I left the Lorne Hotel early the next morning, Sauchiehall Street was thick with a grimy winter fog. I felt refreshed, nervous, ready. The shock of Lee’s photograph had begun to ease and I was ready now to start searching for her in earnest.

  I took a taxi to Cyril’s office. The fog closed in, smelling wet and dirty. I rather liked it.

  The offices were on the second floor of a respectable, quiet, prosperous-looking building in West Regent Street. All Britain Distributing, Ltd., offered a very restrained face to the world, polished brass and dark shiny doors. The reception room was small, gleaming, carpeted, presided over by a middle-aged woman in sensible tweeds. A radiator hissed out of sight, but it was cool in the room. I told her who I was, she blinked, disappeared through a heavy door that closed without a sound, and came back saying Mr. Dumfries would see me right away if I’d kindly follow her.

  Jack Dumfries was tall and slender, turned out in a vested dark blue suit, white shirt, narrow striped tie below the spread collar. It was the British uniform for the business day. A signet ring glinted on his little finger. He was an ageless man, fresh-faced but slightly stooped, in his thirties. Or forties.

  We shook hands, he poured us tea from a dainty little pot with a pastoral scene painted on its plump sides. A fire struggled with wet logs, hissing and popping in the grate. It was a marvelously elegant office, typical of Cyril’s concern for surroundings.

  Dumfries took up his stand by the mantelpiece, stirring his tea, smiling officiously. I hoped to God he wasn’t going to turn out insufferable.

  “What’s your title here, Mr. Dumfries?” I asked. I sat down in an oxblood leather armchair and looked gravely up at him. The fire warmed me; I hitched closer.

  “I am the managing director, Glasgow,” he said, sipping tea into his large mouth, staring at me with wet blue eyes over the rim. “I report to Mr. Cyril Cooper in writing, twice monthly, to the London office.” His voice was edged with defensiveness. “As far as Glasgow is concerned, it’s my own show.”

  “Sit down, Mr. Dumfries,” I said, “please.”

  The china was rattling as he lowered his elaborate frame into another leather chair. Rain clattered on the casement, flung by the wind through billowing fog.

  “My brother Cyril is dead, Mr. Dumfries.”

  “Oh, no. …” He looked very sad, but wheels were turning behind the wet blue eyes, calculating instantaneously.

  “He died quite suddenly in the family home, back in Cooper’s Falls, Minnesota.” I pulled out my pipe and began filling the bowl. “Now, his interests in All Britain Distributing, Ltd., pass to me. I am somewhat unfamiliar with them but my attorneys are straightening all that out now. I will need recent audits and inventories made available in the relatively near future.” He looked normally disconcerted as I struck a match and lit my pipe. I smiled, watching it all sink in on him.

  “Of course, whenever you wish them, Mr. Cooper. I’m certain you’ll find everything in perfect order.” He leaned forward, elbows on knees, preparing himself for any onslaughts from the new management.

  “I have every confidence in you, Mr. Dumfries,” I said, “every confidence. My brother was an excellent judge of men and if he chose you to take charge of things here in Glasgow I’m certainly not going to change things. You may rest assured.” I puffed on the pipe, got a good fire going, sipped some tea.

  Dumfries sighed, sagged inside the expensive uniform.

  “This is a shock, Mr. Cooper,” he said, relaxing a bit. “How did your brother die? He seemed in excellent health last fall, which was the last time I saw him. We seldom saw him here—a very silent owner. We never knew where he was. We’re really just an investment for him.”

  “He did die of an illness, Mr. Dumfries—he was poisoned. Someone murdered him.”

  The color seeped from Dumfries’ face. It was turning into an unpleasant morning. He got up and stood staring into the fog, the street below. “That’s incredible. I don’t know what to say.” He looked back sharply. “Do they know who did it, then?”

  “No, I’m afraid not. All very mysterious, very sinister. You see, there have been two attempts on my life as well … and several other people are already dead.”

  I gave him an abridged version of what had happened. He hurried through two cups of tea and lit a cigarette. The façade of reserve had pretty well crumbled. I liked Jack Dumfries. When I finished he stared at me and said: “Jesus Christ and company. … By rights, if the pattern continues, old Glasgow is in for a crime wave, what? Now you’re here, I mean.”

  “If the pattern
holds.

  “There are some questions I’d like to ask you and we might as well get to it. First, there’s something I’d like you to take a look at.” I took one of the Lorne’s envelopes from my pocket and handed it to him. When he opened it and fetched out the clipping he snorted in surprise. “You have seen it before?”

  “Of course I have,” he said. “I arranged to have this picture taken.” He stroked his chin. “Odd, though, what you two chaps have seen in it … you see, the day this photograph appeared in the Glasgow Herald was the same day your brother arrived in Glasgow last fall, the same exact day, and he brought it with him to the office. I’d never seen him in quite that mood but I’ll never forget it, that’s certain.”

  The Glasgow Trade Fair was in progress at the time and Dumfries was quite pleased with himself for having arranged the photograph of Herr Gunter Brendel and the accompanying story by Alistair Campbell which made special mention of a business arrangement contracted for between All Britain Distributing, Ltd., and Herr Brendel’s firm of importers in Munich. In the normal course of things, All Britain had been trying to crack the German market with a new brand of scotch whiskey called Thistle and Heather. This was the breakthrough which Dumfries had been working on for some time. To celebrate it, he had prevailed on Campbell, whom he had known for several years, to treat the deal as an example of expanding trade relations with Germany and thereby gain publicity for Thistle and Heather. All in all, it had worked perfectly. Together they had arranged for the photograph to draw attention to the story and it was understood that from then on as much of the new whiskey was Campbell’s as he could possibly consume—a not inconsiderable gift given the journalist’s capacity.

  When Cyril arrived at the All Britain offices that morning he was unusually excited. Shooing everyone out of the office, he and Dumfries had sat before the fire and Cyril had begun questioning him about the photograph, the story, and the events leading up to the agreement with Brendel’s firm.

  “He was very persistent,” Dumfries recalled. “He particularly wanted to know how the whole thing had been initiated, whether they had come to us or we had gone to them. Of course, I had made the initial contact with Brendel because the word was out that his firm was in the marketplace.”

  “Did you go to Germany to pursue it?” I asked.

  “No, Herr Brendel came here from his offices in Munich. He wanted to see if we were in the trade to stay, don’t you see?”

  “Did he know that my brother owned All Britain?”

  “Aha, you see, that’s another point which fascinated your brother—once he was absolutely certain that I had initiated the negotiations and not the other way round, then he started in on that angle. Was there any way Brendel could have known of his involvement? Had I ever made mention of it? Could it have come to Brendel’s attention in any way that I knew of?” Dumfries lit another cigarette and peered into the teapot, which was empty. He went to the door and summoned more tea, which appeared almost instantaneously.

  “Well, I could only speak from my own knowledge,” he went on, “and based on that I told your brother that the name of Cooper had never come up and, actually, why should it have? I am the managing director. Brendel would not be interested in remote ownership.”

  “You satisfied Cyril on that point, then,” I said. The fire was baking my shins. I got up and stood with my back to the window. A brass ship’s clock struck eleven o’clock. The fog outside was thick as ever.

  “Well, then, what about Brendel’s wife? Frau Brendel? Did you ever meet her?” My breath was short. I couldn’t help it.

  Dumfries shook his head like a man trapped into a magical show. “Same damned thing your brother wanted to know. He was more urgent about it, though … yes, the answer is yes, I met her. The second time Brendel came to Glasgow, to visit the Trade Fair, I dined with them, just the three of us—that would be three days before your brother arrived. It was at Guy’s”—he recognized the curiosity in my face—“a very nice restaurant, Mr. Cooper, our best, actually. Brendel treated, too, and insisted on tying the business knot, so to speak. Altogether a memorable evening. Champagne … and, thank God, no Thistle and Heather whiskey.” He made a face.

  “All right.” I interrupted him. “Tell me about Frau Brendel, whatever you remember about her.”

  “Ah, Frau Brendel. Lise was her name. Lise. …”

  I flinched inwardly at the name, the similarity to Lee. “She’s not an easy woman to forget, I assure you, Mr. Cooper, but rather difficult to describe. Quite exceedingly beautiful … but quite remote. Not in the least unfriendly, but, this sounds absurd to say after one meeting—I realize that—but she seemed a rather sad woman.” He caught my eye. “Do you know what I mean by that? Not sad-sad but not a happy person. She smiled and carried off all the amenities of entertaining one of her husband’s business friends, but when she didn’t think you were looking, when her face was in repose, there was a rather sorrowful expression.”

  “Sorrowful?”

  “She is a good deal younger than her husband, very solicitous toward him, more like a daughter, actually.” He leaned back and crossed his long, thin legs and blew a smoke ring which hung before him like a mobile before drifting away, disintegrating. “It’s rather awkward, saying this—”

  “Yes?”

  “Herr Brendel is a very elegant man, bits of jewelry, excessively well tailored, speaks in hushed little whispers—very effete—I don’t want to say more than that.”

  “He’s a homosexual?”

  “Well, not in so many words, no,” Dumfries said, clearing his throat. “But he blurs the line, if you know what I mean. He’s handsome, well preserved like a woman of a certain age. He has that kind of artificially tanned face. It looks creamed and kneaded and so extraordinarily immaculate—as if he’s had his eyebrows trimmed.” Dumfries laughed nervously. “What I mean to say is simply that that might explain Frau Brendel’s aura of loneliness, solemnity, the frown that comes over her in repose. It is as if she is anesthetized against laughter, the normal gaiety, silliness. She does not have an absolutely overwhelming sense of humor, you know.”

  “You told my brother all this,” I said.

  “Yes. He was very persistent and wanted to know where he could find Brendel—”

  “And—where can I find Brendel?”

  “I can only tell you what I told him. Namely, that Brendel’s home office is Munich. And I know that his firm also has offices in London. He was no longer here in Glasgow when your brother arrived.”

  “Did Cyril say what he was going to do about Brendel? Did he tell you why he was so interested in this photograph?”

  “No, and I didn’t pry into it. But it did make an impression on me, you know. I thought about it afterward and I wondered if it wasn’t the woman he was curious about—was it a former lover? Someone he knew or had known, who had meant a great deal to him.” He smiled calmly. “Which is about what I would conclude from your questions.” The smile faded. “But now, I don’t know. His death. Or the other people you say have been killed. Are they all connected? Is this photograph a part of it?” He picked it up again and seemed to be searching it for new meanings.

  “Mr. Dumfries, you’ll probably be much better off not knowing.”

  “About the firm,” he said. “Is there anything you want done right away?’

  “Not a thing, Mr. Dumfries,” I said. “Carry on as you have been.”

  “Well, take care of yourself. …” He hesitated, touched the knot of his tie.

  “Do you know what Cyril did after he left you?”

  “No, I never heard from him again, which wasn’t unusual. My reports were filed but there was no word from him personally and I simply assumed that he was wrapped up in something important.”

  “Well, he was,” I said.

  The newsroom of the Glasgow Herald was artificially bright and hot and smelled of sweat and typewriter ribbon. There was a steady clatter of typewriters, teletype machines, the throb of pres
ses somewhere in the building’s innards. The floors were dirty, the desks old and battered, the conversation salty and harsh, and I felt as though I’d walked into a performance of The Front Page.

  Alistair Campbell was leaning back in a wooden swivel chair, staring morosely into an antique black typewriter. Smoke climbed steadily from his corncob. He was wearing heavy tweeds and a cardigan underneath his coat. His hair was wiry and red, his head tiny, his face crimson, his tie brown: he gave the immediate impression of having been left too long in the fog and rain, of having rusted.

  There was a vague aroma of scotch in his vicinity, mixing with a peculiarly acrid tobacco. Apparently he was making good use of his Thistle and Heather.

  “Mr. Campbell?”

  He bit off a cough. “Aye, Campbell. And who might you be?” He cast a fisheye my way from beneath enormous bushy eyebrows which were sandy like his hair. Behind the smoke his eyes, tiny and nut-brown like glittering Spanish peanuts, flicked across me.

  I told him my name and asked him if my brother had called on him.

  “Cyril Cooper, eh? Yes, indeed, Mr. Cyril Cooper did call on me, all in a lather, said he’d come directly from Jack Dumfries. And I suppose you’ve done the same.”

  “I have, yes. I want to ask you a few questions.”

  “About the scotch deal with the Germans.” He nodded the little head and took the pipe out of his mouth, flashed yellow, stained teeth.

  “Right again,” I said. “You have a good memory, Mr. Campbell.”

  “I do have a good memory, laddie, right enough, but any bloody twit could remember what I’m remembering. This is definitely not the sort of thing you forget.” He shook his head and stood up, a diminutive man not five and a half feet tall. He brushed his hand across his freckled forehead and we shook hands.

  “Can we talk, Mr. Campbell?”

  “Ah, by all means.” He looked quickly about us. “But not here. I suggest we repair to a friendly and inconspicuous pub of my experience. Where we’re not so likely to be overheard. This place”—he gestured in disgust—“you never know who’s listening.”