Dead Cold Mysteries Box Set #4: Books 13-16 (A Dead Cold Box Set) by Blake Banner (best ereader for academics .txt) 📕

over her knees. The room was very quiet. Somewhere I could hear the tick of an old fashioned clock. It made the house seem quieter.

“Cyril and I were very close as children. But after he went to New York, we lost touch. I always tried to look out for him, but it seems he didn’t appreciate that. We didn’t communicate for quite a few years. Not even Christmas cards.”

She looked up, raised her chin, as though challenging me to make something of the fact that they hadn’t exchanged Christmas cards. When I said nothing, she looked back at the hem of her skirt.

“Then, quite suddenly, twelve years ago, out of the blue, he telephoned me. He said he was in serious trouble and needed my help, just for a few days.”

Dehan asked her, “What kind of help?”

Mary closed her eyes. She made an eloquent expression of impatience. “It was absolute nonsense. Typical of Cyril’s. Melodramatic nonsense. He said he was in trouble with the police. He had been framed for murder, for goodness sake! He needed to stay with me for a couple of days and then he would be gone. If the police called, I was to tell them I had not heard from him.”

“What happened?”

“Well naturally I told him not to be so foolish. That if the police wanted to talk to him he should go to them, but he became almost hysterical, so I told him to come home.”

“Is that what he did?”

“Yes. He was in a frightful state, sobbing like a little girl, half hysterical. I gave him a hot bath and a hot meal and that seemed to soothe him. He wanted to tell me some ridiculous story about a girl who had been killed, and somebody who was trying to frame him. I didn’t want to hear it and I told him so.”

I frowned. “But when the police telephoned you…”

“I told them what I told you: I had nothing to say. Our family business is none of your concern. I am only talking to you, Detective Stone, because you threatened me.”

“Where is he now, Ms. Browne?”

“I have already told you I don’t know. He stayed a couple of days, then flew to somewhere in Europe. He didn’t want to tell me where, and frankly his behavior was so absurd I didn’t want to know.”

Dehan was making a face like brain-ache. “But everything he told you was true.”

Mary gave her head a stiff little shake. “You don’t know Cyril. He is always making up absurd stories and getting ridiculously emotional over them.”

Dehan gave a small laugh and shook her head too. “No, Ms. Browne. What he told you was true. Do you not understand that?”

Her cheeks flushed. “Don’t try to tell me about my own brother! I know what he is like! Before long, he’ll come running back because he has wet his pants, or grazed his knee and I will have to bathe him and cook him a meal and then he’ll cry himself to sleep like a silly little girl. He is hopeless.”

I gave Dehan a glance to shut her up and asked, “What is the age difference between you, Ms. Browne?”

“What has that to do with anything?”

“Please answer the question.”

“I am ten years his senior.”

“Are you blood relations?”

“Of course we are! What an absurd question!”

“Ms. Browne, we are nearly done. Please bear with us a little longer. Can you tell me about your parents?”

She faltered, shrugged, gave her head another little shake. “I mean… like what?”

“Well, for example, they left you a substantial inheritance. You’re a school teacher, he was a librarian, they are not the best paid jobs in the world, yet…”

She cut me dead. “Both of our parents died when I was fifteen and Cyril was just five. The house was paid for and both mother and father had substantial life insurance. By the time the authorities had finished messing around, I had turned sixteen. They put us through hell in the courts, trying to take Cyril away from me. But I fought them every step of the way, and in the end the judge decided we had been through enough, and it would do Cyril more harm than good to be placed with a foster family. So I brought him up on my own. They appointed us a social worker, but it didn’t take me long to get rid of her.”

I looked around the room and gestured with my hand. “I don’t see any pictures of your parents, or of Cyril.”

“They were good, strict Catholics. They didn’t encourage sentimentality. Love and devotion should be for God. I brought Cyril up in the same way.”

“Where in Europe did he go?”

“I told you I don’t know. I don’t want to know. He’ll come back soon enough.”

“Where in Europe would he go?”

“I don’t know!”

Dehan said, “Why would he choose Europe? He must have had a reason to go there. Was there some place he always wanted to visit? There must be some reason he went there.”

“How many times do I need to tell you? I don’t know! When he was small he never stopped yammering. I spent my whole time telling him to shut up. And when he turned twelve you couldn’t get him to utter a word. I don’t know why he went to Europe, or where he went in Europe, and frankly I don’t want to know because it is just another one of his stupid fantasies!”

I scratched my chin. “‘Another one of his fantasies.’ Did he have a lot of fantasies?”

“All the time.”

“Can you give us an example?”

“More? How about moving to New York? Or his idea he was going to be, ‘independent’? Or that he would have a family of his own? The notion that he had been framed