Theo didn’t go outside to catch the snowflakes, the investigator came inside the house and they sat down at the dining table (?) and Theo opened the window next to it. Still, a bizarre thing to do!

That’s a great point actually, I had thought Barbie to be an irrelevant character but now that you mention it, she was the only person who believed Alicia about seeing the man, so of course the author would try to make her seem untrustworthy and Theo would go to see how much info she had on him! I hadn’t even considered that.