An Unexpected Peril

by DEANNA RAYBOURN

  “Disaster indeed,” I murmured as Stoker returned to his mosses.

  I turned the photograph over and saw the notation penciled in her grandmother’s hand. Alice’s Last Photograph. On the slopes of the Teufelstreppe. It was dated the previous October. There was no hesitation in the handwriting, no weakness or sentimentality. Just the stark facts of her granddaughter’s life and death in a few strokes of the pencil. I put the photograph aside, making a note to find an easel to display it near the map at the start of the exhibition.

  “Teufelstreppe,” I mused aloud. “Your German is better than mine. It means the devil’s what?”

  “Step or stair,” Stoker called in a distracted voice.

  I looked again at the photograph, the sharp ridge cut by a series of steep, unforgiving steps. The devil’s staircase indeed, I decided with a shudder.

  I moved on to the next box, a crate stamped with chalk marks in various languages. “This seems to have come directly from the Alpenwald,” I told him, circling the crate. I tested the lid, but it was hammered firmly. “It does not appear to have been opened yet.”

  Stoker passed me the pry bar and I applied myself to levering off the lid. The crate was not large, a cube of perhaps three feet on each side. Excelsior had been packed inside, securing the contents, and this I deposited neatly in a pile. Underneath I found a hefty coil of ropes tied with various bits of climbing impedimenta. “Good God, these weigh a ton,” I muttered.

  Stoker left off his moss laying and came to lend me a hand. “Good ropes are quite dense,” he explained, his eyes gleaming with interest. I ought to have known better than to mention the ropes. In his previous exploits as a circus performer and naval surgeon, he had had better cause to appreciate a good stout rope than anyone, and he often amused himself with the tying of various knots—excellent practice, he pointed out, for the times we were bound hand and foot by the occasional villain. His knowledge of hempcraft had been more than useful to us, so I said nothing as he occupied himself happily in examining Alice Baker-Greene’s climbing equipment.

  “I wonder if these are the ropes she was using when she died,” he said, his brow furrowing as he tested their strength.

  “They must be,” I said, brandishing a sheet of thick, crested paper stamped with assorted seals of Alpenwalder officials. “This is the manifest for the crate and it specifically notes that the ropes are those she was using when making her ascent of the Teufelstreppe that day,” I told him.

  I dug deeper under the excelsior. “Here are her spare set of climbing clothes and a box of personal effects,” I added. There was a brief note explaining that she had been buried in her favorite climbing clothes, an ensemble not unlike my own adventure costume, with a fitted shirtwaist and trousers under a tailored jacket and narrow skirt which could be buttoned up over the thighs to permit ease of movement. I scrutinized the cut of her spare skirt to see if there were variations I could make upon my own costume. The tweed was thicker than mine, no doubt due to her choice of occupation—the unforgiving rock and equally unforgiving climate would demand the strongest of cloth. When I turned it inside out, I detected an arrangement of loops threaded with a drawstring that, when pulled, would instantly lift the skirt, securing it out of the way.

  “Ingenious,” I murmured. It was a decided improvement on my own costume, but I noted with some satisfaction that Alice Baker-Greene’s ensemble lacked one singular innovation that Stoker had added to mine—pockets.

  Packed beneath the climbing costume was the little box of personal effects, trifles really. There was a small looking glass painted with roses and gilt initials, her mother’s, I suspected. There was a jar of cold cream of roses, my own favorite for protecting my complexion on my travels, and a small assortment of personal items—a toothbrush and tin of tooth powder, a few books, a stack of plain handkerchiefs, each embroidered with her monogram in a simple design and plain white thread.

  At the bottom of the small box, wrapped carefully in another handkerchief, was the enameled charm—the summit badge of the Alpenwald. I ran a finger over the edge, touching the nick where it had been damaged and remembering her obvious pride when she spoke of it. I understood her reluctance to part with it long enough to have a repair effected. Tucked into my own pocket at all times was a tiny grey velvet mouse called Chester, the constant companion of my adventures and the sole memento of my father. He had weathered many perils, including a drowning off the coast of Cornwall, but thanks to Stoker’s excellent surgical efforts, he lived to fight another day.* Such talismans and trophies were not to be scorned at, I thought as I put the badge carefully aside.

  With the badge was a notebook, clearly well used, for the green kid of its cover was watermarked and ink stained, the pages filled with notes written in a tiny, tidy hand. The markings were cryptic, many of them numerical notations of altitude and temperature, I discovered. There were longer passages, descriptions of flora and fauna accompanied by surprisingly detailed sketches. She had turned her artistic hand to mapping out the routes she had taken up the mountains she climbed as well, I realized, tracing one with a finger as it wound its way up the Teufelstreppe. Tucked in the back was a photograph, clearly taken the same day as the larger portrait, for the background was the Alpenwalder mountain. But in this version, Alice Baker-Greene was not alone. She stood beside a man of medium height with a strong, muscular build and a spectacular set of moustaches. There was something arrogant about the tilt of his mouth, barely visible under those lavish moustaches, and the set of his shoulders. I turned it over, but there was no inscription on this photograph, and the man would remain a mystery. I remembered Alice’s ebullience on the subject of the Alpenwald, and I wondered if this man had anything to do with her enthusiasm for the place and her determination to make her home there.

  I held up the photograph to show Stoker, but he was staring down at the rope in his hands, his expression grim.

  “Whatever is the matter?” I teased. “Find a knot you cannot unravel?”

  “Nothing like that,” he said in a hollow voice. “What do you know about Alice Baker-Greene’s death?”

  I shrugged. “Only what I read in the newspapers in passing. She died early in October,” I reminded him. “We were rather occupied with the investigation into Madame Aurore’s doings.” October had been fraught with peril for many reasons, not least an investigation that brought us into the highest circles of royalty and within the sphere of the malefactor known as Jack the Ripper.*

  “I read the newspapers too,” he told me. “Including the pieces about Miss Baker-Greene in the Daily Harbinger.”

  I pulled a face. The Daily Harbinger was the lowest sort of rag, trading in sensationalist news and lurid illustrations. The fact that our sometime nemesis and occasional friend, J. J. Butterworth, wrote for the Harbinger did not improve my opinion of it. I took great pleasure in watching Stoker use it for wrapping the nastier bits of the animals he preserved.

  “And?” I prompted.

  “And they were quite specific as to the details of her death,” he said. “The Teufelstreppe is not called the devil’s staircase by accident. The mountain was named for a challenging passage in the middle of the climb, a perilous series of granite steps just before the turn for the long final stages of the ascent. Alice Baker-Greene attempted the climb so late in the year because there had been an unseasonably late warm spell, clearing the snow from the steps. But the exposed ridge of the granite was sharp. It frayed her rope as she climbed and the rope failed her.”

  “A tragic accident,” I began.

  Stoker held up the end of the rope. Instead of a broken collection of frayed fibers, it was taut and neat, cut straight across.

  “Stoker, you cannot think—”

  “That someone deliberately cut her rope? That is exactly what I think.”

  CHAPTER

  3

  I put out my hand for the rope. “Show me.”
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  He did, bending near enough for me to smell the delectable scent of honey drops on his breath as he explained. “This rope, like all good climbing and rigging ropes, is—”

  A sympathetic reader will understand that I regarded Stoker’s subsequent explanation as so much background noise as I examined the rope. He held forth at some length about hempen fibers and tensile strength and spiral braiding and all manner of technical details whilst I raised the rope at eye level, noting the single strand of scarlet in the middle and inspecting the end with care. It was perfectly, brutally straight.

  Stoker, detecting my lack of attention to his remarks, gave a sigh and retrieved a short length of rope from his pocket with his clasp knife. “Here. I will demonstrate.”

  He always carried a bit of narrow rope in his pocket to amuse himself in idle moments with the tying of elaborate knots, a holdover from his days in Her Majesty’s Navy. His nimble fingers made quick work of the knots he had tied, and he folded the rope over the blade of his knife. He sawed once or twice and the rope snapped in two. He held the cut ends against the larger sample from Alice Baker-Greene’s climbing apparatus. “My rope is smaller in diameter, but the principle is the same. A cut rope will present a sharp, flat plain to the eye,” he said. “A frayed rope will not.”

  I peered closely at the ropes but there was no arguing with his hypothesis. Still, I turned over all the possibilities in my mind. “Ropes are sold by the length. Perhaps this is the end that was cut when she purchased it.”

  He shook his head. “For mountaineers, the fresh-cut ends are whipped with twine to keep them from fraying. There is no twine in evidence and the cut is obviously new.”

  “Then perhaps Miss Baker-Greene cut it herself because it proved too long or there was a spot of weakness?” I suggested.

  “Again, she would have secured the end immediately by whipping it with twine. No experienced climber would go out with a rope that has not been whipped. This is fresh,” he added, pointing to the brighter color of the exposed rope compared to the weathered hue of the rest.

  I nodded slowly. “Very well. The rope was deliberately cut. We must inform the Hereditary Princess that Alice Baker-Greene was murdered.”

  Stoker blinked slowly at me. “I beg your pardon?”

  “It is the only logical conclusion,” I began.

  “It bloody well is not! I can think of a dozen other explanations,” he countered.

  “I will wait.” I tipped my head to the side, adopting a patient expression.

  After a long moment, Stoker exhaled gustily. “She might have cut the rope herself.”

  “I already suggested that,” I reminded him. “And you said it was not possible because the rope has not been whipped.”

  “Perhaps it became tangled on the climb and she had to cut it free,” he said, his eyes glinting with possible triumph.

  “No, I think you were quite correct the first time,” I said cheerfully. “This is a case of murder.”

  “I reject this,” Stoker said in a tone that bordered on desperation.

  “Stoker, as you well know, murders happen,” I told him.

  “But why must they happen to us?”

  I patted his shoulder kindly. “Because Fate knows we will always rise to the occasion, for we are the servants of Justice.”

  “Even servants have the occasional month off,” he said in some bitterness.

  “Do not look so downcast,” I chided. “We have once more the opportunity to test our mettle, to pit our wits against those of a killer. Do you not find it exhilarating? We will apply ourselves to this latest puzzle and emerge triumphant,” I assured him. “But our first task must be to inform the authorities that Alice Baker-Greene was murdered.”

  A gasp cut through the silence that followed my pronouncement. So intent had we been upon our discussion, we had neither of us noticed the trio standing in the doorway. Lady C., accompanied by a pair of ladies I did not know. One was shorter, a little inclined to stoutness, although it was well concealed by her expensive walking suit of dark blue. She would never see forty again—and perhaps not fifty—and would have been an interesting-looking woman were it not for her companion, an arrestingly comely young woman near to my own age. Her hair, black as a raven’s wing, was piled atop her head in an enormous and elaborate coiffure secured with jeweled pins. Her eyes, a peculiar dark violet, were bright with interest as she stared from Stoker to me and back again. It was her companion who had gasped, the older woman’s mouth still rounded with astonishment.

  “Who is this person?” the older woman demanded of Lady C.

  Lady C. stepped forward, turning to address the younger lady. “Your Serene Highness,” she said, her demeanor unruffled despite the strangeness of the moment, “may I present the pair working most closely to assemble the exhibition, Miss Veronica Speedwell and Mr. Revelstoke Templeton-Vane. Miss Speedwell is a member of the club, a renowned lepidopterist, and Mr. Templeton-Vane is the younger brother of Viscount Templeton-Vane.” She turned to us. “Veronica, Stoker. Her Serene Highness, the Princess Gisela of the Alpenwald and her lady-in-waiting, the Baroness von Wallenberg.”

  Stoker inclined his head to the princess, but I merely stood. I had long ago given up any form of genuflecting.

  The princess came closer, leveling an assessing look at us. I had the oddest sensation that I had seen her somewhere before, but I could not place her amongst my acquaintance. I had not included the Alpenwald on my travels—the butterfly population, as previously noted, was pretty but hardly worthy of a special expedition—nor did I collect postage stamps or pungent cheeses, the other two principal attractions of the Alpenwald.

  The princess spoke, her English fluent and only lightly touched with a very faint German accent. “You have shocked my companion, Miss Speedwell. You believe Miss Baker-Greene was murdered? This is a most distressing accusation.”

  “Observation, Your Serene Highness,” I corrected quickly. “Not an accusation.”

  She lifted one fingertip in a gesture of dismissal. “Semantics, I think. In order to observe that a murder has been committed, there must be a murderer, must there not.” It was phrased as a question, but without the upward inflection that would have invited a response. She put out her hand for the rope.

  Wordlessly, Stoker gave it to her, and she spent a long moment studying it. “You believe this rope is proof of something nefarious?” she asked, frowning.

  “Mr. Templeton-Vane has some experience with ropes,” I said demurely.

  Stoker shot me a look but stepped forward. “With your permission, Your Serene Highness.” He took the rope back, pointing to the significant marks. “Here and here, you can clearly see the effect of a blade.”

  “I see the end of a rope,” the princess said coolly. She turned to her companion. “Margareta, what do you see?”

  The Baroness von Wallenberg lifted the monocle pinned to her collar and fitted it into place. She bent to peer through the lens, shaking her head after a long moment. “I suppose it is possible,” she added with an apologetic little glance towards Stoker. “This gentleman is doubtless more learned than I on the subject of ropes.”

  The princess looked at Lady C., who hurried to supply Stoker’s bona fides. “Mr. Templeton-Vane spent the years of his youth in a traveling circus, madame. He was responsible for rigging the tents as well as the lines for the tightrope walkers. He later served for several years in Her Majesty’s Navy as a surgeon’s mate.”

  The princess’s ebony brows rose slightly. “A surgeon’s mate. Not a sailor?”

  “Not a sailor,” Stoker admitted.

  The princess pressed the matter. “And you worked in your youth in a circus.” She surveyed him from tousled hair to scuffed boot tips. “I think it is perhaps a few years since your youth?”

  “I am more than thirty,” he agreed.

  “And do you have e
xperience with climbing ropes?” she asked in the same blankly conversational tone.

  “I regret that I do not. I have done very little climbing in my travels, and never for sport.”

  “For what purpose, then?” she asked, her frown deepening.

  “Mr. Templeton-Vane is a natural historian,” Lady C. offered. “He has traveled extensively in Amazonia.”

  The princess flicked her a glance, then returned her gaze to Stoker. “Amazonia. There are not many mountains there, I believe.”

  “There are not,” Stoker said, his mouth tightening a little. “But ropes are ropes.”

  “And mountains are mountains,” the princess returned coolly. “It was very warm on the Teufelstreppe this year. The step from which Miss Baker-Greene fell had almost no snow, and the stone is quite sharp.”

  “Which would have frayed the rope,” I put in. “And this rope was clearly cut through with a blade.”

  Lady C. gave a single pointed shake of the head, but I ignored her and pressed my point. “If Stoker says that Miss Baker-Greene’s ropes were tampered with, you would do well to believe him.”

  The baroness gave a little gasp, which she covered with a cough. “We do not speak so directly in the Alpenwald,” she murmured helpfully in my direction.

  “Well, in England, we do,” I replied with as much firmness as I could muster.

  The princess gave me a long look. “You are forthright, Miss Speedwell. And a—what was it? Lepidopterist? This is a word I do not know in your language.”

  Her lady-in-waiting stepped forward and gave a quick explanation in the native dialect—a form of German mixed with French and what sounded like the odd Italianate phrase. The princess’s expression turned from puzzled to mildly amused. “A butterfly hunter? You chase wingy insects for a living?”

  “I do.”

  “You must travel widely,” she observed.

  “I have been round the globe four times,” I said.