An Unexpected Peril

by DEANNA RAYBOURN

“How dare you—” I began, but then I noted the unholy light in his eyes. “You are enjoying this. I think you have always enjoyed this. Being shot and stabbed and nearly drowned, you complain about all of it, yet here you are, haring off in the dead of night to commit some sort of illegal entry into a private club to secure a possible clue after we have nearly been bombed to bits. Do not argue with me, Revelstoke Templeton-Vane. I see you for the seeker of thrills that you really are.”

  He rose and picked up his hat, grinning. “Excelsior!”

  * * *

  • • •

  It took a little time to hail a cab in the Marylebone Road, no surprise given the lateness of the hour. Stoker took the precaution of giving an address a street before the Curiosity Club. We wanted no witness to our presence in the vicinity once the theft was inevitably discovered.

  On the way, we discussed what we knew of the case so far and my theory that Alice Baker-Greene might have been eliminated as an obstacle to the duke’s marriage to the princess.

  “A sound enough idea in theory,” Stoker agreed. “If she was the duke’s mistress—”

  “And why else give her the house intended for Captain Durand?” I interjected.

  “It is certainly a possibility,” he said. “But how could he go so quickly from providing Alice a love nest right under the princess’s nose to wanting to kill her?”

  “To ensure his marriage to Gisela,” I said promptly.

  He shook his head. “I do not believe it. If he loved Alice enough to set her up in a house of her own in Hochstadt, in the very shadow of the castle, we are told, then he would not murder her within a few months.”

  “I think you, above all people, would understand the possibility of a relationship going badly awry in a short period of time,” I said gently.

  “Touché. I did myself change from husbandly devotion to incandescent rage within a few months,” he acknowledged. “But between those times were months of abject sorrow. I had first to recognize that the woman I thought I had married did not exist. I could not hate her until I had learnt to mourn her. You are suggesting something quite different—that Maximilian murdered Alice in cold blood to secure his marriage.”

  “To a princess,” I corrected. “There is a throne in the equation. You cannot discount the lengths to which a man will go for a crown.”

  “A consort’s crown of a tiny, insignificant country,” he said. “Would any man kill for that? Least of all the woman he loved?”

  I considered this. “It took a betrayal for you to move from love to hatred,” I reminded him. “Perhaps Maximilian experienced the same.”

  “You mean Alice had a lover besides Maximilian?”

  “Why not? She was a woman of keen independence. She embraced many modern ideas—votes for women, rights for workers. Why not free love as well? Or perhaps she simply fell out of love with him and found someone else. If Maximilian had already gone to the trouble of arranging for her establishment in the Alpenwald, he would be enraged to find himself a laughingstock.”

  “So he killed the woman he loved either to sacrifice her to his own ambitions or to punish her for failing to return his fidelity?”

  “Both of those are understandable actions if a man is proud—and Duke Maximilian is excessively proud,” I pointed out.

  “As I said, in theory, either explanation makes perfect sense.”

  “However?”

  “However, I think there is something more we have not yet discovered. And perhaps the answers lie between the covers of Alice’s notebook.”

  I harkened back to something he had said at Bishop’s Folly. “Do you really believe there is a connection between Alice’s death and Gisela’s disappearance?”

  “I cannot imagine what, but it is entirely possible the two events are unrelated.”

  “They had Maximilian in common,” I mused. “What if he did not remove Alice from the picture, but Gisela herself did?”

  “She had only to order Alice from the Alpenwald,” he reminded me. “She is the hereditary princess. If she wanted Alice banished, then Alice would go.”

  “But Maximilian, if he was still in love with Alice, might make a good deal of trouble. Would you want to start a marriage on such a footing?”

  “Better than killing my mistress, if that is what you mean.”

  I lapsed into irritated silence. “Their motives are so oblique. I find these people vastly annoying.”

  “Annoying, but interesting,” he said with a smile. “It is a tangled skein to be sure. Now let us set to raveling.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Naturally there ensued a rather spirited discussion on which of us ought to break into the Curiosity Club. We stood on the pavement, tucked into the leafy shadows of the square across the street. The club had once been a private residence, deeded to the organization by one of the founding members. It stood in a quiet street not so very far from a royal palace. The houses that stood like sentinels around the square were tastefully embellished and uncompromisingly white—austere wedding cakes, I always thought of them. During the day, the square would hum with discreet activity, nannies pushing their charges in perambulators buffed to a perfect gloss, maidservants moving on silent feet, starched aprons and cap ribbons snapping behind them. There were a hundred such streets in London, each of them pristine and tidy and secure in their own respectable prosperity. It seemed nothing scandalous or criminal could ever happen in such a place. Except that we were currently bent upon thievery.

  We argued in hushed tones as we surveyed the building that housed the Curiosity Club. Stoker pointed out his greater skills in the art of lockpicking—to say nothing of shinning up a drainpipe like a monkey, a product of years spent in circus tents and on naval ships. But I replied that his skills were entirely immaterial in this case.

  “I have a key,” I told him, brandishing the article in question.

  “Veronica, you cannot just bloody well walk inside and steal Alice’s notebook,” he protested.

  “Of course I can. I am a member of the club and you are not even the proper gender to be allowed inside its hallowed walls. I shall enter and slip upstairs to the exhibition room. If I am detected, I will simply say that I have come at Lady C.’s behest to attend to a detail regarding the exhibition and that the hour may be unconventional but was the only time I could spare.”

  “And what if Lady C. is the one who apprehends you?” he demanded.

  “That is a river I will ford when I come to it,” I told him. I lifted up on tiptoe and kissed his cheek. “Stay in the shadows and try not to look quite so menacing or someone will report you to the police as a lurker.”

  He grumbled something entirely unprintable in a polite memoir and I hurried off, drawing in great lungfuls of cold, crisp London air. The door of the Curiosity Club sat in a tiny pool of warm light from the gas lantern hung next to it. Around me were silent shadows. In this quiet and largely residential part of the city, there were only houses and private clubs barred to outsiders. Even the garden in the center of the square was locked and barred against those who did not belong. Stoker had moved backwards to conceal himself still further against the high iron gate of the garden in the square, and I could not see him as I moved on careful feet to the top of the stone steps and fitted my key to the lock.

  I gave a soft call—the cry of the hoopoe and our arranged signal. One call for success and two for danger. I waited for Stoker’s answering call and slipped into the club, closing the door silently behind me and thanking providence for Hestia. As portress, she was a ferocious guardian at the gate and took exquisite care of the property as well as the organization itself. Her exacting standards meant that there were no creaking hinges, no groaning floorboards to betray my presence. Inside the hall, a night-light burned, a single gas jet illuminating the interior. I groped my way up the stairs, keeping one hand lightly
on the stair rail as I moved, fingertips skimming the freshly polished wood. It smelt strongly of beeswax and lavender. I forced myself to move slowly, advancing a step with each new breath, willing my heartbeat to calmness. The walls were thickly hung with paintings and photographs, framed maps and expedition gear. The last thing I needed was to upset one of them and send something crashing down to rouse the household. Hestia slept on the premises, I recalled, and there were a few rooms always reserved for members who did not live in London but wished to use the club as a sort of base camp whilst in the city. Heaven only knew how many women might be sleeping under that roof while I crept about, but my plan was to leave them to their slumbers.

  The door to the exhibition room was unlocked. As I turned the knob, I heard a soft noise—a footfall? a snore?—and instantly stopped, standing as still as one of Stoker’s stuffed specimens. I waited an eternity, but there was no further noise, only the occasional gentle creak of an old house settling its bones against the icy weather. After a thousand heartbeats, I slipped inside the room, shutting the door gently behind me. I took the precaution of turning the key in the lock and slipping it into my pocket. Without it, there would be a delay of several hours at least before anyone was able to gain access to the room and discover the theft of the notebook.

  I was conscious at once of how cold it was in the room, far colder than the rooms downstairs, and I shivered as I crossed the carpet to the display case where the notebook had been locked. It was darker here as well. No night-light softened the darkness, and the heavy draperies had been drawn across the window. It was a large French window giving on to a small, balustraded parapet that overhung the ground floor, making the house far more attractive than the buildings with flat façades, I thought, but desperately drafty in winter, it seemed. The draperies even stirred a little in the chill of the night air, and I realized I could, quite possibly, leave that way, eliminating the need for a return trip through the club. All it required was a convenient bit of ivy or even a few architectural embellishments upon which to place my weight. I was no climber in the fashion of Alice Baker-Greene—or even as skilled as Stoker in such matters—but butterflying required considerable scrambling over rocks, hauling oneself up and down steeply scrubby hillsides and modest mountains. I had more than once launched myself into ravines or over a precipice, and the thought of doing so under these conditions caused my pulse to quicken with excitement.

  So distracted was I by such thoughts that once I struck a vesta, the burst of light blooming into the darkness and dazzling my eyes, I did not realize at first that the door of the case stood open, a twisted wire lodged in the lock. On the shelf, where the notebook had been left, there was only an empty place. I like to think that my wits might have functioned more quickly had my eyes not taken a moment to adjust to the change in the light, but the truth was, I had approached the endeavor far too complacently. When I am coursing along the trail of a most elusive butterfly, I must still be watchful, vigilant against poisonous vipers, assorted venomous spiders, rock falls and sinking sands, and the occasional brigand. In the cushioned security of the Curiosity Club, those lessons deserted me, and I did not scent danger until it was upon me.

  The drapery at the window bellied out with a sudden frosty gust, and I realized too late that the window was not poorly fitted and drafty—it was open. The gust caused my vesta to gutter and die just as a figure launched itself at me from behind the drapery. I had but a fragment of a second’s warning. I dodged to my right, eluding the heaviest part of the blow, but still a solid strike from a closed fist landed upon my jaw, hurtling me to the ground and causing stars to sparkle across my vision.

  Without thought or hesitation, I forced myself up onto my hands and knees in time to see the intruder flee through the open window, pausing only briefly, entangled in the thick curtain before vanishing out the window and onto the parapet. Our collision had cost me a second or two at most, and by the time I reached the parapet, the villain had only just swung a leg over the side of the balustrade. The figure was male, with a cap pulled low over the brow, concealing the features. The head turned, the shadowed eyes seeming to bore into me, and then he was gone, as silent and weightless as if he had dropped from the parapet.

  I vaulted to where he had disappeared to find he had not, in fact, fallen, but was climbing swiftly and quietly, with an economy of motion that would have done credit to an orangutan. I swung my leg over the parapet, giving a double-barreled cry of the hoopoe, two quick calls to alert Stoker to danger. The figure looked up as I secured my hold on the drainpipe. The apparatus swung alarmingly under our combined weight but it held, the bolts biting into the masonry of the building as we descended. He hit the ground at a dead run, his boots making a peculiar metallic noise as he moved. There was no sign of Stoker and I cursed him roundly under my breath as I undertook the pursuit myself. The stranger ran across the street towards the square, hauling himself hand over hand up the iron bars and into the garden, disappearing into the thick foliage.

  “What in the name of the oozing wounds of Christ is happening?” Stoker demanded as I pounded on the bars in frustration.

  “The devil has gone in there!” I exclaimed. “He has the notebook!” Stoker, to his eternal credit, required no further urging. He dropped at once to his knee, forming a stirrup with his hands. He rested these on his thigh and as I set my foot into his cupped palms, he surged upwards, vaulting me up and over the top of the fence. He followed hard upon my heels, both of us landing rather gracelessly in a particularly nasty evergreen shrub.

  We helped one another to our feet, stopping to listen. There was no noise save the sigh of the wind and the click of the bare branches of the plane trees overhead as they rubbed together.

  “He cannot be far,” I whispered. “His boots make noise. Metallic.”

  “Climbing boots,” Stoker said grimly. “Nails in the soles, no doubt.”

  I nodded and peered into the darkness. Only a sliver of a waning crescent moon illuminated the sky, giving nothing but a cold, faraway glow to the rooftops beyond the garden. Of the square itself, it showed nothing, and there were no friendly lanterns to light the way. It seemed impossible that one could be in the heart of London and yet so completely silent, but we were as remote as that silvery, slivery moon, I thought.

  But then I knew, although I could not have said why. Our miscreant was close at hand.

  I turned to Stoker. “We have lost him,” I said in audible dejection. “And I cannot stand any longer in this freezing cold. We might as well go home.”

  Stoker opened his mouth to protest, but I pressed his hand. “Oh—er, yes. Quite right. It is devilishly cold and I think I am taking a chill.”

  He gave a racking cough that was as false as it was loud, and I tugged on his hand, pulling him towards the gate. “Have you your lockpicks handy? I’ve no liking for going over that fence again and it would be far more comfortable to leave by the gate.”

  “Yes, of course.” We dared not light a vesta, so he worked by touch, taking a little longer than he might otherwise have done. I was conscious the whole time of a presence, nothing more than a feeling. Not by footstep or rustling branch did he betray his presence. But I knew he was there.

  When the gate was at last open, I motioned for Stoker to go through first. He eased himself out onto the pavement, looking for any passersby, but he shook his head, indicating the streets were quiet. I tested the gate on its hinges, finding it silent and smooth, and opened it widely.

  “Thank God this night is over,” I said with a yawn, and I gestured for Stoker to walk a little ways down the pavement, his footfalls echoing around the silent square. I stood in the shadow for a long minute, so long I began to think our quarry would never emerge. But at last I heard the peculiar metallic scrape of his boots on the gravel, coming closer and closer still as my hand gripped the gate.

  He stepped onto the pavement and I flung the gate forward with all m
y might, the end post catching him squarely upon the chin and knocking him flat onto his back as his feet soared over his head.

  Stoker was at my side in an instant. “I presume you had an excellent reason for doing that?” he asked mildly.

  “He hit me in the jaw,” I said, tapping the spot on my face that I was quite certain would bloom with a bruise by morning.

  “Well then,” Stoker replied, “you ought to have hit him harder.”

  “He is unconscious,” I pointed out. “I was not trying to kill him.” Stoker lit a series of vestas to illuminate the scene as I bent swiftly to the villain’s recumbent form and searched his pockets. The notebook was in the second and I handed it to Stoker for safekeeping. I might have proved myself a match for the fellow, but I had little doubt he would think twice before attacking Stoker.

  “Who do you think it is?” Stoker asked as he buttoned the notebook securely into his pocket. His vesta struggled against the chill wind, giving only a small pool of light, and the miscreant’s face was still concealed by his scarf and cap.

  I shrugged. “It has all been too confusing to venture a guess. Maximilian perhaps?”

  Just then the villain groaned and moved his head. “What in the name of Sam Hill did you do that for?” he demanded.

  He sat up, his scarf falling away, but even if I had not glimpsed the features, I would have known him from the American idiom. “Douglas Norton!” I cried.

  CHAPTER

  16

  Douglas Norton gave another groan and dropped his head into his hands. “It feels like my head is about to fall off,” he complained as he raised his face to Stoker. “What did you hit me with?”

  “I did not hit you at all, my good fellow,” Stoker replied. “That is the lady’s handiwork.”

  Norton gave a soundless whistle. “That was as hard a hit as any I’ve taken,” he said with something that might have been respect.