An Unexpected Peril

by DEANNA RAYBOURN

  “I had no choice,” she repeated, coming closer, her breast rising and falling heavily. “The very future of my country was at stake.”

  “I hardly think so,” I told her in a deliberately bored voice. “Surely you exaggerate.”

  “I do not!” She stepped nearer still. “You know nothing of my troubles.”

  “Because you do not really have troubles,” I told her patiently. “You merely invented some in order to justify murdering your princess.”

  “How dare you! I would not harm a hair upon her head!”

  “You say that, but here we are. The princess is missing, her maid has been strangled, and now you are attempting to murder two more people. How do we know you have not actually killed your princess? That is regicide, you know.” I wrinkled my nose. “Or is there another term for it when you kill a princess and not a king?”

  The sailors began to shift uneasily. “You killed a princess? That is not on. You said you had to toss these two overboard because he”—the sailor holding my arms jerked his head towards Stoker—“inflicted himself barbarously upon your daughter. But she don’t seem too ill-used to me.”

  “I am not,” I told him kindly. “Besides, if that story were true, why would she wish to kill me? Wouldn’t I be her beloved and greatly wronged daughter?”

  The sailor next to him gave him an ungentle shove. “I told you it was a Banbury tale!”

  “Also, I should like to point out, I am not a rapist,” Stoker said in tones of hectic outrage.

  “That is true,” I agreed. “I can vouch for his character.”

  The men looked doubtful, but one pointed to the elaborate dragon tattooed on Stoker’s pectoral muscle. “A fellow navy man,” he said, rubbing his bewhiskered chin. “Where did you get that, now?”

  “After the Siege of Alexandria,” Stoker told him.

  “You were there! Bill, this lad were at Alexandria, same as us,” the sailor crowed in delight. His companion gave a short nod of recognition. “What ship?”

  “HMS Luna,” Stoker said.

  “A fine ship she is,” the sailor told him proudly. “Thomas Corrigan, HMS Orkney. This is my mate, Billy Weaver, of the same. Munitions men, we were. And you?”

  “Surgeon’s mate,” Stoker said.

  Thomas Corrigan gave a soundless whistle. “Well, if that don’t beat all. A surgeon’s mate!” He narrowed his gaze at the baroness. “Ye’ve lied to us and tried to set us against this fellow and his lady. We’ll not harm a hair on his head, no matter how much you pay. He is one of our own.”

  The baroness burst into a torrent of infuriated German, but the sailor merely held up his hand. “Screech like a parrot, but you’ll not change our minds.”

  The baroness started forward, hands upraised, but Weaver leapt into the fray, seizing her firmly about the waist with one broadly muscled arm and pinning her arms tightly with the other.

  “How dare you lay hands upon me! I will report you to the authorities,” she shrieked.

  Thomas Corrigan darted a look at Stoker. “What sort of trouble can she make for us?”

  “The kind you do not want,” Stoker told him. “But my associate and I will intercede for you if she tries.”

  “That’s mighty decent of you considering,” he replied. His expression was sheepish, and he ducked his head towards me. “Sorry about the trouble, miss. We meant no harm.”

  “Not at all,” I assured him in my most gracious manner. “But we would very much like to return to the shore now.”

  “We will have you there in a trice,” he promised. He raised his voice to the wheelhouse. “Ned, come about! Back to Greenwich,” he instructed. He looked at the baroness. “What should we do with her?”

  “For now, I would bind her hand and foot,” Stoker told him. “We will think of a plan of action by the time we reach Greenwich. How far out to sea are we?”

  Corrigan shrugged. “No more than an hour, but we were running against the tide. ’Twill be faster on the return.” He signaled to his mate and the fellow began to tie the baroness with a bit of stout rope. The fight seemed to have gone out of her, and she submitted to the indignity without a protest. While he worked, Corrigan hunted down a coat for me and an extra pair of trousers and a fisherman’s jersey for Stoker. The trousers came only halfway down Stoker’s calves and the jersey looked as if it had been knitted for his younger brother. But we were somewhat warmer at least. He heated drinks for us, tea with hefty measures of rum added in, and thrust the steaming cups into our hands as we returned to the deck.

  “Rather surprised at that,” Corrigan said, jerking his chin to where the baroness sat, mute and miserable at the railing. Weaver stood next to her, keeping careful watch upon his prisoner.

  “Thought she would have put up more of a fight.”

  “She knows she is done for,” Stoker said. “There is no escaping the trouble she has crafted for herself.”

  The baroness set her face to the wind, not deigning to look at us. I left Stoker and the sailors exchanging navy stories and went to sit next to her. She did not look at me, but sat, face to the wind.

  “I do not bear a grudge over these kinds of things,” I told her. “I have nearly been murdered too many times to take it personally. But you might do me the courtesy of answering a question or two.”

  “What do you want to know?” she asked in a dull voice. She stared ahead into the darkness. Somewhere in the night lay the wide green expanse of the Thames. Her shoulders were erect. Even in defeat, she would not relax her posture.

  “I presume you were the one who cut Alice’s climbing ropes,” I began.

  She nodded but said nothing.

  “It would take a cool nerve to do that,” I observed. “I did not realize you were a climber.”

  She curled a lip. “I was the most accomplished lady climber in the Alpenwald in my youth—the first woman to summit the Teufelstreppe. There is a paragraph about my accomplishment in that little guide you were reading,” she said with a sly smile.

  “The Baedeker? Is that why you snatched it out of my hands? I thought you were irritated about Yelena and simply wanted to tidy up.” I was a little put out with myself for never suspecting her real intention had been to keep me from reading the Baedeker. Now that I knew the baroness had been an alpinist, it all seemed perfectly clear. “I imagine you waited until Alice was at the most treacherous part of the climb.”

  She did not respond for a long moment, then sighed. “Climbing skills, once learnt, are forever. It was many years since I was on the mountain, so I knew no one would suspect that I had made my way up to find Alice, but it was simple enough. I had only to set out earlier than she did. I hid around the side of a boulder, and when she reached the first step of the middle of the Teufelstreppe, I emerged and sliced cleanly through the rope. Only I left it almost too late. It took longer to make the cut, even with a sharp blade, and she almost got a foothold on the step before she fell. She stretched out her hand to me as she went.”

  The baroness turned to me, and I saw there were tears in her eyes, whether from the brisk wind whipping off the river or any excess of emotion, I could not say.

  “She grasped my coat as she fell. I did not realize at the time that she had taken hold of my summit badge. Only later did I notice it was missing, and there was no way to know where it had fallen. I thought someone might eventually find it and I would simply say I had lost it on a previous climb.”

  “But no one did find it,” I said, working it out as we spoke. “Because it was still clutched in Alice Baker-Greene’s hand when she died. And because it was found in her hand, it was mistaken for her own badge and buried with her. She took the proof of your guilt with her to the grave.”

  She shook her head. “You cannot imagine my horror when I realized what must have happened.”

  “And no one was the wiser until the princess ar
rived at the club and noticed the photograph of Alice in her coffin—wearing a badge for her burial. But the badge at the exhibition was Alice’s, marked with a nick that the princess knew about and recognized immediately. And this immediately raised the question, ‘Whose badge had Alice been buried with?’ Coming hard upon Stoker finding the cut rope, Gisela must have realized instantly that if Alice had not worn her own badge that day, she could only have been buried with her murderer’s badge.”

  She clutched her hands together, the knuckles whitening.

  “Is that why you harmed your princess?” I asked.

  She rounded on me, her expression fierce. “How many times do I have to say it? I would never harm my princess!”

  “Then where is she, Baroness?”

  “I do not know,” she told me, her voice small and defeated. “She has run away before, but never for so long.”

  “When she left before, it was to be with Alice, wasn’t it?” I ventured. She did not respond, but the stubborn set of her chin told me I was right. “We compared the dates of her absences from the Alpenwald with the times Alice was climbing in remote areas with a companion she referred to in her journal by the letter ‘D.’ Dolcezza.”

  “The sweet one,” the baroness said, the words bursting forth in a torrent of rage. “It was wrong, her association with that woman. It brought out all of her worst instincts, her inclination to liberality, to modernization. It taught her to neglect her duties and to scorn our traditions.”

  “Alice Baker-Greene was a suffragist,” I recalled. “She demonstrated for all sorts of causes, education for all, Irish Home Rule, the rights of workers, and open immigration. All the things in which Princess Gisela was interested. I have seen her books, remember?”

  “Books given her by that woman,” she spat. “They sat up for hours, far into the night, talking of such things, making plans to change our country, to strip away all that we hold dear. And Gisela neglected her duties to be with this foreigner who had befriended her. It was a kind of madness. I tried to speak with her so many times about her responsibilities, about her duty to marry and secure the succession, but she would argue with me, trying to explain about education and votes for women and the rights of animals,” she said, her mouth twisting bitterly. “Animals! She was no longer the Gisela I knew, but I believed she would return to us. She was too proud, too much of an Alpenwalder, to neglect her people.”

  “Then why eliminate Alice?” I asked. “If you were so certain that Gisela would overcome her feelings and do her duty, why act at all?”

  “Because she was blinded by her idealism—idealism instilled in her by that creature! Every day our Gisela became more radical in her opinions, wanting to change things, to make it all different and modern,” she said, her mouth twisting bitterly. “Every day she moved further away from us.”

  “And you realized Gisela was thinking of renouncing her throne,” I said suddenly. “I saw the passages she had highlighted in the biography of Queen Christina about abdication. Your princess was considering the unimaginable—giving up her royal destiny. You could not have that, could you? You could not take the risk that Alice would take her away from the Alpenwald forever.”

  “Gisela belongs to her people,” she said. “The crown is her right but also her responsibility. She has a duty to perform.”

  “And you were going to see that she did it, no matter what. So Alice had to die, to remove the distraction she had become, the dangerous ideas she had instilled in your princess. Her influence over Gisela threatened your own.”

  Something flickered in her expression and I seized upon the hunch. “Because that was the real problem, wasn’t it? You couch your confession in terms of destiny and service to the people of the Alpenwald, but it is much simpler and dirtier than that, is it not? If Gisela abdicated, your post as lady-in-waiting would be at an end. All the opportunities to profit from your court appointment, the lavish lifestyle you enjoyed in the castle, the influence—all of it would vanish in the snap of the fingers.”

  “I will not dignify such an accusation,” she said loftily.

  “You do not have to,” I said. “I am convinced of it. You murdered Yelena as well. As close as she was to the princess, she must have guessed something of her feelings for Alice and your resentment as well. Or did she find the mask and put the pieces together herself? I imagine she was blackmailing you. Poor stupid Yelena! All she wanted was a little money so she and her captain could marry. And she was mercenary enough to think she could risk making an enemy of you, not realizing that you are every bit as calculating. It was not sentiment or loyalty to your country that drove you to murder Alice Baker-Greene. You meant to keep Gisela under your guidance. With Alice gone, she would have turned back to you, leant upon you for support—and of course she would have rewarded that support, would she not? You intended that your princess should never leave the Alpenwald so that you could continue to feather your nest as you have for all these years. So simple a motive and so venal.”

  She turned her shoulder towards me and faced into the wind once more. “You understand nothing,” she told me.

  “On the contrary,” I said. “I understand everything.”

  CHAPTER

  28

  At last, just as dawn was breaking over the horizon, we reached the docks at Greenwich. Stoker and I had, after a spirited exchange of views, decided to hand the baroness over to the authorities.

  “You’ve no call to summon the police, do you?” Corrigan asked nervously.

  “It would be no more than you deserve,” Stoker replied with a narrow look.

  Corrigan ducked his head. “C’mon, guv. You know what it’s like for a sailor, trying to make an honest shilling. Sometimes the work just isn’t there, and I’ve seven mouths to feed at home, I do. And Weaver there has nine.”

  “Remind me to have an instructive discussion with your wives on the precautionary arts,” I told them.

  “Come again?”

  “Family planning,” Stoker explained dryly. “It would keep your wives from being subjected to more expectations and you lot from having more children than you can reasonably support.”

  “That’s not natural, that isn’t,” Corrigan protested.

  “And starvation is?” I put in tartly. “I shall send along pamphlets. Promise to read them and we will not refer this matter to the police.”

  Corrigan relaxed visibly. “That’s mighty kind of you, miss.”

  He gave me an address to direct the pamphlets to as Weaver took up the bound form of the baroness and set her onto the dock. Her hair had been whipped free of its plaits, and it hung in great silvering hanks about her face. She looked older, but there was still a trace of defiance in her eye.

  “You cannot possibly think that you will get away with handling the lady-in-waiting to the Hereditary Princess of the Alpenwald in such a fashion,” she said, lifting her chin to an imperious angle. “I demand that you release me.”

  “Oh, we will,” Stoker assured her. He pointed behind her. “Into their care.”

  Coming down the dock were a number of figures, cloaked and hooded against the chill, but each wearing the distinctive dark blue of the Alpenwalder wool—Captain Durand, his head wrapped in a considerable bandage, flanked by the chancellor and the duke, their expressions grim with purpose. And leading them all, Her Serene Highness, Princess Gisela.

  The princess spoke in a low voice that commanded attention. “Baroness von Wallenberg, according to the authority of the laws of the Alpenwald, you are to be taken into custody by the chancellor’s men and transported back to our country, where you will stand trial for the murder of Alice Baker-Greene.”

  The baroness gambled all in one last throw of the dice. “You will never find me guilty! You cannot. You have no proof.”

  “No, they do not,” said a new voice. From behind the chancellor came a creaking noise, and he st
epped aside to permit an elderly woman in a Bath chair to propel herself forward. “But I do,” she said.

  “Pompeia Baker-Greene!” I exclaimed softly to Stoker.

  She held up a small, familiar medal. “‘Alpenwalder Kletterverein Gipfelabzeichen,’” she read in halting German. “Your summit badge, Baroness. Buried with my granddaughter. And the climbing rope cut by your hand.”

  The baroness looked around wildly, but there was no mercy to be found.

  “There is also the body of Yelena and a mask that matches the description of the figure seen on the Teufelstreppe the day Alice died,” the chancellor said. “You cannot escape this,” he added sternly. “You will answer for what you have done.”

  At this, the baroness gave a deep groan and seemed to fold in on herself. The chancellor signaled and Captain Durand came forward slowly to take her in hand. As he led her away, the figure in the Bath chair pushed herself towards us.

  “Mrs. Baker-Greene,” Stoker said, inclining his head.

  “One and the same. Mr. Templeton-Vane, I presume? Miss Speedwell, it is good to see you again,” she said, giving me her hand. It was cold and rough, the flesh tempered by decades of pitting herself against the unforgiving granite of the world’s most demanding mountains.

  “It is an honor,” I told her.

  Princess Gisela came to stand behind her. She glanced at Stoker’s unorthodox garments and the coat flapping about my calves.

  “Come. The pair of you must be half-perished from the cold. Let us return to the Sudbury. There are many things to say.”

  As we walked away, Stoker put his arm through mine as Tommy and Billy waved an obviously relieved farewell. “It would serve them right if we handed them over to Mornaday,” he mused. “After all, they did conspire to abduct us.”

  “An abduction they ultimately abandoned,” I reminded him. “Besides, we now know two men in possession of a boat and flexible morals who feel they owe us a favor. That, I have no doubt, will someday come in handy.”