An Unexpected Peril (Veronica Speedwell #6)(12)
“I agree with you.”
His mouth twitched. “Do not make a habit of it. It is upsetting to see you so quiescent.”
“I will always agree with you when your arguments are based upon sound common sense and scientific fact,” I said smoothly.
“Leave it,” he urged. He picked up the parcel and slipped it behind the draperies of the diorama. “There. No one will disturb it, and if the chancellor decides to take up the matter, we can hand it over.”
“And if he doesn’t?” I inquired hopefully.
“Then we will revisit the subject of Sir Hugo,” he said with a heavy sigh.
I grinned and he tipped up my chin, kissing me, quickly and firmly. “Do not gloat, Veronica. No one loves a boorish winner.”
* * *
? ? ?
That evening, Stoker amused himself with the earl’s latest purchase for the Rosemorran Collection—an enormous walrus that had required the combined strength of numerous porters to wheel into the Belvedere, the freestanding ballroom that had been given over to the various artifacts and works of art hoarded by seven generations of earls. It was, in due course, to serve as a museum once the contents were properly sorted and arranged for the edification of the general public. The fact that Stoker and I were the only two people working to organize the thousands of items meant that the museum was projected to open sometime in the middle of the next century. The Belvedere was a place of unending magic and mystery, crammed to the rafters with every variety of trophy—jewels, statues, fossils, paintings, coins, suits of armor, one or two moldering mummies, and natural history specimens of all descriptions. The acquisition of the walrus had long been a pet dream of Stoker’s and its arrival had kindled in him an enthusiasm akin to that of a child on Christmas morn. He had fallen upon the massive crate with a pry bar and single-minded determination. The fact that it smelt strongly of rotting fish had done little to dampen his ardor.
“It wants cleaning out,” he explained happily, anticipating with real pleasure many hours spent raking bits of decaying filler from its imperfectly preserved insides.
“Your tastes will ever surprise me,” I remarked dryly. I expected some vigorous rejoinder, but he was already peering intently into the creature’s mouth, neatly eluding the long, menacing ivory tusks.
“Amazing!” he exclaimed. “Do you realize that this is the largest single specimen of Odobenus rosmarus ever to be seen on English shores? Two thousand two hundred and forty-five pounds. And a half,” he added with all the pride of a new father observing his offspring for the first time.
“You don’t say,” I murmured. Stoker’s dogs, Huxley and Nut, and his lordship’s enormous Caucasian sheepdog, Betony, sat patiently at his heels, waiting for the destruction of the trophy to begin. Stoker had—upon several occasions and in exhaustive detail—explained that the fashion for stuffing specimens had been discarded for the more aesthetically pleasing and accurate method of mounting them. Older examples of the taxidermical arts had been stuffed with sawdust, newspapers, old book pages, rags, whatever was to hand when the job was in progress. Stoker had even unearthed a foul nest of dead kittens in one particularly vile specimen. It was his practice to take such trophies and deftly unstuff them, if one may be permitted to use such a word, removing the putrefying fillers and cleaning the various hides and skins to restore them to lustrous life. He fashioned his own eyeballs after intensive research into the proper shape and color and pupillary details, and he sculpted his own armature to hold the refurbished exteriors. It was a gift, of that there could be little doubt, to bring these creatures back to life, resurrecting them so perfectly that one could easily imagine they had been alive only a moment before—indeed might still be alive, only arrested in mid-breath. More than once I had glanced quickly back at one of his trophies, certain I had caught movement in the tail of my eye. I was not surprised the walrus had diverted him. I had met him when he was engaged in assembling an elephant of dramatic proportions, and with Stoker size was always a consideration.
I took myself up the narrow twisting stair of the Belvedere into the gallery that provided a snuggery of sorts. It was furnished with low bookshelves and a campaign bed once belonging to Wellington as well as a few other cozy comforts. My own dog, Vespertine, trotted obediently behind, coming to rest lightly at my feet with a hopeful glance. The poor fellow had lost his mistress a few months previously and had taken to following me about with persistent devotion. He was a Scottish deerhound, tall and elegant, and had a habit of looking down his aristocratic nose at Huxley the bulldog and Nut the pharaoh hound. Huxley had belonged to Stoker when I met him, but Nut—like Vespertine—was the souvenir of an investigation, and it occurred to me, not for the first time, that Stoker and I were going to have to be a little more judicious in our acquisitions of animals unless we meant to start a dog circus.
I rootled through the stacks of newspapers until I found the ones I wanted: issues of the Daily Harbinger from the previous October. The front pages were covered in lurid illustrations from the murder scenes of that fiend popularly known as Jack the Ripper, but in the latter pages of one edition, I saw a mention of Alice Baker-Greene. It was the merest snippet, a paragraph only, stating that the renowned climber had died upon the slopes of the Teufelstreppe in an attempt to summit the mountain out of season. There was no byline on the piece, and I flapped it aside in irritation. I rummaged through a few more issues until I found a proper tribute. This one was more informative, detailing Miss Baker-Greene’s history as part of the noteworthy Baker-Greene climbing family. Her grandparents had begun the tradition, using the Pennines as their training ground. They took along their son, who soon distinguished himself as one of the youngest men ever to summit the Matterhorn. He was an ambitious youth, determined to gain access to peaks previously unchallenged by Englishmen—notably the Himalayas. There was a brief mention of his demise in the Karakoram and his father’s later death in an avalanche in the Andes. The only surviving member of the family was the elder Mrs. Baker-Greene, who had taken charge of her orphaned young granddaughter. She had curtailed her climbing in order to raise the child, but when she discovered the girl perched atop a substantial deposit of talus, she realized that it would be futile to think she could keep young Alice from mountaineering. The elder Mrs. Baker-Greene had resumed her travels, taking the girl with her when school terms permitted, teaching her everything she knew about the pursuit.