An Unexpected Peril (Veronica Speedwell #6)(17)

Lady C. went on, furrowing her brow. “I suppose I ought to go and inspect the ledger and see what I can learn from that.”

“I cannot imagine any member of the club doing such a thing,” I began.

“They didn’t,” Stoker said soberly as he came to join us.

Lady C. brightened. “What makes you say that?”

“Because it is not just the badge that has vanished,” he said, giving me a level look. “The cut climbing rope is missing. Veronica and I put it behind the draperies for safekeeping and it is gone.”

Lady C. stared at him a long moment. “I do not understand. The badge at least was metal. Why on earth would someone wish to take an old rope?”

“Because it was very likely a murder weapon,” I told her.

She took a deep, shuddering breath. “I must go to Hestia,” she said, invoking the name of the portress and directress of the club. “She has been deciding upon a course of action and wishes to meet at once.”

“We will clear it up,” I told her. “I know where the brooms are.”

She hurried off and I bent to tidying away the broken glass, no easy task when much of it had been ground to slivers in the carpet.

“You can leave off smiling anytime, you know,” Stoker said as he plucked splinters of glass from the velvet display shelves.

“I am not smiling.”

“Veronica, I can see your face. I know precisely what your mouth is doing.”

I sat back on my haunches. “Very well. I am smiling. Do you know why?”

“Because you think this will change something,” he said, calmly dropping the splinters into a dustpan.

“It changes everything! We know now that our hypothesis was correct. Alice Baker-Greene was murdered.”

“That is not our hypothesis,” he pointed out. “It is yours and it demonstrates a woeful failure of logic.”

I made a scoffing noise. “You were the one who first introduced the possibility of murder,” I reminded him.

“For which I am immensely sorrowful,” he replied. “One cut rope does not a murder make.”

“It does if that cut rope meant a woman plunged to her death. Ow!” I swore as a bit of glass jammed into my finger.

“Let me see,” he ordered. “Here in the light.”

I went to stand next to him, extending my finger where a bright bead of ruddy blood stood. He peered at it, then took a slender knife from his pocket. Stoker’s pockets were invariably a repository for all manner of oddments—coins, vestas, paper twists of sweets, great crimson handkerchiefs, assorted glass eyeballs, lockpicks. One never knew what lurked in there, but Stoker always managed to produce the proper tool for any occasion. He bent his head to the task, plying the knifepoint so quickly and deftly that I never felt the splinter move. He dropped it into the dustpan with a delicate clink and the blood welled afresh. I expected him to wrap it in one of his enormous scarlet handkerchiefs.

Instead, he took the fingertip in his mouth, giving it a gentle suck. A jolt of a most arresting sensation coursed through me, so much so that I was entirely incapable of speech.

After a moment, he removed my finger from his lips, examining it in satisfaction. “The suction and the saliva help with clotting,” he told me. “Of course, it is not a technique one would care to employ on anyone to whom one was not intimately connected.”

I said nothing. I stepped closer, lifting my face to his as I applied a caress to a specific and wholly enthralling portion of his anatomy to assess its readiness.

“Veronica!” He grasped my wrists, putting me firmly away. “This is hardly the time or place,” he began.

I moved forward again, pressing my hips to his. “That is rather the point,” I murmured.

“We will be discovered,” he protested.

“Will we?” I breathed, trailing a kiss from his earlobe down his neck. “How very dangerous.”

“Veronica.” This time it was a groan and he did not push me aside. Instead he buried his hands in my hair, kissing me as thoroughly as he did everything, which is to say, expertly and with exquisite attention to detail. I was just reaching for the hem of my petticoat when he gave a maidenly gasp and thrust me away. “Veronica, what has got into you? That is quite enough,” he said, straightening his disordered garments. He buttoned his shirt, finishing just as Lady C. appeared. I dropped the last splinter of glass into the dustpan.

“Hestia has spoken with the Alpenwalders. It has been decided the less said about this the better,” she told us, her expression grim.

“The Alpenwalders! What business is it of theirs?” I demanded.

Lady C.’s tone was even, but it seemed an effort. “They are underwriting the expenses of the exhibition and Hestia felt obliged to inform them of this development. They were most insistent upon discretion. They have a horror of any sort of bad publicity.”

“Reasonable enough,” Stoker put in. “If the mountaineering business is already suffering thanks to Alice Baker-Greene’s death, then any news story which revives the whole sordid business must be unwelcome.”

“Exactly that,” Lady C. said. “And Hestia agrees with them. She will have a joiner come tomorrow to fit a new panel of glass to the cabinet. In the meanwhile, the room is to be kept locked at all times and I will keep the key.”