An Unexpected Peril (Veronica Speedwell #6)(22)

“How can you know that?” he demanded.

I described the nick at the edge of the medal. “Alice showed me herself. She said it got bashed about when she wore it climbing once and she intended never to wear it climbing again.”

I paused again and he made a restless gesture. “Get on with it,” he growled.

“The badge at the club is undoubtedly Alice’s own,” I repeated. “But the badge she was buried with was not pinned to her clothing because it was not hers.”

Stoker waved the newspaper at me. “It is most definitely pinned to her clothing in this photograph.”

“But that is not where it was found,” I pointed out. “Read the article carefully, and you will be struck by one curious fact—the badge was found with her lifeless body on the Teufelstreppe, but clutched in her hand. This is the badge, the undamaged badge, that was pinned to her garments as she lay in her coffin. And I propose that this badge belonged to her murderer,” I finished triumphantly. “And was wrenched from his shirt as Alice Baker-Greene reached out for the last time whilst she struggled for her life on that mountain.”

He gave a deep groan. “Veronica, of all the melodramatic codswallop—”

“It is not codswallop. What is more logical than that Alice, whose rope was clearly cut in an act of sabotage, might have struggled with her attacker and ripped a badge from his clothing, carrying down the mountain a clue to his identity? Furthermore, you thought the same yourself, otherwise you would not have had so strenuous a reaction to the realization. ‘Bloody bollocking hell’ were your words, I believe.”

“I admit, I may have thought something along those lines at first, but almost at once I saw that there might be a dozen other perfectly logical explanations for the presence of a second badge amongst her things.”

“I would settle for one,” I told him sweetly.

“It might be a memento,” he said, shoving the newspaper back at me. “Surely she had a love affair or a friendship of some sort—one she mightn’t have wanted made public. So the badge was a sentimental keepsake.”

“Possible, but weak,” I told him. “Two marks out of ten.”

“That suggestion is at least a seven,” he countered.

I flapped a hand. “Two and I am being generous. First, she did have a possible relationship in the Alpenwald with a minor member of the royal family—Duke Maximilian of Lokendorf—”

Stoker’s crow of triumph broke into my narrative. Naturally, I ignored him and carried on, raising my voice only slightly.

“Say what you like but it fits the facts,” I protested. “The badge discovered in Alice’s hand was that of her murderer—and I know who he was.”

Stoker blinked in astonishment. “The devil you do.”

I gave a little sigh of pleasure. “The moustachioed man.” I nodded towards the newspaper. “Read on. Miss Butterworth was most thorough, but even she failed to deduce the likeliest explanation—that the mysterious man on the mountain was there for one purpose that morning: murder.”

“More likely her editors were afraid of drawing a costly lawsuit,” Stoker replied.

Stoker read through the piece, his brows drawing further and lower with every line. When he had finished, he prowled through the rest of the cuttings, laying them side by side in a sort of timeline as he came to the end of each. “All right, let us suppose, for just a moment, that what you have said is possible—that Alice was murdered and that the summit badge was stolen because it provides a clue. That gets us no closer to discovering who this person might have been.”

“Of course it does!” I enumerated the points on my fingers. “First, someone else’s badge in Alice’s dead hand means that the murderer must have been a climber, a proposition that is further confirmed by the presence of the moustachioed man on the mountain that day, our possible murderer. Second, only an experienced climber would have known how to tamper with the ropes at just the correct spot to ensure she fell to her death. Third, why else steal the rope and badge from the club if not to conceal the fact that it was murder and that the killer was a mountaineer? Altogether, this means that our villain must have been someone who not only climbs but knew of the existence of the badge and rope in Alice’s effects. In short, my dear Stoker, it was an Alpenwalder.”

“Not necessarily,” he said slowly.

“You are determined to be difficult.”

“It is a poor scientist who is so attached to her theory that she cannot entertain criticism of it,” he countered.

“Very well. Go on.”

“If it were an alpinist who killed her—and I do concede that only a skilled climber could have ascended to the devil’s staircase in order to dispatch her—then yes, the badge and rope might offer clues as to the murderer’s identity. But it does not necessarily follow that the murderer was an Alpenwalder.”

“The description fits Duke Maximilian,” I protested.

“The description of a man of mystery and moustaches also fits Douglas Norton.”

“Perhaps,” I admitted.

He gave a snort and produced the cutting with Norton’s photograph. “Moustaches. And slender.”

I pulled a face.

“Don’t pout, Veronica. It does not suit a woman of your age.” He grinned.