An Unexpected Peril (Veronica Speedwell #6)(55)

I poked my head around the screen. “How did you learn about the journal?” I demanded. “I know I showed it to you the day we met the princess, but how do you know its significance?”

“Captain Durand,” he said in obvious satisfaction. “We had a most illuminating discussion whilst he was helping me with my moustaches. Apparently, Alice kept detailed records of her expeditions—including companions. If she meant to climb with someone that morning, she might have made note of it and it may well lead us to the moustachioed man on the mountain. Besides which, it is a notable coincidence that the princess has disappeared just after we discovered that Alice Baker-Greene was likely murdered and I do not like coincidences. Alice apparently wrote at length about the people where she traveled. She may well have recorded something which could lead us to the princess as well.”

I emerged from the screen, pulling on a heavy cloak. “That was my discovery,” I told him in some irritation. “I was meant to persuade you that we needed to see the ledger.”

He shrugged a shoulder. “Perhaps I am better at this investigative business than you are,” he said lightly.

“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.”