An Unexpected Peril (Veronica Speedwell #6)(6)
“What is tonight?”
“My farewell to the Hippolyta Club,” she told me, even as I made a noise of protest. She raised a hand. “You would not attempt to dissuade me if you knew where I am bound—a veritable paradise on earth for a mountaineer. I am off to the Alpenwald. Do you know it?”
“Somewhere between France and Germany, is it not?”
She led me to a map of the world and pointed to a minuscule dot between the two great European powers. “Just there, that lovely tiny patch of green.” Her expression softened and her eyes grew misty at the thought of the place. “Oh, Miss Speedwell, you cannot imagine the felicity! The whole of this small nation devoted to the climbing of mountains. It is in their blood, their very souls, I daresay. And what a mountain! It is a lonely alp, but a worthy one. I mean to learn every inch of it, in summer and winter, in meadowgrass and snowfall.”
“It sounds ideal.”
“It is. The Alpenwalder economy is largely driven by its mountaineering,” she explained. “I found there such a worthy mountain and such stalwart friends, I could scarcely bring myself to leave! And then I was offered a house of my own to make the Alpenwald my base. How could I refuse?”
She gestured towards the jeweled badge pinned at her collar and motioned for me to make a closer examination. It was a small thing but exquisitely fashioned, a medallion struck with a tiny image of a snowy mountain peak, a sun rising behind it, the sky enameled in brilliant blue. The effect was modern and arresting, the work of a significantly gifted craftsman, I realized, and no inexpensive trinket. Around the perimeter were the words alpenwalder kletterverein gipfelabzeichen. The only flaw was a nick on one edge, no doubt the result of being much worn.
“The Alpenwalder Climbing Society. I was made a full member, an honor never before accorded to a foreigner,” she related with obvious pride. She touched the nick with a rueful finger. “I managed to strike it upon a stone the last time I climbed, but I will not give it back to be repaired. I quite like the little scar.”
“A badge of honor,” I said lightly.
“Yes, but I should not like to damage it further. I will keep it properly tucked away when I climb in future. I am looking forward to many more days upon the Teufelstreppe,” she said with shining eyes.
“Well, the Alpenwald’s gain is our loss,” I told her. I extended my hand again and she shook it warmly.
“You must come and visit me there,” she urged. “I have every hope of perfect happiness and it will be my joy to share it.”
She was called away then to meet other members, and I had no chance to speak to her afterwards. But I thought often of her forceful, dynamic personality and her apparent pleasure in anticipating the future she planned in the Alpenwald.
“And yet here we are,” I said as I finished recounting the meeting to Stoker. “A little more than a year later, preparing an exhibition to commemorate her death. Such a short time for her to know happiness!”
His expression was thoughtful. “If she had had a Scottish nanny, she would have known that sort of happiness would never last.”
“What on earth are you talking about?” I demanded.
He shrugged. “It sounds as if that last night here, she was fey.” My expression must have betrayed my bemusement for he went on. “It is an old Scots word, it means a sort of hectic happiness that cannot last. It usually presages a disaster.”
I looked at the photograph in my hands, Alice’s proudly raised chin, the bright glint of the jeweled climbing badge on her jacket. And I thought of her, falling to her death on the mountain she had considered a worthy foe.
“Disaster indeed,” I murmured as Stoker returned to his mosses.
I turned the photograph over and saw the notation penciled in her grandmother’s hand. Alice’s Last Photograph. On the slopes of the Teufelstreppe. It was dated the previous October. There was no hesitation in the handwriting, no weakness or sentimentality. Just the stark facts of her granddaughter’s life and death in a few strokes of the pencil. I put the photograph aside, making a note to find an easel to display it near the map at the start of the exhibition.
“Teufelstreppe,” I mused aloud. “Your German is better than mine. It means the devil’s what?”
“Step or stair,” Stoker called in a distracted voice.
I looked again at the photograph, the sharp ridge cut by a series of steep, unforgiving steps. The devil’s staircase indeed, I decided with a shudder.
I moved on to the next box, a crate stamped with chalk marks in various languages. “This seems to have come directly from the Alpenwald,” I told him, circling the crate. I tested the lid, but it was hammered firmly. “It does not appear to have been opened yet.”
Stoker passed me the pry bar and I applied myself to levering off the lid. The crate was not large, a cube of perhaps three feet on each side. Excelsior had been packed inside, securing the contents, and this I deposited neatly in a pile. Underneath I found a hefty coil of ropes tied with various bits of climbing impedimenta. “Good God, these weigh a ton,” I muttered.
Stoker left off his moss laying and came to lend me a hand. “Good ropes are quite dense,” he explained, his eyes gleaming with interest. I ought to have known better than to mention the ropes. In his previous exploits as a circus performer and naval surgeon, he had had better cause to appreciate a good stout rope than anyone, and he often amused himself with the tying of various knots—excellent practice, he pointed out, for the times we were bound hand and foot by the occasional villain. His knowledge of hempcraft had been more than useful to us, so I said nothing as he occupied himself happily in examining Alice Baker-Greene’s climbing equipment.