An Unexpected Peril (Veronica Speedwell #6)(95)

Thomas Corrigan darted a look at Stoker. “What sort of trouble can she make for us?”

“The kind you do not want,” Stoker told him. “But my associate and I will intercede for you if she tries.”

“That’s mighty decent of you considering,” he replied. His expression was sheepish, and he ducked his head towards me. “Sorry about the trouble, miss. We meant no harm.”

“Not at all,” I assured him in my most gracious manner. “But we would very much like to return to the shore now.”

“We will have you there in a trice,” he promised. He raised his voice to the wheelhouse. “Ned, come about! Back to Greenwich,” he instructed. He looked at the baroness. “What should we do with her?”

“For now, I would bind her hand and foot,” Stoker told him. “We will think of a plan of action by the time we reach Greenwich. How far out to sea are we?”

Corrigan shrugged. “No more than an hour, but we were running against the tide. ’Twill be faster on the return.” He signaled to his mate and the fellow began to tie the baroness with a bit of stout rope. The fight seemed to have gone out of her, and she submitted to the indignity without a protest. While he worked, Corrigan hunted down a coat for me and an extra pair of trousers and a fisherman’s jersey for Stoker. The trousers came only halfway down Stoker’s calves and the jersey looked as if it had been knitted for his younger brother. But we were somewhat warmer at least. He heated drinks for us, tea with hefty measures of rum added in, and thrust the steaming cups into our hands as we returned to the deck.

“Rather surprised at that,” Corrigan said, jerking his chin to where the baroness sat, mute and miserable at the railing. Weaver stood next to her, keeping careful watch upon his prisoner.

“Thought she would have put up more of a fight.”

“She knows she is done for,” Stoker said. “There is no escaping the trouble she has crafted for herself.”

The baroness set her face to the wind, not deigning to look at us. I left Stoker and the sailors exchanging navy stories and went to sit next to her. She did not look at me, but sat, face to the wind.

“I do not bear a grudge over these kinds of things,” I told her. “I have nearly been murdered too many times to take it personally. But you might do me the courtesy of answering a question or two.”

“What do you want to know?” she asked in a dull voice. She stared ahead into the darkness. Somewhere in the night lay the wide green expanse of the Thames. Her shoulders were erect. Even in defeat, she would not relax her posture.

“I presume you were the one who cut Alice’s climbing ropes,” I began.

She nodded but said nothing.

“It would take a cool nerve to do that,” I observed. “I did not realize you were a climber.”

She curled a lip. “I was the most accomplished lady climber in the Alpenwald in my youth—the first woman to summit the Teufelstreppe. There is a paragraph about my accomplishment in that little guide you were reading,” she said with a sly smile.

“The Baedeker? Is that why you snatched it out of my hands? I thought you were irritated about Yelena and simply wanted to tidy up.” I was a little put out with myself for never suspecting her real intention had been to keep me from reading the Baedeker. Now that I knew the baroness had been an alpinist, it all seemed perfectly clear. “I imagine you waited until Alice was at the most treacherous part of the climb.”

She did not respond for a long moment, then sighed. “Climbing skills, once learnt, are forever. It was many years since I was on the mountain, so I knew no one would suspect that I had made my way up to find Alice, but it was simple enough. I had only to set out earlier than she did. I hid around the side of a boulder, and when she reached the first step of the middle of the Teufelstreppe, I emerged and sliced cleanly through the rope. Only I left it almost too late. It took longer to make the cut, even with a sharp blade, and she almost got a foothold on the step before she fell. She stretched out her hand to me as she went.”

The baroness turned to me, and I saw there were tears in her eyes, whether from the brisk wind whipping off the river or any excess of emotion, I could not say.

“She grasped my coat as she fell. I did not realize at the time that she had taken hold of my summit badge. Only later did I notice it was missing, and there was no way to know where it had fallen. I thought someone might eventually find it and I would simply say I had lost it on a previous climb.”

“But no one did find it,” I said, working it out as we spoke. “Because it was still clutched in Alice Baker-Greene’s hand when she died. And because it was found in her hand, it was mistaken for her own badge and buried with her. She took the proof of your guilt with her to the grave.”

She shook her head. “You cannot imagine my horror when I realized what must have happened.”

“And no one was the wiser until the princess arrived at the club and noticed the photograph of Alice in her coffin—wearing a badge for her burial. But the badge at the exhibition was Alice’s, marked with a nick that the princess knew about and recognized immediately. And this immediately raised the question, ‘Whose badge had Alice been buried with?’ Coming hard upon Stoker finding the cut rope, Gisela must have realized instantly that if Alice had not worn her own badge that day, she could only have been buried with her murderer’s badge.”