An Unexpected Peril (Veronica Speedwell #6) -Deanna Raybourn Page 0,20

I surveyed the contents of the case. Everything I had placed there was accounted for, albeit several things had been jostled in the miscreant’s theft and bits of glass sparkled like diamonds on the velvet display cloth.

“Have you looked through the rest of the exhibition?” Stoker asked.

Lady C. shook her head. “That is why I asked you to come. I thought you might notice more than I would if anything else had been taken.”

We made a quick appraisal of the various shelves and cabinets, looked through the photographs and mementoes. Stoker quietly moved behind the draperies where we had stowed the parcel with the climbing rope as I turned to Lady C. “Nothing else appears to be missing.”

Her shoulders relaxed. “Well, that is a mercy, although how I am to explain to Mrs. Baker-Greene that her granddaughter’s summit badge is missing is anyone’s guess. I am not looking forward to telling her we have managed to lose one of her most treasured mementoes.”

“You hardly lost it,” I pointed out. “It was stolen.”

“Because we were lax with security,” she returned in some bitterness. “Perhaps we ought to engage some sort of security, although we have never had need of it before. There has always been an atmosphere of trust in this place, a trust that has now been grossly violated.”

“Who was here yesterday evening?” I asked.

She spread her hands. “The members come and go, as you well know. The ledger is supposed to be used to sign in whenever one visits, but that is not always practiced,” she added with a slightly reproachful glance at me. It was not undeserving. I myself occasionally failed to sign the ledger and had even earned a stern rebuke from the club authorities for omitting to declare Stoker as a guest one evening. The club had strict rules about the admission of gentlemen, permitting them only by prior arrangement or during events which were open to the public.

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