An Unexpected Peril (Veronica Speedwell #6) -Deanna Raybourn Page 0,26

way and that he had watched her until she rounded the breast of the mountain, heading upwards to the unseen challenge of the devil’s staircase. Some minutes later, he revealed, he had heard a scream and then she had hurtled into view, falling from a terrible height to her instant death. Naturally, he rushed to the scene, as did many others who had witnessed her fall. The most usual route up the mountain, as sketched by the intrepid Miss Butterworth, began in a little wood just beyond the central square of Hochstadt, lying in a verdant green forest that nestled against the walls of the castle courtyard. To sit in one of the many biergartens with a warm glass of spiced wine or a cold stein of beer and watch the climbers toil up the mountain was one of the Alpenwalders’ favorite pastimes, it appeared. And dozens of people had watched Alice Baker-Greene fall to her death. There was nothing unusual in the circumstances, Captain Durand had insisted. A tragic accident and no more.

It was not until I read through J. J.’s interviews with Alice’s landlady, the local priest, and the cheesemonger that I spotted it. The cheesemonger had seen Alice Baker-Greene that morning. It was her custom to carry a small cheese and a loaf in her knapsack when she climbed. She often departed shortly after dawn, preferring to watch the sun rise on the slope of the mountain and take her breakfast on the devil’s staircase as she rested and sketched the routes. That morning, she had been in high spirits, he said, planning to test a new variation on the devil’s staircase that might prove useful when the snows set in before her winter climb. He had waved her off and watched her begin her climb. One other climber appeared that morning, a slender mustachioed man who began to climb a little while before Alice, but whose appearance was nothing near as thrilling as a sighting of the famous mountaineer. J. J. slipped into sticky sentimentality when she concluded that the climber might well have been the last person to see Alice alive on the mountain and ended the piece with a plea to the young man to come forward so she might tell his version of events to the public. She dangled the promise of a reward, but though I scoured the later numbers of the newspaper, I could find no further mention of Alice Baker-Greene. No doubt J. J.’s publisher refused to sanction any further Continental adventures and had ordered her home before she could track down the elusive young man.

I suppressed a sigh. This was precious little bait to use to entice Stoker into an investigation, I reflected darkly as I tucked the newspaper under my arm, but I would make a manful attempt nonetheless. I went downstairs to the sarcophagus we used as a buffet—Greco-Roman and scarcely worth the cartonnage—and peeked under the lidded dishes dispatched from the main house’s kitchens. Cook had outdone herself. In addition to the usual eggs and bacon, she had sent down a heaping portion of kedgeree and a plate of deviled kidneys.

“How bad is the storm?” I asked Stoker as I filled my plate.

“Snow in Kent,” he told me in a tone of bemusement. “And west of the Tamar into the north of Cornwall, if you can believe it. It has snowed so heavily in the Midlands that the trains have stopped and nothing moves. Wales is completely cut off. What is the world coming to?”

“What of Scotland?” I asked in some concern. I worried for Lady Wellie, marooned as she was in her Highland aerie.

Stoker intuited my thoughts, but his expression was unconcerned. “She took Baring-Ponsonby with her. I daresay she will be warm enough.” His mouth twitched with a suppressed smile as he spoke.

Cecil Baring-Ponsonby was a gentleman of even more advanced years than Lady Wellie, but they had been lovers for decades. “Poor old Cecil is nearly ninety,” I reminded him. “He has no more business in such a climate than she does. They ought to have gone to Egypt or a nice remote island in the South Pacific. His lordship owns property all over the world. Surely he might have made her the loan of a handy archipelago.”

Stoker snorted but said nothing and I returned to the copy of the Daily Harbinger, scouring J. J.’s piece again. I focused this time on the photographs, feeling a sudden spear thrust of irritation that so