An Unexpected Peril (Veronica Speedwell #6) -Deanna Raybourn Page 0,7
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.
“I wonder if these are the ropes she was using when she died,” he said, his brow furrowing as he tested their strength.
“They must be,” I said, brandishing a sheet of thick, crested paper stamped with assorted seals of Alpenwalder officials. “This is the manifest for the crate and it specifically notes that the ropes are those she was using when making her ascent of the Teufelstreppe that day,” I told him.
I dug deeper under the excelsior. “Here are her spare set of climbing clothes and a box of personal effects,” I added. There was a brief note explaining that she had been buried in her favorite climbing clothes, an ensemble not unlike my own adventure costume, with a fitted shirtwaist and trousers under a tailored jacket and narrow skirt which could be buttoned up over the thighs to permit ease of movement. I scrutinized the cut of her spare skirt to see if there were variations I could make upon my own costume. The tweed was thicker than mine, no doubt due to her choice of occupation—the unforgiving rock and equally unforgiving climate would demand the strongest of cloth. When I turned it