An Unexpected Peril

by DEANNA RAYBOURN

  “Can you imagine learning to climb as a child?” I asked.

  Stoker looked up from where he was applying lavish amounts of glue to a sculpted base. “Did she?”

  “She did indeed. Her grandmother taught her. Have you not read Climbing in the Peaks: A Lady Mountaineer’s Guide to the Pennines by Mrs. Pompeia Baker-Greene?”

  “I have not,” he admitted.

  I curled a lip. “She is a pioneer of the alpinist movement, a founding fellow of the Hippolyta Club, and yet you haven’t read her magnum opus. You are a dreadfully lax explorer.”

  He gave me a repressive look. “I have had rather a busy time of it lately,” he reminded me. He was not entirely wrong. Between sleuthing out murderers, cataloging the Rosemorran Collection, and allowing ourselves to experience the rumbustious pleasures of the flesh, we had had little time to spare for hobbies.

  “It is quite a good read, although she does spend rather a lot of time discussing rocks. Mountaineers do love their rocks,” I added wistfully. “In any event, she chronicles her attempt first to teach her son to climb as a child still in skirts and later her granddaughter.”

  “Where is her son now? Alice Baker-Greene’s father?” he asked as I plucked a jaunty little Tyrolean cap from the box.

  “Dead,” was my succinct reply. “A climbing accident in the Karakoram.”

  “Two climbing deaths in one family?” He gave a visible shudder. “How unspeakably tragic.”

  “Three, actually,” I corrected. “Pompeia Baker-Greene’s husband, Alice’s grandfather, also perished on a mountainside. Somewhere in the Andes, if memory serves.”

  “I wonder what on earth drives them to it?” he asked, almost more of himself than of me.

  He returned to his diorama, gathering up a handful of fresh, springy moss to apply to the damp glue. “The same that keeps us at it,” I surmised. “The thirst to net each new specimen or mount each new mammal. There is nothing in natural history that is not new again every time we encounter it, no greater mystery than things that exist apart from man and with no interest in us.”

  “How poetic,” he murmured before favoring me with a few appropriate lines from Keats. There were always appropriate lines from Keats, I had learnt from my association with Stoker. He maintained that there was not a single occasion to which a few stanzas might not be applied. I had, during one rather notable interlude, challenged Stoker to produce a fitting quote, and I can only say that what followed was highly instructive although not wholly coherent, diverted as he was by my own distracting efforts at the time.

  I rummaged in the drifts of excelsior in the box, finding a few unremarkable books—a selection of climbing memoirs and geological surveys with a decrepit and outdated collection of flora and fauna, all inscribed by various family members now perished on assorted mountainsides. At last there was nothing left to the box but bare boards and a single photograph.

  I extracted it, wiping the last shreds of excelsior free. The photograph was framed in rosewood inlaid with a mountain motif of darker woods and mother-of-pearl. It depicted a woman posed against an outcropping of rock, a light dusting of snow on the ground. She was dressed in a lady’s mountaineering garb, a coil of rope slung across her torso, ice axe poised at her side, a jaunty spotted handkerchief knotted at her throat. Her face was turned to the camera and her expression was serene, guarded almost. But there was no mistaking the faint lines of good humor at her eyes and mouth. She was just past the first flush of youth and had obviously never been a beauty, yet it would have been apparent to anyone unacquainted with her that this was a woman of great strength of character and irrepressible spirit.

  And I was not unacquainted with her. “It is a very good likeness,” I remarked to Stoker.

  He came to look over my shoulder. “Good climbing hands,” he said, nodding towards them, crossed as they were over the head of her ice axe. They were broad of palm and long of finger, surprisingly elegant. “You met her, then?”

  “Once,” I said. “Here at the club—it must have been more than a year ago. She gave a lecture on climbing in Bolivia. She was, quite simply, one of the most remarkable people I have ever met.”

  I paused and looked again at the photograph. As I had observed, it was a good likeness, but could any image capture the vivacity, the bright spark of courage and animation that drew one’s attention like a moth to a candle flame in the darkness?

  It had been a chill and wintry evening, I recalled, when I made my way to the Curiosity Club in the company of Lady C. I had attended other, smaller, events at the club, but this was my first “occasion” and I was conscious of a buzz of anticipation the moment I stepped over the threshold. As chair of the events committee, Lady C. bustled away to attend to a few last-minute details whilst I amused myself by inspecting the paintings hung in the main hall. Life-sized and rendered in oils, each depicted a different founding member of our organization. One in particular captured my imagination. The woman was sharp-eyed and sharp-chinned, and while most of the subjects had been painted looking off to far horizons, this explorer stared directly out of the canvas, as if to dare the viewer to take up the mantle of discovery for herself. She was clearly a mountain climber—holding an alpenstock, with one hand resting lightly upon a coil of rope—but she was dressed in the style of the early lady alpinists, with heavy skirts and thick plaits of hair bundled into a knitted snood. A boa of ostrich feathers softened the neckline of her tailored jacket, and I could detect the gleam of pearls in her ears. At the bottom of the frame, a small brass plaque identified her as the renowned climber Pompeia Baker-Greene.

  “It is a dreadful painting,” came a gruff voice at my side. I turned to see an imposing old woman in a Bath chair, her hands lightly gripping the wheels as she came to a halt.

  “I like it,” I said.

  She jerked her chin at me. “Then your sight is defective or you are lacking in taste,” she pronounced.

  “Grandmama.” A woman stepped forward, resting her own hand lightly on the older woman’s shoulder. There was a touch of reproof in her voice, but she was smiling.

  “You will have to forgive her. Grandmama’s manners are not what they used to be.”

  “Feathers,” said the old woman. “My manners were never very good to begin with. Most of what passes for politeness is simply a waste of time.” She patted the hand at her shoulder fondly as she gave me a searching look. “What do you like about it?”

  I tipped my head and considered the painting. “She is not a woman who would step back from a challenge,” I said finally. “I suspect she is a kindred spirit.”

  The old woman nodded slowly. “A kindred spirit. I like that.” Her gaze sharpened. “I am Pompeia Baker-Greene, alpinist,” she told me, flicking her gaze to the small brass plate affixed to the frame of the painting. It was the custom at the club to introduce oneself with a mention of one’s field of expertise. She turned her hawk’s eyes back to me as she put out her hand. “What is your name?”

  “Veronica Speedwell, lepidopterist,” I told her, extending my hand. She shook it gravely and I could feel the strong sinews and slender bones even though the years had not been particularly kind. The knuckles were swollen and red, and her skin was heavily blotched with liverish spots.

  “The indignities of age,” she said, sketching a vague gesture. “And if you think those are regrettable, you ought to see what has become of my bosom.”

  “Grandmama,” the younger woman said, but she was grinning outright and I smiled.

  “Gravity comes for us all in the end,” I remarked.

  The older woman gave a bark of laughter as she eyed my own décolletage. “Mind you enjoy those whilst you can. Make the most of them before they make their descent.”

  “I will,” I promised her. She gave me another nod and rolled herself away, but her granddaughter lingered.

  “Thank you,” she said quiet
ly. “She is a little too revered sometimes, and people forget to speak to her as if she was a human being. It can be lonely on Olympus.”

  “I would have enjoyed speaking with her longer,” I said truthfully. “I mean to be a tremendously outrageous old woman in due course and I might learn a thing or two from her.”

  She laughed, her grandmother’s quick, sharp laugh. “Indeed, you would.” She put out her hand. “Alice Baker-Greene, alpinist.”

  “And tonight’s guest of honor,” I finished. “I am very excited to hear your talk.”

  She pulled a rueful face. “I dread these sorts of occasions,” she confided. She glanced around as if to make certain we were not overheard. “I would far rather sit in my study with a good glass of cognac and write up my climbing notes than stand up in front of a group of people and talk about myself. Still,” she said, brightening, “at least I will not be asking you lot for money.”

  “Is that the normal course of affairs?” I inquired.

  She rolled her eyes heavenwards. “My dear girl, I can only think that you must have been born to wealth or have a most generous benefactor if you have never resorted to pleading with strangers to open their pocketbooks and sponsor your expeditions.”

  “I am neither,” I said mildly. “But lepidoptery is a singularly inexpensive proposition. I require only my net and a supply of killing jars. I lodge in tents or modest hostelries. I have neither porters nor dragomen and rarely do I require a guide.”

  “You are fortunate,” she said fervently. “I spend more time begging for money to pay those wretched men to accompany me than I ever do on a mountainside.” There was a note of real bitterness in her tone.

  “That must be terribly frustrating when I imagine all you want to do is climb,” I remarked.

  “It is in my blood,” she told me. “My grandparents were the first Europeans to climb in the Karakoram, and my father was the first to summit the South American peak of El Infierno.” Her eyes gleamed with unmistakable pride. “I never had a dream but to follow in their footsteps. Quite literally,” she added. “I climbed El Infierno myself last season and then made an ascent of its higher companion peak, El Cielo.”

  “The first woman to do so, were you not?”

  “The first person,” she corrected sharply. “Or at least I ought to have been.” Her expression darkened and her complexion was suffused with anger. She pressed her lips together for a moment before continuing. “How familiar are you with mountain climbing, Miss Speedwell?”

  “Vaguely. Butterflies are much more common in the tropics, so my travels seldom take me into the mountains.”

  “Well, I do not know how lepidopterists conduct themselves, but amongst climbers, there is a code of behavior.”

  “What are the terms?”

  “That when one has been hired as a guide, one may choose the route and lead. One may even insist upon turning back if conditions are judged to be too dangerous. But what one may never, ever do is take the summit for oneself. That is the client’s privilege.”

  “And someone took your summit of El Cielo?”

  “He did indeed,” she said, clipping off the words sharply. “Douglas Norton is the scoundrel’s name. I engaged him at extortionate terms to accompany me and help manage the porters in Bolivia. They are not always inclined to take orders from a member of the gentler sex,” she added with an expressive gesture. “But I made it quite clear to him from the very beginning that the expedition was mine. In the end, the porters proved perfectly amenable to my suggestions and Norton was an unnecessary extravagance.”

  I was not surprised to hear it. She was, to put it plainly, a force of nature, and I could well imagine most men bending before her. But then, any person who pitted themselves against mountains must be fashioned of something indomitable.

  She went on. “The afternoon of the last day, we had climbed for eleven hours and paused to rest before the final push to the summit. I took a little refreshment, and when I had gathered myself and was ready to resume, Douglas was nowhere to be found. The porters dared not betray him by giving away his intentions when he slipped ahead, but I discovered his intentions soon enough. I climbed like a demon to reach him, but by the time I joined him, he was perched atop the summit having already written his name into a book for the purpose and left it atop. The glory was his.”

  “What an odious man!” I exclaimed. Lepidoptery was not without its scoundrels—let any collector get so much of a whisper of a Rajah Brooke’s Birdwing in the vicinity and blows might easily be exchanged—but this was a completely different level of infamy. There could only ever be one first summit, after all.

  “Yes, I think so. And I believe I might have forgiven him if he had stood up for himself and defended his actions. Boldness, arrogance, audacity—those are crimes of character that I can understand. I share them. But he whimpered and whined like a kicked dog all the way down the mountain, pleading for forgiveness and for me not to think too badly of him.”

  “I begin to hate him,” I told her. “I hope you pushed him off the mountain.”

  She grinned. “Again, the code of climbing, Miss Speedwell. One never endangers anyone whilst on the mountain. No, I waited until we had descended to the village at the base, where everyone could see. I seized the first weapon to hand—a buggy whip if my memory is to be trusted—and I thrashed him.”

  “Well done!” I cried, wishing I had employed such tactics myself upon one or two occasions.

  “Not my finest hour,” she said with a shrug, “but he deserved it. Unfortunately for him, a reporter happened to be in the village to write the story of our attempt and witnessed the entire imbroglio. It caused the most enormous fuss in the mountaineering community. The British men, who are notoriously devoted to their own sex, seem to have sided with him, the Americans with me. And now we are both of us infamous.”

  “Surely his is the greater shame,” I protested.

  “I think,” she said gently, “you must have enough experience of the world to know better than that. There will always be men who rally to the cause of another man in his moment of disgrace simply because they fear their own so deeply.” She drew in a deep breath and her mien became instantly more cheerful. “But I have put this behind me. I mean to make a fresh start after tonight.”

  “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.