“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 tocommemorate 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 thickerthan 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 inside out, I detected an arrangement of loops threaded with a drawstring that, when pulled, would instantly lift the skirt, securing it out of the way.
“Ingenious,” I murmured. It was a decided improvement on my own costume, but I noted with some satisfaction that Alice Baker-Greene’s ensemble lacked one singular innovation that Stoker had added to mine—pockets.
Packed beneath the climbing costume was the little box of personal effects, trifles really. There was a small looking glass painted with roses and gilt initials, her mother’s, I suspected. There was a jar of cold cream of roses, my own favorite for protecting my complexion on my travels, and a small assortment of personal items—a toothbrush and tin of tooth powder, a few books, a stack of plain handkerchiefs, each embroidered with her monogram in a simple design and plain white thread.
At the bottom of the small box, wrapped carefully in another handkerchief, was the enameled charm—the summit badge of the Alpenwald. I ran a finger over the edge, touching the nick where it had been damaged and remembering her obvious pride when she spoke of it. I understood her reluctance to part with it long enough to have a repair effected. Tucked into my own pocket at all times was a tiny grey velvet mouse called Chester, the constant companion of my adventures and the sole memento of my father. He had weathered many perils, including a drowning off the coast of Cornwall, but thanks to Stoker’s excellent surgical efforts, he lived to fight another day.* Such talismans and trophies were not to be scorned at, I thought as I put the badge carefully aside.
With the badge was a notebook, clearly well used, for the green kid of its cover was watermarked and ink stained, the pages filled with notes written in a tiny, tidy hand. The markings were cryptic, many of them numerical notations of altitude and temperature, I discovered. There were longer passages, descriptions of flora and fauna accompanied by surprisingly detailed sketches. She had turned her artistic hand to mapping out the routes she had taken up the mountains she climbed as well, I realized, tracing one with a finger as it wound its way up the Teufelstreppe. Tucked in the back was a photograph, clearly taken the same day as the larger portrait, for the background was the Alpenwalder mountain. But in this version, Alice Baker-Greene was not alone. She stood beside a man of medium height with a strong, muscular build and a spectacular set of moustaches. There was something arrogant about the tilt of his mouth, barely visible under those lavish moustaches, and the set of his shoulders. I turned it over, but there was no inscription on this photograph, and the man would remain a mystery. I remembered Alice’s ebullience on the subject of the Alpenwald, and I wondered if this man had anything to do with her enthusiasm for the place and her determination to make her home there.
I held up the photograph to show Stoker, but he was staring down at the rope in his hands, his expression grim.
“Whatever is the matter?” I teased. “Find a knot you cannot unravel?”
“Nothing like that,” he said in a hollow voice. “What do you know about Alice Baker-Greene’s death?”
I shrugged. “Only what I read in the newspapers in passing. She died early in October,” I reminded him. “We were rather occupied with the investigation into Madame Aurore’s doings.” October had been fraught with peril for many reasons, not least an investigation thatbrought us into the highest circles of royalty and within the sphere of the malefactor known as Jack the Ripper.*
