I stood on tiptoe on the edge of the pavement, straining to see an empty cab.
Stoker cupped his hands to his mouth and made a sound of such eldritch horror that half the horses in the street started in surprise. But a cab came trotting smartly around the corner and we sprang inside, urging the driver to make haste. Still, the streets were thick with traffic, wagons and carriages and carts all jostling for place with the monstrous bulk of omnibuses while pedestrians picked their way as best they could through the throng. There were a few hours of short, sharp daylight that time of year, and the city never seemed more alive to me than in the brief bright hours in which so much business was conducted. Amidst the odors of horse and burning coal I could smell roasting chestnuts and the occasional whiff of woodsmoke. The air was damp and heavy, the clouds gathering to draw a grey veil over the sun.
“The weather is turning,” Stoker remarked as he cast a practiced eye upon the line of rooftops. “It will be icy by morning.”
I shivered in my seat. Like all butterfly hunters, I was most at home in tropical lands where the most flamboyant species of lepidoptera flourished. Give me a jungle, a forest lush with green and thick with flower-scented air that steamed gently, pulsing with life and promise, and I was a happy woman. This sooty, smirched chill that penetrated one’s clothes and settled into the bones was most difficult to bear in January. The calendar had turned, the days were lengthening, spring was a promise, but it was a long and shiversome season until May blossoms would ripen.
It took longer than I might have preferred to reach the club, but we arrived at last to find Lady C.’s anxious white face peering from one of the upstairs windows. She dropped the curtain when she saw us alight from the hansom, hurrying downstairs to meet us as we entered.
“Whatever is the problem—” Stoker began but she hissed him to silence.
“Hush! Not here. Upstairs,” she said, bustling us up to the exhibition room. She drew a key from her pocket and unlocked the door, making it fast behind us once she had peered down the corridors to make certain we were not observed.
Stoker did not have to repeat his question. There was a gentle crunch underfoot as we trod on broken glass, powdering it into the carpet. The display cabinet had been broken.
“An unfortunate accident,” I began. But Lady C. shook her head.
“There are scratches on the lock,” she told us, her expression grim. “Someone had a go at forcing it but couldn’t manage it. They might have feared to take too long or simply lacked the strength to break it. In any event, they found it easier to break the glass.”
“What is missing?” Stoker asked, peering in the cabinet.
“Only one thing, as far as I know,” she said. “Alice Baker-Greene’s summit badge from the Alpenwalder Climbing Society.”
Stoker and 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.