“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in the box, finding a few unremarkable books—a selection of climbing memoirs and geological surveys with a decrepit and outdated collection of flora and fauna, all inscribed by various family members now perished on assorted mountainsides.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.