“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 that brought us into the highest circles of royalty and within the sphere of the malefactor known as Jack the Ripper.*
“I read the newspapers too,” he told me. “Including the pieces about Miss Baker-Greene in the Daily Harbinger.”
I pulled a face. The Daily Harbinger was the lowest sort of rag, trading in sensationalist news and lurid illustrations. The fact that our sometime nemesis and occasional friend, J. J. Butterworth, wrote for the Harbinger did not improve my opinion of it. I took great pleasure in watching Stoker use it for wrapping the nastier bits of the animals he preserved.
“And?” I prompted.
“And they were quite specific as to the details of her death,” he said. “The Teufelstreppe is not called the devil’s staircase by accident. The mountain was named for a challenging passage in the middle of the climb, a perilous series of granite steps just before the turn for the long final stages of the ascent. Alice Baker-Greene attempted the climb so late in the year because there had been an unseasonably late warm spell, clearing the snow from the steps. But the exposed ridge of the granite was sharp. It frayed her rope as she climbed and the rope failed her.”
“A tragic accident,” I began.
Stoker held up the end of the rope. Instead of a broken collection of frayed fibers, it was taut and neat, cut straight across.
“Stoker, you cannot think—”
“That someone deliberately cut her rope? That is exactly what I think.”
CHAPTER
3
I put out my hand for the rope. “Show me.”
He did, bending near enough for me to smell the delectable scent of honey drops on his breath as he explained. “This rope, like all good climbing and rigging ropes, is—”
A sympathetic reader will understand that I regarded Stoker’s subsequent explanation as so much background noise as I examined the rope. He held forth at some length about hempen fibers and tensile strength and spiral braiding and all manner of technical details whilst I raised the rope at eye level, noting the single strand of scarlet in the middle and inspecting the end with care. It was perfectly, brutally straight.
Stoker, detecting my lack of attention to his remarks, gave a sigh and retrieved a short length of rope from his pocket with his clasp knife. “Here. I will demonstrate.”
He always carried a bit of narrow rope in his pocket to amuse himself in idle moments with the tying of elaborate knots, a holdover from his days in Her Majesty’s Navy. His nimble fingers made quick work of the knots he had tied, and he folded the rope over the blade of his knife. He sawed once or twice and the rope snapped in two. He held the cut ends against the larger sample from Alice Baker-Greene’s climbing apparatus. “My rope is smaller in diameter, but the principle is the same. A cut rope will present a sharp, flat plain to the eye,” he said. “A frayed rope will not.”
I peered closely at the ropes but there was no arguing with his hypothesis. Still, I turned over all the possibilities in my mind. “Ropes are sold by the length. Perhaps this is the end that was cut when she purchased it.”
He shook his head. “For mountaineers, the fresh-cut ends are whipped with twine to keep them from fraying. There is no twine in evidence and the cut is obviously new.”
“Then perhaps Miss Baker-Greene cut it herself because it proved too long or there was a spot of weakness?” I suggested.
“Again, she would have secured the end immediately by whipping it with twine. No experienced climber would go out with a rope that has not been whipped. This is fresh,” he added, pointing to the brighter color of the exposed rope compared to the weathered hue of the rest.
I nodded slowly. “Very well. The rope was deliberately cut. We must inform the Hereditary Princess that Alice Baker-Greene was murdered.”