It was not until I read through J. J.’s interviews with Alice’s landlady, the local priest, and the cheesemonger that I spotted it. The cheesemonger had seen Alice Baker-Greene that morning. It was her custom to carry a small cheese and a loaf in her knapsack when she climbed. She often departed shortly after dawn, preferring to watch the sun rise on the slope of the mountain and take her breakfast on the devil’s staircase as she rested and sketched the routes. That morning, she had been in high spirits, he said, planning to test a new variation on the devil’s staircase that might prove useful when the snows set in before her winter climb. He had waved her off and watched her begin her climb. One other climber appeared that morning, a slender mustachioed man who began to climb a little while before Alice, but whose appearance was nothing near as thrilling as a sighting of the famous mountaineer. J. J. slipped into sticky sentimentality when she concluded that the climber might well have been the last person to see Alice alive on the mountain and ended the piece with a plea to the young man to come forward so she might tell his version of events to the public. She dangled the promise of a reward, but though I scoured the later numbers of the newspaper, I could find no further mention of Alice Baker-Greene. No doubt J. J.’s publisher refused to sanction any further Continental adventures and had ordered her home before she could track down the elusive young man.
I suppressed a sigh. This was precious little bait to use to entice Stoker into an investigation, I reflected darkly as I tucked the newspaper under my arm, but I would make a manful attempt nonetheless. I went downstairs to the sarcophagus we used as a buffet—Greco-Roman and scarcely worth the cartonnage—and peeked under the lidded dishes dispatched from the main house’s kitchens. Cook had outdone herself. In addition to the usual eggs and bacon, she had sent down a heaping portion of kedgeree and a plate of deviled kidneys.
“How bad is the storm?” I asked Stoker as I filled my plate.
“Snow in Kent,” he told me in a tone of bemusement. “And west of the Tamar into the north of Cornwall, if you can believe it. It has snowed so heavily in the Midlands that the trains have stopped and nothing moves. Wales is completely cut off. What is the world coming to?”
“What of Scotland?” I asked in some concern. I worried for Lady Wellie, marooned as she was in her Highland aerie.
Stoker intuited my thoughts, but his expression was unconcerned. “She took Baring-Ponsonby with her. I daresay she will be warm enough.” His mouth twitched with a suppressed smile as he spoke.
Cecil Baring-Ponsonby was a gentleman of even more advanced years than Lady Wellie, but they had been lovers for decades. “Poor old Cecil is nearly ninety,” I reminded him. “He has no more business in such a climate than she does. They ought to have gone to Egypt or a nice remote island in the South Pacific. His lordship owns property all over the world. Surely he might have made her the loan of a handy archipelago.”
Stoker snorted but said nothing and I returned to the copy of the Daily Harbinger, scouring J. J.’s piece again. I focused this time on the photographs, feeling a sudden spear thrust of irritation that so robust and engaging a woman should have had her life cut short so brutally, so tragically. I peered at the funeral photograph, putting down my toast and reaching slowly for my magnifying glass. After a long moment, I sat back, smiling.
“I can hear you thinking, Veronica,” Stoker said from behind his newspaper. “What is it?”
Wordlessly, I produced the cutting and handed it over, using the magnifying glass to point out the detail in the photograph that had captured my attention.
After a long moment, Stoker slumped in his chair. “Bloody bollocking hell,” he managed. I smiled, a purely feline expression of contentment, and he immediately bristled.
“See here, Veronica—”
I held up a hand to forestall his objections. “No. Let us have it plainly with no brangling. Alice Baker-Greene was laid to her eternal rest wearing a climbing costume and the enameled badge of the Alpenwalder Kletterverein Gipfelabzeichen.”
“Your German pronunciation is execrable,” he put in.
“Do not sulk. It is unbecoming in a man of your age,” I replied calmly. “Now, this badge is not the plain badge worn by every mountaineer who climbs on the Teufelstreppe. It is the particular and very special badge awarded to those who achieve the summit. So, Miss Baker-Greene is buried in her mountaineering garb with an accolade from the society, a very special society marking her accomplishment. Why, then, I am forced to ask, did we find that exact badge amongst her personal possessions at the club? And furthermore, why was Alice Baker-Greene’s climbing badge stolen from the exhibition on the night before last?”
Stoker’s response was pointed. “You cannot possibly know the answers to those questions.”
“I am a scientist,” I told him ruthlessly. “I do not require perfect knowledge in order to form a working hypothesis, only possibilities. Alice Baker-Greene was buried with an Alpenwalder summit badge. This we know from the photograph,” I said, jabbing a finger towards the newspaper in his hand. “Yet an identical—or nearly identical—badge was sent with her personal possessions from Hochstadt. Since an item cannot occupy two places at once, we may safely deduce that there are two badges.” I paused and he gave a grudging nod.
“I suppose so.”
“Now, the badge we saw at the Curiosity Club was packed with Alice’s personal possessions from her lodgings and conveyed directly here. It is, I happen to know, Alice’s own badge.”
“How can you know that?” he demanded.
I described the nick at the edge of the medal. “Alice showed me herself. She said it got bashed about when she wore it climbing once and she intended never to wear it climbing again.”
I paused again and he made a restless gesture. “Get on with it,” he growled.
“The badge at the club is undoubtedly Alice’s own,” I repeated. “But the badge she was buried with was not pinned to her clothing because it was not hers.”
Stoker waved the newspaper at me. “It is most definitely pinned to her clothing in this photograph.”
“But that is not where it was found,” I pointed out. “Read the article carefully, and you will be struck by one curious fact—the badge was found with her lifeless body on the Teufelstreppe, but clutched in her hand. This is the badge, the undamaged badge, that was pinned to her garments as she lay in her coffin. And I propose that this badge belonged to her murderer,” I finished triumphantly. “And was wrenched from his shirt as Alice Baker-Greene reached out for the last time whilst she struggled for her life on that mountain.”
He gave a deep groan. “Veronica, of all the melodramatic codswallop—”
“It is not codswallop. What is more logical than that Alice, whose rope was clearly cut in an act of sabotage, might have struggled with her attacker and ripped a badge from his clothing, carrying down the mountain a clue to his identity? Furthermore, you thought the same yourself, otherwise you would not have had so strenuous a reaction to the realization. ‘Bloody bollocking hell’ were your words, I believe.”