“I admit, I may have thought something along those lines at first, but almost at once I saw that there might be a dozen other perfectly logical explanations for the presence of a second badge amongst her things.”
“I would settle for one,” I told him sweetly.
“It might be a memento,” he said, shoving the newspaper back at me. “Surely she had a love affair or a friendship of some sort—one she mightn’t have wanted made public. So the badge was a sentimental keepsake.”
“Possible, but weak,” I told him. “Two marks out of ten.”
“That suggestion is at least a seven,” he countered.
I flapped a hand. “Two and I am being generous. First, she did have a possible relationship in the Alpenwald with a minor member of the royal family—Duke Maximilian of Lokendorf—”
Stoker’s crow of triumph broke into my narrative. Naturally, I ignored him and carried on, raising my voice only slightly.
“Say what you like but it fits the facts,” I protested. “The badge discovered in Alice’s hand was that of her murderer—and I know who he was.”
Stoker blinked in astonishment. “The devil you do.”
I gave a little sigh of pleasure. “The moustachioed man.” I nodded towards the newspaper. “Read on. Miss Butterworth was most thorough, but even she failed to deduce the likeliest explanation—that the mysterious man on the mountain was there for one purpose that morning: murder.”
“More likely her editors were afraid of drawing a costly lawsuit,” Stoker replied.
Stoker read through the piece, his brows drawing further and lower with every line. When he had finished, he prowled through the rest of the cuttings, laying them side by side in a sort of timeline as he came to the end of each. “All right, let us suppose, for just a moment, that what you have said is possible—that Alice was murdered and that the summit badge was stolen because it provides a clue. That gets us no closer to discovering who this person might have been.”
“Of course it does!” I enumerated the points on my fingers. “First, someone else’s badge in Alice’s dead hand means that the murderer must have been a climber, a proposition that is further confirmed by the presence of the moustachioed man on the mountain that day, our possible murderer. Second, only an experienced climber would have known how to tamper with the ropes at just the correct spot to ensure she fell to her death. Third, why else steal the rope and badge from the club if not to conceal the fact that it was murder and that the killer was a mountaineer? Altogether, this means that our villain must have been someone who not only climbs but knew of the existence of the badge and rope in Alice’s effects. In short, my dear Stoker, it was an Alpenwalder.”
“Not necessarily,” he said slowly.
“You are determined to be difficult.”
“It is a poor scientist who is so attached to her theory that she cannot entertain criticism of it,” he countered.
“Very well. Go on.”
“If it were an alpinist who killed her—and I do concede that only a skilled climber could have ascended to the devil’s staircase in order to dispatch her—then yes, the badge and rope might offer clues as to the murderer’s identity. But it does not necessarily follow that the murderer was an Alpenwalder.”
“The description fits Duke Maximilian,” I protested.
“The description of a man of mystery and moustaches also fits Douglas Norton.”
“Perhaps,” I admitted.
He gave a snort and produced the cutting with Norton’s photograph. “Moustaches. And slender.”
I pulled a face.
“Don’t pout, Veronica. It does not suit a woman of your age.” He grinned.
I thought a moment, then gave him a triumphant look. “Douglas Norton could not have known the badge and rope would be in the effects sent to the club. Only someone in the Alpenwald would have known that.”
He rolled his eyes. “The exhibition is a celebration of Alice Baker-Greene’s lifetime as an alpinist. It is a reasonable expectation it would include artifacts from her last climb.”
“Possibly.”
He grinned again. “So, we are in agreement insofar as we believe it is possible that Alice was the victim of a calculated and deliberate murder, carried out by a man with moustaches and climbing experience.”
“Correct.”
“But how does that fit with the theft of the items from the club?” he asked, stroking his chin thoughtfully. He had shaved, imperfectly as usual, and there was a blue-black shadow at his jaw. With his long, tumbled ebony locks and the glint of gold hoops in his ears, he bore a striking resemblance to an Elizabethan buccaneer, even more so when he donned the eye patch he occasionally wore to rest the eye that had been injured in a dispute with a jaguar. (Stoker, I should mention, emerged wounded and scarred from the fight but very much alive, which is more than one can say for the jaguar.)
In any event, surveying his physical charms was a distraction I could not afford, I told myself sternly. I had a murderer to catch.
I clipped the last article I had unearthed and placed it with the other cuttings, bundling them neatly into a file while Stoker continued to muse.
“It might have been anyone,” he said finally.
“How can you possibly think so?” I demanded. “The only people in the room were the Alpenwalder delegation of the princess and her lady-in-waiting, Lady C., and the pair of us. In case it has escaped your notice, none of us is a moustachioed man of superlative climbing ability.”
“No, but we were not the only ones to see those particular items,” he pointed out. “Someone recovered Alice’s things. Someone packed and shipped them.”
“Surely if the murderer was involved in conveying her things, they would have removed them,” I protested.
“Perhaps they could not,” he theorized. “Perhaps they were never alone with her possessions. They might have bided their time until now when they were relatively easy to retrieve from the club.”
“It would take an audacious murderer to do such a thing,” I said slowly.
“More audacious than attacking a world-class climber on a mountain? If this is indeed how she was murdered, then the killer is a man of tremendous nerve and excellent timing—both skills that a mountaineer must possess, in any event. And if it was,” he went on, “there is always the possibility that the killer never intended to retrieve the rope and badge at all. Think of it, if some of Alice’s things go missing, it draws attention to them. But a bit of rope and a badge that everyone already knew she owned? By themselves they are unremarkable. Far safer to leave them be and let everyone get on with burying the dead.”