The Abominable: A Novel

wildly. Jean-Claude doesn’t help by laughing.

“I’m going down to help Dr. Pasang supervise the loading,” says the Deacon.

Reggie is telling the liveryman which small pony saddles should go with which small pony. I get the largest saddle.

“Luncheon is at eleven sharp,” she calls after the Deacon. “We have to settle the provisions problem then.”

The Deacon stops, turns, opens his mouth to say something, but then pulls his unlit pipe from his tweed jacket’s pocket and bites down on the stem. Making a military turn on his right heel, he walks quick time out of the stable and down toward the garages and smaller stable, from which direction we can hear the shouting of Sherpas and the braying of mules.

The Deacon and Reggie argue loudly during lunch, continue the argument over sherry in the afternoon when the gear and provisions finally have been apportioned to packs for quick loading on the mules in the morning, and resume the arguments again during dinner in the grand dining room.

They argue over provisions, about the route, over alternate plans for the search for Percival Bromley’s corpse, about methods of climbing once we get to Everest, and—most central to all of the arguments—about who is in charge of the expedition.

In the middle of the arguing at lunchtime, the Deacon brings up a mystery that we haven’t been able to solve despite all of the Deacon’s contacts with the 1924 expedition: i.e., how on earth had Percival Bromley been allowed to tag along behind the expedition? Both General Charles Bruce, before he became ill and had to leave the expedition, and Colonel Norton, who took over general command of the expedition, were sticklers for staying with the plan they’d laid out. Even the addition of one more person to be responsible for would have fouled up their plans, and certainly young Percy wasn’t such a renowned climber that Mallory and the others wouldn’t have objected strongly to his nearby presence, even if he weren’t a member of the expedition. Even the Deacon’s good friends Noel Odell and the moviemaker who’d caused such controversy with his dancing lamas, Captain John Noel, had told the Deacon that they had no idea why Percy had been allowed to tag along. All they knew was that both General Bruce and Colonel Norton insisted that it was all right, against all logic—and each climber that the Deacon queried had said that Percy was such a nice and unassuming chap that as long as he simply followed the expedition, perhaps a half day’s march behind, he was tolerated.

But there had been no plans for young Lord Percival Bromley to go with them even as far as Everest Base Camp at the foot of the Rongbuk Glacier. Everyone had understood that.

In the middle of arguing over provisions, the Deacon returns to this issue of how and why Percival Bromley was allowed to tag along to Mount Everest.

Reggie is weary of the talk, and her tone is of the sort that ends most conversations. “Listen one last time, Mr. Deacon. Cousin Percival was visiting here when the ’twenty-four expedition leaders were invited to the plantation to have dinner with Lord and Lady Lytton, as well as Percy and me. Lord Lytton, as you may remember, was Governor-General of Bengal, and he and General Bruce and Colonel Norton met alone with Percy for the better part of an hour in the study. When they emerged, both Bruce and Norton announced that Percy would be allowed to follow the expedition—not travel with them, you understand, and never be on the official rolls, but strictly travel behind them—the condition being that Percy provide his own pony, tent, and foodstuffs. The last was no problem because Percy had been assembling his kit here at the plantation for two weeks before the expedition arrived in Calcutta.”

The Deacon shakes his head. “That makes no sense. Let someone just follow the expedition into Tibet? Someone with no official clearance to be in Tibet? Even if Lord Percival were following a day behind the real expedition, as an Englishman, his arrest or detention might have put the entire expedition at risk with the dzongpens and Tibetan authorities. It makes no sense at all.”

“What are these dzongpens I’ve been hearing so much about?” asks Jean-Claude. “Just local headmen? Village chiefs? Tibetan warlords?”

“None of the above, really,” says Reggie. “Most Tibetan communities are run by dzongpens—usually two men—one an important lama and the other an important layperson from the village. But sometimes there’s a single dzongpen chieftain.” She turns back to the Deacon. “It’s getting late in the afternoon, Mr. Deacon. Have all your questions been answered to your satisfaction?”

“All save for why your cousin was trying to climb Everest after the Norton Expedition had left the area,” presses the Deacon.

Reggie laughs with no humor in her voice. “Percy never attempted to climb Mount Everest. Of that I am certain.”

“Sigl told both the Berliner Zeitung and The Times that he had been attempting precisely that,” says the Deacon. “Sigl says that when he and the other Germans arrived at Camp Two—just exploring out of an original intent to meet Mallory and then from sheer curiosity—he, Sigl, and the other Germans could see your cousin and Kurt Meyer staggering down the North Ridge. Obviously in some difficulty.”

Reggie shakes her head with absolute certainty. Her blue-black curls slide across her shoulders. “Bruno Sigl lied,” she says sharply. “Percy may have had a reason to go up onto the mountain, but I know for a certainty that he did not go into Tibet in order to attempt a climb of Mount Everest. Bruno Sigl is a common German thug who lies.”

“How do you know Sigl is a common German thug?” asks the Deacon. “Do you know him?”

“Of course not,” snaps Reggie. “But I had inquiries made in Germany and elsewhere. Sigl is a dangerous climber, dangerous to himself and anyone with him, and in his regular life in Munich he’s a fascist thug.”

“Do you think that Sigl was somehow complicit in your cousin’s and this Meyer’s death?” asks the Deacon.

Reggie fixes her ultramarine gaze on the Deacon but does not answer.

In the calmer part of the afternoon, we show Reggie J.C.’s modified 12-point crampons and the shorter ice axes for vertical travel. Then Jean-Claude demonstrates the jumar climbing mechanism and the caver’s rope ladders we’ve brought.

“Brilliant,” says Reggie. “It all should make getting onto the North Col infinitely easier—and safer for the porters with the fixed ropes and ladders. But I don’t have boots rigid enough for the pointed crampons, I fear.”

“You’d need them only if you were leading the climb,” says the Deacon. “And I guarantee you will not be doing that.”

“I brought an extra pair of rigid boots,” says Jean-Claude. “And I think they may fit you. I’ll run and get them and we’ll see.”

They did fit her. She made some practice swings with the short ice hammers. The Deacon did not roll his eyes, but I could see this took some effort.

“Now I have an innovation for all of you,” says Reggie. She goes into a storeroom and returns a few minutes later with four pairs of what look to be leather-strap football headgear, or perhaps leather bands that a coal miner might wear. But there are two insulated batteries in the back and an electric miner’s lamp on the front.

“I had these made up after I returned from Everest last September,” she says. “Lord Montfort had extensive mining operations in Wales. These are the newest thing—electric headlamps instead of carbide flames that might trigger an explosion. The batteries are a bit heavy, but they power the lamps for hours…and I have a lot of extra batteries.”

“What on earth for?” asks the Deacon, holding the leather straps and lamp and heavy batteries at arm’s length.

Reggie sighs. “According to Norton, Noel, and others I spoke to as their defeated party retreated through Darjeeling last year, Mallory and Irvine had planned to depart their high tent at six or six thirty a.m., but the slowness of everything—getting boots on properly, trying to melt snow on the stove for water for a hot drink and hot gruel before departing but overturning the cooker, getting their oxygen apparatus on and working, everything done so terribly slowly at that altitude—kept them in their camp until eight a.m. or later. That’s far too late to leave camp for a summit bid. Even if they reached the summit, there was no way they could have gotten back down to their Camp Five before nightfall. Probably not even back down to the Yellow Band.”