The Abominable: A Novel

J.C. somehow manages to ask the important question. Perhaps it’s easier for a Frenchman. “May I ask when have you seen him naked, my lady?”

Reggie smiles. “The first night you were all at my Darjeeling plantation. But it’s not what you’re thinking. I had Pasang deliberately drug Mr. Deacon’s brandy with a draught of morphine so that he’d sleep deeply. Pasang and I then examined his body using only candles for light. Luckily, in warmer climes, your Mr. Deacon sleeps in the nude. It was nothing personal, you understand. Purely a medical necessity.”

Now, there’s absolutely nothing to say to this, so I don’t. It’s not only crazy but outrageous. Nothing personal? What could be more personal than someone drugging you to inspect you while you’re naked? I find myself wondering if she and Pasang inspected all of us that night—I remember sleeping deeply. But why would she?

Neither J.C. nor I ask that question aloud, but Reggie answers it.

“Did either of you know Mr. Deacon before the War?”

We shake our heads.

“Did either of you know him during the years immediately after the War?”

Again we signify we did not. Sometimes I forget that Jean-Claude met and began climbing with the Deacon just two months before I did.

Reggie sighs. “Captain R. D. Deacon was cited in no fewer than fourteen official despatches during the War,” she says softly. “Do you get the full import of that information?”

“That Ree-shard is very brave?” J.C. says tentatively.

Reggie smiles. “Amidst all that carnage and bravery,” she says, “to be singled out for praise in four or five despatches is extraordinary. To be mentioned in seven or eight is usually associated only with those so courageous that they invariably died in battle. Captain Deacon—he refused multiple attempts to promote him to major or colonel, you know—was in the thick of the battle at Mons, when they inserted the British Expeditionary Forces into the hole in the front at the First Battle of the Marne, at Ypres—which many British soldiers pronounced ‘Yippers’— at Loos in the Battle of Artois in nineteen fifteen, at the Somme in February nineteen sixteen when the British lost fifty-eight thousand men before breakfast the first day, in the crater at the Battle of Messines, and finally in some of the worst fighting at both Passchendaele in nineteen seventeen and the Second Battle of the Marne in nineteen eighteen.”

“How do you know all this?” I ask.

“My late cousin Charles was one source,” says Reggie. “Cousin Percival was an even better source.”

“I thought that Percival—young Bromley—hadn’t fought in the War,” says Jean-Claude.

“Percival did not fight in the War,” says Reggie. “At least not as a soldier in uniform in the way Captain Deacon and my cousin Charles did. But Percival’s contacts in the government and the War Department were…let us say…extensive.”

“But your cousin Percy was dead by the time you knew that Ree-shard was coming on this mission,” persists J.C.

“Oui,” says Reggie. “But dropping Percival’s name opened certain doors…or I should say file drawers…for me in the last few months.”

“I don’t understand,” I say, the protest more than audible in my tone. “How on earth does the Deacon’s admirable war record justify you and Pasang drugging him and looking at him naked as he slept?”

“I had already made arrangements for this spring’s expedition to find Percival’s remains,” Reggie says. “I had three alpine guides—Swiss—lined up to come back here to the mountain with me. When I heard that you and Jean-Claude were coming with Mr. Deacon—who saw his chance to use my aunt Elizabeth’s wealth to fund you all—and that you’d actually landed at Calcutta, I had to know if Mr. Deacon was physically fit.”

“Of course he is,” I say, not even trying to hide the indignation I feel. “You’ve seen him trek and climb. He’s almost certainly the strongest of us all.”

Reggie shrugs slightly, but not enough to show apology or regret. “I knew from Cousin Charles—and the classified War Department records Charles’s and Percival’s contacts had got for me—that Captain Deacon was wounded no fewer than twelve times. At no time did he allow himself to be invalided home to England the way, say, George Mallory did. Mallory was a second lieutenant in the Fortieth Siege Battery at the Somme—he served all of his time at the Front in an artillery unit behind the front lines, as such—and while he saw men killed near him, Second Lieutenant Mallory was never posted directly at the Front for any length of time the way Richard Deacon was in the infantry. Mallory was invalided out and back to England for surgery—it was an old ankle injury which occurred before the War, the result, I believe, of a fall while rock scrambling in a quarry. He was invalided out of France on eight April nineteen seventeen, the day before the Battle of Arras, in which forty thousand British soldiers died. And the battle in which Captain Deacon was wounded for the fifth time. George Mallory—who had friends on high, no pun intended—spent most of the rest of the War in England, both recuperating and working in training units. He was still on convalescent leave when he felt well enough to go climbing at Pen-y-Pas in Wales with friends. Mallory was ordered back to his artillery battalion in time for the terrible Battle of Passchendaele, but he missed arriving there on time due to another injury in England—this time damage to his foot and thumb when he had an accident with his motorcycle in Winchester. You might say, if such things were possible to say, that Second Lieutenant George Mallory had an easy war.

“Captain Deacon, on the other hand, kept returning to the Front in spite of his injuries. He never allowed himself to be invalided back to England. As far as I know, he never returned to England during the entire War— very, very unusual for an officer. It was only a day’s travel from the Front to London or home, and officers took advantage of almost every leave to make that trip. As for the despatches and wounds, I was also aware that, at least twice, Captain Deacon had been directly exposed to mustard gas.”

“His lungs are fine,” I say. “His eyes are fine.”

“Ahh,” says Jean-Claude as if he finally comprehends something.

Reggie shakes her head. “You don’t understand, Jake. Mustard gas not only attacks the eyes and lungs and mucous membranes in a person but—as it did with poor Cousin Charles—when it’s spattered directly upon one’s body, the yellow powder of the gas eats directly into flesh and muscle in a wound that will never heal. Sufferers from mustard gas contact have bleeding, suppurating wounds that have to be re-dressed every day of their lives. My dear cousin Charles suffered from precisely such suppurating wounds. Do either of you remember the name John de Vere Hazard?”

“Hazard was on last year’s expedition,” says Jean-Claude. “He’s the fellow who left four Sherpas behind here on the North Col in a storm—a storm like this one—and made Mallory, Somervell, and the others risk their lives going up from Camp Three to get them down.”

Reggie nods. “Mr. Hazard received the Military Cross during the War. A very serious decoration for exemplary service and for receiving wounds in the line of duty. Mr. Deacon won it four times during the War. Mr. Hazard came on the Everest expedition last year with his wounds— especially bad were the ones caused by contact with solid mustard gas, but he also had shrapnel in his back and wounds from machine gun fire in his thigh and hips. Hazard’s wounds opened while he was climbing here. Beneath his wool and cotton, the poor man was bleeding constantly. When he was most needed, he was most incapacitated.”

“How can you know all this?” I say again.

“My cousins Charles and Percy had many contacts,” says Reggie. “I’ve also had a long history of exchanging letters with Colonel Teddy Norton, whom you met last autumn at the Royal Geographical Society digs.”

“So,” says J.C., “you felt that you had to…vet, I believe is the legal language in English…vet Richard Deacon by having Dr. Pasang look at his wounds while the Deacon slept under the influence of morphine at your plantation?”

“Yes,” says Reggie. There’s no defiance in her tone, but still no sound of shame, either.

“What did you find?” asks Jean-Claude.

I turn to shoot a harsh glance at J.C.

“Scar tissue in more than a dozen places, as you might imagine,” replies Reggie. “Some muscle in his left calf missing due to a machine gun wound there. At least three sets of scars on his torso where shrapnel or bullets passed all the way through Captain Deacon, obviously not striking any vital blood vessels or organs. Naked, your Captain Richard Davis Deacon’s scars, front and back, look like a spider has been weaving white webs in his flesh.”