Dan Simmons - The Abominable - A Novel

“From the south?” interrupts the Deacon.

“I’m not sure, Dickie, but I believe so. Also Percy and his guide made a—what is it called—a long sideways travel during a climb?”

“A traverse?” offers Jean-Claude.

“Oui. Merci,” says Lady Bromley. “Percy and his guide had made a traverse of Mont Blanc from the Dôme hut to the Grands Mulets in what he called a summer blizzard. I remember his writing about doing the Grand Combin, whatever it is, in a very short time—he wrote mostly about the view from the summit. I have postcards from him talking about his…traverse, yes, that is the word…of the Finsteraarhorn and successful ascent of the Nesthorn.” She smiles sadly at us. “Through all the years of Percy’s risky sports, including these climbs, I spent many an anxious mother’s hours looking up these hills and peaks on maps in our library.”

“But he never joined the Alpine Club,” says the Deacon. “And he wasn’t an official member of last spring’s Everest expedition with Norton, Mallory, and the others?”

Lady Bromley shakes her head, and once again I admire the complex simplicity of her hair. It makes the tall, perfectly upright woman seem even taller.

“Percival was never much of a joiner of groups,” she says, and there’s a sudden shadow of sadness passing over her face and eyes as she realizes that she’s already speaking of her son in the past tense. “I received a brief note from him in March, posted from his cousin Reggie’s tea plantation near Darjeeling, saying that he might follow along after or with Mr. Mallory’s expedition and walk into Tibet, and then nothing…silence…until the terrible news reports in June.”

“Can you remember the names of any of his alpine guides?” asks the Deacon.

“Oh, yes,” says Lady Bromley, brightening some. “There were three favorites of his who were from Chamonix…”

She gives the names, and Jean-Claude makes a silent whistle with his lips. “Three of the best we have,” he says. “Geniuses on rock, snow, and ice. Great guides and brilliant climbers in their own right.”

“Percival loved them,” says his mother. “Another British man he climbed with frequently in the Alps was also named Percy…Ferrou, Ferray?”

“Percy Farrar?” asks the Deacon.

“Yes, that’s it,” says Lady Bromley, smiling again. “Isn’t it odd how I can remember the names of all of his French and German guides, but not a fellow British subject?”

The Deacon turns to look at J.C. and me. “Percy Farrar would have had sixteen or seventeen years of extreme alpine experience when he was climbing with Percy…with young Lord Percival.” Looking directly at me, he adds, “Farrar later became president of the Alpine Club and was the one who first proposed that George Leigh Mallory be included in that first nineteen twenty-one expedition to Everest.”

“So your son climbed with the best,” Jean-Claude says to Lady Bromley. “Even though he wasn’t invited on the Everest expedition, his climbing abilities could have been formidable.”

“But Percy wasn’t on any of the official rosters of either the Alpine Club or the Everest Committee,” says the Deacon. “Do you happen to know, Lady Bromley, how it was that your son came to be on Everest at almost the same time as Mallory’s climbers?”

Lady Bromley sips the last of her tea and sets the cup on its saucer with a delicate touch. “As I say, I received only that brief note from Percival, written from the Darjeeling plantation in March,” she says patiently. “Evidently Percy met Mallory and the other members of this year’s expedition at his cousin Reggie’s plantation near Darjeeling in the third week of March. My son had just trekked through parts of Asia and arrived unannounced at our tea plantation very near to Darjeeling…the plantation that’s been owned and managed for years now by Percy’s cousin Reggie.

“Cousin Reggie was very helpful in finding Nepalese porters for Mallory’s expedition—Sherpas, they are called—many who have relatives who’ve worked at our plantation for years. The actual leader of the expedition at that time, as you must know, was Brigadier General Charles Bruce…but from what Colonel Norton told me when the others returned to England, General Bruce was in poor health and had to turn back only two weeks after the expedition had left Darjeeling to pass through the Serpo La to Kampa Dzong and Tibet. I understand that Colonel Norton, who was already part of the group, was chosen to replace General Bruce as expedition leader, and then, according to Colonel Norton himself—who was very kind in visiting me—he appointed George Mallory as climbing leader. That’s really all I know of the details of Percival’s last days. He did not camp with the British expedition, nor attempt to climb with them.”

“Did Lord Percival travel alone or with manservants?” asks the Deacon.

“Oh, Percy always preferred to travel alone,” says Lady Bromley. “It made no sense—all that fussing by oneself over wardrobe choices and luggage—but it was his preference, and Colonel Norton says that he camped alone during the five-week trek in to Mount Everest.”

“Never staying with the official party?” asks Jean-Claude with some slight wonderment in his voice. Why would a British lord travel separately from a British expedition?

Lady Bromley shakes her head ever so slightly. “Not according to Colonel Norton’s and the Alpine Club’s report to me. Nor did his cousin Reggie know why Percy was going to Tibet or choosing to travel near the expedition but not with it.”

“What about these Germans?” asks the Deacon. “This Meyer person who is said to have been caught in the same avalanche with Lord Percival. Bruno Sigl, who says he witnessed it from lower down on the mountain. Do you happen to know if Percival knew these gentlemen?”

“Oh, heavens no!” cries Lady Bromley. “I am quite sure he did not. This Meyer seems to be very much a nonperson as far as the Alpine Club and my friends in His Majesty’s Government can make out, and Herr Sigl…well, let us say that he was not the sort of man with whom Percival would have social intercourse.”

The Deacon rubs his brow as if he has a headache. “If Lord Percival was not with the British expedition when Mallory and Irvine were lost, how is it, according to this Bruno Sigl, that he and some unknown German were supposed to have been carried away by an avalanche between Camp Five and Camp Six? Mallory’s Camp Five was a few hundred feet above seven thousand six hundred and twenty-five meters—that’s twenty-five thousand feet, Lady Percival, very high—but Camp Six, their jumping-off point for the summit, was over eight thousand meters—around twenty-six thousand eight hundred feet. Less than three thousand feet below the summit of Everest. The newspapers speculate that Lord Percival was attempting a search for Mallory and Irvine, days after they were declared lost by Norton and the others on the expedition. No one on the expedition saw either Lord Percival or Meyer or this Sigl person during their retreat from the mountain. Can you think of any other explanation for Percival to have been so high on the mountain after Colonel Norton and the others had left the area?”

“I’m sure I have no idea,” Lady Bromley says. “Unless Percival…my Percy…was making an attempt to climb to the summit of Mount Everest on his own, or with this Austrian climber. It is not an impossibility. Percy was…is…was very ambitious, you know.”

The Deacon only nods at that and glances at me. Norton and the others, after giving up Mallory and Irvine for dead, ended all further summit attempts, not merely out of respect for their lost fellows, but because of fears that the monsoon season had begun in earnest. They retreated from Everest Base Camp in strangely clear weather but feared that the monsoon would catch them any day en route. Certainly even an amateur such as Bromley would not attempt to summit the mountain—or even climb high to hunt for the missing Mallory and Irvine—under the imminent threat of monsoon weather. Being caught high on Everest when the monsoon struck would have been a particularly stupid and useless form of suicide.