Jean-Claude answered. He couldn’t read Sandy Irvine’s abbreviated scribble any better than the rest of us, but he was an expert on George Finch’s, Sandy Irvine’s, and his and his father’s modified O2 tanks. “Discarded the first bottle—of oxygen—three hours and forty-eight minutes into the ascent after leaving Camp Five,” translated J.C. But he wasn’t done. “Just below the First Step,” he continued, “after using the full flow of two-point-two liters all the way.”
“That would be right,” said the Deacon, his voice almost hushed in respect. “If they’d gone on full flow all the way from Camp Five that morning, they would have discarded the first empty bottle somewhere just short of the First Step.”
“How many bottles of air did they have?” asked Reggie.
The Deacon shrugged. “No one’s sure. But from those notes I saw jotted on the margins of one of the old letters from Mallory’s pocket, wrapped in the fancy handkerchief…my guess is at least five between them.”
“My Lord,” whispered Reggie. “With five tanks, and leaving just before or after sunrise, they could have reached the summit of Everest and had enough bottled air to get them at least down past the Second Step again.”
“What do those last two entries say?” asked the Deacon.
“M lft R in btfl pls. bf vry prd. acd cnt b hlpd/Msl rp sn. ne hts bt nt as much as bee4. m sbfc hts mr. nt. mny srrs. Btifl. Vry vry cld noiw. Gby M I lv u an F and H nd Au TD. Im sry.”
The Deacon thought a minute then tried to snap his fingers through his thick mittens. “Mallory left the photo of Ruth in a beautiful place. Both very proud. Accident couldn’t be helped…Mallory slipped, rope snapped.”
“What about this last part?” asked Pasang, peering at the note in the bright sunlight. He pointed to the “ne hts bt nt as much as bee4. m sbfc hts mr. nt. mny srrs. Btifl. Vry vry cld noiw” line.
“Knee hurts, but not as much as before,” translated Reggie, who was getting the hang of the dead man’s shorthand. “My…” She paused at the “sbfc.”
“Sun-burned face?” suggested the Deacon.
Reggie nodded and sighed. “My sun-burned face hurts more. Night. Many stars out. Beautiful. Very very cold now.”
I didn’t want to start crying, so I stared hard through my thick goggles at the dead man. There was no emotion on his face either.
“This part?” asked Jean-Claude, pointing to the last few jumbled jottings: “Gby M I lv u an F and H nd Au TD. Im sry.”
The Deacon and Reggie looked at one another, the Deacon nodded, and Reggie translated in a strained but steady voice. “Good-bye, Mother. I love you and Father and Hugh—that would be Sandy’s older brother—and…Aunt T.D.” Reggie paused. “Aunt T.D., I’m all but certain. Christian name Christina. He mentioned her twice at that last dinner at the plantation. And then only…I’m sorry.”
“But it would have been just really dark, no moon, when they were trying to find their way down through these ledges and gullies,” said Deacon, almost as if he were speaking to himself. “Thus the goggles in their packs and pockets.”
“This is all…merde. Mere conjecture,” said Jean-Claude.
“Oui, my friend,” said the Deacon. “But Jake there may have found the proof that they made it to the summit.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Sandy Irvine’s note that Mallory had left the photograph of his wife, Ruth, in a beautiful place. And that they were both—Irvine and Mallory—very proud. It sounds like a modest summit claim to me.”
“Or perhaps Mallory left Ruth’s photograph at their highest point below the summit,” said Reggie. “Their turnaround point…when they decided they had to retreat or really be trapped by darkness. The view from anywhere up above the Second Step would be beautiful.”
“We’ll never know,” I said.
The Deacon looked at me. “Unless we try the two-summit traverse,” he said. “And find Ruth’s photo on the higher, North Summit up there.”
No one spoke for a while after that. I realized that we were all standing with our hands folded, as if praying for Sandy Irvine. We were certainly giving him that moment of silent respect I mentioned earlier.
“I’m sorry that the damned ravens got at his face,” I said suddenly.
“They did not on this side of his face,” said Dr. Pasang. He pulled his two layers of mittens off and pointed a thinly gloved finger to the strange translucent strips hanging from the right side of poor Irvine’s face. “This is peeling from a terrible sunburn when he was alive,” said Pasang. “That—especially with the oxygen mask digging into his raw and sunburned flesh—must have been terribly painful in his last few days and hours of life.”
“Irvine wouldn’t have complained,” Reggie said flatly.
The Deacon blinked. “I’d almost forgotten that you met him last year at your plantation near Darjeeling.”
Reggie nodded. “He seemed to be a marvelous young man. I warmed to him much more than I did to George Mallory.” She pointed toward his shoulder carryall and oversized Norfolk jacket pockets. “We should see what he’s carrying.”
“Please pardon us, Mr. Irvine,” said the Deacon. And with that he opened the flap of the gas mask carryall and started removing things.
As with Mallory, there were personal things—tins of throat lozenges, some papers, the same strap-on bit of leather to attach his oxygen mask—but there was also a small but heavy little camera.
“I do believe that this is George Mallory’s Kodak Vest Pocket camera,” said the Deacon.
“It is,” said Reggie. “He was showing it to Lady Lytton and Hermione’s brother, Tony Knebworth, at my bon voyage dinner at Bromley plantation the night before they left last March—a year ago March.”
“Let’s all put our goggles back on,” said the Deacon. “This snow’s bright.” He handed the Kodak Vest Pocket camera around saying only, “Please don’t drop it.”
The camera was small and black and not much larger than a tin of sardines. It would have slipped easily into one of either man’s oversized shirt pockets, but for some reason Irvine had chosen to carry it in his canvas carryall instead. J.C., bolder than I with historical artifacts, unfolded the little camera by pulling out the bellows that was attached to hinged and folding metal X’s. The mechanism opened easily, just as if it had not just suffered a summer monsoon and endless winter and hard spring at 28,000 feet on Mount Everest.
There was no viewfinder. To take a photograph, one held the expanded camera at chest level and peered down at a very, very small prism. The shutter release was one tiny lever. Mechanically, the Kodak Vest Pocket camera could not have been much simpler or more foolproof.
Still holding the camera to his chest, J.C. took a step back and uphill from all five of us—five including Sandy Irvine’s corpse. “The image is upside down.” Then he said, “Everyone say fromage.”
The Deacon started to say “Don’t, we—” but J.C. had already clicked the shutter.
“It works,” said Jean-Claude. “The Kodak Company should be commended. Perhaps I shall write them an advertisement recommendation.”
“How can you joke at a moment like this?” asked Reggie. Her voice was soft, but J.C. hung his head like a reprimanded child. None of us wanted to fall out of Lady Bromley-Montfort’s favor.
“If there was an image on that frame of film,” the Deacon said tiredly, “you may have just double-exposed it and ruined it.”