“Kami had the presence of mind to ask where Sahib Bromley had died, and Sigl said that it had been on the mountain, above Camp Four on the North Col. Kami said that he was very saddened by the news—indeed, he wept in front of Sigl, partially, Kami admitted, because he knew the German had lied to him about where Bromley had died, and Kami still thought the chances were great that he himself would be shot dead by the German; but then Sigl merely waved him away and told him to stay away from Rongbuk.
“Kami complied,” concludes Odell, “literally glissading down dangerous stretches of the glacier until he picked up Nema and Dasno. The three cousins whipped their little ponies away from there and rode all through the night before coming across Shebbeare and me headed north toward the trade routes.”
“So we telegraphed tentative word of Bromley’s fatal accident to The Times from Darjeeling in our first full report,” says Colonel Norton. “Less than two days after we all took the train to Calcutta, Sigl himself showed up in Darjeeling and telegraphed his version of Bromley’s death to the Völkischer Beobachter in Germany.”
“That is one of the right-wing fascist newspapers, is it not?” asks Jean-Claude.
“Yes,” says Somervell. “A National Socialist Party paper. But Sigl was a respected German mountain climber, and the story was picked up almost immediately by the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, then the Berliner Tageblatt, and then the Frankfurter Zeitung. Sigl’s story was repeated almost verbatim by The Times less than a day after our own sketchy first report—and folded within our report in a way I did not much care for, to be honest.”
Norton and the others nod at this.
“But you do have Hazard’s, Hari Sing Thapa’s, the Tibetan pilgrims’, and Kami’s reports to back up Sigl’s claim that Bromley had gone to Everest and started climbing,” responds the Deacon. “I can give little hope or comfort to Lady Bromley about the reports of his disappearance on the mountain somehow being a mistake.”
“Perhaps not,” says Howard Somervell, “but it’s all deucedly strange. It leaves a bad taste in one’s mouth, no? And not just because young Percy was a nobleman.” Somervell slaps the leather arms of his deep chair. “Well, gentlemen, I believe it is time…”
We rise.
“One last thing,” asks the Deacon, after again thanking his former associates and climbing partners for their time. “We all know something about Bruno Sigl—he’s been a German alpine climber for years, but never an explorer to my knowledge. But what about Kurt Meyer? Why would Bromley have chosen to try to climb Everest, even a little way up, with this Austrian or German?”
Colonel Norton shrugs. “The Alpine Club has been in touch with the German and Austrian alpine and climbing clubs, but they say they have no record whatsoever of a Kurt Meyer as a registered climber. It’s strange.”
“It’s all very strange, if you ask me,” says Dr. Hingston as we all walk through the Map Room on the way to the banquet hall. “Damnably strange.”
And then there are all-around handshakes and farewells to us that are much warmer than the first greetings.
Outside, a north wind is blowing in from Kensington Gardens across the broad avenue. It’s scented with plants and flowers still blooming, but there’s also a stronger, sadder scent of leaves fallen and moldering. The not unpleasant smell of death in autumn. The clouds are low, and I can smell rain coming.
“We’d best find a cab,” says the Deacon.
None of us says a word during the entire ride back to the hotel.
Chapter 5
This is one hell of a stupid place to leave a pipe.
A fter the October memorial services and Alpine Club reports and our interview with Norton, Somervell, Noel, Odell, and Hingston, but before our November trip to Munich to meet Sigl, Jean-Claude and I want to start packing for Everest. The Deacon overrules us. He says that there are two things we have to do before we start planning the matériel and logistics for such an expedition.
First, says the Deacon, we have to learn about George Mallory—something that will show us something important about the challenge of climbing Everest that’s ahead of us—and for that we have to drive to Wales. (I know nothing about Wales except that I seem to remember that they use no vowels in their spellings there. Or was it all vowels? I’ll soon find out.)
We have a few weeks until the Deacon and I leave for Germany. He’s arranged a meeting with Bruno Sigl in Munich in November. In the meantime, the Deacon has reminded me that Jean-Claude lost not only all three of his older brothers in the Great War but also two uncles and a half dozen other close male relatives.
With that background, I find it surprising that Jean-Claude accepts German clients in his Chamonix Guide work and, the Deacon says, is as careful, protective, and polite to them as to any of his French, Italian, British, American, or other clients. But down deep, J.C. does, the Deacon says, deeply hate les boches.
But the Munich trip lies ahead in November.
“First,” says the Deacon after we’ve filled most of the backseat and all of the boot of a borrowed automobile with full rucksacks and climbing gear, including a lot of expensive new rope of the Deacon’s own design—the Deacon’s Miracle Rope, J.C. and I call it, since its blend of rope materials gives it a much greater tensile strength than the easily snapped climbing rope we are used to in the Alps—all of which I assume will go with us to Mount Everest, “we go to Pen-y-Pass.”
“Penny Pass?” I say, even though he hadn’t pronounced it that way. “That sounds like some place in a Tom Mix western.”
Rather than answering, the Deacon ignores me as he starts the engine and drives us out of town and west toward Wales.
It turns out that Pen-y-Pass is an area of tall crags and vertical rocky slabs in the region near Mount Snowdon in north Wales. We pass a hotel situated at the summit of the pass that—according to the Deacon—used to host many climbing parties in the early days of British rock climbing, many of them brought there by the preeminent rock climber of the time, Mallory’s older friend Geoffrey Winthrop Young, whom Mallory met way back in 1909.
I wouldn’t mind a big lunch and a pint at the hotel, but we keep driving. We’ve packed sandwiches and water in our rucksacks, but I secretly hoped for something better.
There have been plenty of climbable, fun-scrambling crags right along the dirt road we’ve been driving on for an hour now, but the Deacon keeps driving past them until, in an absurdly remote area, he finally parks the coupe and says, “Get your rucksacks and all that gear out of the boot, chaps. And tie it on well. It’s going to be a long hike in.” It is. More than two hours of covering rough country to get to his chosen crag. (I can’t remember now whether it was named Lliwedd or Llechog, but it is a big crag, at least 400 vertical feet to the summit, with a daunting overhang running the width of it about 50 feet below the summit.) All we’re given to understand is that the Deacon climbed here before the War with Mallory and his wife, Claude Elliott, David Pye, the better climber Harold Porter—who did a lot of first ascents and new routes on these crags in 1911—and the best climber of the time and perhaps Mallory’s closest climbing friend, Siegfried Herford.