The Abominable: A Novel

Chapter 3

If we can find the remains of Lord Percival, we can certainly find Mallory or Irvine…or both of them.

T here are many memorial services for Mallory and Irvine in that late summer and autumn of 1924, but perhaps the most important one is held at Saint Paul’s Cathedral on October 17. It is essentially an invitation-only memorial service, and from our group, only the Deacon is invited to attend. He does so and says little about it to us afterward, but the London newspapers are filled with the eulogy by the Bishop of Chester. The bishop ends with an adaptation of King David’s lament from the Bible—“Delightful and very pleasant were George Mallory and Andrew Irvine; in life, in death, they were not parted.”

Jean-Claude points out to me the next day that if—as was probably the case—one of them fell first on their way up or down the mountain, they were certainly parted in their last minutes or hours.

The deaths of Lord Percival Bromley and Kurt Meyer are mentioned only in the abstract during the bishop’s eulogy for Mallory and Irvine—“as we remember others who also perished on the mountain that month”—and Lady Bromley holds no memorial service for her son that summer or autumn (perhaps because she still believes he is alive somewhere on Mount Everest or the Rongbuk Glacier below and truly does believe that the three of us will find and rescue him a year after he disappeared). Lady Bromley has urged the Deacon to start the expedition this very autumn of 1924 and to attempt the Everest “rescue” in winter, but he assured her that both the mountain and access routes to the mountain are impassable and unclimbable in the Himalayan winter. Deep within her, Lady Bromley—even through her shock and temporary mental instability—knows that our expedition the next spring and summer of 1925 will be, at best, a recovery attempt, not a rescue effort.

That same evening of October 17 there is held an assembly related to Mallory and Irvine which the Deacon does get J.C. and me into, despite its being so crowded that the group has to rent the Royal Albert Hall for the occasion. The Royal Geographical Society and its Alpine Club are holding their joint meeting “to Receive the Reports from the Mount Everest Expedition of 1924.” To say that the crowd—mostly of climbers and a mob of reporters—is enthusiastically interested would be an understatement.

The finale of the program is the reading of the report from the photographer-climber-geologist Noel Odell—who many believe should have been Mallory’s partner in that final summit attempt rather than young Andrew Irvine—and it tells of Odell’s efforts to wait for the missing climbers at their high camp and his final sighting of them from his point between Camps IV and V when the clouds parted briefly, although Odell seems confused at times as to whether he saw the “two, moving black dots” on a snowfield above the First Step along the North East Ridge, above the Second Step, or even possibly above the lesser Third Step and on the “pyramid of snowfields” approaching the summit itself.

“The question remains,” Odell wrote in his report, “has Mount Everest been climbed? It must be left Unanswered, for there is no direct evidence. But bearing in mind all the circumstances…and considering their position when last seen, I think there is a strong probability that Mallory and Irvine succeeded. At that I must leave it.”

This causes a low murmuring and susurration in the crowd of England’s best climbers. Many of the men—even some of Mallory’s and Irvine’s other climbing partners on the expedition—do not believe the evidence suggests that the two men had summited. Even if Odell’s sighting was real and Mallory and Irvine had somehow climbed the ominous Second Step, it was too late in the day for a successful summit attempt—they would have had to descend in the dark—and their oxygen canisters must have been on or near empty at such a late hour. So it is the opinion of most of the world-class climbers in the Albert Hall this night that Mallory and Irvine had pressed on too far, too late, had attempted to descend in the dark—probably well before getting anywhere near the summit—and both had fallen to their deaths on the North Face in the dark and windy lunar-cold night somewhere there above 27,000 feet, and possibly in the unbreathable Martian-thin air around 28,000 feet.

But I remember that Odell’s report caused a powerful wave of opposition when he ended his communiqué with his belief that the two men had died of exposure.

“Exposure” simply wasn’t a noble enough death for these two national heroes, these mere men who were quickly turning into an English legend, but even foreign climbers who’d known and climbed with Mallory—men immune from the patriotic fervor filling the Albert Hall this mid-October night—don’t believe that he, or even Sandy Irvine, for that matter, was so foolish as to die of exposure. Most of the climbers we listen to after the meeting guess that one of the two missing men—almost certainly Irvine—fell, probably on the return from the summit or their high point that evening before the sun set, perhaps in the darkness, possibly on the North Face itself in their effort to get out of the howling winds, and, in falling, pulled the other climber off his perch to his death.

Even the official leader of the fatal 1924 expedition, Edward “Teddy” Norton, had written from Base Camp, “I am very sorry Odell put that bit about their dying of exposure in his communiqué.” And he’d added, to the Mount Everest Committee, “All the rest of us are agreed it is any odds on a fall-off.”

On our walk back to the hotel late that October night after the Alpine Club meeting, Jean-Claude asks the Deacon, “Ree-shard, do you think Mallory and Irvine reached the summit?”

“I have no idea,” says the Deacon around the stem of his pipe. The fragrance of his tobacco leaves a scent trail in the cold, damp air as we hurry along.

“Do you believe they died of exposure?” persists J.C. “Or fell?”

The Deacon removes the pipe and looks at us, his gray eyes bright in the light from the corner streetlamp. “There simply isn’t enough public or Alpine Journal information from Odell or anyone else who was there to make a judgment about how or where they died. The three of us need to talk to Norton, John Noel, Odell, Dr. Somervell, and other friends of mine who were on last spring’s expedition. Then we’ll have to go to Germany—to Munich—to talk to this climber Bruno Sigl, who says he was high enough on the lower parts of Everest to see the avalanche he says carried Bromley and the mysterious Austrian or German, Meyer, away. Don’t you agree?”

Jean-Claude and I look at each other. I can see in his eyes that J.C. will never travel to Germany with the Deacon and me. The Germans killed three of his brothers, and he swore long ago never to cross that border into Deutschland.

“I know, Jean-Claude,” says the Deacon even though J.C. hasn’t said a word. “I understand. Jake and I can go to Munich next month—November—and report to you later what this Sigl person says about the death of Lord Percival and that other man, Meyer, as well as give us any details he has about the disappearance of Mallory and Irvine. But do stay in London long enough to visit Norton and the others with us.”

“What if this Sigl fellow doesn’t have any details about anything?” I say almost plaintively. “What if you and I waste time going to Munich next month and learn nothing new about Mallory and Irvine or—more important to our mission—about what happened to Percival Bromley?”

“Well,” says the Deacon with a smile that looks almost hungry, “then we’ll just have to go to Everest next March through June and find out for ourselves what happened to them. If we can find the remains of Lord Percival, we can certainly find Mallory or Irvine…or both of them. The dry winds of Mount Everest desiccate and mummify a corpse far more efficiently than could the high priests of ancient Egypt.”