"That doesn't sound to me like the type of person who takes her own life," Cynthia said.
Fred O'Connor's eyes lit up and his wheels began to spin. Dean knew the look and he put the brakes on Fred's euphoria before the rampant speculation could go any further.
"Don't forget the suicide note," Dean said emphatically. "She wrote it and no one forced her to do so. We can wonder what happened to the pen and who raided her panties but we'll probably never know the answer to either question. We can speculate all day why Edith Shipton killed herself, but there's no arguing the fact that she did so. That's a given. End of report." Dean rose and wandered out to the front porch but in spite of his sterling speech, and overwhelming wish that he could forget the Shiptons and all the grief they had brought him, he couldn't quite chase the unfinished business from his churning mind. Primarily, it was Jerome Shipton's severed climbing rope that remained a knotty question that wouldn't go away.
The following weekend, two and a half weeks after Edith's death, Penny and Mick returned to bird Song for a couple of days of ice climbing, a further reminder of the ice park incident. Before the couple left for their climb, Dean pulled Penny aside.
"If I wanted to rappel down and not leave a rope at the top, how would I do it?" he asked.
"That's easy," she answered. "You'd just loop your line through a set up or a fixed anchor and rappel down. Then you'd pull the free end of the line down to you."
"What happens to the ice anchor?"
She looked at Dean as if he were less than the top of his class. "It'd stay up there, of course. If there's a stationary point you could tie on to, all the better. Otherwise, you're out one anchor."
"But you've retrieved your line."
"Sure."
"But you'd have to set an ice anchor?"
"No need, in most places." She paused, then clarified. "If you can't find a fixed rappel, you have to rig one, but at popular climbing spots, like in the ice park, there's lots of choices 'cause it's climbed so much."
"But you could rig an anchor, right?"
"As a last resort. But those things cost big bucks. Why leave it up there if you've got a better choice, like a tree or iron ring to rig your station? But why would you go to all that trouble in the first place? You'd have to get back up to where you started anyway, unless you're going out in another direction. Rappelling is just getting there, a way to get down to your base. The sport is called ice climbing-getting back up is the challenge."