The Case of the Missing Marquess Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  CHAPTER THE FIRST

  CHAPTER THE SECOND

  CHAPTER THE THIRD

  CHAPTER THE FOURTH

  CHAPTER THE FIFTH

  CHAPTER THE SIXTH

  CHAPTER THE SEVENTH

  CHAPTER THE EIGHTH

  CHAPTER THE NINTH

  CHAPTER THE TENTH

  CHAPTER THE ELEVENTH

  CHAPTER THE TWELFTH

  CHAPTER THE THIRTEENTH

  CHAPTER THE FOURTEENTH

  CHAPTER THE FIFTEENTH

  LONDON, NOVEMBER, 1888

  CIPHER SOLUTION

  “I HAD STOOD STILL A MOMENT TOO LONG.”

  Heavy footsteps sounded behind me.

  I leapt forward to flee, but it was too late. The footfalls rushed upon me. An iron grip grasped my arm. I started to scream, but a steely hand clamped over my mouth. Very close to my ear a deep voice growled, “If you move or cry out, I will kill you.”

  Terror froze me. Wide-eyed, staring into darkness, I couldn’t move. I could barely breathe. As I stood gasping, his grip left my arm and snaked around me, clasping both arms forcibly to my sides, pressing my back against a surface that might as well have been a stone wall had I not known it to be his chest. His hand left my mouth, but within an instant, before my trembling lips could shape a sound, in the dim night I saw the glint of steel. Long. Tapering to a point like a shard of ice. A knife blade.

  ALSO BY NANCY SPRINGER

  THE TALES OF ROWAN HOOD

  Rowan Hood, Outlaw Girl of Sherwood Forest

  Lionclaw

  Outlaw Princess of Sherwood

  Wild Boy

  Rowan Hood Returns, the Final Chapter

  THE TALES FROM CAMELOT

  I am Mordred

  I am Morgan Le Fay

  Ribbiting Tales

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Young Readers Group

  345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario,

  Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)

  Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124,

  Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)

  Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park,

  New Delhi - 110 017, India

  Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0745, Auckland, New Zealand

  (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.)

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue,

  Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Registered Offices: Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published in the United States of America by Philomel Books,

  a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 2006

  Published by Puffin Books, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 2007

  Copyright © Nancy Springer, 2006

  All rights reserved

  THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGED THE PHILOMEL EDITION AS FOLLOWS:

  Springer, Nancy.

  The case of the missing marquess : an Enola Holmes mystery / by Nancy Springer.

  p. cm.

  Summary: Enola Holmes, much younger sister of detective Sherlock Holmes, must travel

  to London in disguise to unravel the disappearance of her missing mother.

  eISBN : 978-1-440-68439-5

  [1. Mothers—Fiction. 2. Missing persons—Fiction. 3. Mystery and detective stories.

  4. London (England)—History—19th century—Fiction.] I. Title.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume

  any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  To my mother—N.S.

  IN THE EAST END OF LONDON AFTER DARK, AUGUST, 1888

  THE ONLY LIGHT STRUGGLES FROM THE FEW gas street-lamps that remain unbroken, and from pots of fire suspended above the cobblestones, tended by old men selling boiled sea snails outside the public houses. The stranger, all dressed in black from her hat to her boots, slips from shadow to shadow as if she were no more than a shadow herself, unnoticed. Where she comes from, it is unthinkable for a female to venture out at night without the escort of a husband, father, or brother. But she will do whatever she must in order to search for the one who is lost.

  Wide-eyed beneath her black veil, she scans, seeks, watches as she walks. She sees broken glass on the cracked pavements. She sees rats boldly walking about, trailing their disgusting hairless tails. She sees ragged children running barefoot amid the rats and the broken glass. She sees couples, men in red flannel vests and women in cheap straw bonnets, reeling along arm in arm. She sees someone lying along a wall, drunk or asleep amid the rats or maybe even dead.

  Looking, she also listens. Somewhere a hurdygurdy spews a jingle into the sooty air. The black-veiled seeker hears that tipsy music. She hears a little girl calling, “Daddy? Da?” outside the door of a pub. She hears screams, laughter, drunken cries, street vendors calling, “Oysters! Sauce ’em in winegar and swaller ’em whole, fat ’uns four fer a penny!”

  She smells the vinegar. She smells gin, boiled cabbage, and hot sausage, the salty waft of the nearby harbour, and the stench of the river Thames. She smells rotting fish. She smells raw sewage.

  She quickens her pace. She must keep moving, for not only is she a seeker, but she is sought. The black-veiled hunter is hunted. She must walk far so that the men who are pursuing her cannot find her.

  At the next street-lamp, she sees a woman with painted lips and smudged eyes waiting in a doorway. A hansom cab drives up, stops, and a man in a tail coat and a shining silk top-hat gets out. Even though the woman in the doorway wears a low-cut evening gown that might once have belonged to a lady of the gentleman’s social class, the black-clad watcher does not think the gentleman is here to go dancing. She sees the prostitute’s haggard eyes, haunted with fear no matter how much her red-smeared lips smile. One like her was recently found dead a few streets away, slit wide open. Averting her gaze, the searcher in black walks on.

  An unshaven man lounging against a wall winks at her. “Missus, what yer doing all alone? Don’t yer want some company?” If he were a gentleman, he would not have spoken to her without being introduced. Ignoring him, she hastens past. She must speak to no one. She does not belong here. The knowledge does not trouble her, for she has never belonged anywhere. And in a sense she has always been alone. But her heart is not without pain as she scans the shadows, for she has no home now, she is a stranger in the world’s largest city, and she does not know where she will lay her head tonight.

  And if, Lord willing, she lives until morning, she can only hope to find the loved one for whom she is searching.

  Deeper and deeper into shadows and East London dockside slums, she walks on. Alone.

  CHAPTER THE FIRST

  I WOULD VERY MUCH LIKE TO KNOW WHY my mother named me “Enola,” which, backwards, spells alone. Mum was, or perhaps still is, fond of ciphers, and she must have had something in mind, whether foreboding or a sort of left-handed blessing or, already, plans, even though my father had not yet passed away.

  In any event, “You will do very well on your own, Enola,” she would tell me nearly every day as I w
as growing up. Indeed, this was her usual absent-minded farewell as she went off with sketch-book, brushes, and watercolours to roam the countryside. And indeed, alone was very much how she left me when, on the July evening of my fourteenth birthday, she neglected to return to Ferndell Hall, our home.

  As I had my celebration anyway, with Lane the butler and his wife the cook, the absence of my mother did not at first trouble me. Although cordial enough when we met, Mum and I seldom interfered in one another’s concerns. I assumed that some urgent business kept her elsewhere, especially as she had instructed Mrs. Lane to give me certain parcels at tea-time.

  Mum’s gifts to me consisted of

  a drawing kit: paper, lead pencils, a penknife for sharpening them, and India-rubber erasers, all cleverly arranged in a flat wooden box that opened into an easel;

  a stout book entitled The Meanings of Flowers: Including Also Notes Upon the Messages Conveyed by Fans, Handkerchiefs, Sealing-Wax, and Postage-Stamps;

  a much smaller booklet of ciphers.

  While I could draw only to a limited degree, Mother encouraged the small knack I had. She knew I enjoyed my sketching, as I enjoyed reading almost any book, on whatever topic—but as for ciphers, she knew I did not much care for them. Nevertheless, she had made this little book for me with her own hands, as I could plainly see, folding and stitching together pages she had decorated with dainty watercolour flowers.

  Obviously she had been at work on this gift for some time. She did not lack thought for me, I told myself. Firmly. Several times throughout the evening.

  While I had no idea where Mum might be, I expected she would either come home or send a message during the night. I slept peacefully enough.

  However, the next morning, Lane shook his head. No, the lady of the house had not returned. No, there had been no word from her.

  Outside, grey rain fell, fitting my mood, which grew more and more uneasy.

  After breakfast, I trotted back upstairs to my bedroom, a pleasant refuge where the wardrobe, washstand, dresser, and so forth were painted white with pink-and-blue stencilled posies around the edges. “Cottage furniture,” folk called it, cheap stuff suitable only for a child, but I liked it. Most days.

  Not today.

  I could not have stayed indoors; indeed, I could not sit down except hastily, to pull galoshes over my boots. I wore shirt and knickerbockers, comfortable clothing that had previously belonged to my older brothers, and over these I threw a waterproof. All rubbery, I thumped downstairs and took an umbrella from the stand in the hallway. Then I exited through the kitchen, telling Mrs. Lane, “I am going to have a look around.”

  Odd; these were the same words I said nearly every day when I went out to—look for things, though generally I didn’t know what. Anything. I would climb trees just to see what might be there: snail shells with bands of maroon and yellow, nut clusters, birds’ nests. And if I found a magpie’s nest, I would look for things in it: shoe buttons, bits of shiny ribbon, somebody’s lost earring. I would pretend that something of great value was lost, and I was searching—

  Only this time I was not pretending.

  Mrs. Lane, too, knew it was different this time. She should have called, “Where’s your hat, Miss Enola?” for I never wore one. But she said nothing as she watched me go.

  Go to have a look around for my mother.

  I really thought I could find her myself.

  Once out of sight of the kitchen, I began running back and forth like a beagle, hunting for any sign of Mum. Yesterday morning, as a birthday treat, I had been allowed to lie abed; therefore I had not seen my mother go out. But assuming that she had, as usual, spent some hours drawing studies of flowers and plants, I looked for her first on the grounds of Ferndell.

  Managing her estate, Mum liked to let growing things alone. I rambled through flower gardens run wild, lawns invaded by gorse and brambles, forest shrouded in grape and ivy vines. And all the while the grey sky wept rain on me.

  The old collie dog, Reginald, trotted along with me until he grew tired of getting wet, then left to find shelter. Sensible creature. Soaked to my knees, I knew I should do likewise, but I could not. My anxiety had accelerated, along with my gait, until now terror drove me like a lash. Terror that my mother lay out here somewhere, hurt or sick or—a fear I could not entirely deny, as Mum was far from young—she might have been struck down by heart failure. She might be—but one could not even think it so baldly; there were other words. Expired. Crossed over. Passed away. Gone to join my father.

  No. Please.

  One would think that, as Mother and I were not “close,” I should not have minded her disappearance very much. But quite the contrary; I felt dreadful, because it seemed all my fault if anything had gone badly with her. Always I felt to blame for—for whatever, for breathing—because I had been born indecently late in Mother’s life, a scandal, a burden, you see. And always I had counted upon setting things right after I was grown. Someday, I hoped, somehow, I would make of my life a shining light that would lift me out of the shadow of disgrace.

  And then, you understand, my mother would love me.

  So she had to be alive.

  And I must find her.

  Searching, I crisscrossed forest where generations of squires had hunted hares and grouse; I climbed down and up the shelving, fern-draped rock of the grotto for which the estate was named—a place I loved, but today I did not linger. I continued to the edge of the park, where the woods ended and the farmland began.

  And I searched onward into the fields, for Mum may very well have gone there, for the sake of the flowers. Being not too far from the city, Ferndell tenants had taken to farming bluebells and pansies and lilies instead of vegetables, as they could better prosper by delivering fresh blossoms daily to Covent Garden. Here grew rows of roses, crops of coreopsis, flaming patches of zinnias and poppies, all for London. Looking on the fields of flowers, I dreamt of a bright city where every day smiling maids placed fresh bouquets in every chamber of the mansions, where every evening gentlewomen and royal ladies decked and scented themselves, their hair and gowns, with anemones and violets. London, where—

  But today the acres of flowers hung sodden with rain, and my dreams of London lasted only a breath or two before evaporating like the mist steaming up from the fields. Vast fields. Miles of fields.

  Where was Mother?

  In my dreams, you see—my Mum dreams, not the London ones—I would find her myself, I would be a heroine, she would gaze up at me in gratitude and adoration when I rescued her.

  But those were dreams and I was a fool.

  So far I had searched only a quarter of the estate, much less the farmlands. If Mum lay injured, she’d give up the ghost before I could find her all by myself.

  Turning, I hurried back to the hall.

  There, Lane and Mrs. Lane swooped upon me like a pair of turtledoves upon the nest, he plucking sopping coat and umbrella and boots from me, she hustling me towards the kitchen to get warm. While it was not her place to scold me, she made her views plain. “A person would have to be simpleminded to stay out in the rain for hours on end,” she told the big coal-burning stove as she levered one of its lids off. “Don’t matter whether a person is common or aristocrat, if a person catches a chill, it could kill her.” This to the teakettle she was placing on the stove. “Consumption is no respecter of persons or circumstances.” To the tea canister. There was no need for me to respond, for she wasn’t talking to me. She would not have been permitted to say anything of the sort to me. “It’s all very well for a person to be of an independent mind without going looking for quinsy or pleurisy or pneumonia or worse.” To the teacups. Then she turned to face me, and her tone also about-faced. “Begging your pardon, Miss Enola, will you take luncheon? Won’t you draw your chair closer to the stove?”

  “I’ll brown like toast if I do. No, I do not require luncheon. Has there been any word of Mother?” Although I already knew the answer—for Lane or Mrs. Lane would h
ave told me at once if they had heard anything—still, I could not help asking.

  “Nothing, miss.” She swaddled her hands in her apron as if wrapping a baby.

  I stood. “Then there are some notes I must write.”

  “Miss Enola, there’s no fire in the library. Let me bring the things to you here at the table, miss.”

  I felt just as glad not to have to sit in the great leather chair in that gloomy room. Into the warm kitchen Mrs. Lane fetched paper imprinted with our family crest, the ink pot and the fountain pen from the library desk, along with some blotting paper.

  Dipping the pen into the ink, on the cream-coloured stationery I wrote a few words to the local constabulary, informing them that my mother seemed to have gone astray and requesting them to kindly organise a search for her.

  Then I sat thinking: Did I really have to?

  Unfortunately, yes. I could put it off no longer.

  More slowly I wrote another note, one that would soon wing for miles via wire to be printed out by a teletype machine as:

  LADY EUDORIA VERNET HOLMES MISSING SINCE YESTERDAY STOP PLEASE ADVISE STOP ENOLA HOLMES

  I directed this wire to Mycroft Holmes, of Pall Mall, in London.

  And also, the same message, to Sherlock Holmes, of Baker Street, also in London.

  My brothers.

  CHAPTER THE SECOND

  AFTER SIPPING THE TEA URGED UPON ME by Mrs. Lane, I changed to dry knickerbockers and started off to deliver my notes to the village.

  “But the rain—the wet—Dick will take them,” Mrs. Lane offered, wringing her hands in her apron again.

  Her grown son, she meant, who did odd jobs around the estate, while Reginald, the somewhat more intelligent collie dog, supervised him. Rather than tell Mrs. Lane I did not trust Dick with this important errand, I said, “I shall make some inquiries while I’m there. I will take the bicycle.”