The Case of the Missing Marquess Read online

  This was not some old high-wheeled bone-shaker, but an up-to-date “dwarf” bicycle with pneumatic tyres, perfectly safe.

  Pedalling through the drizzle, I stopped for a moment at the lodge—Ferndell is small for a hall, really only a stone house with its chest puffed out, so to speak, but it needs must have a drive, a gate, and therefore a lodge.

  “Cooper,” I asked the lodge-keeper, “would you open the gate for me? And by the way, do you happen to recall opening it for my mother yesterday?”

  To which, not quite masking his astonishment at such a question, he replied in the negative. At no time had Lady Eudoria Holmes passed this way.

  After he had let me out, I pedalled the short distance to Kineford village.

  At the post office I sent my telegrams. Then I left off my note at the constabulary, and spoke with the officer, before I began my rounds. I stopped at the vicarage, the greengrocer’s, the bakery, the confectionery, the butcher’s shop, the fishmonger’s, and so forth, inquiring after my mother as discreetly as I could. No one had seen her. The vicar’s wife, among others, raised her eyebrows at me. I supposed it was because of my knickerbockers. For public cycling, you see, I should have been wearing “rationals”—bloomers covered by a waterproof skirt—or indeed any kind of skirt long enough to conceal my ankles. I knew my mother was criticised for failing properly to drape vulgar surfaces such as coal scuttles, the back of her piano, and me.

  Shocking child that I was.

  I never questioned my disgrace, for to do so would have been to broach matters of which a “nice” girl must remain ignorant. I had observed, however, that most married women disappeared into the house every year or two, emerging several months later with a new child, to the number of perhaps a dozen, until they either ceased or expired. My mother, by comparison, had produced only my two much older brothers. Somehow this prior restraint made my late arrival all the more shameful for a gentleman Rationalist logician and his well-bred artistic wife.

  The eyebrow-raisers bent their heads together and whispered as I pedalled around Kineford again, this time inquiring at the inn, the smithy, the tobacconist’s, and the public house, places where “nice” females seldom set foot.

  I learned nothing.

  And despite my best smiles and by-the-way manner, I could almost hear a crescendo of excited gossip, conjecture, and rumour rising behind me as I returned to Ferndell Hall in an unhappy state of mind.

  “No one has seen her,” I answered Mrs. Lane’s mute, questioning glance, “or has any idea where she might be.”

  Again waving aside her offers of luncheon—although now it was nearly tea-time—I trudged upstairs to my mother’s suite of rooms and stood outside the hallway door, considering. Mum kept her door locked. To spare Mrs. Lane the trouble, supposedly—for Lane and Mrs. Lane were the only house-servants—Mum cleaned her rooms herself. She hardly ever allowed anyone to enter, but under the circumstances . . .

  I decided to go ahead.

  Laying my hand upon the doorknob, I fully expected I would have to hunt up Lane to get the key.

  But the knob turned in my grasp.

  The door opened.

  And I knew in that moment, if I had not known before, that everything had changed.

  Looking about me in the hush of my mother’s sitting room, I felt rather more worshipful than if I were in a chapel. I had read Father’s logic books, you see, and Malthus, and Darwin; like my parents I held rational and scientific views—but being in Mum’s room made me feel as if I wanted to believe. In something. The soul, perhaps, or the spirit.

  Mum had made this room a sanctuary of the artistic spirit. Panels of Japanese lotus-patterned silk dressed the windows, drawn back to let in the light upon slender furnishings of maple wood carved to resemble bamboo, very different from the hulking dark mahogany in the parlour. Down there all the wood was varnished, heavy serge draped the windows, and from the walls stared grim oil portraits of ancestors, but here in my mother’s domain the wood had been painted white, and on pastel walls hung a hundred delicate watercolours: Mum’s airy, lovingly detailed renditions of flowers, each picture no larger than a sheet of writing paper, lightly framed.

  For a moment I felt as if Mum were here in this room, had been here all the time.

  Would that it were so.

  Softly, as if I might disturb her, I tiptoed into the next room, her studio: a plain room with bare windows for the sake of light and a bare oak floor for the sake of cleaning. Scanning the easel, the tilted art table, the shelves of paper and supplies, I caught sight of a wooden box and frowned.

  Wherever Mum had gone, she had not taken her watercolour kit with her.

  But I had assumed—

  How very stupid of me. I should have looked here first. She had not gone out to study flowers at all. She had gone—somewhere, some why, I simply did not know, and how had I ever thought I could find her myself? I was stupid, stupid, stupid.

  My steps heavy now, I walked through the next door, into Mum’s bedroom.

  And halted, astonished, for several reasons. First and foremost the state of Mum’s shining, modern brass bed: unmade. Every morning of my life, Mum had seen to it that I made my bed and tidied my room immediately after breakfast; surely she would not leave her own bed with linens thrown back and pillows askew and eiderdown comforter sliding onto the Persian carpet?

  Moreover, her clothes had not been properly put away. Her brown tweed walking suit had been most carelessly thrown over the top of the standing mirror.

  But if not her customary walking outfit—with its skirt that could be drawn up by strings so that only petticoats need get wet or soiled, yet let down at a moment’s notice should a male appear on the horizon—if not this very practical, up-to-date garment for the country, then what had she worn?

  Parting the velvet drapes to admit light from the windows, I threw open the wardrobe doors, then stood trying to make sense of the jumble of clothing inside: wool, worsted, muslin, and cotton but also damask, silk, tulle, and velvet. Mum was, you see, very much a free thinker, a woman of character, a proponent of female suffrage and dress reform, including the soft, loose, Aesthetic gowns advocated by Ruskin—but also, whether she liked it or not, she was a squire’s widow, with certain obligations. So there were walking costumes and “rationals” but also formal visiting dresses, a low-necked dinner dress, an opera cloak, and a ball gown—the same rusty-purple one Mum had worn for years; she did not care whether she was in fashion. Nor did she throw anything away. There were the black “widow’s weeds” she had worn for a year after my father’s demise. There was a bronze-green habit left over from her fox-hunting days. There was her grey caped pavement-sweeping suit for city wear. There were fur mantles, quilted satin jackets, paisley skirts, blouses upon blouses . . . I could not make out what garments might be missing from that bewilderment of mauve, maroon, grey-blue, lavender, olive, black, amber, and brown.

  Closing the wardrobe doors, I stood puzzled, looking about me.

  The entire room was in disarray. The two halves, or “stays,” of a corset, along with other unmentionables, lay in plain sight on the marble-topped washstand, and upon the dresser sat a peculiar object like a cushion, but all of a pouf, made of coils and clouds of white horsehair. I lifted this odd thing, rather springy to the touch, and making no sense of it, I carried it along with me on my way out of my mother’s rooms.

  In the downstairs hallway I encountered Lane polishing the woodwork. Showing him my find, I asked him, “Lane, what is this?”

  As a butler, he did his very best to remain expressionless, but he stammered slightly as he replied, “That is, um, ah, a dress improver, Miss Enola.”

  Dress improver?

  But not for the front, surely. Therefore, it must be for the rear.

  Oh.

  I held in my hands, in a public room of the hall, in the presence of a male, the unwhisperable that hid inside a gentlewoman’s bustle, supporting its folds and draperies.

&nbs
p; “I beg your pardon!” I exclaimed, feeling the heat of a blush rise in my face. “I had no idea.” Never having worn a bustle, I had not seen such an item before. “A thousand apologies.” But an urgent thought conquered my embarrassment. “Lane,” I asked, “in what manner was my mother dressed when she left the house yesterday morning?”

  “It’s difficult to recall, miss.”

  “Was she carrying any sort of baggage or parcel?”

  “No, indeed, miss.”

  “Not even a reticule or hand-bag?”

  “No, miss.” Mother seldom carried anything of the sort. “I think I would have noticed if she were.”

  “Was she by chance wearing a costume with a, um . . .” The word bustle would be indelicate when speaking to a male. “With a train? With tournure?”

  Very unlike her, if so.

  But with memory dawning in his eyes, Lane nodded. “I cannot bring to mind her exact apparel, Miss Enola, but I do recall she wore her Turkey-back jacket.”

  The kind of jacket that would accommodate a bustle.

  “And her high-crowned grey hat.”

  I knew that hat. Meant to be military in appearance, resembling an upside-down flowerpot, it was sometimes, by the vulgar, called three-storeys-and-a-basement.

  “And she carried her walking umbrella.”

  A long black implement meant to be used like a cane, as sturdy as a gentleman’s stick.

  How odd that my mother should go out with a mannish umbrella, a mannish hat, yet swishing that most flirtatious feminine tail, a bustle.

  CHAPTER THE THIRD

  JUST BEFORE DINNERTIME, A BOY BROUGHT a reply from my brothers:

  ARRIVING FIRST MORNING TRAIN CHAUCERLEA STOP PLEASE MEET AT STATION STOP M & S HOLMES

  Chaucerlea, the nearest town with a railway station, lay ten miles beyond Kineford.

  In order to meet the early train, I would have to set off at dawn.

  In preparation, that evening I bathed—quite a bother, dragging the metal tub out from under the bed and placing it before the hearth, hauling buckets of water upstairs and then teakettles of boiling water to pour in for warmth. Mrs. Lane was of no help, for—even though it was summertime—she needs must build a fire in my bedchamber, all the while declaring to the kindling, the coals, and finally the flames that no sane person would bathe on such a damp day. I wanted to wash my hair, also, but I could not do so without Mrs. Lane’s assistance, and she developed a sudden rheumatism in her arms while declaring to the towels she was heating, “It’s no more than three weeks since the last time, and the weather not nearly warm enough.”

  I bundled into bed directly after my bath, and Mrs. Lane, still muttering, placed hot water bottles at my feet.

  In the morning I brushed my hair a full one hundred strokes, trying to render it glossy, then tied it back with a white ribbon to match my frock—girls of the upper classes must wear white, you know, to show every fleck of dirt. I wore my newest, least soiled frock, with very nice white lace pantalets below, and the traditional black stockings with black boots, freshly polished by Lane.

  After so much dressing at such an early hour I had no time for breakfast. Snatching a shawl from the rack in the hallway—for it was a very chilly morning—I set off on the bicycle, pedalling hard in order to be on time.

  Cycling, I have found, allows one to think without fear of one’s facial expressions being observed.

  It was a relief, yet hardly a comfort, to think about recent events as I sped through Kineford and turned onto the Chaucerlea Way.

  I wondered what in the world had happened to my mother.

  Trying not to dwell on that, I wondered whether I would have difficulty finding the railway station, and my brothers.

  I wondered why on earth Mum had named my brothers “Mycroft” and “Sherlock.” Backwards, their names spelled Tforcym and Kcolrehs.

  I wondered whether Mum was all right.

  Think instead about Mycroft and Sherlock.

  I wondered whether I would recognise them at the train station. I had not seen them since I was four years old, at Father’s funeral; all I remembered of them was that they had seemed very tall in their top-hats draped in black crepe, and severe in their black frock coats, their black gloves, their black armbands, their gleaming black patent leather boots.

  I wondered whether Father had really expired of mortification due to my existence, as the village children liked to tell me, or whether he had succumbed to fever and pleurisy as Mum said.

  I wondered whether my brothers would recognise me after ten years.

  Why they had not visited Mother and me, and why we had not visited them, of course I knew: because of the disgrace I had brought upon my family by being born. My brothers could ill afford to associate with us. Mycroft was a busy, influential man with a career in government service in London, and my brother Sherlock was a famous detective with a book written about him, A Study in Scarlet, by his friend and fellow lodger, Dr. John Watson. Mum had bought a copy—

  Don’t think about Mum.

  —and we had both read it. Ever since, I had been dreaming of London, the great seaport, the seat of monarchy, the hub of high society, yet, according to Dr. Watson, “that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained.” London, where men in white ties and women decked with diamonds attended the opera while, in the streets, heartless cabbies drove horses to exhaustion, according to another favourite book of mine, Black Beauty. London, where scholars read in the British Museum and crowds thronged theatres to be Mesmerised. London, where famous people held séances to communicate with the spirits of the dead, while other famous people tried to scientifically explain how a Spiritualist had levitated himself out of a window and into a waiting carriage.

  London, where penniless boys wore rags and ran wild in the streets, never going to school. London, where villains killed ladies of the night—I had no clear idea what these were—and took their babies in order to sell them into slavery. In London there were royalty and cutthroats. In London there were master musicians, master artists, and master criminals who kidnapped children and forced them to labour in dens of iniquity. I had no clear idea what those were, either. But I knew that my brother Sherlock, sometimes employed by royalty, ventured into the dens of iniquity to match wits against thugs, thieves, and the princes of crime. My brother Sherlock was a hero.

  I remembered Dr. Watson’s listing of my brother’s accomplishments: scholar, chemist, superb violinist, expert marksman, swordsman, singlestick fighter, pugilist, and brilliant deductive thinker.

  Then I formed a mental list of my own accomplishments: able to read, write, and do sums; find birds’ nests; dig worms and catch fish; and, oh yes, ride a bicycle.

  The comparison being so dismal, I stopped thinking to devote my attention to the road, as I had reached the edge of Chaucerlea.

  The crowd in the cobbled streets daunted me somewhat. I had to wind my way among persons and vehicles unknown in the dirt lanes of Kineford: men selling fruit from barrows, women with baskets peddling sweets, nannies pushing prams, too many pedestrians trying not to be run over by too many carts, coaches, and gigs, beer-wagons and coal-wagons and lumber-wagons, a carriage, even an omnibus pulled by no less than four horses. Amid all this, how was I to find the railway station?

  Wait. I saw something. Rising over the house-tops like an ostrich feather upon a lady’s hat stood a white plume in the grey sky. The smoke of a steam locomotive.

  Pedalling towards it, I soon heard a roaring, shrieking, clanging noise—the engine coming in. I arrived at the platform just as it did.

  Only a few passengers got off, and among them I had no difficulty recognising two tall male Londoners who had to be my brothers. They wore gentlemen’s country attire: dark tweed suits with braid edging, soft ties, bowler hats. And kid gloves. Only gentry wore gloves at the height of summer. One of my brothers had grown a bit stout, showing an expanse of silk waistcoat. That would be Mycroft, I s
upposed, the older by seven years. The other—Sherlock—stood straight as a rake and lean as a greyhound in his charcoal suit and black boots.

  Swinging their walking sticks, they turned their heads from side to side, looking for something, but their scrutiny passed right over me.

  Meanwhile, everyone on the platform stole glances at them.

  And to my annoyance, I found myself trembling as I hopped off my bicycle. A strip of lace from my pantalets, confounded flimsy things, caught on the chain, tore loose, and dangled over my left boot.

  Trying to tuck it up, I dropped my shawl.

  This would not do. Taking a deep breath, leaving my shawl on my bicycle and my bicycle leaning against the station wall, I straightened and approached the two Londoners, not quite succeeding in holding my head high.

  “Mr. Holmes,” I asked, “and, um, Mr. Holmes?”

  Two pairs of sharp grey eyes fixed upon me. Two pairs of aristocratic brows lifted.

  I said, “You, um, you asked me to meet you here.” “Enola?” they both exclaimed at once, and then in rapid alternation:

  “What are you doing here? Why did you not send the carriage?”

  “We should have known her; she looks just like you, Sherlock.” The taller, leaner one was indeed Sherlock, then. I liked his bony face, his hawk eyes, his nose like a beak, but I sensed that for me to look like him was no compliment.

  “I thought she was a street urchin.”

  “On a bicycle?”

  “Why the bicycle? Where’s the carriage, Enola?”

  I blinked: Carriage? There were a landau and a phaeton gathering dust in the carriage house, but there had been no horses for many years, not since my mother’s old hunter had gone on to greener pastures.

  “I could have hired horses, I suppose,” I said slowly, “but I would not know how to harness or drive them.”

  The stout one, Mycroft, exclaimed, “Why are we paying a stable boy, then, and a groom?”