The Case of the Missing Marquess Page 5

  I said, “I have always been a disgrace, I will always be a disgrace, and I am not going to be sent to any finishing establishment for young ladies.”

  “Yes, you are.”

  Glaring across the table at each other in the candle-lit twilight, we had given up any pretense of dining. I am sure he was aware, as I was, that both Lane and Mrs. Lane were eavesdropping in the hallway, but I, for one, did not care.

  I raised my voice. “No. Get me a governess if you must, but I am not going to any so-called boarding school. You cannot make me go.”

  He actually softened his tone, but said, “Yes, I can, and I shall.”

  “What do you mean? Shall you shackle me to take me there?”

  He rolled his eyes. “Just like her mother,” he declared to the ceiling, and then he fixed upon me a stare so martyred, so condescending, that I froze rigid. In tones of sweetest reason he told me, “Enola, legally I hold complete charge over both your mother and you. I can, if I wish, lock you in your room until you become sensible, or take whatever other measures are necessary in order to achieve that desired result. Moreover, as your older brother I bear a moral responsibility for you, and it is plain to see that you have run wild too long. I am perhaps only just in time to save you from a wasted life. You will do as I say.”

  In that moment I understood exactly how Mum had felt during those days after my father’s death.

  And why she had made no attempt to visit my brothers in London, or welcomed them to Ferndell Park.

  And why she had tricked money out of Mycroft. I stood up. “Dinner no longer appeals to me. You’ll excuse me, I’m sure.”

  I wish I could say I swept with cold dignity out of the room, but the truth is, I tripped over my skirt and stumbled to the stairs.

  CHAPTER THE SIXTH

  THAT NIGHT I COULD NOT SLEEP. INDEED, at first I could not even be still. In my nightgown, barefoot, I paced, paced, paced my bedroom as I imagined a lion at the London Zoo might pace his cage. Later, when I turned my coal-oil lamp low, put out my candles, and went to bed, my eyes would not close. I heard Mycroft retire to the guest bedroom; I heard Lane and Mrs. Lane tread upstairs to their quarters on the top floor, and still I lay staring at the shadows.

  The whole reason for my distress was not as obvious as may at first appear. It was Mycroft who had made me angry, but it was my changing thoughts about my mother that made me upset, almost queasy. It feels very queer to think of one’s mother as a person like oneself, not just a mum, so to speak. Yet there it was: She had been weak as well as strong. She had felt as trapped as I did. She had felt the injustice of her situation just as keenly. She had been forced to obey, as I would be forced to obey. She had wanted to rebel, as I desperately yearned to rebel, without knowing how I ever would or could.

  But in the end, she had managed it. Glorious rebellion.

  Confound her, why had she not taken me with her?

  Kicking off the covers to lunge out of bed, I turned up the oil lamp, stalked to my desk—its border of stencilled flowers did not cheer me now—seized paper and pencil from my drawing kit, and drew a furious picture of my mother, all wrinkles and jowls with her mouth a thin line, going off in her three-storeys-and-a-basement hat and her turkey-back jacket, flourishing her umbrella like a sword while the train of her ridiculous bustle trailed behind her.

  Why had she not taken me into her confidence? Why had she left me behind?

  Oh, very well, I could understand, however painfully, that she had not wanted to trust a young girl with her secret . . . but why had she not at least offered me some message of explanation or farewell?

  And why, oh why, had she chosen to leave on my birthday? Mum never in her life took a stitch without thread. She must have had a reason. What could it be?

  Because . . .

  I sat bolt upright at the desk, my mouth agape.

  Now I saw.

  From Mum’s point of view.

  And it made perfect sense. Mum was clever. Clever, clever, clever.

  She had left me a message.

  As a present.

  On my birthday. Which was why she had chosen that day of all days to leave. A day for the giving of gifts, so no one would notice—

  I leapt up. Where had I put it? I had to light a candle to carry with me so I could see to look around my bedroom. It was not on the bookshelf. It was not on any of the chairs, or my dresser, or my washstand, or my bed. It was not perched on the Noah’s Ark or the rocking horse, hand-me-downs from my brothers. Confound my stupid, muddled head, where had I put . . . there. In my neglected dollhouse, of all places, there it was: a slender sheaf of hand-painted, hand-lettered crisp artists’ papers, creased precisely in half and stitched together along the fold.

  I pounced upon it: the booklet of ciphers my mother had created for me.

  ALO NEK OOL NIY MSM UME HTN

  ASY RHC

  In my mother’s flyaway lettering.

  One glance at the first cipher made me shut my eyes, wanting to cry.

  Think, Enola.

  It was almost as if I heard my mother chiding me from inside my head. “Enola, you’ll do quite well on your own.”

  I opened my eyes, stared at the line of jumbled letters, and thought.

  Very well. First of all, a sentence would not likely have words all of three letters.

  Taking a fresh sheet of paper from my drawing kit, I pulled close the oil lamp on one hand and the candle on the other, then copied the cipher like this:

  ALONEKOOLNIYMSMUMEHTNASYRHC

  The first word sprang out at me: “alone.”

  Or was it “Enola”?

  Try it backwards.

  CHRYSANTHEMUMSMYINLOOKENOLA

  My eye passed over the first part to seize upon the letters “MUM.” Mum. Mother was sending me a message about herself?

  MUMS MY IN LOOK ENOLA

  The order of the words sounded backwards.

  ENOLA LOOK IN MY

  Oh, for Heaven’s sake. CHRYSANTHEMUMS. The border of flowers painted around the page should have told me. Gold and russet chrysanthemums.

  I had solved the cipher.

  I was not totally stupid.

  Or perhaps I was, for what on earth did it mean, “Enola, look in my chrysanthemums”? Had Mother buried something in a flower bed somewhere? Unlikely. I doubted she’d ever held a shovel in her life. Dick took care of such chores, and in any event, Mother was no gardener; she liked to let hardy flowers, such as the chrysanthemums, take care of themselves.

  The chrysanthemums outside. What would she consider her chrysanthemums?

  Downstairs the casement clock struck two. Never before had I been up so late at night. My mind felt as if it were floating, not quite anchored in my head anymore.

  I felt tired and calm enough to go to bed now. But I did not wish to.

  Wait. Mother had given me another book. The Meanings of Flowers. Reaching for it, I consulted the index, then looked up chrysanthemum.

  “The bestowing of chrysanthemums indicates familial attachment and, by implication, affection.”

  Implied affection was better than nothing.

  Idly, I looked up the sweet pea blossom.

  “Good-bye, and thank you for a lovely time. A gift made upon departure.”

  Departure.

  Next, I looked up thistles.

  “Defiance.”

  Grimly I smiled.

  So. Mum had left a message after all. Departure and defiance in the Japanese vase. In her airy sitting room with a hundred watercolours on the wall.

  Watercolours of flowers.

  I blinked, smiling wider. “Enola,” I whispered to myself, “that’s it.”

  “My” chrysanthemums. Mums that Mum had painted.

  And framed, and displayed on the wall of her sitting room.

  I knew.

  Without an inkling how anything could be “in” a mum painting or what it might be, I knew that I had understood rightly, and I knew that I must go and see. This very m
oment. At the darkest hour of night. When no one else, especially not my brother Mycroft, would know.

  Girls are supposed to play with dolls. Over the years, well-meaning adults had provided me with various dolls. I detested dolls, pulling their heads off when I could, but now I had finally found a use for them. Inside a yellow-haired doll’s hollow cranium, I had hidden the key to my mother’s rooms. It took me only a moment to retrieve it.

  Then, lowering the wick of the oil lamp and carrying my candle with me, I softly opened my bedroom door.

  My mother’s door stood on the opposite end of the hallway from mine, and directly across from the guest room.

  Where my brother Mycroft lay sleeping.

  I hoped he was sleeping.

  I hoped he was quite a sound sleeper.

  Barefoot, with candlestick in one hand and my precious key in the other, I tiptoed down the hallway.

  Issuing from behind Mycroft’s closed bedroom door came an uncouth drone rather like that of a hog lying in the sun.

  Evidently my brother snored.

  A good indication that he was indeed asleep.

  Excellent.

  As silently as possible I inserted and turned the key in the lock of my mother’s door. Still, the bolt snicked. And, as I turned the knob, the latch clicked.

  A snort interrupted the rhythm of Mycroft’s snoring.

  Looking at his bedchamber door over my shoulder, I froze.

  I heard some wallowing sounds, as if he were turning over. His bedstead creaked. Then he snored on.

  Slipping into Mum’s private parlour and closing the door behind me, I breathed out.

  Lifting the candle, I looked up at the walls.

  So many watercolours my mother had painted of so many different sorts of flowers.

  I searched the four walls, straining my eyes to see the pictures in the wan candlelight. At last I found a rendition of chrysanthemums, russet and gold, like the ones in my cipher book.

  Standing on tiptoe, I could just reach the bottom of the frame—a fragile one, carved like the furniture in my mother’s room to resemble sticks of bamboo, their ends crossed and projecting. Gently I lifted the frame, coaxing its wire off the nail to take it down. I carried it to the tea table, where I set my candle beside it and studied it.

  Enola, look in my chrysanthemums.

  Often enough I had seen Mum frame her pictures. The frame itself came first, facedown on a table. Then the glass, very clean. Then a kind of inner frame cut out of thick tinted paper. To this the top edge of the watercolour was lightly gummed. Then a backing of thin wood painted white. Tiny nails driven edgewise into the frame held everything in place, and finally Mother would paste brown paper over the back of the frame to hide the nails and keep out dust.

  I turned the chrysanthemum picture over and looked at its brown paper.

  Taking a deep breath, I pried at one corner with my fingernails, trying to peel the paper off in one piece. Instead, a long strip of brown tore away. But never mind. I saw something nestled at the bottom of the picture, between the brown paper and the wooden backing. Something folded. Something white.

  A note from Mum!

  A letter explaining her desertion, expressing her regrets and her affection, perhaps even inviting me to join her . . .

  With my heart pounding please, please, and with my fingers shaking, I fished out the rectangle of crisp paper.

  Trembling, I opened it.

  Yes, it was a note all right, from Mum. But not the sort of note for which I hoped.

  It was a Bank of England note for a hundred pounds.

  More money than most common folk saw in a year.

  But money was not what I wanted from my mother.

  I must admit that I cried myself to sleep. But sleep I did, finally, straight through the next morning, and no one disturbed me except that Mrs. Lane came in once and woke me to ask whether I felt ill. I told her no, I was just tired, and she left. I heard her say to someone, probably her husband, in the hallway, “She’s in a state of collapse, and no wonder, poor lamb.”

  When I awoke in the early afternoon, although very much wanting both breakfast and luncheon, I did not at once leap out of bed. Instead, I lay still for a moment and made myself consider my situation with a clear head.

  Very well. While not what I had hoped for, money was something.

  Mum had secretly given me a considerable sum.

  Which she had gotten, no doubt, from Mycroft.

  By deceitful means.

  Was it proper for me to keep it?

  It was not any money that Mycroft had ever earned. Rather, as far as I could understand, it was money that settled on him for being Father’s firstborn son.

  It was the inheritance of a squire. Centuries worth of rent money, with more coming in every year. And why? For the sake of Ferndell Hall and its estate.

  In a very real sense, the money, like the chandeliers, did go with the house.

  Which was, or should be, Mother’s house.

  Legally, the money was neither Mother’s nor mine. But morally—many, many times Mum had explained to me how unfair the laws were. If a woman laboured to write and publish a book, for instance, any money it earned was supposed to go to her husband. How absurd was that?

  How absurd, then, would it be for me to give that hundred-pound note back to my brother Mycroft just because he had been born first?

  Legalities could go jump in a lake, I decided to my satisfaction; morally, that money was mine. Mum had sacrificed and struggled to wrest it from the estate. And she had slipped it to me.

  How much more might there be? She had left me many ciphers.

  What did Mother mean for me to do with it?

  Already, dimly, by her example I knew the answer to that question.

  CHAPTER THE SEVENTH

  FIVE WEEKS LATER, I WAS READY.

  That is to say, in the eyes of Ferndell Hall I was ready to go to boarding school.

  And in my own mind, I was ready for a venture of quite a different sort.

  Regarding boarding school: The seamstress had arrived from London, settled herself in a long-vacant room once occupied by a lady’s maid, sighed over the old treadle sewing machine, and then taken my measurements. Waist: 20 inches. Tsk. Too large. Chest: 21 inches. Tsk. Far too small. Hips: 22 inches. Tsk. Dreadfully inadequate. But all could be set right. In a fashionable publication my mother would never have allowed in Ferndell Hall, the seamstress located the following advertisement:

  AMPLIFIER: Ideal Corset for perfecting thin figures. Words cannot describe its charming effect, which is unapproachable & unattainable by any other Corset in the World. Softly padded Regulators inside (with other improvements combining softness, lightness, & comfort) regulate at wearer’s pleasure any desired fullness with the graceful curves of a beautifully proportioned bust. Corset sent on approval in plain parcel on receipt of remittance. Guaranteed. Money returned if not satisfied. Avoid worthless substitutes.

  This device was duly ordered, and the seamstress began to produce prim, dim-coloured dresses with high whalebone-ribbed collars to strangle me, waistbands designed to choke my breathing, and skirts which, spread over half a dozen flounced silk petticoats, trailed on the floor so that I could barely walk. She proposed to sew two dresses with a 19½-inch waist, then two with a 19-inch waist, and so on to 18½ inches and smaller, in expectation that as I grew, I would diminish.

  Meanwhile, increasingly terse telegrams from Sherlock Holmes reported no word of Mother. He had tracked down her old friends, her fellow artists, her Suffragist associates; he had even travelled to France to check with her distant relations, the Vernets, but all to no avail. I had begun to feel afraid for Mum again; why had the great detective not been able to locate her? Might some accident have befallen her after all? Or, even worse, some foul crime?

  My thinking changed, however, upon the day the seamstress completed the first dress.

  At which time I was expected to put on the Ideal Corset (which had a
rrived, as promised, in discreet brown paper wrappings) with frontal and lateral regulators plus, of course, a Patent Dress Improver so that never again would my back be able to rest against that of any chair I sat in. Also, I was expected to wear my hair in a chignon secured with hairpins that dug into my scalp, with a fringe of false curls across my forehead similarly skewered. As my reward, I got to put on my new dress and, in new shoes just as torturous, toddle around the hall to practise being a young lady.

  That day I realised, with irrational yet complete certainty, where my mother had gone: someplace where there were no hairpins, no corsets (Ideal or Otherwise), and no Patent Dress Improvers.

  Meanwhile, brother Mycroft sent a telegram reporting that all was arranged—I was to present myself at such-and-such a “finishing school” (house of horrors) on such-and-such a date—and instructing Lane to see to my getting there.

  More importantly, regarding my own venture: I spent my days as much as I could in a dressing gown, keeping to my room and napping, pleading nervous prostration. Mrs. Lane, who frequently offered me calves’ foot jelly and the like (small wonder invalids waste away!), grew so worried that she communicated with Mycroft, who assured her that boarding school, where I would breakfast upon oatmeal and wear wool next to my skin, would restore my health. Nevertheless, she summoned first the local apothecary, and later a Harley Street physician all the way from London, neither of whom found anything wrong with me.

  Correctly enough. I was simply avoiding corsets, hairpins, tight shoes, and the like, while making up for lost sleep. No one knew that every night, after I had heard the rest of the household go to bed, I got up and worked on my cipher book through the dark hours. I enjoyed the ciphers after all, for I loved finding things, and Mum’s ciphers gave me a new way to do this, first discovering the hidden meaning, then the treasure. Each cipher I unraveled led me into Mum’s rooms in search of more riches she had secreted for me. Some of the ciphers I could not solve, which frustrated me so that I considered ripping the backing off of all Mum’s watercolours—but that hardly seemed sporting. Also, there were many, many, too many paintings, and moreover, not all of the ciphers directed me to them.