The Case of the Missing Marquess Read online

  Dawn had progressed to a dull sunrise, threatening rain. Shopkeepers were just opening their shutters, the ice-man was hitching up his sway-backed nag to make his rounds, a yawning maid threw a bucket of something unspeakable into the gutter, a ragged woman swept a street crossing. Newsboys heaved stacks of the morning edition towards the curb. A match-seller sitting at a corner—a beggar, really—cried, “Let there be light; a match for the gentleman?” Some of those who passed by were indeed gentlemen in top-hats, others workmen in flannels and caps, yet others nearly as ragged as himself, but he cried “gentleman” to them all. He made no attempt to sell a match to me, of course, for ladies did not smoke.

  BELVIDERE TONSORIUM declared gold letters painted on the glass of a door beside a red-and-white spiral-striped pole. Ah, I had heard of a town called Belvidere, satisfactorily distant from Kineford. Looking about me, I saw SAVINGS BANK OF BELVIDERE carved upon the stone lintel of a stately building nearby. Very good; I had achieved my goal. Well done, I thought, picking my way between horse droppings, for a mere girl of limited cranial capacity.

  “Onions, potatoes, parsnips!” called a man pushing a barrow.

  “Fresh carnation for the gent’s buttonhole!” cried a shawled woman offering flowers from a basket.

  “Shocking kidnapping! Read all about it!” bellowed a newsboy.

  Kidnapping?

  “Viscount Tewksbury snatched from Basilwether Hall!”

  I did indeed want to read all about it, but first I wanted to find the railway station.

  With this in mind, I followed a top-hatted, frock-coated, kid-gloved gentleman who was positioning a fresh carnation upon his lapel. Formally dressed, perhaps he was going to the city for the day.

  Affirming my hypothesis, soon I heard the rumble of an approaching engine crescendo to a roar that shook the pavement beneath my boots. Then I could see the peaked roof and turrets of the station, with the clock in its tower reading just half past seven, and I could hear the shriek and whine of brakes as the train pulled in.

  Whether my unwitting escort travelled to London, I will never know, for as we approached the station platform, my attention was all taken up by the scene unfolding there.

  A gawking crowd had gathered. A number of constables formed a line to keep the onlookers back, while yet more officials in blue uniform strode forward to meet the newly arrived train, an engine pulling a single car importantly labeled POLICE EXPRESS. Out of this stepped several men in travelling cloaks. These swept the ground impressively enough, but the ear-flaps of the matching cloth caps done up in bows atop their heads looked like little bunny ears, quite silly, I thought as I started to edge through the crowd towards the ticket window of the station.

  As if I had walked into a pot on the boil, all around me bubbled excited voices.

  “It’s Scotland Yard, right enough. Plainclothes detectives.”

  “I heard they sent for Sherlock Holmes, too—”

  Oh, my goodness. Halting, eagerly I listened.

  “—but he won’t come, he’s called away by family—”

  The speaker passed by, confound it, and I heard no more of my brother, although other babble aplenty.

  “My cousin’s the second assistant upstairs maid at the big house—”

  “The duchess has gone clean out of her head, folk say.”

  “—and she says they—”

  “And the duke is fit to be tied.”

  “Old Pickering at the bank says they’re still waiting for a ransom demand.”

  “Who’d want the boy if not for ransom?”

  Hmm. It would seem that the “Shocking Kidnapping!” had taken place close by. Indeed, watching the detectives pile into quite a lovely landau, I saw them being trotted off towards a green park not far beyond the railway station. Above the trees rose the grey Gothic towers of—from the talk around me—Basilwether Hall.

  How interesting.

  But first things first. I must purchase a ticket—

  However, according to the large schedule posted upon the station wall, there would be no lack of trains to London. Every hour or so all day and into the evening.

  “Duke’s son gone missing! Read all about it!” shrieked a newsboy standing beneath the schedule.

  While no believer in providence, I had to wonder how chance had placed me here, on this scene of crime, and my brother the great detective elsewhere. My thoughts became unruly, and their lure irresistible. Abandoning my attempt to reach the ticket window, I bought a newspaper instead.

  CHAPTER THE NINTH

  AT A TEA-SHOP BESIDE BELVIDERE STATION, I sat at a corner table, facing the wall in order to lift my veil. I needed to do this for two purposes: to breakfast upon tea and scones, and to look at young Viscount Tewksbury Basilwether’s photographic likeness.

  Occupying nearly half the front page of the newspaper, a formal studio portrait showed the boy dressed in—heavens have mercy, I hoped he wasn’t made to wear velvet and frills every day—but how else might he go about with his fair hair, rendered artistic by the curling tongs, hanging to his shoulders? All too apparently his mother had fallen in love with Little Lord Fauntleroy, wretched book responsible for the agonies of a generation of well-born boys. Got up in the height of Fauntleroy fashion, little Lord Tewksbury wore patent leather buckle slippers, white stockings, black velvet knee pants with satin bows at the sides, and a satin sash under his black velvet jacket with its flowing white lace cuffs and collar. He stared at the camera with no expression whatsoever on his face, but I thought I saw a trace of hardness around his jaw.

  DUKE’S HEIR OF TENDER YEARS

  HORRIFICALLY MISSING .

  screamed the headline. Reaching for a second scone, I read:

  A scene of the most alarming implications unfolded early Wednesday morning at Basilwether Hall, ancestral home of the Dukes of Basilwether, near the thriving town of Belvidere, when an under-gardener noticed that one of the French doors of the billiards room had been broken into. The household staff then being alerted, next discovered that the lock of the room’s interior door had been forced, the woodwork showing the marks of a vicious knife. Naturally fearful of burglary, the butler checked the silverware pantry and discovered nothing missing. Nor were the plate and candelabra of the dining room disturbed, or the innumerable valuable contents of the drawing-room, the gallery, the library, or anywhere else in Basilwether Hall’s extensive premises. Indeed no further doors had been forced downstairs. It was not until the upstairs maids commenced carrying the customary ewers of hot water to the ducal family’s quarters for their matutinal ablutions, that Viscount Tewksbury, Marquess of Basilwether’s chamber door was found standing ajar. His furnishings, strewn about the room, bore mute witness to a desperate struggle, and of his noble personage there was no sign. The Viscount, Lord Basilwether’s heir and, indeed, his only son, a mere twelve years of age—

  “Twelve?” I exclaimed, incredulous.

  “What is that, madam?” asked the hostess behind me.

  “Ah, nothing.” Hastily I lowered the newspaper to the table and my veil to cover my face. “I thought he was younger.” Much younger, in his curled tresses and storybook suit. Twelve! Why, the boy should be wearing a sturdy woollen jacket and knickers, an Eton collar with a tie, and a decent, manly haircut—

  Thoughts, I realised, all too similar to those of my brother Sherlock upon meeting me.

  “Poor lost Lord Tewksbury, you mean? Aye, his mother has kept him a baby. One hears she’s wild with grief, unfortunate lady.”

  I pushed back my chair, left a halfpenny on the table, exited the tea-shop and, after entrusting my carpet-bag to a porter at the railway station, walked towards Basilwether Park.

  This would be far better than searching for bright pebbles and birds’ nests. Something truly valuable was to be found, and I wanted to find it. And I believed perhaps I could. I knew where Lord Tewksbury might be. I just knew, although I did not know how to prove it. All the way up the long drive lined with giant
poplar trees I walked in a kind of trance, imagining where he might have gone.

  The first gates stood open, but at the second gates, a lodge-keeper stopped me, his duty being to keep out the idle curious, newspaper reporters, and the like. He asked me, “Your name, ma’am?”

  “Enola Holmes,” I said without thinking.

  Instantly I felt so inexcusably stupid, I wanted to expire on the spot. Running away, I had of course chosen a new name for myself: Ivy Meshle. “Ivy” for fidelity—to my mother. “Meshle” as a kind of cipher. Take “Holmes,” divide it into hol mes, reverse it into mes hol, Meshol, then spell it the way it was pronounced: Meshle. It would be a rare soul who could connect me with anyone else in England (“Are you related to the Sussex Meshles of Tottering Heath?”), much less to anyone named Holmes. Ivy Meshle. So clever. Ivy Meshle! And now like an imbecile I had told this lodge-keeper, “Enola Holmes.”

  Judging by his blank face, the name meant nothing to him. Yet. If any foxhunt after me had begun, the view-halloo had not yet reached this area or this man. “And your business here, Mrs., um, Holmes?” he asked.

  Having been a fool, I decided, I might as well make the most of it. I said, “As Mr. Sherlock Holmes could not himself attend to this matter, he asked me to come and have a look about.”

  The lodge-keeper’s brows lurched, and he blurted, “You’re related to the detective, ma’am?”

  “Indeed,” I replied, my tone quelling, and I swept past him, marching into Basilwether Park.

  The hall, rising before me at the circular end of the drive, would have held ten of Ferndell—but I did not approach its wide marble steps or its pillared doors. My interest did not lie in that noble residence, nor in the formal gardens all around it, studded with topiaries and glittering with well-disciplined roses. Veering away from the drive, I walked across an expanse of lawn towards Basilwether Park proper, that is to say, the woodlands surrounding the hall and gardens.

  Not forest. Woodlands. Stepping beneath the trees, expecting to meet a few thickets, a patch of moss or two, some kindred brambles, I found instead soft grass trimmed short enough to play croquet upon.

  A tame place, this. Walking along, I discovered no interesting hollows, dells, or grottos. Basilwether Hall’s estate was flat and featureless. How disappointing, I thought as I emerged onto lawn again. The only possibility might be—

  “Mrs. Holmes!” cried a wild soprano voice, and I turned to see the distraught mother, the duchess, hurtling towards me. I knew it was she because of the richness of her day dress, the heavy braiding and embroidery on her silver-grey capelet over a gown of shirred mauve drawn back from a pleated underskirt of rose-grey satin. But there was nothing of richness in the tears stark on her staring face, and nothing of the nobility in the way she flew at me between the trees like a bloodied swan, wings of nearly white hair falling out from under her hat to flap about her shoulders.

  A pair of frightened-looking maids came hurrying up behind her. In their aprons and white lace caps, they must have run straight out of the house after her. “Your Grace,” they cried, coaxing, “Your Grace, please come in, do, and have a cup of tea. Please, it’s going to rain.” But the duchess seemed not to hear them.

  “Mrs. Holmes.” I felt her bare hands trembling as she grasped at me. “You are a woman, with a woman’s heart; tell me, who could have done this evil thing? Where could my Tewky be? What am I to do?”

  Holding her quivering hands in both my own, I felt grateful for the heavy veil hiding my dismayed face, grateful for the gloves that separated my warm flesh from hers, so cold. “Have courage, um, Your Grace, and, um . . .” I fumbled for words. “Be of good hope.” Then I could blunder on. “Let me ask you this: was there anywhere . . .” The way she doted on him, she might have spied or surmised. “A place on the grounds where your son would go to be alone?”

  “To be alone?” Her swollen, red-rimmed eyes blinked at me utterly without comprehension. “Whatever do you mean?”

  “Sheerest nonsense,” proclaimed a resonant alto voice behind me. “This insignificant widow knows nothing. I will find the lost child, Your Grace.”

  Turning, I found myself looking at the most extraordinary woman, even taller than I and far bulkier, shockingly hatless and uncoifed. Her wiry hair spread about her head, shoulder to shoulder, for all the world as if she were a white lamp and her hair a red shade: not chestnut, not auburn, but true red, almost scarlet, the colour of a poppy blossom, while her eyes glared out of her rice-powdered face as sooty dark as a poppy’s black heart. So arresting were her hair and face that I barely noticed her clothing. I have only a vague impression of cotton, perhaps from Egypt or India, in some barbaric crimson pattern, petalled around her massive body as wildly as the poppy-hued hair around her face.

  The duchess gasped, “Madame Laelia? Oh, you’ve come, as I begged you to, Madame Laelia!”

  Madame what? Madame Spiritualist Medium, I surmised, this being one role in which women, the morally and spiritually superior gender, commanded greater respect than men. But such characters—or charlatans, as my mother would have it—evoked the spirits of the dead. And surely the duchess most fervidly hoped her son was not one of those, so what was this oversized female doing—

  “Madame Laelia Sibyl de Papaver, Astral Perditorian, at your service,” the statuesque one proclaimed. “Whatever is lost, I can surely find, for the spirits go everywhere, know all, see all, and they are my friends.”

  The duchess now seized upon this woman’s large yellow-gloved hands, while I, like the two meek maids, stood there with my mouth airing, thunder-struck. But, in my case, not by this woman’s grotesque appearance. Nor by her talk of spirits. While I wanted to believe that I would somehow persevere after my corporeal body was gone, I imagined that if it were so, I would have better things to do than to knock on furniture, ring bells, and shake tables. Nor did the word astral impress me. Of all that Madame Laelia Sibyl de Papaver had said, it was a single word that rendered me motionless and speechless.

  That word: Perditorian.

  From the Latin perditus, meaning “lost.”

  Perditorian: one who divines that which is lost.

  But . . . but how dare she, with all her blather of spirits, title herself so nobly? Knower of the lost, wise woman of the lost, finder of the lost: That was my calling.

  I was a perditorian. Or I would be. Not astral. Professional. The world’s first professional, logical, scientific perditorian.

  All in one gasping breath of inspiration, I knew this as surely as I knew my real name was Holmes.

  I scarcely noticed how the maids escorted the duchess and Madame Laelia into the hall, perhaps for tea, perhaps for a séance; I did not care. Back in the woodlands that encircled Basilwether Park, I walked at random, oblivious to the drizzle that had begun to fall, my thoughts running wild with excitement, building upon my original scheme to find Mum.

  That plan remained simple: Upon arriving in London, I would hail a cab, tell the driver to take me to a respectable hotel, and have dinner and a good night’s sleep. Staying at the hotel until I found suitable lodgings, I would set up bank accounts—no, first I would go to Fleet Street and place encrypted “personals” in the publications I knew Mum read. Wherever she was, would she not continue to read her favourite journals? Of course. I would wait until Mum replied. Just wait.

  That would suffice, if—as I often found it necessary to reassure myself—if indeed Mum was alive and well.

  In any event, wait was all I could do.

  Or so I had thought. But now, now that I had found my calling in life, I could do so much more. Let my brother Sherlock be The World’s Only Private Consulting Detective all he liked; I would be The World’s Only Private Consulting Perditorian. As such, I could associate with professional women who met in their own tea-rooms around London—women who might know Mum!—and with the detectives of Scotland Yard—where Sherlock had already filed an inquiry concerning Mum—and with other dignitaries, and also perhap
s with disreputable persons who had information to sell, and—oh, the possibilities. I was born to be a perditorian. A finder of loved ones lost. And—

  And I ought to stop dreaming about it and start doing it. Right now.

  The only possibility, as I had been thinking before I was interrupted, seemed to be perhaps a tree.

  Backtracking through the boringly well-tended woodlands of Basilwether Park, I concentrated now on looking for that particular tree. It would be located not too near Basilwether Hall and its formal garden, and not too near the edge of Basilwether Park, either, but in the middle of the woods, where adult eyes would be least likely to spy. And like my refuge under the overhanging willow in Ferndell’s fern dell, it had to be distinctive in some way. Different. Worthy of being a hideaway.

  The thin rain had stopped, the sun had come out, and I had nearly circled the estate before I found it.

  It was not one tree, actually, but four growing from a single base. Four maple seedlings had planted themselves in the same place, and all had survived to form a symmetrical cluster whose four trunks rose at a steep angle from one another, with a perfect square of space in between.

  Planting one booted foot upon a gnarl and grasping a handy bough, I swung myself up to stand perhaps three feet above the ground inside the encompassing V’s of the trunks, a perfect axis at the hub of a foursquare leaf-encircled universe. Delightful.

  Even more delightful: I saw that someone, presumably young Lord Tewksbury, had been here also. He had hammered a large nail—a railroad spike, actually—into the trunk of one of the trees on the inside. No one walking by was likely to notice it, but there it sturdily jutted.

  To hang something upon? No, a much smaller nail would have served that purpose. I knew what this spike was for.

  To set one’s foot upon. To climb.