The Case of the Missing Marquess Page 8

  Oh, glorious day, to climb a tree once again after so many weeks of ladylike confinement . . . But oh, consternation, for what if anyone observed me? A widow lady in a tree?

  I looked all around, saw no one, and decided to chance it. Ridding myself of my hat and veil, concealing them in the leaves overhead, I hoisted my skirt and petticoats into a bunch above my knees, securing it with hatpins. Then, setting my foot upon the spike and seizing a branch, up I went.

  Twigs snagged my hair, but I didn’t care. Except for the usual jabs in the face, it was as easy as climbing a ladder—a good thing, as my sore limbs protested every inch of the way. But Lord Tewksbury, happily for me, had driven railroad spikes wherever no maple boughs presented themselves. Brilliant lad, this young viscount. No doubt he had obtained the spikes from the tracks that ran past his father’s estate. I hoped no trains had derailed on his account.

  After I had climbed twenty feet or so, I stopped to see where I was going. I tilted my head back—

  Good heavens.

  He had built a platform in the tree.

  A structure not at all visible from the ground when the trees were in leaf, but from my perch I could admire it clearly enough: a square framework made of scraps of unpainted lumber, set between the four maples. Supporting beams ran from trunk to trunk, wedged into place on tree limbs or else secured with cord lashed around the corners. Planks lay across the beams to form a crude sort of floor. I imagined him scavenging that wood from cellars or stable lofts or goodness knew where, dragging it here, maybe creeping out at night to lift it into the tree with a rope and set it in place.

  And all the time his mother applying the curling tongs to his hair, and clothing him in satin, velvet, and lace. Heaven have mercy.

  In one corner of the platform he had left an opening by which to enter. As I popped my head through, my respect for young Lord Tewksbury only increased. He had suspended a square of canvas, perhaps a wagon cover, as a roof over his hideaway. In the corners he had placed saddle-blankets presumably “borrowed” from the stable, folded to serve as cushions to sit upon. Into the four tree trunks he had driven nails from which hung loops of knotted cord, pictures of boats, a metal whistle, all sorts of interesting things.

  I crawled in to look.

  But at once my attention was arrested by a shocking sight in the middle of the plank floor.

  Scraps, fragments, rag-tag bits cut and torn so dreadfully that it took me a moment to recognise what they were: black velvet, white lace, baby-blue satin. Remains of what had once been clothing.

  And atop that heap of ruins, hair. Long, curled locks of golden hair.

  He must have shorn his head to stubble.

  After ripping his finery to shreds.

  Viscount Tewksbury had entered this refuge. Of his own free will. No kidnapper would have or could have brought him here.

  And by the looks of things, Viscount Tewksbury had left this hideaway as he had come, of his own free will. But no longer to be Viscount Tewksbury, Marquess of Basilwether.

  CHAPTER THE TENTH

  ON THE GROUND AGAIN, WITH MY SKIRTS down where they belonged, my black hat pinned in place to cover my unkempt head, and my veil pulled down to conceal my face, I walked blindly. I did not know what to do.

  Around one gloved forefinger I twisted a lock of long, blond, curled hair. The rest I had left where I had found it. I imagined the wild birds taking it away strand by strand to line their nests.

  I thought of the mute, enraged message the runaway boy had left in his secret sanctuary.

  I thought of the tears I had seen on his mother’s face. Poor lady.

  But equally, poor lad. Made to wear velvet and lace. Almost as bad as a steel-ribbed corset.

  Not at all incidentally, I thought of myself. I, Enola, on the run just like young Lord Tewksbury, except that it was to be hoped he’d had the sense to change his name. Fool that I’d been, coming here as Enola Holmes, I had put myself in jeopardy. I needed to get away.

  Still, I must reassure the unfortunate duchess—

  No. No, I should leave Basilwether Park as quickly as possible, before—

  “Mrs. Holmes?”

  Stiffening, I found myself on the carriage-drive directly in front of Basilwether Hall, uncertain whether to advance or retreat, when a voice called to me from above.

  “Mrs. Holmes!”

  Hiding the lock of blond hair in the palm of one hand, I turned to see a man in a travelling cloak hurrying down the marble steps towards me. One of the detectives from London.

  “Excuse me for presuming upon your acquaintance,” he said when he stood before me, “but the lodge-keeper informed us you were here, and I wondered . . .” He was a small, weasel-like man, hardly the muscular sort one expected of a police department, yet fearsome in the way his beady eyes peered at me, like shiny black ladybugs trying to crawl right through my veil. In a rather high-pitched voice he went on, “I am an acquaintance of Mr. Sherlock Holmes. My name is Lestrade.”

  “How do you do.” I did not offer to shake hands.

  “Very well, thank you. I must say it is an unexpected pleasure to meet you.” His tone hinted for information. He knew my name was Enola Holmes. He could see that I was a widow. Therefore he titled me Mrs., but if I were merely related by marriage to the Holmes family, he must have been thinking, why would Sherlock send me in his stead? “I must say Holmes has never mentioned you to me.”

  “Indeed.” Politely I nodded. “And have you discussed your family with him?”

  “No! Er, I mean, there has not been occasion.”

  “Of course not.” My tone remained, I hope, bland, but my thoughts twittered like a chaffinch. This snoop would tell Sherlock he had met me, and under what circumstances, at his first opportunity. No, worse! As an inspector for Scotland Yard, at any minute he might receive a wire concerning me. I had to get away before that happened. He seemed suspicious of me already. I had to distract Inspector Lestrade from inspecting me.

  Opening my gloved hand, I uncoiled a lock of fair hair and held it out to him.

  “Regarding Lord Tewksbury,” I said in a commanding manner mimicking that of my famous brother, “he has not been kidnapped.” I waved aside the inspector’s attempt to protest. “He has taken matters into his own hands; he has run away. You would, too, if you were dressed like a doll in a velvet suit. He wants to go to sea on a boat. A ship, I mean.” In the young viscount’s hideaway I had seen pictures of steamships, clipper ships, all sorts of sea-faring vessels. “In particular, he admires that huge monstrosity, the one that looks like a floating cattle trough with sails on top and paddle-wheels on the sides, what is its name? The one that laid the transatlantic cable?”

  But Inspector Lestrade’s gaze remained riveted upon the blond, curling tresses in my hand. He babbled, “What . . . where . . . how do you deduce . . .”

  “The Great Eastern.” At last I remembered the name of the world’s largest ship. “You will find Lord Tewksbury at a seaport, probably the docks of London, in all likelihood applying for a berth as a seaman or a cabin boy, as he has been practising tying sailors’ knots. He has cut his hair. He must have gotten some common clothing somehow, perhaps from the stable boys; you might want to question them. After such a transformation, I imagine no one at the station recognised him if he went by train.”

  “But the broken door! The forced lock!”

  “He did that so that you would search for a kidnapper rather than a runaway. Rather mean of him,” I admitted, “to worry his mother so.” This thought made me feel better about telling what I knew. “Perhaps you could give Her Grace this.” I thrust the lock of hair at Inspector Lestrade. “Although truly, I do not know whether it will help her feel better or make her feel worse.”

  Gawking at me, Inspector Lestrade seemed barely to know what he was doing as his right hand rose to accept the tresses of a duke’s son.

  “But—but where did you find this?” With his other hand he reached for me as if to grip me by
the elbow and draw me into Basilwether Hall. Stepping back, away from his grasp, I became aware of a third party to the conversation. At the top of the marble stairway, looming amid balustrades and Grecian columns, Madame Laelia watched and listened.

  I lowered my voice to answer Inspector Lestrade quite softly. “In the first floor, so to speak, of a maple tree with four trunks.” I pointed in its direction, and as he turned to look, I walked away, rather more quickly than a lady should, down the drive towards the gates.

  “Mrs. Holmes!” he shouted after me.

  Without altering the rhythm of my pace or looking back, I lifted one hand in a polite but dismissive wave, imitating the way my brother had waggled his walking stick at me. Restraining an impulse to run, I kept walking.

  When I had passed through the gates, I breathed out.

  Not having ridden in a train before, I was surprised to find the second-class passenger car divided into little parlours for four people each, with leather seats facing each other as in a carriage. I had imagined something more open, like an omnibus. But not so: A conductor led me down a narrow aisle, opened a door, and willy-nilly I found myself compartmented with three strangers, taking the one remaining place, which faced the rear of the train.

  Moments later I felt myself being carried, slowly at first but moment by moment accelerating, backwards towards London.

  All too apt a position, as Inspector Lestrade had so reversed my affairs that I could no longer foresee what lay ahead.

  Since he had talked with a nitwit widow named Enola Holmes, and would tell my brother Sherlock, I needed to abandon my nearly perfect disguise.

  Indeed, I needed to completely reconsider my situation.

  Sighing, perched on the edge of my seat because of my bustle—or rather, luggage—I braced myself against my backwards progress. The train lurched and swayed as it rumbled along at least twice as fast as any bicycle had ever skimmed down any hill. Trees and buildings whipped past the window at a speed so tumultuous that I had to avoid looking out.

  I felt a bit ill, for more than one reason.

  My safe and comfortable plans for cab, hotel, genteel lodgings, and quiet waiting would no longer serve. I had been identified. Seen. Either Lestrade or my brother Sherlock would trace a young widow’s steps through Belvidere and find that I had gotten onto the afternoon express train to the city. So much for misdirecting my brothers towards Wales! Although they could have no idea of my financial well-being, nevertheless, they would know now that I’d gone to London, and there was nothing I could do about it.

  Except leave London as soon as I arrived, by the next train to anywhere?

  But surely my brother would inquire of the ticketing agents, and now my black dress marked me. If Sherlock Holmes found that a widow had gotten on the train to, say, Houndstone, Rockingham, and Puddingsworth, he would investigate. And surely he would find me more easily in Houndstone, Rockingham, Puddingsworth, or any such place than in London.

  Moreover, I wanted to go to London. Not that I thought Mother was there—quite the opposite, actually—but I would best be able to find her from there. And I had always dreamt of London. Palaces, fountains, cathedrals. Theatres, operas, gentlemen in tails, and ladies dripping with diamonds.

  Also—and rumbling backwards towards the great city, I found myself smiling beneath my veil at this thought—the idea of hiding beneath my brothers’ noses appealed all the more now that they knew. I would revise their opinion of the cranial capacity of their accidental younger sister.

  Very well. London it was.

  But circumstances had changed so that I could not, upon arriving in the city, take a cab. Sherlock Holmes would inquire of the cabdrivers. Therefore, I would have to walk. And night was coming on. But I could not now allow myself a hotel room. Surely my brother would inquire at all the hotels. I would have to walk for quite a distance to get myself well away from the railway station—but where to go? If I took the wrong street, I might find myself in company with someone who was not a nice sort of person. I might encounter a pickpocket, or—or perhaps even a cutthroat.

  Most unpleasant.

  And just as I thought this, averting my eyes from the dizzying scene outside the train’s window, I glanced up instead at the glass in the corridor door.

  I very nearly screamed.

  There, like a full moon rising, a large face peered into the compartment.

  With his nose actually pressed against the glass, the man looked in, scanning each occupant in turn. With no change in his cold expression he fixed his shadowy gaze on me. Then he turned away and moved on.

  Gulping, I looked around at my fellow passengers to see whether they, too, were frightened. It appeared not. In the seat next to me, a workman in a cap sprawled snoring, his rough square-toed boots thrust out into the middle of the floor. Opposite him, a fellow in shepherd’s-plaid trousers and a homburg hat studied a newspaper which, judging by etchings of jockeys and horses, concerned itself with the racetrack. And next to him, opposite me, a squat old woman fixed me with her cheery gaze.

  “Something the matter, duckie?” she inquired.

  Duckie? A most peculiar mode of address, but I let it pass, asking merely, “Who was that man?”

  “What man, ducks?”

  Either she hadn’t seen him at all, or it was perfectly normal for large bald men wearing cloth caps to peer into railroad parlours, and I was being a fool.

  Shaking my head dismissively, I murmured, “No harm done.” Although my heart declared me a liar.

  “Yer looking a bit white under all that black,” my new acquaintance declared. Common, toothless crone, instead of a proper hat she wore a huge old-fashioned bonnet with a brim that flared like a fungus, tied with an orange ribbon under her bristly chin. Instead of a dress she wore a fur wrap gone half bald, a blouse somewhat less than white, an old purple skirt with new braid stuck on its faded hem. Peering at me like a robin hopeful of crumbs, she coaxed, “Yers a recent loss, duckie?”

  Oh. She wanted to know about my fictitious dear departed husband. I nodded.

  “And now yer bound ter London?”

  Nod.

  “It’s the old story, isn’t it, ducks?” The vulgar old woman leaned towards me with as much glee as pity. “Catched yerself a likely ’un, ye did, but now he’s died”—such was the brutal word she used—“gone and died on you, he has, and left you wit’out the means to feed yerself? And ye, as yer lookin’ so sick, maybe wit ’is child in yer belly?”

  At first I could scarcely understand. Then, never having heard anything so unwhisperable stated out loud, and in a public place, yet, in the presence of men (although neither of them seemed to notice), I found myself shocked speechless. A fiery flush heated my face.

  My friendly tormentor seemed to consider my blush to be affirmation. Nodding, she leaned even closer to me. “And now yer thinking ye can find yerself summat to support ye in the city? ’Ave ye ever been t’London before, m’dear?”

  I managed to shake my head.

  “Well, don’t be makin’ the old mistake, duckie, no matter what the gentlemuns promise.” She leaned closer, as if telling me a great secret, yet did not lower her voice. “If ye need a few pennies to yer pocket, ’ere’s the dodge: take a petticoat or two out from under yer dress—”

  I truly thought I would faint. The workman, blessedly, snored on, but the other man unmistakably lifted his newspaper to hide his face.

  “—won’t never miss ’em,” the toothless crone gabbled on. “Why, many’s a woman in London hain’t got a petticoat to ’er name, and ye with ’alf a dozen, I’ll warrant by the puffing and the rustling of ’em.”

  I desperately wanted the journey and this ordeal to end, so much so that I risked a look at the window. Houses upon houses whisked past the glass now, and taller buildings, pressed together, brick to stone.

  “Take ’em to Culhane’s Used Clothing on Saint Tookings Lane, off Kipple Street,” relentlessly continued the hag, whose squat presence now remin
ded me more of a toad than a robin. “Down in the East End, ye know. Ye can smell yer way there by the docks. And mind, once ye find Saint Tookings Lane, don’t go to one of them other dealers, but straight to Culhane’s, where ye’ll get a fair sum for yer petticoats, if ’em’s real silk.”

  The man with the newspaper rattled it and cleared his throat. Gripping the edge of my seat, I leaned away from the shocking hag as far as my bustle would allow. “Thank you,” I muttered, for while I had no intention of selling my petticoats, nevertheless this dreadfully common old woman had helped me.

  I had been wondering how I was to dispose of my widow’s clothing and get something else. Of course, I had plenty of money to order anything I wanted, but the construction of clothing takes time. Moreover, surely my brother would inquire of the established seamstresses, and surely I would be remembered if, all clad in black, I were fitted for anything except more black, or grey with perhaps a touch of lavender or white. After the first year in mourning, that was all one was supposed to wear. Yet, given my brother’s cleverness, none of that would do. I could not merely modify my appearance; I needed to transform it completely. But how? Pluck garments off of washing-lines?

  Now I knew. Used clothing shops. Saint Tookings Lane, off Kipple Street. In the East End. I did not think my brother was likely to inquire there.

  Nor did I think—as I should have—that I would risk my life, venturing there.

  CHAPTER THE ELEVENTH

  FROM MY SEAT ON THE TRAIN I CAUGHT only fleeting glimpses of London. But when I emerged from Aldersgate Station, meaning to walk briskly away, instead I stood for a moment gazing at a metropolis so dense and vast. All around me towered a man-made wilderness, buildings taller and more forbidding than any trees that ever were.

  My brothers lived here?

  In this—this grotesque brick-and-stone parody of any world I had ever known? With so many chimney-pots and roof-peaks looming dark against a lurid, vaporous orange sky? Lead-coloured clouds hung low while the setting sun oozed molten light between them; the Gothic towers of the city stood festive yet foreboding against that glowering sky, like candles on the Devil’s birthday cake.