The Case of the Missing Marquess

Table of Contents

 

 

“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.

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

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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.

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.

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 was 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

 

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.