The Case of the Missing Marquess (Enola Holmes, #1)

by Nancy Springer

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.

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.

matutinal /məˈtyo͞otn(ə)l ˌmaCHəˈtīnl/ I. adjective ‹formal› of or occurring in the morning. – origin mid 16th cent.: from late Latin matutinalis, from Latin matutinus ‘early.’

ablution /əˈblo͞oSHən/ I. noun — (usu. ablutions) 1. the act of washing oneself (often used for humorously formal effect) • the women performed their ablutions. 2. a ceremonial act of washing parts of the body or sacred containers. II. derivatives ablutionary adjective – origin late Middle English: from Latin ablutio(n-), from abluere, from ab- ‘away’ + luere ‘wash.’ The original use was as a term in chemistry and alchemy meaning ‘purification by using liquids,’ hence ‘purification of the body by washing’ (mid 16th cent).

Using spirits to find what is lost

“Whatever is

lost, I can surely find, for the spirits go everywhere, know all, see all, and they are my friends.”

Perditorian: one who divines that which is lost.

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.

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.

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.

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.

He had built a platform in the tree.

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.

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.

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.

“I am an acquaintance of Mr. Sherlock Holmes. My name is Lestrade.”

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

wheels on the sides, what is its name? The one that laid the transatlantic cable?”

“The Great Eastern.”

What with so many strange sights and so much commotion, small wonder I didn’t hear the footsteps following me. I did not notice until the night deepened and darkened—or so it seemed at first, but then I realised it was the streets themselves that had grown grimmer.

“I yield in favor of the gentleman,” I responded, thinking only that a girl must never place herself in such a position that a male might look up her skirt. Not at all thinking of what might await us above.

was trying to remember what Madame Laelia had looked like, but so much had happened in the past three days that I retained only an impression of red hair, large face, large body, large hands in yellow kid gloves—

Cutter in disguise or related to him?

Tewky saw, too. He whispered, “It’s the same person.”

“She seemed intelligent enough when I spoke with her,” said Lestrade. “She certainly deceived me. I would have sworn she was twenty-five, at least. Poised, well-spoken, thoughtful—” My scowl smoothed away. I quite approved of Lestrade.

Sherlock and Mycroft would have wanted Mum back in Ferndell Hall, but obviously she did not wish to be there. When—not if, but when I found her, I would ask of her nothing that might make her unhappy. I was not seeking her in order to take away her freedom. I just wanted to have a mum.

fact, while Sherlock Holmes dismissed “the fair sex” as irrational and insignificant, I knew of matters his “logical” mind could never grasp. I knew an entire world of communications belonging to women, secret codes of hat brims and rebellion, handkerchiefs and subterfuge, feather fans and covert defiance, sealing-wax and messages in the positioning of a postage-stamp, calling cards and a cloak of ladylike conspiracy in which I could wrap myself. I

every day his secretary comes and goes, putting things to rights in his new office, tending to his affairs. She is a plain young woman, unremarkable except for her efficiency, very much like thousands of other young women typists and bookkeepers surviving in London so as to send a little money home to their families. Her name is Ivy Meshle.

The runaway woman had no great distance to travel, needing only to walk out upon the countryside until she met, very likely by prearrangement, with a caravan of England’s nomads. In The Meanings of Flowers, the rambling rose refers to “a free, wandering, Gypsy type of life.”