The Case of the Missing Marquess (4 page)

“Gardener? There is no gardener.”

Mycroft turned on me like a hawk stooping. “But you do have a gardener! Ruggles, the man’s name is, and I have been paying him twelve shillings a week for the past ten years!”

I daresay I sat with my mouth open, for several reasons. How could Mycroft be suffering under this absurd delusion that there was a gardener? I knew no one named Ruggles. Moreover, I had no idea that money came from Mycroft. I think I’d been assuming that money, like stair rails and chandeliers and other furnishings, came with the hall.

Sherlock intervened. “Mycroft, if there were such a personage, I am sure Enola would be well aware of him.”

“Bah. She wasn’t aware of—”

Sherlock interrupted, although addressing his remark to me. “Enola, never mind. Mycroft gets quite out of humour when he is disrupted from his usual orbit between his rooms, his office, and the Diogenes Club.”

Ignoring him, his brother leaned towards me, demanding, “Enola, are there really no horses, no groom, and no stable boy?”

“No. I mean, yes.” Yes, there really were none.

“Well, which is it, no or yes?”

“Mycroft,” Sherlock intervened, “the girl’s head, you’ll observe, is rather small in proportion to her remarkably tall body. Let her alone. There is no use in confusing and upsetting her when you’ll find out for yourself soon enough.”

Indeed, at that moment the hired brougham pulled up in front of Ferndell Hall.

ENTERING MY MOTHER’S ROOMS ALONG with my brothers, I noticed upon the tea table a Japanese vase with flowers in it, their petals going brown. Mum must have arranged that bouquet a day or two before she had gone missing.

I picked up the vase and hugged it to my chest.

Sherlock Holmes swept past me. He had rebuffed Lane’s welcome, declined Mrs. Lane’s offer of a cup of tea, refused to pause even a moment before beginning his investigation. Glancing about my mother’s light, airy sitting room with its many watercolours of flowers, he then strode through the studio and onward into the bedchamber. There I heard him give a sharp exclamation.

“What is it?” called Mycroft, ambling in more slowly, having chatted a moment with Lane as he left his stick, hat, and gloves in the butler’s care.

“Deplorable!” cried Sherlock from the far room, referring, I assumed, to the mess in general and the unmentionables in particular. “Indecent!” Yes, definitely the unmentionables. Striding out of the bedroom, he reappeared in the studio. “She seems to have left in great haste.”

Seems,
I thought.

“Or perhaps she has become lax in her personal habits,” he added more calmly. “She is, after all, sixty-four years old.”

The vase of flowers in my arms gave off an odour of stagnant water and decaying stems. When it was fresh, however, the bouquet must have smelled wonderful. The shrivelled blossoms, I saw, had been sweet peas.

And thistles.

“Sweet peas and thistles?” I exclaimed. “How odd.”

Both men turned their eyes upon me with some exasperation. “Your mother
was
odd,” said Sherlock curtly.

“And still is, presumably,” added Mycroft more gently, for my benefit, judging by the warning glance he gave his brother.

So they, too, feared she might be . . . deceased.

In the same sharp tone Sherlock said, “From the state of affairs here, it appears she may now have progressed from oddness to senile dementia.”

Hero or no hero, he—his manner—was beginning to annoy me. And distress me, for my mother was his mother, too; how could he be so cold?

I did not know then, had no way of knowing, that Sherlock Holmes lived his life in a kind of chill shadow. He suffered from melancholia, the fits sometimes coming upon him so badly that for a week or more he would refuse to rise from his bed.

“Senility?” Mycroft asked. “Can you not arrive at any more helpful deduction?”

“Such as?”

“You’re the detective. Whip out that lens of yours.
Detect.
”

“I have already done so. There is nothing to be learned here.”

“Outside, then?”

“After a full day of rain? There will be no traces to tell which way she’s gone. Foolish woman.”

Dismayed by his tone and this comment, I left, carrying the vase of withering flowers downstairs to the kitchen.

There I found Mrs. Lane crouched upon the floor with a scrub brush, scouring the oak boards so fiercely that I suspected she, also, was perturbed in her mind.

I dumped the contents of the Japanese vase into the wooden slop bucket, on top of vegetable parings and such.

On her hands and knees, Mrs. Lane told the floor, “Here I was so looking forward to seeing Mister Mycroft and Mister Sherlock again.”

Setting the green-slimed vase in the lead-lined wooden sink, I ran water into it from the cistern tap.

Mrs. Lane spoke on, “And here it’s still the same old story, the same foolish quarrel, they’ve never a kind word for their own mother, and she maybe lying out there . . .”

Her voice actually broke. I said nothing, so as not to further upset her.

Sniffing and scrubbing, Mrs. Lane declared, “Small wonder they’re bachelors. Must have everything their way. Think it’s their right. Never could abide a strong-minded woman.”

A bell rang, one of a number of bells poised on coiled wires along the wall above the stove.

“There, now, that’s the morning room bell. I suppose that’s them wanting luncheon, and me up to my elbows in the dirt of this floor.”

Having had no breakfast, I quite wanted luncheon myself. Also, I wanted to know what was going on. I left the kitchen and went to the morning room.

At that informal room’s small table sat Sherlock smoking a pipe and staring at Mycroft, who sat across from him.

“The two best thinkers in England ought to be able to reason this out,” Mycroft was saying. “Now, has Mother gone off voluntarily, or was she planning to return? The untidy state of her room—”

“Could mean that she left impulsively and in haste, or it could reflect the innate untidiness of a woman’s mind,” interrupted Sherlock. “Of what use is reason when it comes to the dealings of a woman, and very likely one in her dotage?”

Both of them glanced up at me as I entered the room, appearing hopeful that I might be a house-maid, although they should have known by now that there were none. “Luncheon?” Mycroft asked.

“Heaven knows,” I replied as I sat down at the table with them. “Mrs. Lane is in an uncertain frame of mind.”

“Indeed.”

I studied my tall, handsome (to me at least), brilliant brothers. I admired them. I wanted to like them. I wanted
them
to—

As for my brothers, they paid me no further heed.

“I assure you, Mother is neither in her dotage, nor demented,” said Mycroft to Sherlock. “No senile woman could have compiled the accounts she has sent me over the past ten years, perfectly clear and orderly, detailing the expense of installing a bathroom—”

“Which does not exist,” interrupted Sherlock in acid tones.

“—and water closet—”

“Likewise.”

“—and the constantly rising salaries of the foot-men, the housemaids, the kitchen maid, and the daily help—”

“Nonexistent.”

“—the gardener, the under-gardener, the odd man—”

“Also nonexistent, unless one considers Dick.”

“Who is quite odd,” Mycroft agreed. A joke, yet I saw no flicker of a smile on either of my brothers. “I’m surprised Mother did not list one Reginald Collie, who is arguably a servant, in her expenses. She listed imaginary horses and ponies, imaginary carriages, a coachman, grooms, stable boys—”

“There is no denying that we have been woefully deceived.”

“—and for Enola, a music teacher, a dancing instructor, a governess—”

A startled look passed between them, as if a logic problem had suddenly grown a face and hair, and then both at once they turned to stare at me.

“Enola,” Sherlock demanded, “you
have
at least had a governess, haven’t you?”

I had not. Mum had sent me to school with the village children, and after I had learned all I could there, she had told me I would do quite well on my own, and I considered that I had. I’d read every book in Ferndell Hall’s library, from
A Child’s Garden of Verses
to the entire
Encyclopaedia Britannica.

As I hesitated, Mycroft restated the question: “You have had the proper education of a young lady?”

“I have read Shakespeare,” I replied, “and Aristotle, and Locke, and the novels of Thackeray, and the essays of Mary Wollstonecraft.”

Their faces froze. I could scarcely have horrified them more if I had told them I had learned to perform on a circus trapeze.

Then Sherlock turned to Mycroft and said softly, “It’s my fault. There’s no trusting a woman; why make an exception for one’s mother? I should have come here to check upon her yearly at the very least, no matter how much unpleasantness would have ensued.”

Mycroft said just as softly and sadly, “To the contrary, my dear Sherlock, it is I who have neglected my responsibility. I am the elder son—”

A discreet cough sounded, and in came Lane with a tray of cucumber sandwiches, sliced fruit, and a pitcher of lemonade. There was blessed silence for a few moments until luncheon was served.

During that silence, I framed a question. “What has any of this,” I asked after Lane had withdrawn, “to do with finding Mother?”

Rather than answering me, Mycroft gave his full attention to his plate.

Sherlock drummed his fingers, rumpling the starched lace tablecloth. “We are formulating a theory,” he said at last.

“And what is this theory?”

Silence again.

I asked, “Am I to have my mother back again or not?”

Neither of them would look at me, but after what seemed a long time, Sherlock glanced at his brother and said, “Mycroft, I think she has a right to know.”

Mycroft sighed, nodded, put down what remained of his third sandwich, and faced me. “We are trying to decide,” he said, “whether what is happening now connects to what happened after Father’s dea—er, after our father’s passing away. You wouldn’t remember, I suppose.”

“I was four years old,” I said. “I remember mostly the black horses.”

“Quite so. Well, after the burial, over the next few days there was disagreement—”

“That’s putting it kindly,” Sherlock interposed. “The words ‘battle royal’ come to mind.”

Ignoring him, Mycroft went on. “Disagreement as to the handling of the estate. Neither Sherlock nor I wanted to live here, so Mother thought that the rent money should come directly to her, and that she should run Ferndell Park.”

Well, she did run it, didn’t she? Yet Mycroft sounded as if he considered the idea absurd.

“As I am the firstborn son, the estate is mine,” he went on, “and Mother did not dispute that, but she could not seem to see why she should not manage things for me, rather than the other way around. When Sherlock and I reminded her that, legally, she had no right even to live here unless I permitted it, she became quite irrational and made it clear that we were no longer welcome in our own birth-place.”

Oh. My goodness. Everything seemed to turn upside down in my mind, as if it were swinging by its knees from a tree limb. All my life I had assumed that my brothers kept their distance due to my shameful existence, whereas they were saying—a quarrel with my mother?

I could not tell how Mycroft felt regarding this revelation. Or Sherlock.

I could not quite tell how I felt about it, either, other than bewildered. But something secret fluttered like a butterfly in my heart.

“I sent her a monthly allowance,” Mycroft went on, “and she wrote me a very businesslike letter requesting an increase. I replied by asking for an accounting of how the money was being spent, and she complied. Her continuing requests for additional funds seemed so reasonable that I never refused any of them. But, as we now know, her accounts were fictitious. What actually has become of all that money, we, um, we have no idea.”

I noticed his hesitation. “But you have a theory,” I said.

“Yes.” He took a long breath. “We think she has been hoarding, while planning an escapade, all this time.” Another breath, even longer. “We think she has now taken what she perceives as her money and, um, gone somewhere to, ah, thumb her nose at us, so to speak.”

What on earth was he saying? That Mum had abandoned me? I sat with my mouth ajar.

“Pity the girl’s cranial capacity, Mycroft,” Sherlock murmured to his brother, and to me he said gently, “Enola, simply put, we think she has run away.”

But—but that was preposterous, impossible. She wouldn’t have done that to me.

“No,” I blurted. “No, it can’t be.”

“Think, Enola.” Sherlock sounded just like Mum. “All logic points to that conclusion. If she were injured, the searchers would have found her, and if she were in an accident, we would have heard. There is no reason for anyone to harm her, and there are no signs of foul play. There is no reason for anyone to seize her against her will, other than ransom, for which there has been no demand.” He paused for a significant breath before going on. “If, however, she is alive, in good health, and doing whatever she pleases—”

“As usual,” Mycroft put in.

“Her disorderly bedroom could be the merest blind.”

“To throw us off the track,” Mycroft agreed. “It certainly appears that she has been plotting and scheming for years—”

I sat up straight like a steam whistle. “But if she could have left anytime,” I wailed, “why would she do it on my
birthday
?”

Now it was their turn to sit with mouths slack and uncouth. I had bested them.