The Case of the Missing Marquess (6 page)

Mycroft, although he said nothing, clearly was not pleased. As soon as the fish was served, he told me, “I have sent to London for a seamstress to provide you with proper clothing.”

I nodded. Some new clothes would be nice, and if I didn’t like them, I could revert to my comfortable knickerbockers the moment his back was turned. But I said, “There is a seamstress right here in Kineford.”

“Yes, I am aware of that. But the London seamstress will know exactly what you need for boarding school.”

Whatever was he talking about? Quite patiently I said, “I am not going to boarding school.”

Just as patiently he responded, “Of course you are, Enola. I have sent inquiries to several excellent establishments for young ladies.”

Mother had told me about such establishments. Her Rational Dress journals were filled with warnings about their cultivation of the “hourglass” figure. At one such “school,” the headmistress tightened a corset upon each girl who entered, and on the girl’s waist the corset stayed, day and night, waking or sleeping, except for one hour a week when it was removed for “ablutions,” that is, so that the girl could bathe. Then it was replaced, tighter, depriving the wearer of the ability to breathe normally, so that the slightest shock would cause her to fall down in a faint. This was considered “charming.” It was also considered moral, the corset being “an ever-present monitor bidding its wearer to exercise self-restraint”—in other words, making it impossible for the hapless victim to bend or relax her posture. The modern corsets, unlike my mother’s old whalebone ones, were so long that they needed to be made of steel so as not to break, their rigidity displacing the internal organs and deforming the ribcage. One schoolgirl’s corseted ribs had actually punctured her lungs, causing her untimely demise. Her waist as she lay in her coffin had measured fifteen inches.

All of this passed through my mind in an instant as my fork dropped to my plate with a clatter. I sat stunned, chilled by the horror of my situation, yet unable to state any of my objections to my brother. To speak of such intimate matters of the female form to a male was unthinkable. I was able only to gasp, “But, Mother—”

“There is no assurance that your mother will come back anytime soon. I cannot stay here indefinitely.” Thank goodness, I thought. “And you can’t just vegetate here by yourself, now, can you, Enola?”

“Are Lane and Mrs. Lane not to stay on?”

He frowned, putting down the knife with which he had been buttering his bread. “Of course, but servants cannot possibly provide you with proper instruction and supervision.”

“I was about to say, Mother would not like—”

“Your mother has failed in her responsibility to you.” His tone had grown considerably sharper than the butter knife. “What is to become of you if you do not acquire some accomplishments, some social graces, some finish? You will never be able to move in polite society, and your prospects of matrimony—”

“Are dim to nil in any event,” I said, “as I look just like Sherlock.”

I think my candor staggered him. “My dear girl.” His tone softened. “That will change, or it will be changed.” By my sitting for endless hours with a book on top of my head while playing the piano, I supposed. Days spent in torment, plus corsets, dress improvers, and false hair, although he would not say so. “You come from a family of quality, and with some polishing, I am sure you will not disgrace us.”

I said, “I have always been a disgrace, I will always be a disgrace, and I am not going to be sent to any finishing establishment for young ladies.”

“Yes, you are.”

Glaring across the table at each other in the candle-lit twilight, we had given up any pretense of dining. I am sure he was aware, as I was, that both Lane and Mrs. Lane were eavesdropping in the hallway, but I, for one, did not care.

I raised my voice. “No. Get me a governess if you must, but I am not going to any so-called boarding school. You cannot make me go.”

He actually softened his tone, but said, “Yes, I can, and I shall.”

“What do you mean? Shall you shackle me to take me there?”

He rolled his eyes. “Just like her mother,” he declared to the ceiling, and then he fixed upon me a stare so martyred, so condescending, that I froze rigid. In tones of sweetest reason he told me, “Enola, legally I hold complete charge over both your mother and you. I can, if I wish, lock you in your room until you become sensible, or take whatever other measures are necessary in order to achieve that desired result. Moreover, as your older brother I bear a moral responsibility for you, and it is plain to see that you have run wild too long. I am perhaps only just in time to save you from a wasted life. You
will
do as I say.”

In that moment I understood exactly how Mum had felt during those days after my father’s death.

And why she had made no attempt to visit my brothers in London, or welcomed them to Ferndell Park.

And why she had tricked money out of Mycroft. I stood up. “Dinner no longer appeals to me. You’ll excuse me, I’m sure.”

I wish I could say I swept with cold dignity out of the room, but the truth is, I tripped over my skirt and stumbled to the stairs.

THAT NIGHT I COULD NOT SLEEP. INDEED, at first I could not even be still. In my nightgown, barefoot, I paced, paced, paced my bedroom as I imagined a lion at the London Zoo might pace his cage. Later, when I turned my coal-oil lamp low, put out my candles, and went to bed, my eyes would not close. I heard Mycroft retire to the guest bedroom; I heard Lane and Mrs. Lane tread upstairs to their quarters on the top floor, and still I lay staring at the shadows.

The whole reason for my distress was not as obvious as may at first appear. It was Mycroft who had made me angry, but it was my changing thoughts about my mother that made me upset, almost queasy. It feels very queer to think of one’s mother as a person like oneself, not just a mum, so to speak. Yet there it was: She had been weak as well as strong. She had felt as trapped as I did. She had felt the injustice of her situation just as keenly. She had been forced to obey, as I would be forced to obey. She had wanted to rebel, as I desperately yearned to rebel, without knowing how I ever would or could.

But in the end, she had managed it. Glorious rebellion.

Confound her, why had she not taken me with her?

Kicking off the covers to lunge out of bed, I turned up the oil lamp, stalked to my desk—its border of stencilled flowers did not cheer me now—seized paper and pencil from my drawing kit, and drew a furious picture of my mother, all wrinkles and jowls with her mouth a thin line, going off in her three-storeys-and-a-basement hat and her turkey-back jacket, flourishing her umbrella like a sword while the train of her ridiculous bustle trailed behind her.

Why
had she not taken me into her confidence?
Why
had she left me behind?

Oh, very well, I could understand, however painfully, that she had not wanted to trust a young girl with her secret . . . but why had she not at least offered me some message of explanation or farewell?

And why, oh why, had she chosen to leave on my
birthday?
Mum never in her life took a stitch without thread. She must have had a reason. What could it be?

Because . . .

I sat bolt upright at the desk, my mouth agape.

Now I saw.

From Mum’s point of view.

And it made perfect sense. Mum was clever. Clever, clever, clever.

She
had
left me a message.

As a present.

On my birthday. Which was why she had chosen that day of all days to leave. A day for the giving of gifts, so no one would notice—

I leapt up. Where had I put it? I had to light a candle to carry with me so I could see to look around my bedroom. It was not on the bookshelf. It was not on any of the chairs, or my dresser, or my washstand, or my bed. It was not perched on the Noah’s Ark or the rocking horse, hand-me-downs from my brothers. Confound my stupid, muddled head, where had I put . . . there. In my neglected dollhouse, of all places, there it was: a slender sheaf of hand-painted, hand-lettered crisp artists’ papers, creased precisely in half and stitched together along the fold.

I pounced upon it: the booklet of ciphers my mother had created for me.

In my mother’s flyaway lettering.

One glance at the first cipher made me shut my eyes, wanting to cry.

It was almost as if I heard my mother chiding me from inside my head. “Enola, you’ll do quite well on your own.”

I opened my eyes, stared at the line of jumbled letters, and thought.

Very well. First of all, a sentence would not likely have words all of three letters.

Taking a fresh sheet of paper from my drawing kit, I pulled close the oil lamp on one hand and the candle on the other, then copied the cipher like this:

 

The first word sprang out at me: “alone.”

Or was it “Enola”?

My eye passed over the first part to seize upon the letters “MUM.” Mum. Mother was sending me a message about herself?

 

The order of the words sounded backwards.

 

Oh, for Heaven’s sake. CHRYSANTHEMUMS. The border of flowers painted around the page should have told me. Gold and russet chrysanthemums.

I had solved the cipher.

I was not totally stupid.

Or perhaps I was, for what on earth did it mean, “Enola, look in my chrysanthemums”? Had Mother buried something in a flower bed somewhere? Unlikely. I doubted she’d ever held a shovel in her life. Dick took care of such chores, and in any event, Mother was no gardener; she liked to let hardy flowers, such as the chrysanthemums, take care of themselves.

The
chrysanthemums outside. What would she consider
her
chrysanthemums?

Downstairs the casement clock struck two. Never before had I been up so late at night. My mind felt as if it were floating, not quite anchored in my head anymore.

I felt tired and calm enough to go to bed now. But I did not wish to.

Wait. Mother had given me another book.
The Meanings of Flowers.
Reaching for it, I consulted the index, then looked up
chrysanthemum.

“The bestowing of chrysanthemums indicates familial attachment and, by implication, affection.”

Implied affection was better than nothing.

Idly, I looked up the sweet pea blossom.

“Good-bye, and thank you for a lovely time. A gift made upon departure.”

Departure.

Next, I looked up thistles.

“Defiance.”

Grimly I smiled.

So. Mum had left a message after all. Departure and defiance in the Japanese vase. In her airy sitting room with a hundred watercolours on the wall.

Watercolours of flowers.

I blinked, smiling wider. “Enola,” I whispered to myself, “that’s it.”

 

“My” chrysanthemums. Mums that Mum had painted.

And framed, and displayed on the wall of her sitting room.

I knew.

Without an inkling how anything could be “in” a mum painting or what it might be, I knew that I had understood rightly, and I knew that I must go and see. This very moment. At the darkest hour of night. When no one else, especially not my brother Mycroft, would know.

Girls are supposed to play with dolls. Over the years, well-meaning adults had provided me with various dolls. I detested dolls, pulling their heads off when I could, but now I had finally found a use for them. Inside a yellow-haired doll’s hollow cranium, I had hidden the key to my mother’s rooms. It took me only a moment to retrieve it.

Then, lowering the wick of the oil lamp and carrying my candle with me, I softly opened my bedroom door.

My mother’s door stood on the opposite end of the hallway from mine, and directly across from the guest room.

Where my brother Mycroft lay sleeping.

I hoped he was sleeping.

I hoped he was quite a sound sleeper.

Barefoot, with candlestick in one hand and my precious key in the other, I tiptoed down the hallway.

Issuing from behind Mycroft’s closed bedroom door came an uncouth drone rather like that of a hog lying in the sun.

Evidently my brother snored.

A good indication that he was indeed asleep.

Excellent.

As silently as possible I inserted and turned the key in the lock of my mother’s door. Still, the bolt snicked. And, as I turned the knob, the latch clicked.

A snort interrupted the rhythm of Mycroft’s snoring.

Looking at his bedchamber door over my shoulder, I froze.

I heard some wallowing sounds, as if he were turning over. His bedstead creaked. Then he snored on.

Slipping into Mum’s private parlour and closing the door behind me, I breathed out.

Lifting the candle, I looked up at the walls.

So many watercolours my mother had painted of so many different sorts of flowers.

I searched the four walls, straining my eyes to see the pictures in the wan candlelight. At last I found a rendition of chrysanthemums, russet and gold, like the ones in my cipher book.

Standing on tiptoe, I could just reach the bottom of the frame—a fragile one, carved like the furniture in my mother’s room to resemble sticks of bamboo, their ends crossed and projecting. Gently I lifted the frame, coaxing its wire off the nail to take it down. I carried it to the tea table, where I set my candle beside it and studied it.