The Case of the Missing Marquess

Tewksbury, having noticed Enola’s attempt to cut her bindings, immediately claims to be the one making the boat rock. He goads the man into attacking him, and while the man is distracted, Enola finally succeeds in cutting the cords. She grabs a ballast rock between her bloodied hands and strikes the man from behind. Enola takes a pocketknife from one of the hidden compartments in her corset, and soon both she and Tewksbury are free. Trying to move both quickly and cautiously, they go up the ladder onto the deck.

The larger man spots them and gives chase. They jump from the boat onto the docks. The docks are a warren of slippery, narrow wooden walkways, and the two young people have no idea where they are headed. The man chasing them corners them at the end of one dock, but they jump across the water onto another dock. They see that the smaller man has joined the chase, as well. They finally make it onto land and run up a narrow street. There are people around, but Enola realizes they are unlikely to offer help. She finally spots the face of someone she knows: the woman from the train, Mrs. Culhane. Grabbing Tewksbury by the hand, she pulls him into Mrs. Culhane’s used clothing shop. When the woman protests that “Cutter” will kill her for helping them, Enola presses a 100-pound note into her hands to silence her.

Through the shop window, Enola watches Cutter—the larger of the two men—and his smaller companion approach. The locals are terrified of them. Mrs. Culhane, still outside, gestures to indicate that Enola and Tewksbury have gone past the shop toward the end of the street. The two men continue, and Enola is overwhelmed with relief. She takes a rag and tends to Tewksbury’s wounds. Mrs. Culhane comes inside and demands more money. Enola negotiates for the price to include new clothing for both herself and the marquess.

On the following morning, Enola and the marquess leave Mrs. Culhane’s shop. Enola is dressed as a young professional woman of the lower-middle class and wears a wig and glasses to disguise her appearance. In her pocket, Enola has stashed a list of questions about Cutter and recent events. She mulls over the significance of Cutter seeming to know her and Tewksbury’s movements despite Enola having only told Lestrade of her theory—in the hearing of Madame Laelia. She and the marquess are startled when they hear a newsboy announcing that a ransom demand has been issued for Tewksbury.

They buy a copy of the paper and look at it together. Tewksbury is humiliated when he sees the picture of himself in his childish garb, and he insists that he will never go back home. The newspaper article credits Lestrade with Enola’s deductions regarding the marquess’s disappearance, but it adds that, since a ransom demand has now been received, these deductions must have been in error. It also mentions that Madame Laelia has urged the family to pay the ransom, because the spirits have told her Tewksbury will be killed if the ransom is not paid.

The young marquess finally realizes that he has to go home to save his family from being swindled. He tells her that London is not what he imagined it would be, in any case, and explains to her about things like the “dosses,” poor elderly women without any homes who are so weak from illness and malnutrition that they can only move about by crawling. Enola is horrified. He and Enola agree to go to the police, reveal the marquess’s identity, and tell the police all about Cutter and his associate.

Enola and the marquess take a cab to Scotland Yard. Enola realizes that Laelia and Cutter must be confederates, as only Laelia could have given the information about herself and Tewksbury to Cutter. She takes out a piece of paper and sketches both of them side by side. When she sees them together this way, she realizes that Madame Laelia is not a woman at all, but Cutter in a wig and dress.

While they wait at Scotland Yard, Sherlock and Lestrade enter. Enola trusts her disguise, but she is relieved that Sherlock’s back is to her. Lestrade argues for Sherlock to help him find Tewksbury, and Sherlock argues for more help in finding Enola. Enola finds herself admiring the charismatic force of Sherlock’s personality. She learns that Sherlock feels guilty for leaving her with Mycroft, but she is hurt when Sherlock characterizes her as having “more spirit than intelligence” (201). When Lestrade again brings up the marquess, Tewksbury clears his throat to get their attention and stands up. Enola slips away as unobtrusively as she can, but she leaves behind her drawing of Cutter and Laelia.

After leaving, Enola feels sad that she did not have more time to spend observing her brother, as she misses him and her home. She is angry that Sherlock does not want to look for Eudoria, however, and resolves again to find her mother herself. She thinks this is better, in any case, because unlike her brothers, she will not try to force Eudoria back to Ferndell. She takes a cab to Fleet Street, where she places a ciphered message as an advertisement in several periodicals she knows her mother reads. The message asks her mother if she is well and to contact Enola.

She feels satisfied with her efforts in finding the marquess and making her way to London on her own. For the first time, she realizes that she has talents and knowledge that Sherlock lacks and that, far from being his inferior, she is his equal. She decides that, with her own unique abilities, she will “go places and accomplish things Sherlock Holmes could never imagine, much less do” (209).

Three months after arriving in London, Enola has settled into her new life. She is living under the name Ivy Meshle and spends her days setting up an office for a fictional male employer, Dr. Leslie T. Ragostin, Scientific Perditorian. This office is in the recently vacated building formerly occupied by Madame Laelia’s office. At night, she adopts a nun’s habit and goes out into the streets of East London, where she hands out food, blankets, and other necessities to the unhoused elderly women. To her delight, Eudoria has responded to her ciphered messages by placing her own ciphers in the periodicals, and Enola knows for sure now that her mother is alive and well. Eudoria implies that she has gone into the countryside to live with a Roma community. Enola thinks that, in the spring, she might travel out from London to try to find her mother.