The Case of the Missing Marquess

Enola is surprised by the picture of Viscount Tewksbury she sees in the newspaper. He’s dressed like a very young child, with long curls and a frilly velvet suit, despite being 12 years old. She learns that an outer door at his home was forced open and his room was found in disarray, but that nothing has been stolen from the house. Instantly, Enola knows what has happened to the young marquess. She heads for Basilwether Park.

At the gate, Enola gives her real name without thinking. She instantly regrets not giving the pseudonym she has already chosen for her new life: Ivy Meshle. Still, she sees that she can turn this to her advantage by pretending that Sherlock has sent her to investigate. The lodge-keeper is impressed and admits her to the estate. Enola heads for some woodlands near the house, but she is intercepted by the marquess’s mother. The duchess has heard about her arrival and has come to beg Enola to find her missing child. Enola gently assures the woman that she will find the marquess.

Their conversation is interrupted by a strange, tall woman with wiry red hair, wearing a loud red dress. The woman announces that she is Madame Laelia Sibyl de Papaver, Astral Perditorian, and that she will use her psychic powers to find the missing boy. Enola dismisses this talk of supernatural forces, but she is riveted by the word “perditorian,” which she understands to mean a finder of lost things. She immediately decides that she will become the world’s first “professional, logical, scientific perditorian” (120).

The duchess and Laelia return to the house, and Enola continues toward the woods. As she searches for the hideaway she is sure the young marquess must have built there, she thinks about her own escape plan. When she gets to London, she intends to place an encrypted message in the periodicals her mother reads, hoping to contact Eudoria. Now, having decided to become a professional perditorian, she also imagines working in this field and associating with other professional women—perhaps even women who know her mother. She finds a treehouse the marquess has constructed and climbs up into it. There, she discovers that the marquess has cut off all of his long curls and shredded his fancy, childish clothing. She also finds many pictures of ships and knotted cords.

On her way back to the Basilwether house, Enola runs into Inspector Lestrade, a detective from Scotland Yard who has worked on several cases with Sherlock. He questions her about her relationship to Sherlock, but she deflects his questions skillfully and instead directs the conversation to the missing marquess. She hands him a lock of the boy’s hair she gathered in the treehouse and suggests that the marquess has run away, likely to the London docks, where he will be trying to get work aboard a ship. Their conversation is overheard by Laelia, who is standing atop a nearby staircase.

Having delivered the information to Lestrade, Enola decides it is time to get away while she still can, and she heads for the train station. On the train, she reflects that she will have to abandon her widow disguise because Sherlock will hear about it from Lestrade. She is startled when a man’s large face appears in her compartment window. He is obviously searching for someone, but he goes away and does not bother Enola again. An elderly woman in Enola’s compartment notices her widow’s garb and, assuming she is a young and recently widowed woman who might need extra money, she tries to persuade Enola to visit a particular used-clothing store to sell some of her petticoats. Enola has no interest in selling these, but she realizes that she can obtain a new disguise by visiting such a shop.

Enola’s first sight of London shocks her. She’s unprepared for its size and darkness, thinking of it as a “grotesque brick-and-stone parody” (141). Crowds of people brush by her, seeming indifferent to her. She takes a deep breath and heads east, toward the used-clothing stores she learned about on the train. The city around her grows progressively more impoverished, dirty, and dangerous. She is shocked at the living conditions of the poor and feels pity for them. She pauses for a moment, horrified at a woman crawling along the pavement, and too late she realizes that she herself is in danger.

A man rushes up and grabs Enola. He clamps a hand over her mouth and tells her that if she struggles or makes any noise, he will kill her. He shows her a long knife and demands to know where Lord Tewksbury is. Enola protests that she has no idea, but the man calls her a liar and moves as if to cut her throat. She hits him with her carpetbag, and it flies out of her hands. He stabs at her waist, but the knife is blocked by her corset. She twists away from him and runs. As she cries out for help, another man calls to her and guides her into an alleyway. She becomes alarmed when the second man leads her onto an unsteady, narrow wooden walkway. When Enola questions him, he grabs her and tells her to do what he says. She struggles and cries out, and he knocks her unconscious. When Enola wakes, she finds herself tied hand and foot in the hold of a boat. She is not alone: the Marquess of Basilwether is her fellow prisoner.