The Case of the Missing Marquess

Sixty-four-year-old widowed aristocrat Eudoria Holmes is the mother of Enola, Sherlock, and Mycroft. Her disappearance sets the novel’s plot in motion and inspires Enola to become a “perditorian.” Although Eudoria does not make a direct appearance in the story, her beliefs and personality shape Enola’s character and circumstances in key ways.

During the years of her marriage to Enola’s father, Eudoria had to play the role of a dutiful aristocratic wife and mother, artificially constrained by expectations of her class and gender. Following her husband’s death, however, her insistence on living by her own rules created a rift between herself and her two sons. Sherlock and Mycroft did not visit Eudoria and Enola for 10 years, leaving Enola to grow up with only Eudoria’s perspective to guide her.

Eudoria is at heart an independent nonconformist who believes strongly in the equality of women. She is a proponent of “Rational Dress,” the idea that women’s clothing should be practical and comfortable rather than restrictive. She “[does] not care whether she [is] in fashion” (21). Enola’s description of Eudoria’s rooms in Chapter 2 as “a sanctuary of the artistic spirit” conveys Eudoria’s great appreciation for art and beauty (19). Eudoria loves flowers and ciphers, and she is knowledgeable about the traditional coded languages Victorian women use to communicate—the languages of flowers, fans, handkerchiefs, and so on. She passes her knowledge of these topics on to Enola, and this knowledge becomes instrumental in Enola’s own success as a perditorian—both in The Case of the Missing Marquess and in later novels in the series.

Eudoria also prepares Enola to follow her own heart—regardless of the opinions of others—by cultivating her independence. Eudoria believed Enola to be a strong and capable child who would thrive if left to her own devices and did not provide a nanny, governess, or other source of guidance and companionship to Enola. Eudoria counted on Enola’s independence because all along—almost since the day of her husband’s death—she was plotting to escape the oppressive control her sons exerted over her life and fortunes. Her love for Enola demanded that she prepare Enola for her absence and encourage Enola to escape, herself.

Eudoria’s struggle to live her life on her own terms epitomizes The Tension Between Independence and Obligation. Eudoria does not flee her home until she judges Enola old enough. Before leaving, Eudoria makes elaborate preparations to encourage and fund Enola’s own flight to freedom. Despite it being a risk to her continued independence, Eudoria responds to Enola’s coded messages at the end of the novel, wanting to reassure her daughter and provide her as much peace as she can. Although Eudoria, faced with the choice between obligation and independence, ultimately chooses independence, she works hard to minimize the impact of this choice on Enola, modeling to her daughter the importance of minimizing damage to others as she embarks on her own path to adult autonomy and learns to follow the dictates of her own heart.

Mycroft Holmes is Enola’s eldest brother. He is in his late thirties or early forties and works in London for the British government. When the novel opens, Enola has not seen Mycroft since her father’s funeral when she was four years old. Although Enola fantasizes about developing a close relationship with her brothers, Mycroft almost immediately becomes an antagonist in Enola’s life, trying to reshape her personality and behavior and use his legal authority and money to control her destiny. Mycroft’s treatment of Enola, which is meant to discourage her from becoming like Eudoria, ironically has the opposite effect. It illustrates clearly to Enola how confined Eudoria felt, inspiring her to plot an escape from Mycroft’s control.

Mycroft is a powerful and well-connected man who is focused on his own social standing and wealth. He is a pompous, misogynistic character who feels free to make rude, condescending remarks to others and lacks empathy for his younger sister’s feelings. Although he expresses guilt about not seeing Enola for 10 years, the basis of his guilt is his feeling that he might be seen to have neglected his duty, as the family’s eldest son and heir, to ensure that Enola was being raised properly.

Mycroft is a character borrowed from the universe of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories. In the original novels and stories, Mycroft is a minor character who only occasionally appears. He and Sherlock are not close, although Sherlock does call on Mycroft for help at times. Doyle’s Mycroft is portrayed as a man of exceptional intelligence who has a central but behind-the-scenes role in government, a man entirely devoted to his essential role in shaping governmental policy. Springer’s adaptation of his character preserves these essential facts but adds new elements to his personality, such as his misogyny and callous treatment of Eudoria and Enola.

Sherlock Holmes is Enola’s elder brother. He’s a famous private detective in his early thirties, living in London. Like Doyle’s original character, Sherlock is a brilliant and observant man with a dogged determination to see his cases through to their conclusions—he can, in fact, have a one-track mind that does not allow him to focus on anything else when he is pursuing answers to a mystery. Across the story, Enola, who admires Sherlock greatly, discovers that she herself is similarly gifted and comes to view herself not as Sherlock’s inferior but his equal.

Like his eldest brother, Mycroft, Sherlock holds prejudiced views toward women and feels free to bluntly dismiss Enola’s independent desires—but unlike Mycroft, he does show at least some warmth toward Enola and some concern for her feelings. Enola’s accomplishments often surprise Sherlock, and he vacillates between dismissing her abilities and offering her a grudging respect. These qualities make him more sympathetic than Mycroft, as does the serious depressive condition that makes it harder for him to connect with others.

Sherlock’s similarities to and differences from Enola allow him to function as a foil for her. Although both siblings are curious and determined people who are single-minded in their pursuit of the truth, Sherlock’s coldness and arrogance serve to highlight Enola’s more compassionate and intuitive approach to both detective work and life. Because Enola admires Sherlock and enjoys similar work, she longs for a relationship with him. Sherlock makes only brief appearances in The Case of the Missing Marquess, but he appears more frequently as the series progresses, and he and Enola gradually develop a closer relationship of mutual respect.

In Doyle’s original tales, Sherlock is portrayed similarly to the way Springer portrays him in this first Enola Holmes novel—although Springer does not showcase Sherlock’s brilliance as a detective to the extent that Doyle does. She also tailors her depiction of Sherlock to her middle-grade audience, eliminating his drug use or his willingness to break the law in pursuit of justice—both signature elements of Doyle’s version of the character.

The Viscount Tewksbury is the 12-year-old son of an aristocratic British family. Feeling trapped by his doting and overprotective mother, who “has kept him a baby,” with long curls and elaborate velvet and lace clothing, he decides to run away from the family’s countryside estate, Basilwether (114). The mystery of his disappearance and Enola’s eventual rescue of him form the central conflict of The Case of The Missing Marquess.

Tewksbury functions as a foil for Enola. When he first runs away, the marquess is, much like Enola, a young dreamer who projects his own fantasies onto the city of London. He dreams of living as an ordinary, working-class sailor and seeing the world, but coming face-to-face with the poverty in London and the anger of the working class at his own position of privilege catalyzes his dynamic, coming-of-age character arc, similar to Enola’s own. Like Enola, he is genuinely distressed by the poverty he sees in the city—but unlike Enola, he does not choose to stay and work to make the lives of the poor better. Instead, he chooses to return to Basilwether to prevent his family from being taken advantage of by Cutter. Faced with the choice between independence and obligation, just as Enola is, he makes the opposite decision.

Enola’s rescue of Tewksbury subverts the damsel-in-distress trope often seen in Victorian novels. His mother’s way of dressing him not only diminishes him to the status of a much younger child and evokes the restrictive, elaborate finery upper-class women of the time are expected to wear, further eroding his autonomy and agency. When Enola finds him in the hold of Cutter’s boat, he is waiting passively for rescue, and it is Enola—a young woman—who boldly frees him and guides him safely to Scotland Yard, reinforcing the underestimated strengths of women.