The Case of the Missing Marquess

The Case of the Missing Marquess by Nancy Springer is the first in a series of young adult mystery-adventure novels featuring protagonist Enola Holmes. Enola, a character created by Springer, is the 14-year-old sister of famed fictional detective Sherlock Holmes. In this first novel, Enola’s mother disappears, inspiring Enola to become a detective herself. As she secretly travels to London—hoping to establish a new home base where she can search for her mother and avoid a plan to send her to boarding school—she becomes entangled in another mysterious disappearance. As Enola sorts out the case of the missing Marquess of Basilwether, she struggles with the prejudices against women common in Victorian England and discovers her own hidden strengths.

Nancy Springer is the author of many novels and short stories for both adults and younger readers. She has written several fantasy stand-alones as well as series like The Book of the Isle and the Tales of Rowan Hood series. She also writes science fiction and mystery-suspense. Springer received the Carolyn W. Field Award in 1999 for her novel I Am Mordred (1998) and won both the 1995 and 1996 Edgar Awards. She has been nominated for the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award and the Hugo Award, and The Case of the Missing Marquess was nominated for the 2007 Edgar Award.

This guide is based on the 2007 Puffin Books paperback edition.

Content Warning: The source material and this guide feature depictions of death, gender discrimination, graphic violence, emotional abuse, bullying, mental illness, and child abuse in the form of abandonment. The source text also reflects stereotypical and racist beliefs about Roma people common in 19th-century England.

Language Note: In references to both the Roma people and their historic lifestyle, the source material employs an offensive word commonly used in the Victorian era. This guide does not reproduce the word.

Plot Summary

On Enola’s 14th birthday, her mother, Eudoria, goes out in the morning, leaving birthday presents for Enola with instructions to open the presents at teatime if Eudoria has not yet returned. The gifts include a cipher book that Eudoria has handmade for her daughter and a book on the traditional meanings of various flowers. When Eudoria has still not returned by the following morning, Enola is alarmed and sends telegrams to her much-older brothers, Sherlock and Mycroft.

Sherlock and Mycroft arrive and are shocked to find their family estate in a state of disrepair and most of the staff of servants dismissed. Mycroft reveals that, as the heir to the estate after their father’s death, he has been sending Eudoria large sums of money for the upkeep of the estate and the servants’ salaries. He and Sherlock assume that Eudoria has been pocketing the money and has now abandoned Enola and their estate to live elsewhere. The brothers reveal that the reason they have not been back to visit Enola and Eudoria for 10 years is that they had a falling-out with Eudoria, whose feminist views disturbed them. Enola feels relieved because she’s always believed that the family rift was caused by her own birth so embarrassingly late in her mother’s life.

Sherlock returns to London, leaving Mycroft to supervise Enola and the estate temporarily. Mycroft begins trying to enforce traditional gender norms for Enola, who chafes at his restrictions on her independence. He announces that she will soon be sent to a boarding school where she will learn to be a proper upper-class young woman and sends for a seamstress to sew Enola uncomfortable new clothes and fit her for a corset. Enola is horrified by these developments, but she cannot see a way out of obeying Mycroft’s instructions.

Enola eventually realizes that her mother has left her encoded messages in the cipher book. She uses this book and the book on the language of flowers to find that her mother has, indeed, left voluntarily. Eudoria has also left behind hidden money for Enola, which Enola finds and collects at night when Mycroft is sleeping. On the day she is scheduled to leave for boarding school, she hides one of her widowed mother’s outfits and the money among her things. She escapes from her driver and heads across country on her bike.

She arrives at a village and, disguised as a young widow, heads for the train station. On her way, she sees many police officers and learns that a 12-year-old nobleman, Viscount Tewksbury, the Marquess of Basilwether, has disappeared and is believed to have been kidnapped. As she has always admired Sherlock’s detective skills and is a curious person who prides herself on her ability to find lost things, Enola is distracted by this mystery. She reads a newspaper article about the supposed abduction and learns some information that interests her: The Marquess, although 12 years old, was habitually dressed like a much younger child by his mother. She begins to believe she knows where the boy might be.

Enola heads for the Basilwether estate. She carelessly gives her real name to the lodge-keeper at the gate and then decides to capitalize on her own mistake by pretending that her famous detective brother, Sherlock, has sent her to look into the case. She is admitted and immediately heads for the estate’s woodlands. The Marquess’s mother, having heard she is on the premises, runs to find her and begs her to find the Marquess. A garishly dressed woman interrupts the conversation, insisting that she, not Enola, is the one who will find the Marquess. She introduces herself as Madame Laelia, Astral Perditorian.

Enola does not believe in the supernatural, but she is very interested in the woman’s use of the term “perditorian,” which she understands to mean a finder of lost things. She decides the word perfectly describes the work to which she plans to devote her life. Unlike Madame Laelia, she will be a scientific finder of lost things—she will start with the Marquess and, someday, she will also find her mother. She heads into the woods and finds a cluster of trees where the Marquess has built himself a treehouse. Inside, she finds that he has cut off his long hair and shredded his childish clothing, confirming her belief that he has run away. She sees many pictures of boats and the sea and concludes that he can be found at the London docks, where he is doubtless trying to secure work on a ship.

As Enola returns to the house to find the Marquess’s mother, she runs into Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard, a detective who has worked with her brother in the past. She explains where to find the missing boy. Madame Laelia, lurking nearby, overhears. Enola heads for the train and begins the final part of her journey to London. On the train, she meets an older woman who, imagining her to be an impoverished recent widow, encourages her to sell her petticoats at a particular used clothing shop in East London. A strange man alarms her by peering into the window of her train compartment, but he goes away without further incident.

London is far larger, busier, and drearier than Enola had imagined it to be. She is shocked by the poverty and misery she sees. Shortly after she arrives, a man accosts her and chases her. A second man, pretending to help her, lures her onto the docks and knocks her unconscious. She wakes in the hold of a boat, tied hand and foot. She is surprised to find that there is another prisoner: the missing Marquess. Someone else has realized where the boy was headed and has managed to kidnap him. Working together, Enola and the Marquess escape their captors and flee into East London. They take refuge in the used clothing shop Enola learned about from the woman on the train, and Enola discovers that the woman from the train is its owner.

Enola pays for new clothing for herself and the Marquess. She takes the boy to the police station and leaves a sketch of one of their captors and Madame Laelia, having realized that Madame Laelia is actually a man, Cutter, dressed up as a woman. Cutter, who overheard Enola’s explanation to Inspector Lestrade, phoned a confederate in London to kidnap the Marquess from the docks while he himself was on his way back to London on the same train Enola took. Cutter and his confederate are arrested, and the Marquess returns home.

Enola settles herself in London. She takes the name Ivy Meshle and poses as the secretary to a fictional man, Dr. Leslie T. Ragostin, Scientific Perditorian. She sets up an office, supposedly for Ragostin. She places a message for her mother in a periodical she knows that her mother reads, using the same cipher her mother used to communicate with her. By this method, she learns that Eudoria ran away from her life at the Holmes estate to live with a community of Roma people, enjoying the freedom of traveling the countryside and not having to conform to upper-class English restrictions on women. Enola looks forward to spring, when she plans to travel into the countryside and see her mother face-to-face.