The Case of the Missing Marquess (16 page)

I rather regretted having to leave Tewky so abruptly, without a farewell.

But it could not be helped. I had to find Mum.

I also very much regretted not having been able to spend more time with my brother Sherlock, even if only in disguise, to look at him, listen to him, admire him. I actually missed him, with yearning in my heart as if I were a ladybird, ladybird, and I wanted to fly away home—

But my famous detective brother did
not
care to find Mum. Confound him. All my fluttering feelings about him folded their wings and settled into heartache.

Although—perhaps it was just as well. Sherlock and Mycroft would have wanted Mum back in Ferndell Hall, but obviously she did not wish to be there. When—not if, but
when
I found her, I would ask of her nothing that might make her unhappy. I was not seeking her in order to take away her freedom.

I just wanted to have a mum.

That was all.

To be in communication with her. Maybe meet now and then to chat over a cup of tea.

To know where she was.

Although one could not help fearing, at the back of one’s mind, that she had come to harm—still, I imagined it more likely that Mum had taken herself someplace where there were no corsets, no bustles, and perhaps no hats or boots. Someplace amid flowers and greenery. Ironic, I thought, that I, following her example and making my escape, had gone instead to this cesspool of a city where I had not yet seen a palace, a golden carriage, or a lady in ermine and diamonds. Where I had seen instead an old woman crawling on the pavement, her head infested with ringworm.

Certainly Mum could never fall to such depths.

Could she?

I must be sure not; and I had only a few hours in which to act before the entire London constabulary would be alerted to look for me.

Alighting from the omnibus at the next stop, I walked a block, then hailed a cab. A four-wheeler this time, for the sake of being closed in, my face unseen. “Fleet Street,” I told the driver.

As he manoeuvred through the heavy traffic of the city, I once more took paper and pencil in hand, composing a message:

THANK YOU MY CHRYSANTHEMUM ARE YOU BLOOMING? SEND IRIS PLEASE.

I distinctly remembered from
The Meanings of Flowers
that the iris indicated “a message.” Irises in a bouquet alerted the receiver to pay attention to the meanings of the other flowers. The Greek goddess Iris had carried messages between Mount Olympus and Earth via the bridge of the rainbow.

Many of the other entries in
The Meanings of Flowers,
however, I could not recall so clearly. As soon as I had found lodgings, I must be sure to obtain a copy of the book for reference.

Bitterly I regretted the loss of that other, irreplaceable book my mother had given me, my most precious memento of her, my book of ciphers. What Cutter had done with it, I would never know.

(Or so I thought at the time.)

But, I assured myself, I did not need it for any practical purpose.

(Again, so I thought.)

Taking the message I had composed, I reversed it:

 

Then I zigzagged it up and down into two lines, thus:
Then, swaying on my seat as my cab rumbled along, I reversed the order of the lines to compose my message. This I would place in the personal advertisements columns of the
Pall Mall Gazette
, which my mother seldom missed, plus the
Magazine of Modern Womanhood
, the
Journal of Dress Reform
, and other publications she favoured. My cipher ran as follows:

“Tails ivy SEPIINSGIOLUYRMMHNSRCMOKAT tips ivy EALSRDE?NMOBOEAUE-TAYHYUYNH your Ivy”

I knew that my mother, who could not resist a cipher, would give this one her fullest attention if and when she saw it.

I also knew that, unfortunately, my brother Sherlock, who habitually read what he called the “agony columns” of the daily newspapers, would also notice it.

But, as he knew nothing of the way ivy runs backwards on a picket fence, perhaps he would not decipher it.

And even if he did solve it, I doubted he would understand it or connect it to me.

Once upon a time—it seemed long ago, in another world, but it was really only six weeks ago—once, pedalling along a country road and thinking of my brother, I had made a mental list of my talents, comparing them unfavorably with his.

Now, riding in a London cab instead of on a bicycle, I found myself compiling in my mind a different list of my talents and abilities. I knew things Sherlock Holmes failed even to imagine. Whereas he had overlooked the significance of my mother’s bustle (baggage) and her tall hat (in which I suspected she had carried quite a stout roll of bank notes), I, on the other hand, understood the structures and uses of ladies’ underpinnings and adornments. I had shown myself adept at disguise. I knew the encoded meanings of flowers. In fact, while Sherlock Holmes dismissed “the fair sex” as irrational and insignificant, I knew of matters his “logical” mind could never grasp. I knew an entire world of communications belonging to women, secret codes of hat brims and rebellion, handkerchiefs and subterfuge, feather fans and covert defiance, sealing-wax and messages in the positioning of a postage-stamp, calling cards and a cloak of ladylike conspiracy in which I could wrap myself. I expected that without much difficulty I could incorporate weaponry as well as defense and supplies into a corset. I could go places and accomplish things Sherlock Holmes could never understand or imagine, much less do.

And I planned to.

LONDON, NOVEMBER, 1888

ALL DRESSED IN BLACK, THE NAMELESS stranger emerges from her lodgings late at night to prowl the streets of the East End. From her unfashionably straight waist swings a rosary, its ebony beads clicking as she walks. The veiled habit of a nun covers her tall, thin body from head to toe. In her arms she carries food, blankets, and clothing for the poor old women who huddle on the steps of the workhouse, the crawling women called dosses, and any others whom she may find in need. The street folk accept her kindness and call her Sister. No one knows her by any other name, for she never speaks. Seemingly she has taken a vow of silence and solitude. Or perhaps she wishes not to flaunt cultivated speech, not to be betrayed by an upper-class accent. Silent, she comes, she goes, an object of curiosity at first but after a few days scarcely noticed.

In a much wealthier and somewhat bohemian section of the city, someone is opening an office in the same Gothic residence where Madame Laelia Sibyl de Papaver, Astral Perditorian, held séances before her—or rather, his—shocking arrest, the scandal of the season. With the previous occupant gone to prison, in the house’s bay window a placard has appeared: Soon to Be Available for Consultation, Dr. Leslie T. Ragostin, Scientific Perditorian. A scientist must of course be a man, and an important one, quite busy at the University or the British Museum; undoubtedly this is why no one in the well-to-do neighbourhood has yet seen the great Dr. Leslie T. Ragostin. But every day his secretary comes and goes, putting things to rights in his new office, tending to his affairs. She is a plain young woman, unremarkable except for her efficiency, very much like thousands of other young women typists and bookkeepers surviving in London so as to send a little money home to their families. Her name is Ivy Meshle.

Daily, as befits a virtuous and modest young woman alone in the big city, Ivy Meshle lunches at the Professional Women’s Tea-Room nearest to her place of employment. There, protected from any contact with the predatory male of the species, she sits alone reading the
Pall Mall Gazette
and various other periodicals. Already she has found in one of these publications a personal advertisement that interests her exceedingly, so much so that she has clipped it out and carries it on her person. It says:

“Iris tipstails to Ivy

Sometimes, alone in her cheap lodgings, Miss Meshle (or perhaps the mute, nameless Sister) draws this slip of paper from a pocket and sits down to look at it, even though she has long since deciphered it:

 

This message was sent, she believes, by a contented woman who is wandering, free, in a place where there are no hairpins, no corsets, no dress improvers: with the Gypsies on the moors.

 

One hypothesis answers all three questions: The runaway woman had no great distance to travel, needing only to walk out upon the countryside until she met, very likely by prearrangement, with a caravan of England’s nomads.

In
The Meanings of Flowers,
the rambling rose refers to “a free, wandering, Gypsy type of life.”

And if there is a touch of larceny in the nature of Gypsies, well, so there appeared to be also in Eudoria Vernet Holmes. As was demonstrated by her dealings with Mycroft Holmes. Very likely she is quite enjoying herself.

One question remains unanswered:

Not as troublesome a thought as it used to be. That freedom-loving lady, growing old, having probably only a brief time to fulfill a dream before she dies, has done the best she can for her late-in-life daughter. Sometime—plans the girl who walks alone—perhaps in the spring, when the weather has warmed enough to permit travel, she will set out to seek for her mother among the Gypsies.

But meanwhile, as she looks at the newspaper clipping, her rather long and angular face softens, rendered almost beautiful, by a smile: for she knows that in the secret code of flowers, a rose of any sort signifies love.

 

END

“TIPSTAILS” INDICATES HOW THE CIPHER IS set up.

To solve, divide the cipher in half:

The first line of letters is “ivy tips,” the second line “ivy tails.” Following the letters up and down between lines:

Then, separating the result into words: