The Case of the Missing Marquess Read Online Free PDF

unless one considers Dick.”
    “Who is quite odd,” Mycroft agreed. A joke, yet I saw no flicker of a smile on either of my brothers. “I’m surprised Mother did not list one Reginald Collie, who is arguably a servant, in her expenses. She listed imaginary horses and ponies, imaginary carriages, a coachman, grooms, stable boys—”
    “There is no denying that we have been woefully deceived.”
    “—and for Enola, a music teacher, a dancing instructor, a governess—”
    A startled look passed between them, as if a logic problem had suddenly grown a face and hair, and then both at once they turned to stare at me.
    “Enola,” Sherlock demanded, “you have at least had a governess, haven’t you?”
    I had not. Mum had sent me to school with the village children, and after I had learned all I could there, she had told me I would do quite well on my own, and I considered that I had. I’d read every book in Ferndell Hall’s library, from A Child’s Garden of Verses to the entire Encyclopaedia Britannica.
    As I hesitated, Mycroft restated the question: “You have had the proper education of a young lady?”
    “I have read Shakespeare,” I replied, “and Aristotle, and Locke, and the novels of Thackeray, and the essays of Mary Wollstonecraft.”
    Their faces froze. I could scarcely have horrified them more if I had told them I had learned to perform on a circus trapeze.
    Then Sherlock turned to Mycroft and said softly, “It’s my fault. There’s no trusting a woman; why make an exception for one’s mother? I should have come here to check upon her yearly at the very least, no matter how much unpleasantness would have ensued.”
    Mycroft said just as softly and sadly, “To the contrary, my dear Sherlock, it is I who have neglected my responsibility. I am the elder son—”
    A discreet cough sounded, and in came Lane with a tray of cucumber sandwiches, sliced fruit, and a pitcher of lemonade. There was blessed silence for a few moments until luncheon was served.
    During that silence, I framed a question. “What has any of this,” I asked after Lane had withdrawn, “to do with finding Mother?”
    Rather than answering me, Mycroft gave his full attention to his plate.
    Sherlock drummed his fingers, rumpling the starched lace tablecloth. “We are formulating a theory,” he said at last.
    “And what is this theory?”
    Silence again.
    I asked, “Am I to have my mother back again or not?”
    Neither of them would look at me, but after what seemed a long time, Sherlock glanced at his brother and said, “Mycroft, I think she has a right to know.”
    Mycroft sighed, nodded, put down what remained of his third sandwich, and faced me. “We are trying to decide,” he said, “whether what is happening now connects to what happened after Father’s dea—er, after our father’s passing away. You wouldn’t remember, I suppose.”
    “I was four years old,” I said. “I remember mostly the black horses.”
    “Quite so. Well, after the burial, over the next few days there was disagreement—”
    “That’s putting it kindly,” Sherlock interposed. “The words ‘battle royal’ come to mind.”
    Ignoring him, Mycroft went on. “Disagreement as to the handling of the estate. Neither Sherlock nor I wanted to live here, so Mother thought that the rent money should come directly to her, and that she should run Ferndell Park.”
    Well, she did run it, didn’t she? Yet Mycroft sounded as if he considered the idea absurd.
    “As I am the firstborn son, the estate is mine,” he went on, “and Mother did not dispute that, but she could not seem to see why she should not manage things for me, rather than the other way around. When Sherlock and I reminded her that, legally, she had no right even to live here unless I permitted it, she became quite irrational and made it clear that we were no longer welcome in our own birth-place.”
    Oh. My goodness. Everything seemed to turn upside down in my mind, as if it were