Free The Case of the Missing Marquess by Nancy Springer Page B

they sent for Sherlock Holmes, too—”
    Oh, my goodness. Halting, eagerly I listened.
    “—but he won’t come, he’s called away by family—”
    The speaker passed by, confound it, and I heard no more of my brother, although other babble aplenty.
    “My cousin’s the second assistant upstairs maid at the big house—”
    “The duchess has gone clean out of her head, folk say.”
    “—and she says they—”
    “And the duke is fit to be tied.”
    “Old Pickering at the bank says they’re still waiting for a ransom demand.”
    “Who’d want the boy if not for ransom?”
    Hmm. It would seem that the “Shocking Kidnapping!” had taken place close by. Indeed, watching the detectives pile into quite a lovely landau, I saw them being trotted off towards a green park not far beyond the railway station. Above the trees rose the grey Gothic towers of—from the talk around me—Basilwether Hall.
    How interesting.
    But first things first. I must purchase a ticket—
    However, according to the large schedule posted upon the station wall, there would be no lack of trains to London. Every hour or so all day and into the evening.
    “Duke’s son gone missing! Read all about it!” shrieked a newsboy standing beneath the schedule.
    While no believer in providence, I had to wonder how chance had placed me here, on this scene of crime, and my brother the great detective elsewhere. My thoughts became unruly, and their lure irresistible. Abandoning my attempt to reach the ticket window, I bought a newspaper instead.

CHAPTER THE NINTH
    AT A TEA-SHOP BESIDE BELVIDERE STATION, I sat at a corner table, facing the wall in order to lift my veil. I needed to do this for two purposes: to breakfast upon tea and scones, and to look at young Viscount Tewksbury Basilwether’s photographic likeness.
    Occupying nearly half the front page of the newspaper, a formal studio portrait showed the boy dressed in—heavens have mercy, I hoped he wasn’t made to wear velvet and frills every day—but how else might he go about with his fair hair, rendered artistic by the curling tongs, hanging to his shoulders? All too apparently his mother had fallen in love with Little Lord Fauntleroy , wretched book responsible for the agonies of a generation of well-born boys. Got up in the height of Fauntleroy fashion, little Lord Tewksbury wore patent leather buckle slippers, white stockings, black velvet knee pants with satin bows at the sides, and a satin sash under his black velvet jacket with its flowing white lace cuffs and collar. He stared at the camera with no expression whatsoever on his face, but I thought I saw a trace of hardness around his jaw.
    DUKE’S HEIR OF TENDER YEARS
HORRIFICALLY MISSING .
    screamed the headline. Reaching for a second scone, I read:
     
    A scene of the most alarming implications unfolded early Wednesday morning at Basilwether Hall, ancestral home of the Dukes of Basilwether, near the thriving town of Belvidere, when an under-gardener noticed that one of the French doors of the billiards room had been broken into. The household staff then being alerted, next discovered that the lock of the room’s interior door had been forced, the woodwork showing the marks of a vicious knife. Naturally fearful of burglary, the butler checked the silverware pantry and discovered nothing missing. Nor were the plate and candelabra of the dining room disturbed, or the innumerable valuable contents of the drawing-room, the gallery, the library, or anywhere else in Basilwether Hall’s extensive premises. Indeed no further doors had been forced downstairs. It was not until the upstairs maids commenced carrying the customary ewers of hot water to the ducal family’s quarters for their matutinal ablutions, that Viscount Tewksbury, Marquess of Basilwether’s chamber door was found standing ajar. His furnishings, strewn about the room, bore mute witness to a desperate struggle, and of his noble personage there was no sign. The Viscount, Lord