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

her confidence? Why had she left me behind?
    Oh, very well, I could understand, however painfully, that she had not wanted to trust a young girl with her secret . . . but why had she not at least offered me some message of explanation or farewell?
    And why, oh why, had she chosen to leave on my birthday? Mum never in her life took a stitch without thread. She must have had a reason. What could it be?
    Because . . .
    I sat bolt upright at the desk, my mouth agape.
    Now I saw.
    From Mum’s point of view.
    And it made perfect sense. Mum was clever. Clever, clever, clever.
    She had left me a message.
    As a present.
    On my birthday. Which was why she had chosen that day of all days to leave. A day for the giving of gifts, so no one would notice—
    I leapt up. Where had I put it? I had to light a candle to carry with me so I could see to look around my bedroom. It was not on the bookshelf. It was not on any of the chairs, or my dresser, or my washstand, or my bed. It was not perched on the Noah’s Ark or the rocking horse, hand-me-downs from my brothers. Confound my stupid, muddled head, where had I put . . . there. In my neglected dollhouse, of all places, there it was: a slender sheaf of hand-painted, hand-lettered crisp artists’ papers, creased precisely in half and stitched together along the fold.
    I pounced upon it: the booklet of ciphers my mother had created for me.
    ALO NEK OOL NIY MSM UME HTN
ASY RHC
    In my mother’s flyaway lettering.
    One glance at the first cipher made me shut my eyes, wanting to cry.
    Think, Enola.
    It was almost as if I heard my mother chiding me from inside my head. “Enola, you’ll do quite well on your own.”
    I opened my eyes, stared at the line of jumbled letters, and thought.
    Very well. First of all, a sentence would not likely have words all of three letters.
    Taking a fresh sheet of paper from my drawing kit, I pulled close the oil lamp on one hand and the candle on the other, then copied the cipher like this:
    ALONEKOOLNIYMSMUMEHTNASYRHC
     
    The first word sprang out at me: “alone.”
    Or was it “Enola”?
    Try it backwards.
    CHRYSANTHEMUMSMYINLOOKENOLA
    My eye passed over the first part to seize upon the letters “MUM.” Mum. Mother was sending me a message about herself?
     
    MUMS MY IN LOOK ENOLA
     
    The order of the words sounded backwards.
     
    ENOLA LOOK IN MY
     
    Oh, for Heaven’s sake. CHRYSANTHEMUMS. The border of flowers painted around the page should have told me. Gold and russet chrysanthemums.
    I had solved the cipher.
    I was not totally stupid.
    Or perhaps I was, for what on earth did it mean, “Enola, look in my chrysanthemums”? Had Mother buried something in a flower bed somewhere? Unlikely. I doubted she’d ever held a shovel in her life. Dick took care of such chores, and in any event, Mother was no gardener; she liked to let hardy flowers, such as the chrysanthemums, take care of themselves.
    The chrysanthemums outside. What would she consider her chrysanthemums?
    Downstairs the casement clock struck two. Never before had I been up so late at night. My mind felt as if it were floating, not quite anchored in my head anymore.
    I felt tired and calm enough to go to bed now. But I did not wish to.
    Wait. Mother had given me another book. The Meanings of Flowers. Reaching for it, I consulted the index, then looked up chrysanthemum.
    “The bestowing of chrysanthemums indicates familial attachment and, by implication, affection.”
    Implied affection was better than nothing.
    Idly, I looked up the sweet pea blossom.
    “Good-bye, and thank you for a lovely time. A gift made upon departure.”
    Departure.
    Next, I looked up thistles.
    “Defiance.”
    Grimly I smiled.
    So. Mum had left a message after all. Departure and defiance in the Japanese vase. In her airy sitting room with a hundred watercolours on the wall.
    Watercolours of flowers.
    I blinked, smiling wider. “Enola,” I whispered to myself, “that’s it.”
     
    “My” chrysanthemums. Mums