Enola Holmes and the Mark of the Mongoose: Enola Holmes 9 by Nancy Springer

Author:Nancy Springer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: A&U Children’s
Published: 2022-07-16T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER

THE

TENTH

Early the next day, Wednesday, the maid brought in, along with matutinal hot water, a replying telegram from Sherlock:

NO JOY STOP NO POLICE REPORTS OF CANINE

INSANITY STOP MOST PERPLEXING

“No joy”? I wondered if Sherlock had ever, even once in his life actually ridden with a fox hunt. I also considered that it was high time for “tally ho.” It had been almost a week since Wolcott Balestier disappeared. I must, simply must, track down Mary Erasmus today, because she knew something! Why else would she have given me a false name? Ethel Etheridge, my eye.

Skipping breakfast (not something I would normally do!), I clothed myself simply, with a scarf tied over my head in lieu of a hat, and set forth quite early. I reached the Covent Garden Flower Market at the height of morning bustle, went directly to the vendors of day-old flowers at the bottom of the market, and started asking, “Excuse me, have you seen Mary Erasmus?”

The fifth vendor I asked, a harried and rather hairy woman of uncertain age, answered without even looking up to see what I was about, “She should be here any minute.”

And so she was.

I watched Mary Erasmus, stoutly corseted and looking upholstered as before, approach through the crowd with a big, empty basket on her arm and what looked like a genuine smile on her flat face. Rather than confronting her, I thought, I would learn more from her if I could keep her smiling, so when I stepped forwards to intercept her, I greeted her lightly, almost in jest. “Ethel Etheridge, you are a sobriquet!”

Startled only slightly, she acknowledged, “An incognito.”

“An alias!”

Playfully sparring with vocabulary, we stood like two rocks in the middle of a flowery flow, people from all directions parting to pass us.

“A pseudonym.”

“An anonym.”

“A nom de guerre.”

“A name of war? I admit defeat,” said I with a smile. “Pray tell, how did you come to acquire your victorious vocabulary?” Anything I might learn of her could do me only good.

She replied amiably enough, “My mother was a ragged schoolteacher.”

Ragged school! From such struggling beginnings came the scholars of the streets, and sometimes the leaders, or the rebels.

“And she was the proud owner of a dictionary,” added “Ethel Etheridge.”

I cocked my head. “Was there a bit of a competition with your mother?” I inquired, remembering my own illustrious mum.

“A bit,” she conceded.

Yes. I knew I had recognised something in her.

“Are your parents still alive?”

“No.” Her amiability vanished.

But I persisted. “So, you are on your own? Can you support yourself by selling boutonnieres?”

“Hardly. By day, I am an artisan in fingernail lacquer.” Interesting! A recent fad, nail lacquer was much in demand among the wealthy, although why any woman should want to glorify her fingernails only to hide them in multi-button gloves was beyond my understanding. “I concoct, sell, and apply my own product,” continued Mary Erasmus with a proud lift of the head. “I am as much of an entrepreneur as any factory owner.”

I heard heavy scorn in those last words.

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