The Missing Boy (Lady Eugenie's School for Girl Sleuths Book 1)

by V. Penley

  Eugenie was among them. She had still been in the habit of wearing her wedding ring, though other young women had encouraged her to take it off. “We’re not in the Victorian era anymore, Eugenie,” they said. “You do not have to remain wedded until your own death.”

  But Eugenie had continued to wear the ring, not out of any fidelity to her late husband. Instead, she wore the ring because it was safest on her hand. It was her largest asset; the only property she owned outright. She had worn the ring to dinner on that first night at Thistledorn Manor, when everyone had gathered in the grand dining room.

  For the benefit of her students, Eugenie pointed down to the miniature dining room, and identified where she had been sitting at the table. She then pointed out where all the other guests had sat.

  Because of how steamy the dining room had been that night, Eugenie had removed the ring and placed it underneath her plate for safekeeping. But when she rose from the table at the end of the meal, the ring was gone. With a cry, she had stopped everyone from moving to the library. Much to the embarrassment of her hosts, Eugenie had plunged under the table in full view of everyone, and rooted around on her hands and knees like a hog.

  But the ring had not fallen to the floor.

  “Look in your pockets,” a friend at dinner had told her.

  “I don’t have pockets,” Eugenie said. Her frock was old—and pocketless.

  “Maybe it’s in a fold,” the friend had said, patting down the cloth and smoothing out every wrinkle. But the dress had been simple—simple being what Eugenie could afford, and the ring had not fallen into any crease.

  It had clearly been taken by someone at the dinner table. Eugenie whispered her suspicions to the friend, who continued to pat. And her friend’s look checked her. She caught Eugenie’s eyes, and held them. To accuse someone of stealing from a fellow guest was poor form—particularly poor form when you were scrounging. Eugenie would never be invited anywhere again if she accused someone of stealing from her. So Eugenie had given a short chuckle and said, “Ooops, we found it.” And then everyone had gone gaily on into the library to enjoy their drinks and conversation.

  But the entire time in the library, Eugenie sat thinking. Who had taken the ring? The seat to her left at the dining table had been empty. A guest hadn’t shown at the last minute, and so no one seated to her left could have taken it. Yet Eugenie had placed the ring to her left of her plate. She was sure of that. Perhaps the Lord of the house, who had sat two seats away, at the Western head of the table, had reached far across the table to take it; but Eugenie was sure that she would have seen him do so. Likewise, perhaps the young college professor who sat to her right might have slid his hand over her plate at some point in the evening to grab the ring; but Eugenie was likewise sure that she would have seen that, also.

  For the benefit of her students, Eugenie once again pointed to where she sat at the table.

  “How would we go about solving who took the ring?” she asked her girls.

  In reality, the Lady of the house had taken the ring; or, she had set into motion the plan to do so. During the meal, one of the servers had pinched Eugenie’s ring and then deposited in the Lady’s care that evening, after everyone had retired to bed.

  Eugenie had deduced as much while sitting in the library. She had tried to think through who would have been able to steal it. By the next morning, she had arrived at the correct chain of logical deductions.

  First, she had identified the servers as the only people in the dining room who had physically come near the ring. Having seen Eugenie take it off, a server had no doubt waited until plates were changed in between courses, and then he had scooped up the ring in the same motion as he had whisked away the plate.

  Second, Eugenie had assumed that a lowly server would not steal from guests. At least, not without permission.

  Therefore, Eugenie reasoned, if a server took the ring—and assuredly all signs pointed that way—then he must have felt sufficiently secure in his employment to risk taking it. Which meant that he pinched the ring with the permission from someone high up; and, at Thistledorn Manor, permission to steal could be granted by only one person: the Lady of the house herself.

  Now, as Eugenie stood before her girls, she expected them to deduce that the ring had been pinched by a server with the Mistress’s approval. Such logical deductions should be well within the reach of her students—at least at this point. It was June, and the end of the school year was approaching.

  “Who,” Eugenie asked, “who do you surmise took the ring?”

  Instead of answering, each of the six faces pointed toward her were blank.

  “Again,” Eugenie said. “The ring is placed here, under the plate, on this side. Facing the empty chair. And you discover the ring missing when you get up to go to the library after dinner.”

  She first looked hopefully to Ivie, whose blonde eyebrows were knotted together. Not a good sign.

  Maisie, by contrast, jutted out her lower lip and crossed her arms. The other girls seemed rather confused also.

  “Ivie,” Eugenie asked, after several seconds of silence. “Who do you think took the ring?”

  Ivie paused, then tentatively reached over the wall of the diorama. “The person seated there.”

  “That seat is empty.”

  “Oh.” She retracted her hand but offered no additional explanation. Instead, she continued to stare down at the miniature furniture, as if expecting it to rearrange itself and reveal the thief.

  Eugenie tried another girl. “Celeste?” she asked. Celeste was usually good at divining human motivation; and, as part of her playlet, Eugenie had included information that Thistledorn Manor was financially strapped. Celeste’s parents, too, were financially strapped—a baron with a smallish estate in Wales. If anyone could add two and two, Celeste should.

  But Celeste shook her head. “I…I don’t know, ma’am.”

  “Please guess,” Eugenie said.

  “This one,” she said, pointing to a seat.

  “I was sitting in that seat,” Eugenie said, her voice rising. “Pippa!” she called. She called on Pippa as a last-ditch effort. “What do you think?”

  The girls separated and made a space for Pippa directly in front of the model castle. Her eyes swept back and forth, not ceasing for a second.

  “I think there was no ring.”

  “But Pippa!” Eugenie exclaimed, trying to stifle her annoyance. “This hypothetical is based on my life. This was my ring. Please try to deduce who took it.”

  Pippa scanned the dining room again. “I think, in that case, that the ring fell into the folds of your dress, and that you lost it in the library. We should look there.”

  Eugenie bit her lower lip—hard.

  Yes, she thought, removing her hands from the diorama. There was still plenty of work to do. And there was not much time left in the year to do it.

  **

  Eugenie left the girls to their lunch and returned to the ground floor kitchen, which she hadn’t seen since first thing in the morning. Mrs. Cabot had gone up to the girls with their lunch.

  When the telegram had arrived, Mrs. Cabot had placed it amongst the bills. Eugenie found it as she ate her soup. The telegram had come from her mother, the Marchioness Carlyle (no “Dowager Marchioness,” as she refused the title), in Barnardshire. Eugenie read it, with a bit of foreboding. But she was surprised.

  “Come home. Mystery.”

  That was all.

  Chapter Four: Tea; and, then, a Game

  Dreadful.

  That word sat uppermost in the Marchioness’ mind as she greeted her daughter’s train at Barnardshire station. The Marchioness had been waiting underneath the giant clock. When the train had pulled in, she had gathered up her things and stood at attention as the passengers disembarked. But she had been unprepared for what looked like a derelict to approach. She had been on the verge of calling a porter for protection when the derelict stopped directly in front of her and said, flatly,
“Marchioness.”

  It was Eugenie, wearing a rumpled overcoat with a tall stiff arrow collar and a thin tie sticking out. Carrying an umbrella, she could have been mistaken for a slovenly gentleman with a cane walking home from the office in the early morning light.

  The Marchioness sighed. Her daughter might not have thrown her lot in with the suffragettes, but her style of dress suggested that running onto a racetrack would be the final, and logical, degradation.

  Two girls stood behind Eugenie and they wore pretty dresses—white, with wide pastel ribbons. They carried small valises and stood quietly. One kept her eyes down, while the other stared boldly at the Marchioness.

  “And where is your luggage?” the Marchioness asked Eugenie, after a brief hug. Fortunately, I’ve worn gloves, the Marchioness thought, as she removed her hands from the oily overcoat.

  “We won’t be staying long,” Eugenie said. “I saw no reason to bring anything other than some unmentionables, which one of the girls is carrying.”

  “You have that much confidence in your detection skills?” Marchioness Carlyle asked, raising an eyebrow.

  Eugenie shrugged.

  “Don’t slouch,” her mother said, which caused her daughter to look off at the train. A classic gesture from childhood: whenever the Marchioness showed concern, Eugenie received it with apathy.

  “Well, it is good to see you nonetheless,” the Marchioness said. “The carriage is this way.”

  *

  From the train station, they had gone directly to Mrs. Todderham’s, who waited rigidly inside her cottage. For the past two days, she had anticipated the Duke or his valet returning and discovering that the shallow grave had been dug up. The light rain in the morning had turned the grave to mud and only served to further reveal the body, which sat on the table as if offered on a giant platter.

  Mrs. Todderham heard the carriage pull up and thought it was a motor car. She clutched her chest but then calmed as the Marchioness walked inside. After a brief introduction to Mrs. Todderham, all three women (and two girls) trooped over to the Duke’s property, to inspect the hole in the ground.

  As they gained the far side, the Marchioness threw out, “A Duke lives here, you know,” and waved her hand in a manner to encompass the entirety of the estate. “Alone, I think. He’s a bachelor, isn’t he?” she asked, turning to Mrs. Todderham.

  “He’s rarely here,” Mrs. Todderham said, her shoulders tensed. She had relaxed somewhat from the presence of the other women, but couldn’t feel entirely comfortable. The valet wouldn’t kill all of them…would he?

  The Marchioness eyed her friend crossly. “Yes. I believe he lives quite alone. In any event,” the Marchioness said, “he’s not involved in the crime. That is so, is it not, Mrs. Todderham?”

  Marchioness Carlyle proffered a stern look to Mrs. Todderham, who didn’t know how to respond.

  “Well, I did see him standing at the grave,” she said.

  “But not with the body? I believe that’s what you told me. Correct?”

  “It’s not a body,” Eugenie said, stopping at the very edge of the grave. She smiled to herself. “It most definitely is not a body,” she said.

  “It isn’t?” Mrs. Todderham said. She began to feel dizzy, as if the globe were spinning very fast. Everything was so confusing now that her husband was dead. “Oh?” she said, touching her forehead.

  Lady Eugenie happily stepped down into the grave, which caused a cry to escape from her mother’s lips.

  “Eugenie, you will hurt yourself! Come away! It’s muddy.”

  “It’s a shallow grave,” Eugenie said, hopping in. She stood beside the table, which came only to her knees, and began to untie the ropes. “There really wasn’t a crime committed here at all. As I will show you shortly.”

  “Don’t touch a dead body!” the Marchioness commanded. “Oh revulsion.” She raised her fingers to her eyes—and looked between them.

  But her words were drowned out by the sound of a motor car, which came roaring into their presence. Around the bend tore Duke Phillip’s green Wolsely, the driver (the Duke himself), staring with his head out the side window at the scene on his property. Had it not rained earlier in the day, a cloud of dust would have blown behind the car. As it was, they all had to settle for the sound.

  “Oh dear!” Mrs. Todderham exclaimed. This was precisely what she had dreaded. Now they had reached the end. She felt herself collapse and reached for Marchioness Carlyle’s hand. She found only air. Marchioness Carlyle had turned with a sweetened face toward the motor car, which pulled up short in the driveway, scattering gravel all over the place.

  “Stop!” the man cried, throwing himself out of the Wolsely and running toward them with his hand raised. “I dare say, Stop! Don’t touch that!”

  As he ran, his tousled hair flew up to form a crown. When he reached them, he stood gulping air but otherwise remained composed. His trim suit was unwrinkled, the tie perfectly slotted between the lapels. He held his hat delicately between two fingers.

  “What,” he began, gulping for air, “may I ask,” more air, “are you doing”—“on my property?”

  He addressed the question generally to the three women and two girls, though his eyes lingered longest on the youngest woman, Lady Eugenie, who stood in the pit with her hands on her hips. She looked up, without apology.

  Mrs. Todderham stepped forward, nearly tripping on a blade of grass. “There…there’s been…a murder!” she cried out. “On your property!”

  The man followed the direction of her hand, which shook in the general direction of the pit.

  “I…” Miss Todderham began, herself gulping air and shaking. “I…I saw your man. He…digging…the body…” She was unable to string together all of the sensations and impressions that rolled around her mind like marbles. So she ended simply where she had started: with her conclusion. “A murder!”

  The man’s lips twitched briefly.

  Then he laughed.

  “Oh,” he said. “Is that all?” He chuckled again. “If so, there’s been a complete misunderstanding, I’m afraid.” And he casually dropped his hat back on his head, covering his disheveled hair. “Dear me. Let me help you up.” He reached down to offer a hand to Lady Eugenie, who took it and stepped up beside him. She brushed off the hem of her trench coat where dirt had collected.

  Well, at least she has the good sense to do that, Marchioness Carlyle observed.

  “There has been a mistake,” Duke Phillip said, and gleefully jumped into the pit himself. Picking up the bundle, he tossed it onto the ground near Marchioness Carlyle’s feet. He then climbed back out, knelt on the ground, and untied the final remaining knots.

  “As you can see,” he said, pulling away the last length of canvas, “this bundle contains nothing but old bed clothes, tied together. There isn’t a body at all.”

  “No…body?” Mrs. Todderham cried.

  “None,” the Duke said.

  And he was right: there was no body. Instead, there appeared to be a good number of old men’s nightgowns tied end-to-end with some other garments stuffed in and around. Though the entire contraption was long and cylindrical, like a body, there was, in fact, no body and no corpse.

  “Oh my,” Mrs. Todderham said, feeling the eyes of her friend, Marchioness Carlyle, land on her with a blow. Her face grew quite red. “I…I had thought….”

  Eugenie cut in. Her voice, like her face, was curious. “Why would you do that?” she asked.

  “It was a test,” Duke Phillip said, standing and smiling down at her. He had several inches on her. In fact, he was really quite tall—almost as tall as her father had been. Standing, he now had grass stains on the knees of his cream-colored suit; Lady Eugenie suppressed a smile.

  “It was for the boys I’m training,” he said, pointing back at his motor car. Slouching against it, completely unnoticed till now, were two boys, also in little suits, much like the Duke’s. Unlike the Duke, they looked uncomfortable in the clothing,
their starched collars cutting up into the soft underbelly of their chins. Phillip waved toward them, a signal for them to join the group. “I’m training them. To become detectives.”

  Lady Eugenie snapped her head up.

  “That’s why I bought the place,” Phillip said. “It’s to be my school. A school, I hope, for gentlemen detectives. And these,” he said, as the boys approached, “are my first pupils. We’ve been studying at my family’s estate in Clowdon until the place here can be sufficiently staffed.”

  “Gentlemen detectives?” Marchioness Carlyle said. “You don’t say?”

  Her eyes positively glowed with delight. In fact, this was perfect. Instead of attempting to soften Eugenie’s career—no Duke, she had been certain, wanted a wife with a career—perhaps she should now… exploit it?

  “So, as you can see,” Duke Philip said. “There is no reason to call the Inspector. No crime at all has been committed.”

  “Lovely,” Marchioness Carlyle said. “You have given two old women—and one younger one”—and here she nodded at Lady Eugenie, the eyes saying what the tongue could not: unmarried— “tremendous excitement.” She clapped her hands. “Much excitement. I feel as if I have just seen a mystery play performed in London. Well done.” She waited for her friend to join her in applause. Instead, Mrs. Todderham slouched from exhaustion.

  The Duke smiled awkwardly while Eugenie glanced over her shoulder at her mother.

  “I’m terribly sorry to have given you all a scare,” Duke Phillip said, particularly to Lady Eugenie, before expanding his gaze and embracing the entire group.

  The Marchioness responded, “And we are sorry to have ever thought that a crime could be committed on your property.”

  The boys, now standing near their master, glanced about, unable to settle comfortably on anything, though always returning to the faces of the two girls, about their ages. The boys and girls eyed each other with curiosity. The adults, likewise, stood about, unsure of what to say next. As host, the Duke finally coughed and stepped into the silence.