The Maid: A Novel (Molly the Maid Book 1)

I am in the police station. It feels odd not to be either at the Regency Grand or at home in Gran’s apartment. I have trouble calling it “my apartment,” but I suppose it’s mine now. Mine and mine alone for as long as I can manage to pay the rent.

Now here I am in a place I’ve never been before, a place I certainly never expected to be in today—a small, white, cinder-block room with only two chairs, a table, and a camera in the upper-left corner, blinking a red light at me. The fluorescent illumination in here is too sharp and blinding. While I have a great appreciation of bright white in décor and clothing, this style choice is definitely not working. White only works when a room is clean. And make no mistake: this room is far from clean.

Perhaps it’s an occupational hazard: I see dirt where others don’t. The stains on the wall where a black briefcase likely grazed it, the coffee rings on the white table in front of me, two round, brown o’s. The gray thumbprints smeared around the doorknob, the geometric treads left on the floor from an officer’s wet boots.

Detective Stark left me here just a few moments ago. Our car ride over was pleasant enough. She let me sit in the front of the car, which I appreciated. I’m no criminal, thank you very much, so there’s no need to treat me like one. She tried to make small talk during the drive. I’m not good at small talk.

“So how long have you worked at the Regency Grand?” she asked.

“It’s now approximately four years, thirteen weeks, and five days. I may be off by a day, but no more. I could tell you exactly if you have a calendar.”

“Not necessary.” She shook her head slowly for a few seconds, which I took to mean I’d offered too much information. Mr. Snow taught me “KISS,” which isn’t what you think. It stands for Keep It Simple, Stupid. To be clear, he wasn’t calling me stupid. He was suggesting that sometimes I overexplain, which I’ve learned can be annoying to others.

When we reached the station, Detective Stark greeted the receptionist, which was rather good of her. I do appreciate when so-called superiors properly greet their employees—No one is too high or too low for common courtesy, Gran would say.

Once we were in the station, the detective led me to this small room at the back.

“Can I get you anything before we begin our chat? How about a cup of coffee?”

“Tea?” I asked.

“I’ll see what I can do.”

Now she’s back with a Styrofoam cup in her hand. “Sorry, there’s no tea to be had in this cop shop. I brought you some water instead.”

A Styrofoam cup. I detest Styrofoam. The way it squeaks. The way dirt clings to it. The way even the slightest nick with a fingernail leaves a permanent scar, but I know to be polite. I won’t make a fuss.

“Thank you,” I say.

She clears her throat and sits in the chair across from mine. She has a yellow note pad and a Bic pen, the top chewed. I will my mind not to think about the universe of bacteria dwelling on the top of that pen. She puts her pad down on the table, the pen beside it. She leans back and looks at me in that penetrating way of hers.

“You’re not in any trouble, Molly,” she says. “I just want you to know that.”

“I’m well aware,” I say.

The yellow pad is askew, approximately forty-seven degrees off from being square with the corner of the table. Before I can stop them, my hands move to rectify this untidiness, shifting the pad so it’s parallel with the table. The pen is also askew, but there is no power on Earth great enough to make me touch it.

Detective Stark watches me, her head cocked to one side. This may be uncharitable, but she looks like a large dog listening for sounds in the forest. Eventually, she speaks.

“It seems to me that Mr. Snow might be right about you, that you’re in shock. It’s common for people in shock to have trouble expressing their emotions. I’ve seen it before.”

Detective Stark does not know me at all. I suppose Mr. Snow didn’t tell her much about me either. She thinks my behavior is peculiar, that I’m out of sorts because I found Mr. Black dead in his bed. And while it was shocking and I am out of sorts, I’m feeling much better now than I was a few hours ago, and I’m most certain that I’m behaving quite normally indeed.

What I really want is to go home, to make myself a proper cup of tea, and perhaps text Rodney about the day’s events in the hopes that he might console me in some way or offer himself for a date. If that doesn’t transpire, not all is lost. I might take a nice bath and read an Agatha Christie novel—Gran has so many of them, all of which I’ve read more than once.

I decide not to share any of these thoughts. Instead, I agree with Detective Stark insofar as I can without complete deception. “Detective,” I say, “you may be right that I am in shock, and I’m sorry if you think I’m not quite myself.”

“It’s perfectly understandable,” she says, and her lips lift into a smile—at least, I think it’s a smile? I can rarely be certain.

“I’d like to ask you what you saw when you entered the Blacks’ suite this afternoon. Did you see anything out of place or unusual?”

During each and every shift, I encounter a panoply of things that are “out of place” or “unusual”—and not just in the Black suite. Today, I found a curtain rod ripped from its hinges in a room on the third floor, a contraband hot plate left in plain sight on a bathroom counter on the fourth floor, and six very giggly ladies trying to hide air mattresses under a bed in a room meant for two guests only. I did my due diligence and reported all of these infractions—and more—to Mr. Snow.

“Your devotion to the high standards of the Regency Grand knows no bounds,” Mr. Snow said, but he did not smile. His lips remained a perfect horizontal line.

“Thank you,” I replied, feeling quite good about my report.

I consider what it is the detective really wants to know and what I’m prepared to divulge.

“Detective,” I say, “the Black suite was in its usual state of disarray when I entered this afternoon. There wasn’t much out of the ordinary, except the pills on the bedside table.”

I offer this up on purpose, because it’s a detail that even the most nitwitted investigator would have noticed at the scene. What I don’t want to discuss are the other things—the robe on the floor, the safe being open, the missing money, the flight itinerary, Giselle’s purse being gone the second time I went into the room. And what I saw in that mirror in Mr. Black’s bedroom.

I’ve watched enough murder mysteries to know who the prime suspects tend to be. Wives often top the list, and the last thing I want is to cast any doubt on Giselle. She’s blameless in all of this, and she’s my friend. I’m worried for her.

“We’re looking into those pills,” the detective says.

“They’re Giselle’s,” I say, despite myself. I cannot believe her name popped right out of my mouth. Perhaps I really am in shock, because my thoughts and my mouth aren’t working in tandem the way they usually do.

“How do you know the pills are Giselle’s?” the detective asks, never looking up from the pad she writes on. “The container wasn’t labeled.”

“I know because I handle all of Giselle’s toiletries. I line them up when I clean the bathroom. I like to organize them from tallest to smallest, though I’ll sometimes ascertain first if a guest prefers a different method of organization.”

“A different method.”

“Yes, such as makeup products, medicines, feminine-hygiene products…”

Detective Stark’s mouth opens slightly.

“Or shaving implements, moisturizers, hair tonics. Do you see?”

She is silent for too long. She’s looking at me like I’m the idiot when clearly she’s the one unable to grasp my very simple logic. The truth is that I know the pills are Giselle’s because I’ve seen her pop them into her mouth several times while I’ve been in her room. I even asked about them once.

“These?” she said. “They calm me down when I freak out. Want one?”

I politely declined. Drugs are for pain management only, and I’m acutely aware of what can happen when they’re abused.

The detective carries on with her questions. “When you arrived in the Blacks’ room, did you go straight to the bedroom?”

“No,” I say. “That would be against protocols. First, I announced my arrival, thinking that perhaps someone was in the suite. As it turns out, I was one hundred percent correct on that assumption.”

The detective looks at me and says nothing.

I wait. “You didn’t write that down,” I say.

“Write what down?”

“What I just said.”

She gives me an unreadable look, then picks up her plume de peste and jots down my words, smacking the pen against the pad when she’s done. “So then what?” she asks.

“Well,” I say, “when no one answered, I ventured into the sitting room, which was quite untidy. I wanted to clean it up, but first I thought it right to look around the rest of the suite. I walked into the bedroom and found Mr. Black in bed, as though he were resting.”

Her chewed pen cap wags at me menacingly as she scratches down my words. “Go on,” she prompts.

I explain how I approached Mr. Black’s bedside, checked for breath, for a pulse, but found none, how I called down to Reception for help. I tell her all of it, up to a point.

She writes furiously now, occasionally pausing to look at me, putting that germ factory of a pen in her mouth as she does so.

“Tell me something, do you know Mr. Black very well? Have you ever had conversations with him, beyond just about cleaning their suite?”

“No,” I reply. “Mr. Black was always aloof. He drank a lot and did not seem partial to me at all, so I stayed clear of him as much as possible.”

“And Giselle Black?” the detective asked.

I thought of Giselle, of all the times we’d conversed, of the intimacies shared, hers and mine. That’s how a friendship is built, one small truth at a time.

I thought back to the very first time, many months ago, when I met Giselle. I’d cleaned the Blacks’ suite many times before, but I’d never actually met Giselle. It was in the morning, probably around nine-thirty, when I knocked on the door and Giselle let me in. She was wearing a soft pink dressing gown made of satin or silk. Her dark hair cascaded onto her shoulders in perfect waves. She reminded me of the starlets in the old black-and-white movies that Gran and I used to watch together in the evenings. And yet there was something very contemporary about Giselle as well, like she bridged two worlds.

She invited me in and I thanked her, rolling my trolley in behind me.

“I’m Giselle Black,” she said, offering me her hand.

I didn’t know what to do. Most guests avoid touching maids, especially our hands. They associate us with other people’s grime—never their own. But not Giselle. She was different; she was always different. Perhaps that’s why I’m so fond of her.

I quickly wiped my hands on a fresh towel from my trolley and then reached out to shake her hand. “I’m pleased to make your acquaintance,” I said.

“And your name?” she asked.

Again, I was flummoxed. Guests rarely asked my name. “Molly,” I mumbled, then curtsied.

“Molly the Maid!” she roared. “That’s hilarious!”

“Indeed, madame,” I replied, looking down at my shoes.

“Oh, I’m no ‘madame,’ ” she said. “Haven’t been for a long time. Call me Giselle. Sorry you have to clean this shithole every day. We’re a bit of a mess, me and Charles. But it’s nice to open the door and find everything all fresh after you’ve been here. It’s like being reborn every single day.”

My work had been noticed, acknowledged, appreciated. For a moment, I wasn’t invisible.

“I’m at your service…Giselle,” I said.

She smiled then, a fulsome smile that reached all the way to her feline green eyes.

I felt the blood rush to my cheeks. I had no idea what to do next, what to say. It’s not every day that I engage in a real conversation with a guest of such stature. It’s also not every day that a guest acknowledges my existence.

I picked up my feather duster and was about to begin my work, but Giselle kept the conversation going.

“Tell me, Molly,” she said. “What’s it like being a maid, cleaning up after people like me every day?”

No guest had ever asked me this. How to respond was not a subject covered in any of Mr. Snow’s comprehensive professional development sessions on service decorum.

“It’s hard work,” I said. “But I find it pleasing to leave a room pristine and to slip out and disappear without a trace.”

Giselle took a seat on the divan. She twirled a lock of her chestnut mane between her fingers. “That sounds incredible,” she said. “To be invisible, to disappear like that. I have no privacy, no life. Everywhere I go, I have cameras in my face. And my husband’s a tyrant. I always thought being the wife of a rich husband would solve all of my problems, but that’s not how it turned out. That’s not how it is at all.”

I was speechless. What was the appropriate response? I had no time to figure that out, because Giselle started talking again. “Basically, Molly, what I’m saying is, my life sucks.”

She got up from the divan, went to the minibar, and grabbed a small bottle of Bombay gin, which she poured into a tumbler. She returned to the divan with her drink and plopped back down.

“We all have problems,” I said.

“Oh really? What are yours?”

Another question for which I was not prepared. I remembered Gran’s advice—Honesty is the best policy.

“Well,” I began. “I may not have a husband, but I did have a boyfriend for a while, and because of him, I now have money problems. My beau…he turned out to be…well, a bad egg.”

“A beau. A bad egg. You talk kind of funny, you know that?” She took a big gulp from her glass. “Like an old lady. Or the queen.”

“That’s because of my gran,” I said. “She raised me. She wasn’t very educated in the official sense—she never went beyond high school, and she cleaned houses all of her life, until she got sick. But she schooled herself. She was clever. She believed in the three E’s—Etiquette, Elocution, and Erudition. She taught me a lot. Everything, in fact.”

“Huh,” said Giselle.

“She believed in politeness and treating people with respect. It’s not your station in life that matters. It’s how you conduct yourself that counts.”

“Yeah. I get that. I think I would have liked your gran. And she taught you to talk like that? Like Eliza from My Fair Lady?”

“I suppose she did, yes.”

She got up from the divan and stood right in front of me, her chin held high, taking me in.

“You have incredible skin. It’s like porcelain. I like you, Molly the Maid. You’re a bit weird, but I like you.” She then skipped off to the bedroom and returned with a brown men’s wallet in her hand. She rummaged through it and pulled out a new $100 bill. She put it in my hand.

“Here. For you,” she said.

“No, I couldn’t possibly—”

“He won’t even notice it’s gone. And even if he does, what’s he going to do about it, kill me?”

I looked down at the bill in my hand, crisp and feather-light. “Thank you,” I managed, my voice a hoarse whisper. It was the biggest tip I’d ever received.

“It’s nothing. Don’t mention it,” she replied.

That’s how it started, the friendship between Giselle and me. It continued and grew with each one of her extended stays. Over the course of a year, we became quite close. She would sometimes send me on errands so that she didn’t have to face the paparazzi that often waited right outside the hotel’s front door.

“Molly, I’ve had quite a day. Charles’s daughter called me a gold digger, and his ex-wife told me I have terrible taste in men. Will you slip out and buy me barbecue chips and a Coke? Charles hates it when I eat junk, but he’s out this afternoon. Here.” She’d pass me a $50 bill, and when I’d return with her treats, she’d always say the same thing. “You’re the best, Molly. Keep the change.”

She seemed to understand that I don’t always know the right way to behave or what to say. Once, I came at my usual time to clean the room, and Mr. Black was seated at the bureau by the door, perusing paperwork and smoking a filthy cigar.

“Sir. Is now a good time for me to return your suite to a state of perfection?” I inquired.

Mr. Black peered at me over his glasses. “What do you think?” he asked, then, like a dragon, exhaled smoke right in my face.

“I think it’s a good time,” I replied and turned on my vacuum.

Giselle rushed out of the bedroom. She put her arm around me and gestured for me to turn the machine off.

“Molly,” she said, “he’s trying to tell you it’s a really bad time. He’s trying to tell you to basically fuck off.”

I felt horrible, like a complete fool. “My apologies,” I said.

She grabbed my hand. “It’s okay,” she said quietly so Mr. Black wouldn’t hear. “You didn’t mean anything by it.” She saw me to the door and mouthed, I’m sorry before holding it open so I could push my trolley and myself out of the suite.

Giselle is good like that. Instead of making me feel stupid, she helps me understand things. “Molly, you stand too close to people, you know that? You have to back off a bit, not get right in people’s faces when you talk to them. Imagine your trolley is between you and the other person, even if it’s not really there.”

“Like this?” I asked, standing at what I thought was the correct distance.

“Yes! That’s perfect,” she said, and she grabbed both of my arms and squeezed. “Always stand that far away, unless it’s, like, me or another close friend.”

Another close friend. Little did she know, she was my one and only.

Some days while I was cleaning the suite, I got the sense that despite being married to Mr. Black, she felt lonely and craved my company as much as I craved hers.

“Molly!” she yelled one day, greeting me at the door in silk pajamas even though it was close to noon. “I’m so glad you’re here. Clean the rooms fast and then we’re doing a makeover.” She clapped her hands with joy.

“Excuse me?” I said.

“I’m going to teach you how to apply makeup. You’re really pretty, Molly, you know that? You have perfect skin. But your dark hair makes you look pale. And the problem is you don’t try very hard. You have to enhance what nature gave you.”

I cleaned the suite quickly, which is hard to do without cutting corners, but I managed. It was lunchtime, so I figured it was acceptable to take a break. Giselle seated me at the vanity in the hallway outside of the bathroom. She brought out her makeup case—I knew it well since I reorganized each of her cosmetics every day, putting the caps back on things she’d left open and placing each tube or container back in its proper slot.

She rolled up her pajama sleeves, put her warm hands on my shoulders, and looked at me in the mirror. It was a lovely feeling, her hands resting on my shoulders. It reminded me of Gran.

She picked up her hairbrush and started brushing my hair. “Your hair, it’s like silk,” she said. “Do you straighten it?”

“No,” I said. “But I wash it. Regularly and thoroughly. It’s quite clean.”

She giggled. “Of course it is,” she said.

“Are you laughing with me or at me?” I asked. “There’s a big difference, you know.”

“Oh, I know,” she said. “I’m the butt of many a joke. I’m laughing with you, Molly,” she said. “I’d never laugh at you.”

“Thank you,” I said. “I appreciate that. The receptionists downstairs were laughing at me today. Something about the new nickname they gave me. To be honest, I don’t fully understand it.”

“What did they call you?”

“Rumba,” I said. “Gran and I used to watch Dancing with the Stars, and the rumba is a very lively partner dance.”

Giselle winced. “I don’t think they meant the dance, Molly. I think they meant Roomba, as in the robotic vacuum cleaner.”

Finally, I understood. I looked down at my hands in my lap so Giselle wouldn’t notice the tears springing to my eyes. But it didn’t work.

She stopped brushing my hair and put her hands back on my shoulders. “Molly, don’t listen to them. They’re idiots.”

“Thank you,” I said.

I sat stiffly in the chair, staring at myself and Giselle in the mirror as she worked on my face. I was concerned that anyone could come in and find me sitting down with Giselle Black, having my makeup done. How to handle guests placing you in this exact situation had never been covered in Mr. Snow’s professional-development seminars.

“Close your eyes,” Giselle said. She wiped them, then dabbed cool foundation all over my face with a fresh makeup sponge.

“Tell me something, Molly,” she said. “You live alone, right? You’re all by yourself?”

“I am now,” I said. “My gran died a few months ago. Before that, it was just the two of us.”

She took a powder container and brush and was about to use it on my face, but I stopped her. “Is it clean?” I asked. “The brush?”

Giselle sighed. “Yes, Molly. It’s clean. You’re not the only person in the world who sanitizes things, you know.”

This pleased me immensely because it confirmed what I knew in my heart. Giselle and I are so different, and yet, fundamentally, we are very much alike.

She began using the brush on my face. It felt like my feather duster, but in miniature, like a little sparrow was dusting my cheeks.

“Is it hard, living alone like that? God, I’d never last. I don’t know how to make it on my own.”

It had been very hard. I still greeted Gran every time I came home, even though I knew she wasn’t there. I heard her voice in my head, heard her traipsing about the apartment every day. Most of the time, I wondered if that was normal or if I was going a bit soft in the head.

“It’s hard. But you adapt,” I said.

Giselle stopped working and met my eyes in the mirror. “I envy you,” she said. “To be able to move on like that, to have the guts to be fully independent and not care what anyone thinks. And to be able to just walk down a street without being accosted.”

She had no idea how I struggled, not the slightest clue. “It’s not all a bed of roses,” I said.

“Maybe not, but at least you don’t depend on anyone. Charles and I? It looks so glamorous from the outside, but sometimes…sometimes it’s not. And his kids hate me. They’re close to my age, which I admit is kind of weird. His ex-wife? She’s weirdly nice to me, which is worse than anything. She was here the other day. Do you know what she said to me the second Charles was out of earshot? She said, ‘Leave him while you still can.’ The worst part is I know she’s right. Sometimes I wonder if I made the right choice, you know?”

“As a matter of fact, I do,” I said. I’d made my own wrong choice—Wilbur—something I still regretted every single day.

Molly picked up some eye shadow. “Close your eyes again.” I did so. Giselle continued to talk as she worked. “A few years ago, I had one goal and one goal only. I wanted to be swept off my feet by a rich man who would take care of me. And I met this girl—let’s call her my mentor. She showed me the ropes. I went to all the right places, bought a couple of the right outfits. ‘Believe and you will receive,’ she used to say. She’d been married to three different men, divorced three times, taking each man for half his net worth. Isn’t that incredible? She was set. A house in Saint-Tropez and another in Venice Beach. She lived alone, with a maid, a chef, and a driver. No one telling her what to do. No one bossing her around. I’d kill for that life. Who wouldn’t?”

“Can I open my eyes now?” I asked.

“Not yet. Almost, though.” She switched to a thin brush that felt cool and tender on my eyelids.

“At least you don’t have a man telling you what to do, a man who’s a hypocrite. Charles cheats on me,” she said. “Did you know that? Gets jealous if I so much as glance at another man, but he has at least two mistresses in different cities. And those are just the ones I know about. He has one here too. I wanted to strangle him when I found out. He pays off the paparazzi so they don’t leak the truth about him. Meanwhile, I have to give him a full report on where I’m going every time I leave this room.”

I opened my eyes and sat up straight in my chair. I was most distressed to learn this about Mr. Black. “I detest cheaters,” I said. “I despise them. He shouldn’t do that to you. It’s not right, Giselle.”

Her hands were still close to my face. She’d rolled her pajama sleeves up well past her elbows. From that vantage point, I could make out bruises on her arms, and as she leaned forward and her top shifted, I saw a blue-and-yellow mark on her collarbone too.

“How did you get those?” I asked. There had to be a perfectly reasonable explanation.

She shrugged. “Like I said, things aren’t always great between Charles and me.”

I felt a familiar churn in my stomach, bitterness and anger frothing just below the surface, a volcano that I would not let erupt. Not yet.

“You deserve better treatment, Giselle,” I said. “You’re a good egg.”

“Meh,” she said. “I’m not that good. I try, but sometimes…sometimes it’s hard to be good. It’s hard to do the right thing.” She picked a blood-red shade of lipstick from her kit and began applying it to my lips.

“You’re right about one thing, though. I deserve better. I deserve a Prince Charming. And I’ll make that happen, eventually. I’m working on it. Believe and you will receive, right?” She put the lipstick down and picked up a large hourglass timer from the vanity. I’d seen it there often enough. I had polished its glass curves with ammonia and the brass with metal cleaner to bring it to a high shine. It was a beautiful object, classic and graceful, a pleasure to touch and to behold.

“You see this timer?” she said, holding it in front of me. “The woman I met, my mentor? It was a gift from her. It was empty when she gave it to me, and she told me to fill it with sand from my favorite beach. I said, ‘Are you crazy? I’ve never even seen the ocean. What makes you think I’m going to a beach anytime soon?’

“Turns out she was right. I’ve seen a lot of beaches these past few years. I was escorted to many of them even before I met Charles—the French Riviera, Polynesia, the Maldives, the Caymans. The Caymans are my favorite. I could live there forever. Charles owns a villa there, and the last time he took me, I filled this timer with sand from the beach. I turn it over sometimes and just watch the sand run through. Time, right? You gotta make things happen. Make what you want out of your life before it’s too late…. And done!” she said, stepping away so I could see my reflection in the mirror.

She stood behind me, hands on my shoulders again.

“See?” she said. “Just a bit of makeup, and suddenly you’re a hottie.”

I turned my head from side to side. I could barely see my old self anymore. I knew that I somehow looked “better,” or at least more like everyone else, but there was something very off-putting about the change.

“Do you like it? It’s like duckling to swan, like Cinderella at the ball.”

I knew the etiquette for this, which was a relief. When someone compliments you, you’re supposed to thank them. And when they do something kind for you—even if you didn’t want them to—you’re supposed to thank them.

“I appreciate your efforts,” I said.

“You’re welcome,” she replied. “And take this,” she said, picking up the beautiful timer. “It’s a gift. From me to you, Molly.”

She put the glowing object into my hands. It was the first gift I’d received since Gran died. I couldn’t recall the last time I’d been given a gift by someone other than Gran. “I love it,” I said. I meant it. This was something I valued much more than any makeover. I couldn’t believe it was now mine, to cherish and polish from this day forth. It was filled with sand from a far-off, exotic place that I would never see. And it was a generous gift from a friend.

“I will keep it here in my hotel locker in case you ever want it back,” I said. The truth is that as much as I loved the timer, I couldn’t bring it home. I wanted only Gran’s things at home.

“Really, I love it, Giselle. I will admire it every day.”

“Who are you kidding? You already do admire it every day.”

I smiled. “Yes, I suppose you’re right,” I said. “May I make a suggestion?”

She stood there with a hand on her hip while I tidied her makeup kit and cleaned up the vanity.

“You might consider leaving Mr. Black. He hurts you. You’re better off without him.”

“If only it were that easy,” she said. “But time, Miss Molly. Time heals all wounds, as they say.”

She was right. As time passes, the wound doesn’t hurt as much as it did at first, and that’s always a surprise—to feel a little bit better and yet to miss the past.

No sooner had that thought crossed my mind than I realized how late it was. I checked my phone—1:03 p.m. My lunch hour was over minutes ago!

“I have to go, Giselle. My supervisor, Cheryl, will be very upset with my tardiness.”

“Oh, her. She was sniffing around here yesterday. She came in asking if we were pleased with the cleaning services. I said, ‘I’ve got the best maid ever. Why wouldn’t I be pleased?’ And she stood there with that dumb look on her face and said, ‘I’ll do a much better job for you than Molly. I’m her supervisor.’ And I’m like, ‘Nope.’ I pulled out a tenner from my purse and handed it to her. ‘Molly’s the only maid I need, thanks,’ I said. Then she left. She’s a real piece of work, that one. Gives new meaning to the term ‘resting bitch face,’ if you know what I’m saying.”

Gran taught me not to use foul language, and I rarely do. But I could not deny Giselle’s appropriate use of language in this particular instance. I started to smile despite myself.

“Molly? Molly.” It was Detective Stark.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “Can you repeat the question?”

“I asked if you know Giselle Black. Did you ever have any dealings with her? Conversations? Did she ever say anything about Mr. Black that struck you as odd? Did she ever mention anything that might help our investigation?”

“Investigation?”

“As I mentioned, it’s likely that Mr. Black died of natural causes, but it’s my job to rule out other possibilities. That’s why I’m talking to you today.” The detective wipes a hand across her brow. “So, again I’ll ask: did Giselle Black ever talk to you?”

“Detective,” I say, “I’m a hotel maid. Who would want to talk to me?”

She considers this, then nods. She is entirely satisfied with my response.

“Thank you, Molly,” she says. “It’s been a tough day for you, I can see that. Let me take you home.”

And so she did.