Murphy's Law (22 page)

"Just a moment," I said. I could hear my voice rising. "My things are still down at the ladies' hostel. Shouldn't I go and fetch them first?"

"They will be collected for you when the coachman has time. You will not be needing them in a hurry." He walked down the hall ahead of me, not looking back. The uneasiness grew. I wasn't going to be allowed to leave again. Don't be stupid, I told myself. He couldn't possibly know who I am. I was perfectly safe--at least for a couple of days. I knew the agency had no available girl to send. I'd stay for the weekend, glean all the information I could, then find an excuse to leave again. And even if

I happened to pass the alderman in a hallway, nobody ever looks at servants. I'd be just another girl who worked in his house. I had nothing to worry about at all.

I was taken into an enormous warm kitchen. Pots and pans hung over the largest kitchen range I had ever seen. The center of the room was filled with a scrubbed wooden table where a girl sat chopping onions, occasionally lifting her sleeve to wipe her eyes. A round woman dressed in black was talking with another woman who was stirring a pot on the stove.

"Excuse me, cook. I'm sorry to interrupt. Mrs. Brennan? A word please?" the butler said and the woman in black turned around.

"The agency has sent a replacement for Eileen."

She looked me up and down critically. "What's your name, girl?"

"Molly, ma'am."

"Molly, eh? Well, Molly, I am

Mrs. Brennan, the housekeeper. You get your orders from me. I hope you're used to hard work. The mistress expects the highest standards in this household. No cutting corners. No slacking off when nobody is watching."

"Oh no, ma'am. I'm used to hard work." She nodded but her expression was skeptical. "Very well then. We'll see how you do. We're at sixes and sevens today because the master is hosting a large dinner party tonight--he always does, the week before St. Patrick's Day. Andwitha girl short, we've all been run ragged. I'll find you a uniform and have Daisy show you your duties. Follow me."

She led me out of the kitchen, along a dark hallway, and into a small office. The shelves were lined with folded linens. She took a black dress from a closet, held it up, then nodded to herself. "That was Eileen's dress, it will have to do, near enough for now. And here's your apron and cap. Make sure you don't spill anything on your apron. It won't get laundered until next Friday."

Then she was off again, along the hall and up a flight of uncarpeted stairs. She pushed open a swing door and we were in a different world. It was an entrance hall with a marble floor, adorned with life-sized marble Greek statues and potted palms as big as trees. To our right a curved

marble staircase swept up to the next floor and the chandelier over it was sparkling even though I could see no candles. It took me a second to realize that it was lit with carefully hidden electric lights. The housekeeper hurried me across the hall and opened a door on the far side. It was a dining room, far grander than anything in the Hartleys' house. Two maids and a footman were standing at a table long enough to host the Last Supper, giving a final polish to candelabras before placing them on the center of a long white cloth.

"Daisy?" Mrs. Brennan's voice cut through the silence. "Leave that for a moment. This is the new girl, Eileen's replacement. Take her up to your room, help her into her uniform, and then she can finish laying the table for you. Go on, girl, get a move on. There's work to be done."

Daisy gave her a frightened look, scurried across the room, and out of the door. I followed. We ducked through the swing door again and she led me up a narrow wooden back staircase. Up and up. Those turrets that looked as if they reached into the sky? We were sleeping in one of them. My legs felt like jelly by the time she pushed open a door on the final landing. It was a narrow, cold room with just one bed in it.

"Here we are," she said. "I'm Daisy, by the way."

"And I'm Molly." I smiled at her.

"When your belongings come you can put them in the bottom drawer. I've got the top one."

"Where's your room, then?"

"This is it."

"And mine?"

"We'll be sharing the bed," she said in an Irish accent thicker than my own. "I hope you don't snore."

"Sharing the bed?" I demanded. "They can afford all those marble statues and they can't buy enough beds for their servants?"

"Hush!" She put her fingers to her lips and glanced at the door, although how she thought anybody would hear us all the way up here, I don't know. "For the love of mike, don't let them hear you talking like that or you'll be out before you start. Alderman McCormack is known for being very good to his servants."

"Where I come from only the Kane family had to share beds, and they were as poor as dirt, and had more

children than rabbits," I said.

"Stop talking and hurry up," Daisy said. "Mrs. Brennan will start yelling if we're not down again before you can blink. She gets so nervous when the master has a dinner party. The mistress is very fussy, you know. Everything has to be quite perfect."

She started trying to undo the buttons on my blouse for me. "I can do it, thank you," I said, hastily. "Is that why the last girl was fired?"

"Fired?" A look of amusement spread across her face. "Who told you she was fired? Ran away she did--her and Frederick, the under footman. Oh, you should have seen the fuss! A parlor maid and a footman running away to get married, just like their betters? Never heard of!" She held the black dress over my head and pulled it on to me. Then she buttoned it down the back. It was scratchy wool. She helped me tie the apron and held out the cap.

"You've too much hair," she said. "They'll probably want you to cut it off. No signs of vanity allowed around here."

"I'm certainly not cutting off my hair," I said indignantly. "I like my hair the way it is, thank you."

"Don't let Mrs. Brennan hear you talking like that. You have to look the way they want you to. What kind of household were you in before?" She was looking at me with horrified fascination as if I was a dangerous new type of animal.

Shut up, I reminded myself. She might report everything I'd just said to the housekeeper and then I'd be fired before I could find out anything useful.

"My mother always used to say I had too much pride," I said, laughing. "I don't think it will ever get stamped out of me."

"It will here, if you stay long enough," Daisy said. She ran a brush savagely through my long curls. "Anyway, for now we'll try to hold it back with pins. The mistress hates to see any hair poking out from under a cap." Together we managed to tame my hair and she tied the cap so tightly across my forehead that it hurt my eyes.

"Ow," I said. "Not so tight."

"It has to be tied as tight as that or it slips. And you'll get in awful trouble if they see you with your cap crooked." She turned me around. I caught a glimpse of a severe

white-faced stranger in the mirror on the dresser. "Right. You'll do. Now we'd better get down there or we'll never hear the end of it."

Back down all those stairs, our feet clattering on bare boards. The candelabras were now in place, and between them large bowls of fruit and flowers. Daisy showed me the open chests of cutlery lying on a sideboard. "Do you know how to lay a table properly?"

"Only the Irish way," I said, not wanting to admit that I'd never seen a table laid properly in my life. Refreshments at the Hartleys' house had been limited to milk and a biscuit taken in the nursery.

"George, put out one place setting for her, then she can follow," Daisy said to the footman.

"I'm still busy polishing," George said. "Whoever put these away didn't do a good enough job at wrapping them. They've started to tarnish."

"Oh, all right. I'll do it." Daisy grabbed a handful of knives and forks. "Now, you start from the outside and work inward, as I expect you know," she said. "The little knife and fork are for the entr@ee, then the soup spoon on the right, then the fish knife and fork are in that box, then the meat--"

"Holy Mother," I said. "How many courses are there?"

"Seven, as usual. It's only for special occasions that they have twelve. This is just regular entertaining that they're always doing."

"They entertain a lot, do they?" I asked, putting out knives and forks as she had demonstrated.

"Oh, all the time. The mistress likes to think of herself as the number one hostess in the city. She's always entertaining the Vanderbilts, and the Roosevelts--all the hoity-toities come here."

My brain was working fast. Today was Saturday so if I counted back ... "I suppose they only entertain at weekends? They don't do this sort of thing on a Monday, say?"

"Oh, sometimes they do. They're either out to dinner or they've got somebody here all the time."

"What about last Monday? Did they have anybody to dinner then?"

"What would you want to know that for?" she laughed. "How can I remember back to last Monday?"

"I remember last Monday," George said

without looking up from his polishing. "They were out. I know because Sunday's usually my evening off but they had the mayor over then and Mr. Holmes told me I could take Monday instead because they'd be dining out."

So the alderman was not at home on Monday evening.

"I bet they come home at all hours when they've been out," I said. "Do they wake you up when they come in? They don't want to be waited on, do they?"

Daisy looked up from the place she was laying across the table. "Only the master and mistress's personal maid and valet have to help them get undressed. Mr. Holmes always stays up until he can lock up for the night. But we don't have to worry about that. We're sound asleep at the top of the house. They could let a herd of elephants run through the place for all we'd hear."

"Do you always chatter like this, Molly?" George demanded. "The mistress doesn't like servants chattering when they're supposed to be working."

"Sorry," I said. "I just like to get the feel of a new place. I won't say another word."

I went back to work. I was pleased to notice that I was quicker than Daisy and even Mrs. Brennan nodded approvingly when we'd finished. "This table looks a treat," she said. "And I must say your appearance is a big improvement over the last time I saw you, Molly. You look quite civilized now. Run and get yourselves a cup of cocoa, girls, before you put the carpet sweeper over the living room and the main staircase."

I followed the others back to the warmth of the kitchen. There were mugs of hot cocoa and big slabs of fruit cake waiting and I fell on them eagerly. It felt like days since I had had a decent meal. While we ate I was wondering how I could find out if Alderman McCormack had not come home on Monday night. Mr. Holmes looked like a meticulous kind of person. Perhaps he kept a diary or appointment book. I'd have to get a feel for the rhythm of the household to know when might be a safe time to go into the butler's private quarters. I couldn't afford to make any mistakes.

As soon as the cups were drained Daisy nudged me. "Come on, we've got sweeping

to do." She took me to a broom closet and handed me a square box on a long handle. "Go on, take it," she said impatiently. "Have you never seen a carpet sweeper before? What kind of households have you worked in?"

"We're not as up-to-date in Ireland," I said, "What do I do with this?"

"Oh, it's like a miracle. You just push it over the carpet and it picks up all the specks. You'll never want to go back to sweeping with a broom again."

We went up the stairs again and back into the bright, sparkling light of the front hall. They kept the electric lights in the chandelier running all the time, even when nobody was around!

"I'll do the drawing room," Daisy said. "The mistress is more likely to notice specks when they're having coffee in there after dinner. You can do the stairs." She pointed at the curved stair- case. "And make sure you do each step thoroughly. And if you hear any family members coming, try to get out of the way until they've passed. They don't like seeing servants in the main part of the house. They like to pretend the house runs itself with no human help!"

I took my sweeper and started on the bottom step, feeling quite exposed in the front hall. The sweeping might have been easier than with the brush and dustpan we used at home, but there were an awful lot of those steps and they became so narrow at the center that it was impossible to get that sweeper to work properly. I was feeling hot and tired by the time I reached the top. But a fascinating new hallway stretched out ahead of me. This might be a good opportunity to do a spot of scouting. My sweeper gave me a good excuse for being there. I started along the hall until I reached the first door. I glanced around, then knelt to put my eye to the keyhole. I was just focusing when the front door opened, letting in a blast of cold air. As I scrambled to my feet and grabbed the carpet sweeper, I got a brief impression of a large man with bushy whiskers depositing his hat on the hall table. Footsteps came up the stairs toward me. I shrank to the side as large feet came past me.

"You, girl. Go and tell Holmes that I'd like a whiskey and soda in my study straight away and then let cook know that I'll take my

lunch on a tray up here while I'm working. Nothing fancy, tell her. A slice of her pork pie and some pickles will do."

"Very good, sir." I bobbed a curtsy, as I'd seen the maids at the Hartley's do, and kept my eyes firmly on my feet.

"You're new here, are you?"

I had to look up then. "Yes, sir." Was the face the one I had seen that night? It was hard to tell. Same impressive whiskers and rounded paunch with a vest stretched across it. I realized that I had never taken in the features beneath those whiskers. Hadn't the nose been larger? If it was he, then surely he must recognize me by now.

"What's your name, child?"