The Maid(35)

“You have no reason to be. You didn’t have anything to do with it.”

“I know I didn’t, but that’s just what you say. Like you did with me at the door. You said you were sorry about Charles. You offered your condolences.”

“But Mr. Black died yesterday, and my mother died many years ago.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Giselle says. “That’s just what you say.”

“Thank you. For explaining.”

“Sure. Anytime.”

I truly am grateful for her guidance. With Gran gone, much of the time I feel like a blind person in a minefield. I’m constantly stumbling upon social improprieties hidden under the surface of things. But with Giselle around, I feel like I’m wearing a breastplate and am flanked by an armed guard. One of the reasons why I love working at the Regency Grand is that there’s a rule book for conduct. I can rely on Mr. Snow’s training to tell me how to act, what to say when, how, and to whom. I find it relieving to have guidance.

I take the tea tray into the sitting room. It rattles in my hands. Giselle sits down on the worst part of the sofa, where the springs poke through a tad, though Gran has covered them with a crocheted blanket. I sit beside her.

I pour two cups of tea. I pick up mine, the one rimmed with gold and decorated in daisy chains, then realize my error. “Sorry. Would you prefer this cup or that one? I’m used to taking the daisies. Gran would take the English cottage scene. I’m a bit of a creature of habit.”

“You don’t say,” Giselle says, and picks up Gran’s cup. She helps herself to two heaping teaspoons of sugar and some milk. She stirs the contents. She’s never done much housework, that’s for sure. Her hands are smooth and flawless, her manicured nails long and polished blood red.

Giselle takes a sip, swallows. “Listen, I know you’re probably wondering why I’m here.”

“I was worried for you, and I’m glad you’re here,” I say.

“Molly, yesterday was the worst day of my life. The cops were all over me. They took me to the station. They questioned me like I’m some kind of common criminal.”

“I was worried that would happen. You don’t deserve that.”

“I know. But they don’t. They asked me if I got too eager as a potential heir to Charles’s estate. I told them to talk to my lawyers, not that I have any. Charles handled all of that. God, it was awful, to be accused of such a thing. Then as soon as I got back to the hotel, Charles’s daughter, Victoria, called me.”

I feel a tremor jolt me as I pick up my teacup and take a sip. “Ah yes, the forty-nine-percent shareholder.”

“That’s what she owned before. Now she’ll own over half of everything, which is what her mother always wanted. ‘Women and business don’t mix,’ Charles says…said. According to him, women can’t handle dirty work.”

“That’s preposterous,” I say. Then I catch myself. “Apologies. It’s rude to talk ill of the dead.”

“It’s okay. He deserves it. Anyhow, his daughter said way worse things to me on the phone. Do you know what she called me? Her father’s Prada parasite, his midlife mistake, not to mention his killer. She was raging so much, her mother took the phone away from her. Calm as anything, Mrs. Black—the first Mrs. Black—says, ‘I apologize for my daughter. We all react to grief in different ways.’ Can you believe it? While her lunatic daughter is yelling in the background, telling me to watch my back.”

“You don’t have to worry about Victoria,” I say.

“Oh, Molly, you’re so trusting. You have no idea how vicious it is out there in the real world. Everyone wants to see me go down. It doesn’t matter that I’m innocent. They hate me. And for what? The police, they suggested that I was violent against Charles. Unbelievable!”

I watch Giselle carefully. I remember the day she told me about Mr. Black’s mistresses, how she was so angry she really did want to kill him. But thought and action are different things. They’re different things entirely. If anyone knows this, I do.

“The police think I killed my own husband,” she says.

“For what it’s worth, I know you didn’t.”

“Thank you, Molly,” she says.

Her hands are shaking like mine are. She sets her cup down on the table. “I’ll never get how a decent woman like Charles’s ex-wife could raise such a bitch of a daughter.”

“Perhaps Victoria takes after her father,” I say. I remember Giselle’s bruises and how they came to be. My fingers tighten on the delicate handle of my teacup. If I grip it any harder, it will shatter into a million pieces. Breathe, Molly. Breathe.

“Mr. Black, he wasn’t good to you,” I say. “He was, in my estimation, a very bad egg.”

Giselle looks down at her lap. She smooths out the edges of her satin skirt. She is picture-perfect. It’s as if a cinema star from the golden age just crawled out of Gran’s TV and magically took a seat beside me on the sofa. That thought seems more probable than Giselle being real, a socialite who is actually friends with a lowly maid.

“Charles didn’t always treat me well, but he loved me, in his way. And I loved him in my way. I did.” Her big green eyes fill with tears.

I think of Wilbur, how he stole the Fabergé. Any fondness I felt for him turned to bitterness in an instant. I would have cooked him in a vat of lye if I could have done so without repercussion. And yet, Giselle, who has just cause to hate Charles, holds on to her love for him. How curious, the way different people react to similar stimuli.