Page 81 of The Maid's Secret

“But you ate my giraffe,” says Juan, “and these maids can probably fill the detective’s notebook with tales of your creative pilfering.”

“True,” says Sunshine, “but this doesn’t have Cheryl’s signature paw prints on it. Her swindles are always sloppy and self-serving. This one isn’t her style.”

Amazingly, everyone nods along to this, including Cheryl. There’s nothing about the heist or the egg’s curious return that seems remotely Cherylesque. In fact, no one in this room seems at all suspect to me.

“It’s a plant,” says Stark. “Whoever put the egg in Molly’s trolley did it last night. The heist was a professional job, and for whatever reason, so was the return of the egg. It was Molly who was supposed to find it.”

“Look on the bright side,” Angela offers. “At least you’ve got it back, Molly. Now you can sell it and get rich!”

I suppose she’s right, but everything about the Fabergé now terrifies me. My mother warned me about the egg being found, and now, here it is.

“What happens next, Detective?” Mr.Snow asks. “Since there’s no longer a crime?”

“The crime of theft remains, but it becomes harder to prove when stolen goods are returned, not to mention harder to understand,” says Stark. “I’m guessing you checked the trolley to see if there was a note this time?” She directs the question to Angela.

“I didn’t think of that,” says Angela. “I didn’t want fingerprints all over things.”

“Bit late for that,” says Stark as she walks over to the trolley. Shelooks down into the middle row of the pyramid I built just last night. There’s a hole in the center where the egg must have been. She reaches for something, picking it up gingerly between two fingers. It’s a single square of two-ply toilet paper with writing on it.

Detective Stark reads aloud:

Dear Molly,

Sell the egg or you die.

—

Chapter 24

Dear Molly,

It’s one thing to lose someone in the natural order of things but another entirely for someone to die before their time. I could not believe what I was seeing on the conservatory floor because it was so completely unnatural—Mrs.Mead, my beloved nursemaid, a kinder mother to me than my own had ever been, who just over an hour earlier had been serving me tea in the banquet room. Now, she lay lifeless at our feet.

What happened next is a blur, a series of tragic tableaux. Someone must have called the police—my father, perhaps, or John? Uncle Willy let them in. The officers, who were known to the Brauns, greeted Magnus and Priscilla with respectful tips of their caps. Notes were taken, details and stories logged. A coroner arrived, officially declaring what was obvious to everyone—Mrs.Mead was dead.

In the tumult that followed, no one seemed clear on how many shots had been fired. Was it one as Magnus and Algernon insisted or two as John and Uncle Willy had claimed? When questioned in the parlor, Uncle Willy revealed that he and Magnus had gone one way inthe forest in pursuit of a noise in the underbrush. John and Algernon had each gone their own separate ways. Uncle Willy said he never fired a shot; neither had Magnus or Papa. But when John and Algernon were asked if they’d fired, only one of them nodded.

“I shot into the air,” said John. “Why kill a harmless animal? I wanted to scare it away.”

“And you, son?” an officer asked Algernon. “Did you shoot your weapon?”

“No,” said Algernon. “I…I don’t recall.”

The men explained what happened, each of their stories dovetailing. John heard a cry that sounded not at all like a deer but like a woman’s scream, and he ran toward it. When he arrived, he found Mrs.Mead collapsed and bleeding out in the underbrush. He dropped the rifle he’d borrowed from Algernon and knelt beside his aunt. Algernon arrived soon after, and Uncle Willy, Papa, and Magnus just after that. John and Uncle Willy tried to stanch the wound in Mrs.Mead’s chest, but it was too late. She was already gone.

After hearing everything, caps in hand, the officers asked the men to take them back to the forest. They ventured once more into the violent downpour, leading the police to the clearing in the underbrush where Mrs.Mead had fallen. They recovered two identical firearms in the vicinity—each missing one bullet. The truth of whose rifle was whose had been washed away by the rain.

Once the men returned to the manor, we gathered in the parlor. The officers again asked Algernon if he’d fired a shot, and this time, his answer changed.

“I think I fired, but earlier—way before the maid came running out of the woods.”

“This maid, Mrs.Mead,” one officer said. “Why would she run out like that? What on earth made her rush outside during a storm?” He surveyed the faces before him.

John and Uncle Willy were sitting side by side on a settee, shaking their heads, their faces pale and drawn.

“Heaven knows what she was thinking,” my mother said in an unsteady voice. “We have no idea what made her run off like that.”

“We were chatting with Flora right in this parlor,” Priscilla offered. “I didn’t even notice the woman run past.”

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