Page 82 of The Maid's Secret

“I did,” I said. “But I don’t know why she was running.”

Algernon was seated across from me, between Priscilla and Magnus. His parents held protective hands on his back. He was mute throughout the conversation. He never looked up from his feet.

Only later did it dawn on me that someone had been absent during the officers’ interrogation. We thought so little of her that we forgot about her entirely. Had she been there, she could have answered the officer’s question, for she was one of only two people who knew exactly why Mrs.Mead had run.

—

We were all in shock in the days that followed, and I was in deep mourning for the very first time in my life. I’d never lost anyone massively important to me. Death before that had been remote and romantic—something in plays and fairy tales.

The grief I experienced upon losing Mrs.Mead was more than emotional. It was physical. It was hard to walk, hard to talk, to wake, to sleep. But my grief was nothing compared to whatever John and Uncle Willy must have felt upon losing this woman who was like a living hearth, bringing warmth and comfort to everyone who approached, and to her family most of all.

As the days passed, it became clear what the police were thinking. They’d returned to the manor several times with follow-up questions, mostly about John. Did he have a history of violence? Was there any reason he might have wanted his aunt dispatched? How long had he been a hunter?

Uncle Willy endured this line of questioning stoically. John wasn’t violent. His aunt was like a mother to him. Apart from the odd groundhog, he wasn’t a hunter at all.

“We all make mistakes,” the officer said when questioning John directly. “If it was an accident, you might as well say so.”

John never wavered from his initial statement—“I shot that rifle into the air. I didn’t kill her.”

I wanted so much to comfort him, for he seemed a husk of his former self. His brown eyes were red-rimmed and downcast, his shoulders slumped, and whenever I tried to speak to him, it was as if he didn’t hear me at all. Like a specter, he simply drifted away.

Meanwhile, Uncle Willy allowed me to hug him and to cry on his shoulder, but his embrace felt distant and weak. He was so bereft, he lacked the energy to console me and I was so accustomed to the constancy of his generosity, the sudden loss of it compounded my grief. For the first time in my life, I realized that what I valued most in this world I could lose in a heartbeat.

Still, Uncle Willy never missed so much as an hour of work at the manor. He stood sentry at the door and did my father’s bidding. When he wasn’t there, he was at the cottage, wandering the grounds aimlessly or sitting at Mrs.Mead’s kitchen table, staring off into space.

My parents responded to Mrs.Mead’s death with their usual lack of tact. “We’ve talked with the Brauns,” my father announced two days after Mrs.Mead died. “Algernon’s fine, just a bit shaken. And they know the police well, so you needn’t worry, Flora. We’ll wear black for a few more days in honor of Mrs.Mead, but after the funeral, life will go back to normal. You understand,” he said.

But I didn’t understand. There was no going back. There was no normal to return to.

“It’s an awful bit of business, darling, a terrible shame,” my mother said, “but it could have been worse.”

When I asked her what she meant, she merely shrugged, but I knew. It was only a servant who’d died, not one of us. We weren’t equal in life, so why would we be equal in death?

In the days that followed, I spent as much time as possible away from my parents. The sight of them now revolted me, and yet Icouldn’t have said why. I holed myself up in my room, crying in my bed, day and night. I half expected Mrs.Mead to walk through the door, to sit on the edge of my mattress and comfort me as she’d done so often in the past.

There, there, child. All will be well. Mrs.Mead’s here now.

But she wasn’t. She’d never be there again.

When the autopsy report arrived a week after her demise, the cause of death was no surprise—a bullet through the heart. But no bullet was found in her body, and subsequent searches of the forest turned up two shells but no clues.

The day of the funeral arrived, and for the first time in my life, I picked my outfit all by myself, weeping as I did so.

We met the Brauns outside the small chapel in town where many of the workers from the surrounding estates lived. It was the first time I was seeing Algernon since the accident, and somewhere in my heart of hearts, I suppose I’d hoped he would offer me some kindness, some comfort, some sympathy. But my hope was dashed when he could barely look me in the eye, as though the raw sight of my grief appalled him.

As we awaited our turn to enter the chapel, he wrestled with his black tie. “It’s strangling me,” he said. “I’ll wait outside.”

“You’ll do no such thing,” his father growled. “You will appear in that chapel as will we all. The whole town is watching, Algernon, including the police. You will show you’re grieving alongside everyone else.”

“But you already spoke to—”

“Grab Flora’s hand, Algie,” Priscilla ordered. “Offer her your handkerchief if she weeps. Do you understand?”

He took my hand as our families entered the church, and we sat in a pew at the back.

The small chapel was soon filled to bursting. It could barely contain all the people who’d been touched by Mrs.Mead and who feltcompelled to honor her in death as she had honored them in life. There were maids and gardeners, farmers and grocery store clerks, chauffeurs and chefs. None of my parents’ associates were there—no captains of industry, no barons and baronesses, no lawyers, doctors, or real estate tycoons.

But everyone seemed to know Mrs.Mead. The ladies’ auxiliary enumerated her contributions—establishing a soup kitchen for the needy and a knitting circle that sold their wares to raise funds for the local children’s charity. The choir lauded Mrs.Mead for founding their quarterly concert series, and several adults stepped forward claiming she had raised them as her own. How was it that Mrs.Mead had known so many, touched so many, loved so many? How was it she’d made such an impact, sowing kindness and goodness wherever she went, and yet somehow I’d been woefully oblivious to her life beyond loving me?

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