Page 186 of Too Good to Be True

I thought of Harriet hanging in the kitchen, eating toast, and nodded, but outside noting how very much Ian paid attention, and cared about his house and his parents, I said nothing.

Ian continued, “But those women’s responsibilities tend more toward the personal. Making beds. Tidying bathrooms. Doing laundry and otherwise seeing to our clothes. All in the spaces that we use. They clean other areas as well and serve. But this is a big house. We own a great many things. And it’s our responsibility to see that it’s all cared for and maintained. We don’t need a leak in the roof and water damage that we don’t know is happening. Wood will get dry and crack if it isn’t oiled. Chandeliers collect dust. There’s silver that needs polishing and china to be fetched, depending on which room it’s being called for.”

I cut in to have my suspicions confirmed. “So each room has its own set of china?”

“Not exactly, but some of them do. Pearl. Rose. Which makes sense, Rose being the room of the lady of the house, Pearl being the room where we most entertain outsiders. But for the most part, the service selected matches the room it’s being taken to. I’ve seen it all, though there’s so much of it, I don’t have a register of it in my head. However, masculine rooms have masculine services, and vice versa. I suspect favored rooms of members of the family over the years had services purchased for when they used those rooms. It stands to reason. We’ve had centuries to collect it and money to burn on those kinds of things.”

“Hmm,” I hummed.

“Tell me about this girl,” he ordered.

“There’s not much to say. Slender. Brown hair. She avoided my eyes. I thought she was shy. Now I wonder if she was somewhere she wasn’t supposed to be.”

“If you’ve seen her, she was. The cleaning girls use the staff passageways almost exclusively. They’re also not full-time and, it’s my understanding, they have the greatest turnover. Usually, they’re young women who go to the college in town. When they earn their degrees or certificates, they move on.”

If they used the staff passageways exclusively, then they’d have healthy knowledge of them.

“Do you know them?” I asked.

“Not the current ones, no.” Another heavy breath from Ian and then, “I’ll make a call. Set my investigators into diving into those two first.”

“Do they live here?”

“I don’t know. Some of them have, as a benefit of their employment. No skin off our noses. We have the room. Some don’t. I don’t tend to pay attention to the intricacies of the running of the house, and not only because I don’t actually live here.”

He did pay attention, but perhaps not to that level.

And…

Okay, time to get into the creepiest part.

Or, the second creepiest part.

“Tell me about these passageways.”

His expression grew understanding, and he assured, “There isn’t an entry into my room.”

At least there was that.

“Okay, but tell me about them anyway.”

“Honestly, if someone had the time and energy, it wouldn’t be hard to know about them, though, it’d take quite some effort. In past times, they were used often, and not just by staff. It was a running joke that a husband could run into his wife, both of them on their way to an illicit liaison.”

“Members of the family?”

“Yes, most definitely, but also guests. If they wrote about them in letters or diaries or told others who did the same, anyone who was looking into Duncroft House could piece them together and use that information to move around this house, in large part, sight unseen.”

Not…

Good.

“Is there an entry into the Whisky Room?”

He shook his head. “No.”

“This is fiendish, Ian,” I remarked.

“I know, darling. But it’ll also be figured out. My investigator can lift fingerprints, evaluate the footprints in the dust, thoroughly check the house, including the staff rooms. Stevenson already has a plan to keep the staff occupied so she can do so without being seen.”

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