The Mystery Guest полностью

My gran once told me a story about a maid, a rat, and a spoon. It went like this:

There once was a maid who worked for wealthy landowners in a castle. She cleaned for them. She cooked for them. She waited on them hand and foot.

One day, as the maid served her masters a nourishing stew, Her Ladyship noted with a sniff of disdain that she was missing her silver spoon. The maid was certain she had placed the spoon by Her Ladyship’s bowl, but when she looked, she saw with her own eyes that the spoon had disappeared.

The maid apologized profusely, but this failed to placate Her Ladyship, nor did it placate His Lordship, who in that moment seethed and raged, accusing the maid of being little more than a petty thief and of stealing their silver.

The maid was frog-marched out of the castle, but not before the stew she had made from scratch was thrown onto her white apron, leaving a shameful blot that could never be removed.

Many years after His Lordship and Her Ladyship died, long after our poor, disgraced maid had moved on, builders who had known her were hired to renovate the castle. When they lifted the dining room floor, they uncovered a nest containing the mummified body of a rat, and beside it, a single silver spoon.

My beloved grandmother, a.k.a. my gran, worked her whole life as a maid. I have followed in her footsteps. It’s a figure of speech. I could not literally follow in her footsteps because she has none, not anymore. She died just over four years ago, when I was twenty-five years old (ergo, a quarter of a century), and even before that, her walking days came to an abrupt end when she suddenly fell ill, much to my dismay.

The point is: she is dead. Gone, but not forgotten, never forgotten. Now my feet follow a proverbial trail all their own, and yet I owe a debt of gratitude to my dearly departed gran, for it is she who made me who I am.

Gran taught me everything I know, such as how to polish silver, how to read books and people, and how to make a proper cup of tea. It is because of Gran that I have advanced in my career as a maid at the Regency Grand Hotel, a five-star boutique hotel that prides itself on sophisticated elegance and proper decorum for the modern age. Believe me when I say I started at the bottom and worked my way up to this illustrious position. Like every maid who has ever walked through the gleaming revolving doors of the Regency Grand, I began as a Maid-in-Training. Now, however, if you step closer and read my name tag—aptly placed above my heart—you will see in large block letters:

MOLLY

which is my name, and in delicate serif script underneath it:

Head Maid

Let me tell you, it’s no mean feat to climb the corporate ladder in a five-star boutique hotel. But I can say with great pride that I have held this lofty position for going on three and a half years, proving that I am no fly-by-night, but as Mr. Snow, hotel manager, recently said about me in an all-staff meeting, “Molly is an employee who sustains an attitude of gratitude.”

I’ve always struggled with understanding the true meaning behind people’s words, but I’ve gotten a lot better at reading people, even strangers, which is why I know what you’re thinking. You think my job is lowly, that it’s a position meriting shame, not pride. Far be it from me to tell you what to think, but IMHO (meaning: In My Humble Opinion), you are dead wrong.