“Bridget Dunham. I’m Miss Adele’s maid,” she replied.
She stood just inside the entrance still uncertain as she stared about the parlor.
“She’s gonna be right upset when she sees this,” she commented.
She seemed to lose some of her first wariness at finding us there.
She explained that she had been employed the past year by Adele DeMille. Who, it seemed, had disappeared.
“Did ye see or hear the intruders?” Brodie then asked.
She shook her head. “I haven’t been here. Me mum hasn’t been well and I needed to see to her. Miss Adele told me to take the days off and come back when she was better.”
Brodie turned a chair right side up for her.
“When did ye last see Miss DeMille?”
“It was four, no five, days ago,” she replied, looking at the chaos in the parlor with wide eyes.
“She had me help her get ready for guests she was expectin’ that night. That’s when she told me to take care of me mum. Has somethin’ happened to her?”
Brodie and I exchanged a look.
“Did she say who those guests were?” he asked. “A name perhaps?”
She shook her head. “She never talked about the men that came here, said it was not for me to know.”
“What can you tell us about her?” I inquired.
“She’s an actress, I heard, performed on the stage in London before she came here. Said it was better than living on a few coins she was paid. And then there were the men that came here.” Her cheeks colored.
“She liked the finer things. While I fixed her hair and helped her dress before they arrived, she would talk about plays she’d been in, the Paris theatre, and that she was never going back to that.”
I kept mental notes and asked more questions while Brodie searched the rest of the residence.
Had Miss DeMille spoken of being afraid of anyone? Had there been any other situations like this before?
“No, miss,” she replied.
What about other servants? A cook or housekeeper?
“She had a woman come in regular to clean, and Mrs. Haggerty prepared food when she was expecting friends. Jimmy in the village sees to it that she has a coach when she wants to go out.”
Adele DeMille had obviously disappeared, quite unlike her. “Was it possible that she had gone to London?”
“Oh, no, miss,” the girl replied. “She didn’t care for London proper, said more than once that everything she needed was right here.” She shook her head as she looked about.
“She’s goin’ to be upset about this. I hope there’s nothing gone wrong. She said she could help me get a part in a play. I’d like that. I don’t want to be a maid the rest of my life. I’d like to travel, work on the stage could provide that.
“I’ll need to let Mrs. Nesby know about this. Such a shame. And the lock will have to be fixed.” She shook her head as she left.
“What about the upstairs rooms?” I asked Brodie after she had gone.
“It could be useful to search them. There might something that might tell us what happened here.”
There were four bedchambers on the second floor. Brodie took the rooms at the far end of the hall, while I took the two rooms nearest.
The first room I entered was sparsely furnished, with only a bed, and did not appear to have been disturbed.
