Bea was still kneeling behind the desk. Vivian didn’t glance down, but she could feel her friend’s trembling. Bea hadn’t been wrong when she said she could end up in jail if she was caught sneaking someone into the house—particularly the girl suspected of murdering someone in that very room. For the moment, Bea was hidden from the housekeeper’s view. But she wouldn’t be for long.
Vivian took a step around the desk. The housekeeper stumbled back, lifting the wavering poker higher. “Don’t you go anywhere,” she said, her voice shaking as badly as her hands. “You stay right there while I telephone the—”
“The police?” Vivian broke in. “I wouldn’t risk that if I was you.”
“Stop talking,” the housekeeper snapped.
Vivian shrugged. “All right, lady. You do what you want. It’s your funeral, though.”
“Are you threatening me?”
“Not hardly,” Vivian said. “I’m helping you out. It’s no picnic having the cops after you. I wouldn’t want you to go through that.”
“Why would I…” The housekeeper stared at her. “Why would they… You don’t mean to imply they’ll thinkIlet you in? What nonsense.”
Vivian took another careful step forward. The housekeeper didn’t look like the sort of woman who knew her way around a fight. But she had a weapon in her hands, and Vivian didn’t. “It’ll make them plenty suspicious, is all I’m saying,” she said, trying to sound as certain as possible. “They’ve gotta be wondering about that poison, after all.”
The housekeeper’s face went white. “What do you mean?”
“They didn’t ask you about that?” Vivian said. She’d have thought the police would question at least some of the staff about the arsenic.
“Of course they did, but that has nothing to do with—How do you know about that?”
Vivian was pleased to see the housekeeper looking uneasy. She had intended to put the woman off balance, chase her away so Bea could slip out unseen. But seeing the thoughts flickering across her face, Vivian had another idea. “Look, they think I stabbed him, right? I didn’t, but they think so. But when would I have had a chance to poison him? That has to be someone who lived here, right?”
“Right…” The housekeeper said slowly, frowning, as though she had momentarily forgotten her distrust and was simply trying to follow Vivian’s logic.
“And who better than a servant? If the cops see that I got in the house and was sneaking around when only you were here…” She trailed off, giving the woman a sympathetic smile as she shrugged. “You see, I’m just trying to save you a trip down to the station.”
“What… what nonsense,” the housekeeper said faintly, but her heart wasn’t in it. The poker was down by her side, and Vivian could see her shaking. It was almost enough to make Vivian feel bad. But she pushed that thought aside. She had other things to worry about.
Vivian took another step forward. “Look, you met me before,” she said, giving her best wide-eyed, innocent expression. “Do I seem likeI could kill someone? Let alone a fella like Mr. Buchanan? He was twice my size. And you know I’d never come around here before, so how could I have anything to do with the poison?”
The housekeeper frowned. “But then what are you doing here now?”
“Look, I get it, no one wants to talk to the cops about whoever it was that came to meet with Buchanan that day.”
“No one did—”
“I said I get it,” Vivian interrupted, then, seeing the expression on the housekeeper’s face, nodded. “Okay, maybe you actually don’t know. I believe you. But someone saw him. I know that maid had to, because she came to get him. He wouldn’t have gone to his office just because I told him to, right? He wouldn’t have had any reason to.”
“I guess… I guess that could make sense,” the housekeeper said slowly.
“All I want is to talk to her. She was older, fifties maybe. And she quit right after. You know who I’m talking about?”
The silence that hung in the room was painful. Vivian wished Bea was by her side, but she kept her eyes straight forward.
“Her name was Maggie Chambers,” the housekeeper said at last. “I can’t tell you much more than that, I’d only hired her a week before and we’ve been through so many maids in the last two months.”
Vivian let out a relieved breath. “But you have some kind of record on her, right? An address, maybe, or a reference that she came with when she applied for the job? That’s all I’m here for. I just want to talk to her.”
She waited, barely breathing, to see what the housekeeper would decide.
“If I give you her reference, I want you to get out of here,” the housekeeper said, her voice and her eyes both flinty. “And you don’t come back. I don’t need you throwing around that kind of talk about poison. And I sure as hell don’t want Mrs. Buchanan finding you here.”
“Fair deal,” Vivian said, nodding. “Just do me one other favor?”
The housekeeper’s eyes narrowed. “What?”
