Mr. Preston thinks it’s some big surprise, but I know what he will tell me—that he’s retiring from his job as a doorman at the Regency Grand. He thinks this news will upset my fragile equilibrium, but it won’t. I’m stronger than everyone thinks. Good eggs don’t crack so easily.
I will miss him terribly, of course, but I will carry on. And we’ll still have our Sunday dinners.
“Good luck in there today,” Mr. Preston had said earlier this morning. “I’m here if you need anything.”
“You always are,” I replied. “And for that I’m grateful.”
He tipped his hat. Then I raced up the stairs and pushed through the gleaming revolving doors into the Regency Grand. The enormous gilt-framed sign in the lobby advertised the day’s big event.
Today
VIP Press Conference
TOPIC: J. D. GRIMTHORPE
Deceased Mystery Author
10:00 a.m.
Regency Grand Tearoom
I hurried past the sign and rushed downstairs to the housekeeping change rooms, where Lily had arrived early for her shift. We donned our uniforms. I placed my Head Maid pin adroitly above my heart, but I surprised her by saying, “Hold on a moment. Give me your pin.”
Lily looked at me in confusion as she placed her Maid-in-Training pin in my open hand. I then exchanged it with what I had concealed in my other palm—a fresh new pin, black with shiny gold letters. It said:
LILY
Maid
She gasped as she took it from my palm. “Really?” she asked as she held proof of her promotion in her own hands.
“You’ve earned it. Put it on,” I replied.
She turned to the mirror and affixed it right above her heart.
“Lily,” I said, “do you think you can serve the tea to our VIP guest, just as you did last week?”
She shook her head, her eyes wide with shock.
“I don’t mean that literally. I assure you the end result of today’s tea service won’t be an untimely death. Can you manage, Lily? Tell me if you can’t.”
“I can do it,” she said in her new, confident voice. “A good maid has a can-do attitude,” she added. “You taught me that.”
“I best be off,” I said. “Please get the VIP tea cart ready. You can roll it into the tearoom at five to the hour.”
Lily curtsied, then left.
I heard the familiar sound of feet flopping down the hallway. It could be only one person.
“Good morning, Cheryl,” I said as she entered the change room. Miracles are possible, and the proof was on the wall clock. Cheryl was early for her shift!
“To what do I owe the pleasure of your punctuality?” I asked her.
“Dunno,” she replied with a shrug. “Doesn’t it say something about the wisdom of early birds in that annoying handbook of yours?”
I gritted my teeth but said nothing. After all, her punctuality was a sign of improvement, and that’s exactly what I’ve been hoping for.
After a rather impassioned debate between Mr. Snow and me a week ago, it was decided that despite Cheryl’s flagrant theft and mischief, we would not fire her. I wanted to give her one last chance to redeem herself as a maid.
I made it expressly clear that animalistic behavior of all kinds would not be tolerated. “In other words, you are not to behave like a thieving rat or a trash panda,” I explained. I placed her on a PIP explaining that I had “Great Expectations” for her in the future. Naturally, she didn’t understand my witty references to Charles Dickens’s novel, so I explained that PIP was short for “Professional Improvement Plan,” meaning Cheryl’s employment was subject to strict adherence to every chapter, rule, and verse of A Maid’s Guide & Handbook. It also meant she would retrain as a maid, working right by my side, where I could watch her every move—and I have been watching her every single day.
I do believe Cheryl is grateful for my clemency, not that she has expressed it in words. But she shows it in other ways. A few days ago, she sneezed and was about to wipe her nose on her sleeve, but I stopped her. “Ah, ah, ah,” I said. “Tissue for your issue.” I handed her one right from her own trolley.
Yesterday, I caught her about to use her toilet cloth on a guest’s washroom sink. “Ah, ah, ah,” I said. “What’s the rule?”
“Please be neat when you sterilize the seat,” she replied with only the faintest trace of sarcasm.
So you see: we’re making progress.
“Earth to Molly. Are you with us?”
I shake off my reverie to find Angela and Detective Stark standing outside the maroon cordon by the entrance to the tearoom. Angela holds up the cordon, and they both duck under and come my way.
“Detective Stark,” I say. “I didn’t know you were coming today.”
“Neither did I,” says Stark. “But the LAMBS showed up at the station yesterday and dropped off this lanyard for me.”
I look at the VIP event pass hanging around her neck. “I couldn’t help myself,” she says. “Curiosity killed the cat and all of that.”
“Here’s hoping no feline, or anyone else, is killed in today’s proceedings,” I reply.
“How are preparations for the court case going?” Angela asks.
“Beulah pled guilty,” says the detective. “So there won’t be a trial. Just a sentencing. And you’ll never believe what she admitted.”
“Do tell!” says Angela as she rubs her hands together with glee.
“The maid she tracked down, the one who used to work for the Grimthorpes ages ago,” Stark says. “Turns out, that maid knew all about the ghostwriter in the mansion, said she figured out long before she was fired what Grimthorpe’s personal secretary really did for him.”
“Have you talked to the maid?” I ask.
“Nope. She told Beulah everything but demanded anonymity, said she had good reasons for remaining invisible. And when Beulah realized she’d devoted her life to a fraud, she devised a plan.”
“To kill Mr. Grimthorpe,” I say.
“Not quite,” Stark replies. “She decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. She rewrote her biography, turning it into a searing exposé. So now she had two versions—her original flattering portrait, and the second, which was completely damning.”
“But why?” I ask. “Why would she write the biography two ways?”
“Because she wanted to ask him herself if he really was a fraud and a predator. Which version she published depended entirely on his answer.”
“But when she met Grimthorpe outside his hotel room the day before the big announcement, he refused to answer her troubling questions,” I say. “Beulah wrote something about that in her ledger.”
“Uh-huh,” Stark says. “He also rejected her as his official biographer, even under threat of having an exposé published.”
“And he slammed the door in her face,” I add.
“So after that encounter, she decided to kill him,” Angela says with somber finality. “The triple whammy sent Beulah into a quiet murderous rage.”
“And as it turns out,” Stark says, “the tea cart in this tearoom wasn’t the only one Beulah poisoned. She poisoned every honey pot on every tea cart left outside his hotel room, from the day before the big event to the morning of it.”
“Which explains why he died so quickly,” I say. “He’d been drinking poisoned tea for over twenty-four hours.”
“Well, holy shih tzu,” says Angela. “It’s just like the plot of his novel Poison & Punishment. What a kick-ass podcast this would make.”
“Maybe you should make it,” says Stark.
Angela’s eyes go wide. “You really think I could?”
“Yeah, I do,” Stark replies.
Before Angela can contemplate this further, Mr. Snow enters the tearoom. He’s dressed in an emerald-green waistcoat and a paisley bow tie.