The Housemaid Read online

  THE HOUSEMAID

  Sarah A. Denzil

  THE HOUSEMAID

  EBOOK EDITION

  Copyright © 2021 Sarah A. Denzil

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this work, in whole or in part, in any form.

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, events, organizations and products depicted herein are either a product of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously.

  Cover Design by Deranged Doctor Design

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  Contents

  Also by the author:

  Quote

  The Music Room

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  The Music Room

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  The Music Room

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  The Music Room

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  The Music Room

  Part 2

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Author Note

  About the Author

  Also by the author:

  Psychological Suspense:

  Saving April

  The Broken Ones

  Only Daughter

  The Liar’s Sister

  Poison Orchids

  Little One

  The Housemaid

  The Silent Child Series:

  Silent Child, Book One

  Stolen Girl, Book Two

  Aiden’s Story, a novella

  Crime Fiction:

  One For Sorrow (Isabel Fielding book one)

  Two For Joy (Isabel Fielding book two)

  Three For A Girl (Isabel Fielding book three)

  The Isabel Fielding Boxed Set

  Supernatural Suspense:

  You Are Invited

  Short suspenseful reads:

  They Are Liars: A novella

  Aiden’s Story (a SILENT CHILD short story)

  Harborside Hatred (A Liars Island novella)

  “He says unloved women have no biographies—they have histories.”

  F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned

  “Look like the innocent flower,

  But be the serpent under it.”

  William Shakespeare, Macbeth

  The Music Room

  Ghost is another name for housemaid. An unseen entity that slips through each room, straightening, wiping, dusting, rummaging. The eye does not linger on the maid in the corridor. The heart does not feel for her. There was a time I convinced myself otherwise, but no matter what you are to your house—a confidante, an ally, a lover—a ghost is what you will transform into. A ghost is what I became.

  I thought I was someone to him—to them even—but in the end, I was nothing.

  I don’t dream anymore, but if I did, I would imagine myself back in the music room, sitting on the piano stool with him next to me. His long fingers caressing the white and black keys and the swell of the music filling up the large space inside that room. Emily, what would you like me to play? He would grin because he knew I always picked my favourite piece—the Debussy. He would perform it for me diligently. But what he didn’t know was that I loved the way he said my name more than any music he played for me. It made me feel noticed, appreciated even, and for a maid, that’s important.

  When a man, a powerful, rich man, looks at you and says your name, well, let’s just say it can elicit an adrenaline rush that chases away common sense.

  Inside the music room, I went to another place. He and I were from two different worlds, but in that room it didn’t matter. I forgot about everything I’d left behind when he started to play. Perhaps I forgot too many things. Perhaps I forgot myself.

  The mistakes I made are my own, and I will never forgive myself for them and for becoming the very thing I’d tried so hard not to be: another ghost.

  Chapter 1

  I was twenty-one years old, broke, homeless, and desperate for a job. Lost, both literally and metaphorically. I realised, once I hopped down from the bus in Paxby village, that I couldn’t afford a taxi to the house. There’d been an unexpected cost along the way. The bus company no longer sold their day saver, and I had to buy a full-price ticket. It left me with three pounds in my wallet and a debit card that belonged to an empty bank account.

  Luckily, I’d arrived in Paxby over an hour early because of my own anxieties about being late. The maid job at Highwood Hall was one I’d coveted for a long time. Highwood Hall provided living accommodation for their maids, and I needed somewhere to live.

  The decision was made for me. I had to walk to the house now that I couldn’t afford an alternative. So I set off at a steady pace, mindful of the warm weather. Not wanting to turn up to my interview soggy from perspiration.

  The ramparts and turrets of Highwood Hall peeked out from above a canopy of sloping green. All I needed to do was walk towards those slate-grey walls. And as I crossed the road, my heart pitter-pattered. In truth, the promise of accommodation was part of the reason for my application. I had to admit that it thrilled me to think of working in that stately home, one of the largest estates in Yorkshire and possibly the last one of its size that hadn’t yet been opened to the public. The Howards had held on to their privacy, able to pay for the upkeep of the Hall through Lord Bertie’s successful finance company. At least, I’d read that he liked to be called Lord Bertie; his actual name was Reginald Peregrine Charles Howard.

  It was late May, and peroxide sunrays exploded through the clouds. As I made my way out of the village, away from the limestone walls and identical rows of cottages, I rolled up my shirtsleeves and pulled my hair back into what I hoped was a tidy bun. Fortunately, I’d had the foresight to wear tennis shoes and carry a pair of—borrowed—smart pumps in my tote bag. Looking at the steep hill up to Highwood Hall, it was the right decision.

  All in all, it took me around thirty minutes to reach the forest, walking slowly so as not to sweat too much. The sudden shade from the canopy above was a welcome respite from the sun, and I allowed myself a moment to drink some water and let my legs rest. I wondered whether any of the other candidates had walked up from the village. It was possible. This interview was for a low-paying job, and I couldn’t be the first interviewee without the means to drive myself there. I couldn’t be the only maid living day by day, sofa surfing through the contacts on my phone, queuing up at closing time in Tesco to get the best discounts on the food they were about to discard. No, there would be others like me, I felt sure of it. I st
retched out my legs and kept going, sticking to the road that snaked its way up through the woods.

  I decided I’d go walking in the woods if I got the job. Maybe I’d get up early, just before dawn, and walk them alone. But what drew me to this spot, I don’t know. There was no beauty here. I saw no grandeur, simply a wildness that I liked. I peeked through the trees at the thorns, weeds and long stretches of nettles. Every tree was twisted, branches malformed, the trunks growing at awkward angles, roots zigzagging down the sloping earth. Cool air spread over my skin. I unrolled my sleeves. I wrapped my arms around my body, hugging my ribs, and I quickened my step, thinking that perhaps I wouldn’t go walking in the woods after all, that I wouldn’t be brave enough.

  Then the hall came into view. A set of wrought iron gates cut the building in half, the metal curving across the front facade of the house, and with each step, those curling bars of iron loomed taller above me. I brushed stray hairs out of my eyes and tucked the strands into my bun. I smoothed my wrinkled shirtsleeves and straightened the collar. Before I reached the gate, I ducked to the side of the road to change my shoes, checked in my compact mirror for smudged make-up, and hoped that no one would notice I’d walked a mile up a hill. Then I went back to the gate and pressed a buzzer that had definitely not been around when the house was built during the Tudor period.

  A voice crackled through the speaker. Whose voice? I wondered. A security guard? A servant? When the agency organised the interview, they didn’t tell me how many members of staff the Howards employed, but I guessed there must be a team. I leaned closer to the speaker and relayed why I was there. I was ten minutes early, despite the walk, but the gate opened for me anyway, and when I stepped through, I saw what the wrought iron had blocked. I saw the stained-glass windows, the rambling magenta roses extending across the bricks, clumps of green leaves dangling over the arch of the great wooden doorway. The house, or rather estate, stretched down towards the forest, running adjacent with a manicured lawn, stone pots of bright flowers, hedgerows of tufty reeds and neat privet hedges. Where I had seen a wild nature in the woods, I saw it repeated here amongst the beauty of the hall. Yes, the hedges were trimmed and no moss dwelt within the cracks of the pathways, but I saw ivy strangling the roses, flaws running along the panes of glass, tall fern fronds leaning over the path and the light dusting of crumbling stone on the doorstep. I felt an immediate kinship with this house. I understood what it was like to be worn down. But unlike me, the house had help to rebuild itself. It had a team.

  I stepped beneath arched stone and grasped the door knocker, an iron circle around a Tudor rose. I cleared my throat as I waited, worried that my first words would be a croak. Silence stretched for several long seconds. But when I lifted my hand to knock again, the door opened and the scent of old paper, wood fires, and pastry spilled out of the house. A woman stood on the threshold. She was wearing a simple burgundy dress with slightly puffed sleeves and buttons on the cuff. The neckline was high but not severe. From the square cut of her dress rose a slender neck and a chin lifted like a ballerina’s. The woman had high cheekbones that gave her face a skeletal structure, and from within her narrow eyes gleamed two black marbles. Her russet skin was slightly looser around the jaw, and a couple of small, wiry grey hairs poked out from her hairline. I put her age at mid to late forties. No hint of a smile came from her full lips.

  “Come to the servants’ entrance around the east side of the house,” she said and then closed the door in my face.

  Chapter 2

  What an idiot. There I was, striding boldly up to the front door of Highwood Hall. The Howards didn’t want their maids wandering into the house. I needed to learn my place, and that place was around the east side of the house with the rest of the servants. As I hurried, the heels of my borrowed shoes caught on the flagstones. A lock of hair came loose. A woman so tidily dressed as whoever had opened the door would not appreciate messy hair or sweat patches. Perspiration formed on my upper lip, but I didn’t want to keep her waiting, so I made haste rather than stopping to arrange myself.

  The woman at the door had to be the housekeeper, I supposed. She would be more my employer than Lord Bertie and the rest of the Howards. The thought of her straight back and sharp cheekbones brought discipline and order to mind. Nerves tickled in the pit of my stomach.

  She was waiting for me by the time I reached the door, which was flung open, ready. She stood in the entrance, again on the edge of the threshold, my roadblock to overcome if I wanted somewhere to live. One thin raised eyebrow lifted her eyelid and revealed the dark iris within, as shadowy as the woodland around the hall.

  “Come with me,” she said, turning abruptly on her heel. She hadn’t even introduced herself or allowed me to introduce myself.

  I closed the heavy wooden door behind me and rushed to keep up with her stride. Her dress wasn’t particularly tight, but it was fitted snugly to her mid-calf, and yet she walked as fast as any man. In time, I would learn to keep up, but I struggled then, especially after my uphill walk from Paxby. The borrowed pumps were already beginning to rub.

  Once we’d made our way through a stone hallway, she walked me into a kitchen and gestured for me to sit at a long wooden table. I knew immediately that it was old, centuries maybe. The wood was thicker than the width of my hand, and the surface was beaten and scratched from years of domestic work—chopping, peeling, scrubbing, polishing. I imagined this place the heart of the house where the staff pumped and bled and kept everything alive.

  At the other end of the long room, the cooks were preparing lunch, whistling along to the radio as they chopped and stirred. The scent of baking pastries wafted over from the oven, making my mouth water. I’d skipped breakfast and now feared that my stomach would betray me with a thunderous rumble.

  “My name is Mrs Huxley,” she said, drawing my attention away from the cooks.

  Still with that straight back, she pulled out a chair and took her seat on the other side of the table. Behind her, I noticed an old clock on the wall next to a row of bells. It was ten a.m.

  “I’m the housekeeper here, and that’s exactly what I do. I keep the house running smoothly.”

  I nodded my head, imagining that Highwood Hall ran like clockwork under the watchful gaze of Mrs Huxley.

  “I believe I have your credentials. You’ve been a maid before?”

  “Yes,” I said. “For about five years now. I started cleaning part-time when I was sixteen. That was at a hotel in York. Since then, I’ve worked for various households and one agency. I think there were three references included in the application.”

  “I read them.” Again, she did not smile. She did nothing to put me at ease. There had been no pleasantries, no chat about the weather, not even a quick history of the room, which was clearly teeming with antiques. Even the hanging pots and pans seemed old. “Highwood Hall is not going to be what you’re used to. Every part of this building must be preserved. You cannot spill. You cannot break. If you break anything at Highwood Hall, it is irreplaceable. Every plate, every vase, every ornament has a place in this house and in its history. You will have to follow my schedule in order to clean this house, and you must follow the rules when you clean. There will be a method. Is that clear?”

  “Yes.”

  “The family will have other tasks for you,” she continued. “You will be on hand to help them with whatever they ask. We run on an enthusiastic skeleton staff here at Highwood.” She lifted her chin haughtily as though to counter the admission. As though ashamed that the grandeur of Highwood faded as time went on. “And that means part of your job as maid is the role of an assistant. A little of everything. Do you understand?”

  “I do.”

  “Because you will be required to work whenever the Howards need you, there will be a room provided for you. It’s a perfectly adequate, comfortable room. You will have meals here, in the kitchen, made by the kitchen staff.” Mrs Huxley’s eyes briefly flicked across to the cooks humming and chatt
ing, breathing life into the house. Huxley was the opposite, cold and still, like the ornaments she so prized. “This is a generously paid position, which reflects the expectations on you. This is not an easy job, and I have seen many young women such as you who have tried and failed to keep this job.”

  I noticed the sweat forming on my lip again as she tapped the tabletop.

  “I’m aware of your background and the difficulties you’ve faced. Lord Bertie has a soft spot for helping those in need. I do not. I believe a strong nature is required for this position. Frankly, I don’t know if you’re up to the job, and I suggest that if you have any concerns, you turn around and walk away now. You know where the door is.”