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had at last firmly closed, leaving her standing here with her hand on the iron railing, debating her next
best move. She had found out precious little that would help the case, but she couldn’t quite shake the
notion that the maid had recognized the name “Dorinda Spencer.” The afternoon was quickly fading
to dusk. Preparations for dinner were probably already underway and almost all homes of this size
had back entrances into the kitchen…Should she risk it?
****
The pregnant maid’s name was Melly MacGraw. She offered this up with such ease that Emma had
no doubt that it was true. Nor did the girl seem especially surprised to find Emma at her kitchen door
and she accepted Emma’s offer of help with alacrity.
“You needn’t worry that I’ll make a muddle of it,” Emma said. “I was a maid myself this time last
year.”
“Were you now?” said the girl, sliding a clump of carrots and a paring knife toward her. “They’ll put
you work fast enough if they hear that.”
“I am not pregnant.”
The girl glanced down at her protruding abdomen. “All right then, neither am I.”
“I have come as part of an investigation,” Emma said cautiously, for she didn’t wish to say anything
that might alarm Melly or cause her easy open manner to shift. “Into missing girls. When I mentioned
the name ‘Dorinda Spencer’ it seemed to me that you reacted. Did you know her?”
“Not exactly. There was a Rose Spencer here when I first come, four months ago. I waited on her, as
her personal maid. She had very fine hair, you know. And she liked the way I did it up. Said I was
as skilled as any lady’s maid in any fine house in England.”
“And what happened to her? Do you have any idea where she is now?”
Melly paused in the process of peeling her potatoes and frowned. “What happens to her is what
happens to them all, I figure. She had her baby and she left.”
“Where do the girls deliver their babies?”
“Upstairs mostly,” Melly said, glancing upward to the ceiling. “They don’t go to the hospital unless
there’s trouble.”
“But you didn’t see her after the child was born. Didn’t see her leave.”
Melly shook her head with some impatience, so Emma changed her tack.
“Do you mind me asking why one woman here would serve as another’s maid? Why, for example,
Rose Spencer might require an elaborate coiffure for dinner and you are here in the kitchen paring
potatoes?”
Melly seemed amused by the question. “You think there can’t be an upstairs and a downstairs, even
in a place like this? No, we may all be the same boat, us girls, but some of us are in posh cabins and
others in steerage.” She chuckled, and Emma marveled that a girl in her circumstances could manage