The Housemaid

by Sarah A. Denzil

  “I’m not stupid,” I said. “And I do have proof. Mrs Huxley is at the police station right now.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” he said. “They won’t believe you. By the time they get a warrant, we’ll have you both gone and this place will be transformed. No one will ever know, and they certainly won’t believe a freak like her.”

  “But they won’t just have to believe her,” I said. “There’s more evidence than that.”

  Alex and Bertie exchanged glances. I saw the cogs of their minds working. What did I know? What had they forgotten?

  “The dining room,” I said. “You were brazen enough to paint the faces of your victims on the walls. I saw my mother’s face on there the first day I arrived.”

  Bertie started to laugh. “That can easily be denied. Most of the paintings aren’t even a decent likeness.”

  “That’s true,” I said. “Seeing as you didn’t even recognise me when I came for my interview. But there’s more.”

  He rolled his eyes. “This is getting ridiculous.” When Bertie lunged towards the door, Ade quickly caught him on the jaw with the butt of his gun. The lord staggered back, almost falling on top of his son.

  I was afraid of them both attacking Ade at once, but Alex seemed to be stuck in some sort of trance.

  “More evidence in my favour,” Bertie said. “Showing what a savage animal your gardener is.”

  I kept an eye on Ade, trying to show through my face to keep him calm. This was almost over. Almost.

  “What other evidence do you have?” Alex said, breaking his silence.

  I lifted my head to the ceiling. “There are ten webcams hidden in the lights above our heads. All of them are live-streaming everything happening in this room. Ade is using his YouTube channel and Facebook page to host the stream. They are motion detected. As soon as Alex pushed me into this room and chained me up, it went live. There are also microphones hidden all over. There’s one by the chair, one in the bed, and one above the door. You can’t get away with this, because everything you’ve done and said has been seen by thousands of people on the internet.”

  The blood drained from Bertie’s face, leaving him ashen. “We’ll say you doctored the videos.”

  “Fine,” I said. “But Mrs Huxley’s testimony backs up our claims.”

  “This is just a play. It’s a movie.” Bertie clapped his hands and laughed. “It’s a fake. It’s all fake.”

  “The photographs you took of the girls you murdered have been delivered to the police,” I said. “Mrs Huxley has them in her possession.”

  I saw him turn towards me, eyes ferocious, spittle flying from his mouth, but Alex moved faster. The Howard heir sped from his chair, punched in a number on the keypad, and sprinted away while Ade was preoccupied with Bertie’s attempt to hurt me. By the time Ade had wrestled Bertie away from me, Alex was gone.

  Chapter 44

  Ade had Bertie on the ground, but Bertie’s hands were on the gun. He was a strong man for his age, not someone easily beaten in a fight. I yanked the chains, unable to do anything but watch. My chest tightened, stomach clenched, heart pounded, my whole body consumed by the unbearable grip of terror. Oh God, we were going to lose this. I pulled against my chain, stretching it to the max, fingers reaching as far as I could. I was going to lose Ade. This couldn’t be happening.

  When Bertie snatched the gun to the right, Ade clung on, but it tugged him sideways, giving Bertie some space to wiggle out of Ade’s grip. On his way out, he kicked Ade hard in the side and I heard Ade grunt in pain. The gun fell from his grasp, and I held my breath. Both men charged for it. Ade was closer, but he was unbalanced. I heard him collide with the hard floor, his shoulder crunching. Ade’s fingers were a hair’s breadth from the weapon with Bertie landing on his knees, throwing his weight forwards. He grabbed Ade by the forehead, trying to yank him away. My knuckles turned white as I clenched the chains inside my fists, fingers tightening harder and harder. I imagined them wrapped around the barrel of the gun, having the power within my grasp. But everything rested on Ade now. I prayed for Ade to reach it first, but Bertie snatched it from his grasp, Bertie had the determination and speed.

  I couldn’t let that happen.

  “I know about your son,” I yelled. “I know Mrs Huxley had your baby and that he’s stuck in a care home.”

  It didn’t work. He didn’t care enough for it to surprise him. Lord Bertie reached the gun first. He lifted it. And yet Ade was the one who delivered the next blow, the one that caught Bertie off guard. Ade rammed his thumbs into Bertie’s eyes, and when the man cried out in pain as he fell backwards, Ade grasped hold of the weapon, wrestled it from Bertie’s grip, and stumbled back. I saw him wince in pain as he rested the butt against his shoulder.

  “Ade, don’t!” I cried as the air exploded from the crack.

  Ade staggered back from the recoil, his face wide open with shock. Slowly, he lifted his gaze from the bleeding man on the ground, to me in the centre of the room. Beneath him, Lord Bertie slithered and twisted in a pool of his own blood. Ade had shot him in the knee, leaving a gaping, throbbing gash through his ripped jeans. Bertie turned to us with the whites of his eyes gleaming, a look of pathetic desperation on his face. He shrieked, clutching the wound, his voice thin and high-pitched.

  I ignored his cries of pain and looked at Ade. “See if he has keys for the chain. No, wait, give me the gun first.”

  Ade nodded his head. He needed both his hands to find the keys. I glanced over at Lord Bertie one more time, but the sight of his bloody, malformed leg made me dry heave. Ade passed me the heavy, cumbersome weapon. With it in my grasp, I convinced myself that all I needed to do was look like I could fire the gun if I needed to.

  While Ade rummaged through Bertie’s pockets, I listened, waiting for sirens. I couldn’t be sure, but it was possible the room had been soundproofed. Some of the staff had heard things coming from the north wing, but not enough noise for any of them to suspect women were murdered in here.

  We needed the police now, and that part of the plan hinged on Mrs Huxley holding her end of the bargain. I’d woken up that morning with a belly full of nerves, but I’d been sure that she’d help us. She was dying no matter what, and there was Charlie to consider. But she had to come through for us. Alex was loose, and we were in danger.

  When Mrs Huxley told me what happened to the maids, she’d told me the date Alex had chosen to introduce me to the north wing. From there, we’d planned the entire operation. From buying the cameras with Ade to hiding Mrs Huxley’s last diorama. Mrs Huxley knew the code to the door because when the girls were trapped in this room, she was the one who brought them meals.

  We’d agreed that as soon as I went to the music room, Mrs Huxley would get in a taxi and go to the police station. Meanwhile, I’d allow myself to be chained up and try to make Alex confess. Then Ade surprised Bertie with the shotgun when he was in his office, forcing him to take them through the secret door tunnel to the north wing.

  But what if the police refused to believe Mrs Huxley? What if the live stream failed? We’d tested the room. We knew the signal was strong enough, but sometimes those things lost connection anyway. I’d prepared myself to be chained up, but I hadn’t expected how terrifying it’d been in reality, and yes, it had felt strong and powerful to deliver the diorama to Alex, but part of me had worried that he’d turn around and kill me right then and there.

  We’d tried to think of a way to make this watertight. To hold them accountable at the highest level, and the best solution we could think of was trial by public opinion. Not being believed by the police was my main concern. Huxley had taken the photographs in case they didn’t believe her, but it was still a crazy story, and the Howards were rich and powerful enough to give your average police officer pause.

  Ade stepped away from the screeching Bertie. “I can’t find any keys.”

  “Try the table over there,” I said.

  I held my breath as Ade opened the top table d
rawer. If Alex had taken them with him, we were in trouble. Losing Alex was an issue. We’d thought the gun would be enough to keep them both under control until the police arrived, but we hadn’t banked on Bertie’s pure rage or Alex being quick enough to sprint out of the room.

  “I’ve got them,” Ade said.

  Relief flooded through me. “Have you checked the stream? Is it working? Have we done it?”

  “I checked it when you got here with Alex.” He fumbled with the keys as he unlocked me. We were both running on adrenaline. I could feel it. “Everything was fine then.”

  “Okay.” Finally free, the chains clattered to the floor. I stepped over to Bertie with the gun raised. “What did you do to Roisin?”

  He was close to passing out. His skin had taken on that sickly, waxy appearance of someone in the throes of sickness, and his eyes glazed over. Perhaps he was dying. His blood pooled beneath my feet, but I couldn’t bring myself to help him.

  “She killed herself.”

  “You’re lying,” I said. “Tell me.”

  But he simply stared at the ground.

  “He won’t admit it,” Ade said. “He’d rather die. Come on, we need to get out of here.”

  “We need to find Alex,” I said.

  Ade paused before he nodded. I could tell by Ade’s hesitation that he wanted us to get to safety, but I wanted Alex to face up to his crimes too. I needed to find him.

  We hurried through the north wing and out of the main house. I was convinced Alex would head to the garage, get in his Ferrari and drive to an airport. For all we knew, they had a contingency plan in place for the day they were caught. A stash of money hidden in a safe, fake passports and a private plane waiting to take them to South America or Russia or a distant Caribbean Island. I couldn’t stand the thought of it, the injustice.

  Perhaps I should call this what it was. Revenge. Slipping from my fingers.

  I handed Ade the gun, seeing as he could actually fire it, whereas I wasn’t so sure, and together we circumnavigated the perimeter of the hall. I left bloody marks on the gravel path while Ade’s jeans were splattered with the gristle of Bertie’s knee. With each step, I prayed for the sound of sirens. The world stayed silent.

  We walked towards the Howards’ garage, both quiet, both aware that things weren’t going well.

  Sitting on a sun lounger in the middle of the lawn was Margot. She had a cigarette between her fingers and a bright pink turban covering her hair. She wore a cashmere wrap around her shoulders and didn’t appear to give two hoots that the sun had set. When she saw me, she waved a hand.

  “Could I have a martini please, dear?”

  “Not right now, Margot,” I called back.

  And then I held my breath. Would she notice the gun, my dishevelled appearance, the blood trailing my footsteps, Ade’s slight hunch from where he hurt his shoulder? The sky darkened around us. Margot’s eyesight might not have been the best, but there were security lights above us. Sure enough, she slipped her reading glasses down her nose, and then she dropped her cigarette on the grass. I noticed her sit up straight and stare at us as we walked away from her.

  “She’s going to call the police,” I said.

  “Fine,” Ade replied. “Let them come. We have the upper hand here. We’re not weirdo serial killers.”

  “You’re right,” I said, exhaling slowly.

  “Are they dead?” Margot called after us.

  I turned to her then. “Alex got away.” There was a chance Bertie had died by then, but I didn’t say that out loud.

  She nodded. “You’d better find him before he finds you, dear.” And then she picked up her cigarette and took a long drag.

  Chapter 45

  By the time we reached the garage, Alex’s Ferrari was gone. My fears had been realised, and some of the air left my lungs. We turned around and started walking back to the hall, when the sirens finally screeched in the distance. Silently, I let us back into the hall, pressing the button on the intercom system to open the gate. We walked back out onto the drive to greet them, exhausted yet glad it was over. But my relief was short-lived when three police officers forced Ade down onto the tarmac.

  “Are you kidding me? He’s not the one you’re looking for!” I shouted. “Didn’t you listen? It’s Lord Bertie you want. Let him go!”

  “He was carrying a weapon.” Some gruff, square-jawed officer grunted at me. The shotgun was on the ground, and yet they placed cuffs on Ade’s wrists. Somehow I stopped myself from flinging my body at them. “It’s just procedure. Calm down please, ma’am.”

  “I can show you where the actual culprit is,” I said through gritted teeth.

  Wasting precious minutes, one of the officers stayed with Ade in a police car while I led two uniformed police officers back into the hall.

  “Mrs Huxley gave you the evidence you needed?” I asked, holding open a door.

  “We can’t discuss the case.”

  “She must have, or you wouldn’t be here,” I muttered to myself.

  I breathed a little lighter after that. Despite everything, which included her part in my mother’s murder, I didn’t see Mrs Huxley as a psychopath like Bertie. She was a normal human being who’d been stuck in a cycle of terrible, psychological abuse. She was his prisoner just as much as the maids he’d killed. It’d taken a lot for her to break through his control, but she’d done it at last.

  “Wait,” I said as we passed the dining room. I beckoned the officers inside. “I don’t know where they buried the bodies, but these are their trophies.” I gestured to the wooden panels, the many angelic faces of the women Bertie and his son—and probably his father too—had murdered over the decades. Who knew how long this tradition had gone on? I thought about what Alex had once said about the men in the family learning an instrument. It was tradition. In reality, they used it as a way to groom the maids. And how many generations of Howard men had participated?

  I closed my eyes for a couple of breaths, allowing myself a moment to feel the disappointment and disgust that had been building. No, I’d never thought Alex was a decent man, but I had been attracted to him. I’d been addicted to him, fascinated even. But he was a monster.

  I opened my eyes. There she was. She had brown eyes, a wide nose, deep-set eyes and wavy brown hair. She had a serene, peaceful expression on her face, but her death had not been peaceful. My mother. She’d come here six months after giving birth to me, hoping to build a better life for us, but she had never left, and now she was trapped here. The ghost of her, just an outline on a wall.

  “When this is over, can I take part of this wall?” I asked, but the officers simply stared at me with a quizzical expression on their faces. “I can’t stand to think of her stuck here.”

  I pictured the diorama Mrs Huxley had sent to herself. The one where she stood outside the hall looking in at all the ghostly faces in the windows. She’d commissioned the diorama herself, and yet it had still shaken her as the package had been delivered. She was the keeper of these souls, and she felt it.

  Silently, we left the dining room and continued on to the north wing, making our way through the building site to the hidden red room. Bertie lay unconscious in a pool of his own blood.

  Finally the officers saw the room, and they began to understand what was happening. The youngest even turned bright white.

  “We need backup,” Square Jaw said into his walkie-talkie.

  I sat down on the chair Alex had been sitting in and watched as a team of paramedics took Bertie to an ambulance. Other officers started to filter in too. Someone took pictures. Others dusted for prints. At one point, Lottie stood in the doorway, her features frozen, as though she’d donned a tight Halloween mask of her own face. Margot moved out of the shadows and placed an arm around her shoulders, watching as a stretcher moved Lord Bertie out of the forgotten wing.

  Everything after happened in a blur. Officers bustled around me. They took pictures of the bruises on my wrists, removed the cameras from t
he places we’d hidden them in order to examine the footage, and asked me to give a witness statement. Towards the end, Lottie and Margot hovered in the periphery of my vision. Margot’s taut face revealed cold rage, but Lottie crumpled inwards, tears running down her nose. She turned away when a police officer pointed out old bloodstains and scuff marks in the corner of the room. For some reason I smiled at Margot, but she walked away.

  Later, in the hospital, I was checked over for any real damage. There were bruises on my wrists and neck. I’d split my lip too, or rather Alex had split it for me. Aside from that, I’d come away lucky. Ade wasn’t quite so lucky—he’d fractured his shoulder—but we made jokes together as the nurse put his arm into a sling.

  “You know, you’re going to have to water the plants for me now,” he said. “This is my watering can arm.”

  “I didn’t realise arms had a watering can preference.”

  “There’s a lot to learn about gardening, young grasshopper.”

  I laughed. “Okay. When are you going to teach me?”

  “How about tomorrow?”

  “I guess it’s better than sleeping at Highwood Hall.” As soon as the words escaped my lips, the laughter between us stopped. The world felt very surreal in those moments.

  “I can’t believe Highwood Hall was my home,” I said, shaking my head.

  “You can stay with me,” he said. “Seriously. For as long as you like. But I’ll understand if you want to go and stay with your aunt.”

  I shrugged. “But then who’d water the plants?”

  He smiled. “That’s a great point, Rubes.”

  I’d never much liked it when someone tried to shorten my name and turn it into a nickname, but with him, it was different. I leaned back on the hospital bed, staring up at the lights. But when they reminded me of those bright spotlights in the red room, I shuddered.

  “I can’t believe I got cuffed,” Ade said quietly.