Page 39 of Disturbing the Dead
Pride sharpens her voice. She has a point. As intelligent and mature as Phoebe and Michael seem, it’s hard to believe they could be of an age with Alice, already working for a living.
I take down my usual dress.
“You cannot wear that,” she says, taking it from me. “You aren’t a maid anymore.”
I hesitate. She’s right about this, too. While the dress isn’t a uniform per se, Isla buys our work clothes so that we don’t need to, and they are work appropriate, which means it’s meant for scrubbing floors, not interviewing witnesses.
“I’m going to need more appropriate clothes,” I say as I take down one of my two nonwork dresses.
“You can buy them with your increased pay,” Alice says as she takes the dress and brushes off a bit of lint. “For being Dr. Gray’s assistant now.”
“Hmm.”
She glances over. “He is paying you more, is he not? If he hasn’t mentioned it, then you must ask. He may forget that you are entitled to a higher wage now, as his assistant.”
Gray has already increased my pay, supposedly to acknowledge the extra work I do as his assistant, but mostly, I think, because the situation is equally awkward for them. I’m not a housemaid or an assistant. I’m a police detective. But it isn’t their fault I can’t do that job, so I want to be paid for my actual work, not slipped extra money like a relation who’s fallen on hard times.
I put on the dress and open my door to see Lorna right outside it, frozen in the horror of being caught.
Finding her there suggests she was coming to speak to me. While that’s hardly a crime, I can see why she might be nervous, after Alice snapped at her.
Now Alice snaps again, with, “What are you doing up here?”
“I—I was coming to say that breakfast is ready and the gentlemen… They, uh, seem to expect Miss Mitchell to join them.”
Her expression says she’s baffled by this, maybe thinking she misunderstood. I might be Gray’s assistant, but I’m still staff, which means I should not be joining the family for meals. Yep, things are different here, as she’ll figure out.
“It’s Mallory, not Miss Mitchell,” I say gently. “And they will be expecting me to take notes.”
She relaxes at that. This is not yet a world with female secretaries, but at least it makes more sense than me joining them as an equal.
“Do you need anything then, miss?” she says. “Paper, pen?”
I smile. “I have both, thank you.”
“Do you prefer tea or coffee? I will have it ready for you.”
“She’s going downstairs right now,” Alice says. “And I will be serving the breakfast.”
Again, Lorna looks confused. There are very clear rules about which staff members do what. Those overlap more with a relatively small staff, but still, the parlormaid doesn’t serve meals unless the housemaid isn’t around.
I know why Alice wants to serve. It’s not so much about being territorial as about wanting to eavesdrop on chatter about the case.
“Alice will do it this morning,” I say. “I fear the case is a disturbing one, and we do not wish to scare you off quite so soon.”
“Yes,” Alice says quickly, straightening. “I am accustomed to these things. You are not.”
With that, Alice sweeps from the room, herding me downstairs to my breakfast.
THIRTEEN
We are taking breakfast in the library, which is not entirely proper. Food is to be consumed in dining rooms. Even if you wished to read while eating, you wouldn’t eat in here… nor would you take the book to the dining room.
As long as Isla is asleep, the men have the excuse of, well, being men. It’s not even so much that they are above the rules as that they can’t be expected to know them. That’s the job of the “angel of the house.”
I once teased Isla with that moniker, and her response was shockingly—and delightfully—profane. The angel of the household is one of those Victorian concepts wrapped in bows and sparkles to hide the rotten core inside. It’s supposed to honor women and raise them on a pedestal to be cherished as something good and pure in a filthy world. Instead, it’s a gilded cage that traps them both physically and psychologically, forcing them to be those good and pure beacons of light.
The angel of the household is expected to be sweet and mild, her life given over to one purpose: keeping the house pleasant and ordered for her man. Look at the stereotypical fifties housewife and you can see how the concept crept through time. Her man has been hard at work all day, and he deserves to come home to a peaceful and tidy house, and a primped and pretty wife with a tumbler of whisky in her hand.
