Chapter Text
“Ugh… Another centipede?”
“Fifth one today. We’ll raise your pay from now on.”
‘From now on’ my ass. They said that two months ago.
All alone in the client’s household, I tightened my apron, adjusted my headband, and slipped into Mary Janes before nicely securing their straps. I clicked my heels against the wooden floorboards to check that they were fastened on. As I swayed down the hallways with a short stack of towels on my flat, outward palms, I noticed a smell of flatulence and bathwater. Ah, I thought, that must be the source of the infestation.
The tall corridors shone with grey sunlight from the windows at each end. I promptly marched through the foggy rays, heading straight toward the bathroom door. Just to make sure, I knocked on the door with emphasis and, upon hearing the silent response, turned the knob. Inside laid a sleek white tub, a beloved little box for soap, and a rubber duck atop some drawers.
As I came in I placed the towels on a nearby desk to the left of the doorway. Removing the handy feather duster from my utility belt, I went for the easier task at hand first: dusting the mirror. Luckily this home belonged to a fairly tidy family, but they must have drawn the line at infestation. The glass was clear aside from a few specks of dust. I awkwardly stood and stared at my reflection, and my feigned happiness dissolved into a frown. I didn’t always enjoy seeing this face—my sunken, brown eyes and braided dark pigtails; I saw traits of my family in that face, traits which remind me every day of their achievements and prowess while I’m stuck here in this cheap headband.
But now wasn’t the time to dwell on this. I shook the duster along the glass, then moved onto the false golden frame, then onto the sink down below it. Focusing on the job wasn’t hard, I just had to avoid mirrors it seemed.
Next, I turned to the windows and brushed over them as well.
As my arm descended to the corners of the frames, I stopped and my smile returned upon the sight it beheld. I gazed out at the beaming plaza down below with frolicking children by the water fountain and elderly couples on benches. Though my job spared little free time to participate in these jovial scenes, I derived much joy simply from observing the happiness that played upon others’ faces. Living humbly meant living vicariously.
My eyes caught on a middle-aged gentleman leaning against a building, somewhat hidden in its alleyway. I peered at him curiously. A stubble lined his scraggly jaw and he donned a flat cap. He was jacketed in what appeared to be dark corduroy, and I could not see his right hand as it hid strangely in the opening of his jacket.
He kept his eyes squinted on passersby. Something about him rubbed me the wrong way, but I didn’t want to jump to any outrageous conclusions. And in a flash—a man was pulled from the plaza—a tousle in the alleyway—blood strung out from a throat! I covered my mouth and could not move. I fixed my eyes on the murderer who then dashed into the dark path, leaving no trace besides a dead body.
Panicked, I lifted up the hems of my dress and trotted out of the bathroom, and down the stairs. I acted without thinking—was I going to chase him?! Yet, soon I found myself hovering over the victim. Blood pooled from his neck, and a visible splatter marked the cobblestone where his head made impact. My guts churned, a tightness welled up in my chest—he was dead. There was no saving him the moment I witnessed the murder.
I glanced around, frightened. “S-somebody, help!” I belted out of nowhere. “A man’s been killed!”
As my eyesight swayed and everything around me darkened, several shadowy figures rushed to my aid. I had collapsed.
When I woke, I was surprised to blink open my eyes to neither the cobblestone outside nor a hospital. I rose from a mahogany bench located by the underside of a staircase. Am I back in the client’s house?! Muffled talking slowly became more clear and pervaded my senses.
“We’ve yet to catch any other suspect, so it must be her!” a familiar older lady’s cranky shouts startled me.
“Madame,” a low Cockney accent reassured her, “we cannot jump to such conclusions as yet. We apprehended a man running through the alleyways around the time of the murder.”
I heard the lady spit on the ground in anger. “Well beats me! If they’re bringing this to court, I’ll have my rat of a maid hanged!”
I shot up on the bench. The duo must have heard this because they scrambled out of a room to approach me. Yet, I saw multiple figures flood the room—one older detective sporting a flushed mustache, my horrid, wrinkly employer whom I loathe, and several bobbies following behind them disorderly. They had an anonymous air about them as if they would all blend into one black mass upon assembling.
“Finally awake, eh?” the mustached man said solemnly, tilting his head to the side.
“I’m telling you, right now, it’s her!” The old hag snarled as she shook a bony finger at me.
“W-wait!” I panicked, waving my hands in the air. “I saw the murder from the window! I saw the man run off!”
The man pulled a cone of newspapers out of his leafy green coat and began munching—on what, I couldn’t say. “Arroight… you saw the man we apprehended. Unfortunately, that don’t tell us much, but we’re wasting time ‘ere anyway. We had to make sure you woke up just fine.”
“What?!” she hissed. “This little vermin did it! She comes from the slums, only little thieves like her could commit such heinous crimes!”
I jumped off of the bench, heat rising in my chest. “You can’t listen to anything she says! I’m sure you understand there’s no evidence to support what she’s saying.”
A rhythmic rapping of sharp footsteps came bouncing down the hall. With it, I heard muttering at first, which became louder, audible speech.
“Therefore,” a man’s voice boomed, “the victim was robbed, and the little girl finished the job!… Hey, that rhymed!”
Silence fell before all of us. A tall blond man in tan attire popped out of a hallway I didn’t know existed. As he landed his last step, he posed with an index finger struck to his head like the stiff hand of a clock. I presumed this was some sort of “thinking” pose, as his eyes were shut and brows furrowed. Examining the foxlike features upon his face, my gaze floated upon to the hat on his head—wait, a deerstalker? You’re not telling me that’s…
“Uhm, Sholmes,” the older man bent slightly, arm craned behind his head bashfully. “That is a bit off the mark. First,” he straightened, shoving hands and food into his pockets, “the victim was not robbed of any possessions.”
“Oh,” replied the tall man, and he, too straightened his composure.
“Second,” added the older man, pulling the cone back out of his pocket to wag in my direction, “that ain’t no little girl.”
The detective, who I’d finally pieced together was the Great Detective, glanced at me.
I could not discern what he was thinking, but I felt my heartbeat tumble in fear. Had I done something wrong without realizing it?!
The next thing I knew, he crept toward me and placed his strange metallic goggles on his face. Bending to my height, he peered eerily at me with soulless lenses I couldn’t see into. I tried eyeing the other man, silently communicating “HELP?!” only to be met with his indifferent shrug.
Sholmes removed the goggles from his face, releasing them upon his hat with a nice snap! “Gregson, my dear fellow,” he turned to his acquaintance, “what the devil happened to that little girl?”
“That was the victim’s daughter visiting the Yard with her mum, sir,” he said.
With a loud guffaw that nearly startled everyone except Gregson, the new detective broke out into howling laughter, even leaning back in his lunacy. “Oh dear,” he cried, “I seemed to have made the age-old mistake again!”
“Again…?” I muttered, entirely confused.
Pulling his head and torso back into position, he smiled and wiped away tears. “You see,” he said to me, “I have some sort of blindness when it comes to the… shorter of stature.”
I looked down at my Mary Jane shoes, gauged the distance from my eyes to the floorboards, and then looked back up.
“Don’t take offense,” Gregson reaffirmed. “He saw that li’le girl from nearly 20 feet away.”
Sholmes spread his arms in a sarcastic exasperation toward Gregson. “But can you blame me, man?! It’s hard to see from up in the clouds! AHAHA—”
And with another raucous round of laughter from him, I found myself instantly reassured. My cranky boss, in her mildly peeved fugue state since the Great Detective’s entrance, had left when she realized she could not scapegoat me for murder. Not without A) effort and B) dealing with that obnoxious, not to mention famous detective.
A while later, I’d been informed that Scotland Yard caught the murderer. It was a murder out of revenge for “stealing” his lifelong “love,” a woman who never showed remotely any interest in the culprit whatsoever. “What an awful story,” I commented to the anonymous bobby, who regaled the tale with surprising enthusiasm.
I gathered my personal belongings from the living room of my client’s space. Luckily they wouldn’t be back for a few days, because I sure as hell didn’t finish my job. And there’s no way in HELL (again) that my boss will want to see me after attempting to frame me for murder.
“Hold it right there!” a familiar voice called. I turned to the entrance of the vestibule. In the warm lights of the hallway was the Great Detective himself.
“I thought you caught the murderer,” I said softly, containing my slight glee to see him once again. Because I had changed clothes, I held the maid dress I adorned earlier in my arms. I sought to merely carry it home as it did not fit in any bag of mine.
Sholmes straightened in posture and brought a gloved hand to his deerstalker, tipping the cap down as though he couldn’t face me while speaking. “You see…” he began, “Well, I take it that you’re a maid, correct?” He returned to normal, or at least composed, with the other gloved hand to his hip.
I lazily lifted the dress so the colors were more visible in the light. “Is it obvious?” I asked sarcastically, though not without a sad smile.
Bringing more energy into the conversation, he struck a finger from under his hat, as though stroking an unlit match, and pointed outward at some invisible target. “I take it, however,” he said, peering up at me, “that you’re a fake maid? Perhaps a freelancer? ”
I hugged the fabric back to my chest, concealing it in embarrassment though I knew not much could be done. “H-how did you know that?”
With a small flourish, he waved his hand in the air and made a gesture similar to that of pulling the string on a lightbulb. Striding across the dim living room space, I thought he was charging at me , but he blazed right past in smooth rhythmic slides. “See these?” he said, pointing at papers on the coffee table.
“Ah,” I said despondently, “I meant to clean that.”
“Darling, you had a murder to contend with! Now, see these papers?”
I leaned in to scrutinize the writing. “These are… bills?”
“Oh-ho, not only bills, dear madame, but outstanding debts.” He flicked the underside of his cap again. “A surefire sign of poverty.”
I scratched my brow. “W-well, I guess so, but why does that matt—”
“Shh-shh!” he interrupted. “Not only that, but—” Sholmes swiveled in circles, moving backward in one smooth motion, and landed beside a bulletin board of notes on the wall. Placed there were a calendar, reminders, and some contact names on little torn-off sheets. “A reminder here which says, ‘Call maid service—centipede infestation.’”
“B-but what does any of this have to do with me?” I asked, almost desperately. “Maybe their current maid got sick, and they needed a replacement.”
“Lifelong debts, and an immediate reference for Maid Service ? Dear Maiden!” He outstretched his arms, just like he had with Gregson. “They’re too poor to afford a regular maid! And, had one existed, there would have been little urgency to tend to an infestation . A dutiful cleaner would have already ridden any excess source of water or humidity in the bathroom to prevent such an outbreak! (I know from personal experience how to fend off centipedes…)”
I stood there stunned, mentally pathing out the nerves in my body to get moving again. I couldn’t twist out of the dumbfounded look on my face—it was practically printed on. Finally regaining my train of thought, I sighed. “Yes, you’re right. They’re poor,” I gestured to the whole of the living room, “and I’m poor,” I gestured to my current clothes, a dirtied white blouse beneath a brown, sleeveless dress. “And what for did you have to bring this up? To remind me of where I truly came from?” I couldn’t help but let my resentment show.
Casting away his gaze again, he tilted his cap down and held on tightly. “I don’t suppose…” he began, “you can work for that old woman anymore?”
“Can’t, nor do I really want to,” I huffed.
“Then…” he continued thoughtfully, bringing his head back up to look at me, “suppose you were to play the role of a maid for a very singular detective—”
I shot him a weary, sidelong glance. He stuttered and waved his gloved hands about.
“With very little work, I tell you! My roommate and I—well, Iris, she’s ten—we tidy up the space extremely well already, but you see, I want to lighten her burden, but I’m either working or I’m sleeping in past noon. And, oh, dear—sometimes those late nights will drive a man to eat soap, you know?! Anyhow, it would bring me great pleasure—bring us both great pleasure, Iris and I—if you were to take on the role of a maid for us.”
To be honest, I zoned out during most of his ramble. I’d entirely forgotten he mentioned a roommate at all. But when he settled, nearly out of breath, I found myself trying not to cry in front of him. “That’s very kind of you,” I managed to utter, “but surely you don’t want the dirty hands of an inexperienced freelancer?”
“You won’t have to pay for anything, clothes and what have you! Food, cleaning supplies, whatever it is you need, we can cover it.”
I froze, albeit for less time. “Y-you'll what?”
“As I said,” he re-emphasized his outstretched arms, “there will be very little work. Plenty of benefits. Besides,” the detective leaned back and pointed to his cap, shutting his eyes in the “thinking” pose again, “it gets a bit lonely at 221B, I must admit. I don’t suppose you talk to your family often?”
Forcing my brain to ignore the emphasis on “benefits,” I frowned at the topic of family. “They’re much more well off and have practically disowned me if I’m to be honest. I live with an old friend’s tiny grandmother, so I’ve no clue what my family is up to right now.”
The detective clapped loudly and seemed to pump his arms in glee discreetly. “What is your name? You’re the perfect candidate!”
I exhaled out of my nose, gently swaying left and right with the limp maid dress in my arms. “Victoria,” I answered without looking at him. “My name is Victoria.”
Craning back, he lifted a hand to grab ahold of his chin while the other propped on his waist. “Victoria,” he poured out the letters slowly, staring somewhere into space. “A name I couldn’t possibly forget. Ahaha!”
I was about to say, Isn’t that the name of our Queen…?
“Now, no time for dawdling,” he snapped out of his pose, urging toward the front door. “At least let us treat you to dinner! Herlock Sholmes is proud to present: A Long Trek Back Home To Meet the Roommate! (God forbid we arrive late—we must catch the first coach we see.)”
I slung my messenger bag over my shoulder. “So you really are him…”
He rapped his knuckles on the doorframe with a nice rhythm and stepped halfway outside. It was already dark out, to my surprise. “No time for doubts! Come now, let us seize the night. Which do you prefer: Mendelssohn or Wagner?”
I let out a quiet laugh. “I’m not familiar with either, so both.”
“Hmm… perhaps an excellent choice. However, I was hoping you would answer Mendelssohn, as I am more familiar with him, so I will pretend you answered Mendelssohn!” As we strode along the pavement, he waved at a carriage passing by. It dipped in and out of the lamplights along the street like a ghost manifesting here and there.
“ Woooaah! ” cried the coachman as he reigned in the leashes of the paired horses. As he beckoned them to slow to a stop, we entered the boxlike area behind the vehicle to take our seats within. Despite the chaos and energy of the day, the ups and downs of getting fired and hired again, framed for murder and proven innocent, and being given another chance at life, one that sounds too good to be true—I found myself exhausted from it all. The gentle shaking of the carriage lulled me to sleep as it tumbled toward the Great Detective’s abode.