I’ve watched enough murder mysteries to know who the prime suspects tend to be. Wives often top the list, and the last thing I want is to cast any doubt on Giselle. She’s blameless in all of this, and she’s my friend. I’m worried for her.
“We’re looking into those pills,” the detective says.
“They’re Giselle’s,” I say, despite myself. I cannot believe her name popped right out of my mouth. Perhaps I really am in shock, because my thoughts and my mouth aren’t working in tandem the way they usually do.
“How do you know the pills are Giselle’s?” the detective asks, never looking up from the pad she writes on. “The container wasn’t labeled.”
“I know because I handle all of Giselle’s toiletries. I line them up when I clean the bathroom. I like to organize them from tallest to smallest, though I’ll sometimes ascertain first if a guest prefers a different method of organization.”
“A different method.”
“Yes, such as makeup products, medicines, feminine-hygiene products…”
Detective Stark’s mouth opens slightly.
“Or shaving implements, moisturizers, hair tonics. Do you see?”
She is silent for too long. She’s looking at me like I’m the idiot when clearly she’s the one unable to grasp my very simple logic. The truth is that I know the pills are Giselle’s because I’ve seen her pop them into her mouth several times while I’ve been in her room. I even asked about them once.
“These?” she said. “They calm me down when I freak out. Want one?”
I politely declined. Drugs are for pain management only, and I’m acutely aware of what can happen when they’re abused.
The detective carries on with her questions. “When you arrived in the Blacks’ room, did you go straight to the bedroom?”
“No,” I say. “That would be against protocols. First, I announced my arrival, thinking that perhaps someone was in the suite. As it turns out, I was one hundred percent correct on that assumption.”
The detective looks at me and says nothing.
I wait. “You didn’t write that down,” I say.
“Write what down?”
“What I just said.”
She gives me an unreadable look, then picks up her plume de peste and jots down my words, smacking the pen against the pad when she’s done. “So then what?” she asks.
“Well,” I say, “when no one answered, I ventured into the sitting room, which was quite untidy. I wanted to clean it up, but first I thought it right to look around the rest of the suite. I walked into the bedroom and found Mr. Black in bed, as though he were resting.”
Her chewed pen cap wags at me menacingly as she scratches down my words. “Go on,” she prompts.
I explain how I approached Mr. Black’s bedside, checked for breath, for a pulse, but found none, how I called down to Reception for help. I tell her all of it, up to a point.
She writes furiously now, occasionally pausing to look at me, putting that germ factory of a pen in her mouth as she does so.
“Tell me something, do you know Mr. Black very well? Have you ever had conversations with him, beyond just about cleaning their suite?”
“No,” I reply. “Mr. Black was always aloof. He drank a lot and did not seem partial to me at all, so I stayed clear of him as much as possible.”
“And Giselle Black?” the detective asked.
I thought of Giselle, of all the times we’d conversed, of the intimacies shared, hers and mine. That’s how a friendship is built, one small truth at a time.
I thought back to the very first time, many months ago, when I met Giselle. I’d cleaned the Blacks’ suite many times before, but I’d never actually met Giselle. It was in the morning, probably around nine-thirty, when I knocked on the door and Giselle let me in. She was wearing a soft pink dressing gown made of satin or silk. Her dark hair cascaded onto her shoulders in perfect waves. She reminded me of the starlets in the old black-and-white movies that Gran and I used to watch together in the evenings. And yet there was something very contemporary about Giselle as well, like she bridged two worlds.
She invited me in and I thanked her, rolling my trolley in behind me.
“I’m Giselle Black,” she said, offering me her hand.
I didn’t know what to do. Most guests avoid touching maids, especially our hands. They associate us with other people’s grime—never their own. But not Giselle. She was different; she was always different. Perhaps that’s why I’m so fond of her.