She came outside, carrying the box under her arm. She heard the gentle rumble of a motor, her own vast and splendid Rolls waiting for her by the curb. The men in top hats all peered at her, expectant. She could afford this place, she supposed. If she spent everything she’d earned, every last penny.
William came to her, squeezed her arm. “All right?” he said.
“Do you want it?” she asked, meaning the house.
He went quiet then. “Do you?” he asked.
She shook her head, serious. “No.”
She lifted the veil. Looped her fingers into the crook of his elbow. Kissed him.
He kissed her back.
The auctioneer stared at them, agog. “Not for me, I think,” she said to him, gently.
William laughed, a low chuckle. She felt the warmth of him, his nearness. “Come on,” she said.
The house shimmered behind her. She felt a flicker of doubt, the briefest tug of desire, but then it unraveled. Winnie and Hephzibah were having her over for luncheon. Alice had sailed back from New York. The Janes were unveiling their new patent for a miraculous suction cleaner. It was going to be an entirely busy afternoon.
They climbed into her Rolls. As they pulled away from the curb, she settled the box on her knees.
“What’s that?” said William, beside her.
She rubbed it with her gloves, removing the dust. Unfastened the clasp. Folded back the velvet. Studied her knives.
Mrs. King lifted them out, one by one, inspecting them. She didn’t do it to impress William, although she knew he would be impressed, but just to make the point. She kept good knives. She took excellent care of them. She was ready for anything.
They roared away down Park Lane and left the house behind.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
It’s a strange and wonderful thing to be sending a story out into the world for the very first time: a long-held dream, of course, and a tad daunting too. So, allow me first to say the most enormous thank you to you for joining me in the world of The Housekeepers. I hope you enjoyed it, and I’d love to tell you more about how it came to be.
I think all writers have core stories they come back to time and again: settings, conflicts, and dreams luring them to the keyboard, even when writing （and finishing!） a novel seems almost insurmountable. I love books full of big houses, broken families, loyal friendships, and wild ambitions—textured with all the glorious sights, scents, and sounds of the past.
When I started The Housekeepers, I was itching to write a novel set in the early 1900s. I had in mind those big hats and house parties of popular imagination: vast, sweeping croquet lawns; gilded sunsets; that notion of the United Kingdom gorging on one great dollop of luxury before going to war. Of course both hindsight and intelligent historiography have given us a more nuanced view of the era, capturing innumerable shifting forces—social change, new technologies, political conflict, war. On May 12, 1905, as we imagine Mrs. King plotting the first steps of her audacious robbery, Emmeline Pankhurst was leading the suffragettes to their first protest at Westminster. On June 27, as we picture our gang celebrating a job well done, feasting on fine wine and chicken in aspic, soldiers were rebelling aboard the Battleship Potemkin. That uprising followed hot on the heels of the First Russian Revolution in January of that year. In other words, change was afoot, and not all that glittered was gold.
So here was a perfect, glamorous, complicated setting; a world to revel in. But what about the story? I’d always adored the slick engineering of a juicy heist plot and was longing to try to write one of my own. I was washing the dishes—apt, in hindsight!—when it occurred to me that the marbled drawing rooms and glittering saloons of Edwardian London had all the gumption and gloss of a Las Vegas casino, and could make the perfect backdrop for a high-stakes heist. My mind’s eye turned slowly to a green baize door, and a cast of servants began sidling out of the shadows, each with their own desire for revenge…
The Housekeepers is a work of fiction, but the Park Lane mansion at the heart of this story is inspired by a string of extraordinary houses that once stood all around the wealthiest parts of West London. Outside the present-day Dorchester Hotel on Park Lane, you can still glimpse Stanhope House, turreted and gargoyled, commissioned by soap manufacturer Robert William Hudson in 1899. It once faced 25 Park Lane, a luxury townhouse built for Barney Barnato, a music-hall actor who made an eyewatering fortune in diamond mining before dying mysteriously at sea. These were homes built for powerful men, containing the most decadent and costly treasures, attended by a seemingly endless supply of obedient servants. And the thrill and joy of writing this novel was to imagine what might have happened if some of the women working below stairs had decided to claim some of that privilege for themselves.
Books like The Lost Mansions of Mayfair by Oliver Bradbury and The Rise of the Nouveaux Riches by J. Mordaunt Crook, which bring the excesses and the financial forces in high society to life in quite brilliant detail, were so helpful to me when I was designing Mr. de Vries’s gargantuan mansion and empire. So too were the archives of the Illustrated London News, which carefully itemized British politician and socialite Sir Philip Sassoon’s collection of furnishings and objets d’art on Park Lane and provided me with a deliciously tangible sense of the riches stored in houses such as these. Isabella Beeton provided immaculate instructions for cleaning picture frames. And I’m forever indebted to ListVerse for surfacing my favorite discovery, the bizarre Parenty Smoke Machine. Here, in fact, I must beg the reader’s leniency and ask you to assume that in the world of this novel, Winnie was able to buy these bonkers contraptions in bulk, at very thrifty wholesale prices, and use them to simulate a fire convincing enough to send Miss de Vries’s guests hurtling out of the house. Here and elsewhere my rendering of 1905 takes liberties with the historical record in service of my story, and of course any mistakes and errors are mine. For example, the Duchess of Montagu in this novel is a fictional figure, the Montagu dukedom having been extinguished in the late eighteenth century. I have adjusted the daily weather forecast for my own purposes, and while George Sanger might really have been able to loan camels from his legendary circus, shadowy figures such as Mr. Whitman exist only in the universe of Mrs. King.
One further note: In the world of The Housekeepers, decadence and opulence are built on the back of reprehensible actions and corruption. There is no suggestion that any historical figures who inspired aspects of Mr. de Vries and his agents were involved in the kinds of abuse and exploitation uncovered in this novel. But I am indebted to authors like Julia Laite, whose brilliant book The Disappearance of Lydia Harvey is just one poignant and incisive account of the very real dangers faced by young women entering the service trade at the turn of the century.
And now I am sending Mrs. King and her gang off into the sunset, or their next enterprise. Their fierce desire to imprint themselves upon the world, to right the wrongs they see around them, and to make the most of the ride—ideally on the trapeze!—have made this book the most extraordinary joy to write. For that, I love them—and I thank you for taking the time to read their story, and mine.
I’d love to stay in touch and hear what you think. Do reach out via Twitter or Instagram （@AlexHayBooks） or via www.alexhaybooks.com. And one day I must tell you one of the stories left untold from the world of The Housekeepers—a whole galaxy of lady con-artists, dastardly impresarios, and runaway maids…