Lucky Seven
As Kit Willetts blew up the seven gold balloons that were to hang from the seven arms of the dining room chandelier, she remembered the day she entered Adelaide Marquette's employ. It was back in 1942, just two months after her husband was killed in the Pacific. With Jim gone, she needed a job to support herself. Unfortunately, she had neither the education to become a teacher nor the typing skills to be a secretary, so when she saw the ad in the paper for a domestic servant, she quickly applied for the position.
Since Kit did not own a car, she took a bus to the small town where Mrs. Marquette lived. After getting off at the Main Street stop, she followed the directions given to her when she made the appointment for the interview: turn right at the corner of Main and Hamilton. Walk ten blocks. Turn left on Seventh and look for the number on the house. The address was 7 Seventh Avenue, but far from being a busy boulevard like its famous namesake in Manhattan, this Seventh Avenue was a dead-end street in the—to use a trite expression—middle of nowhere.
"That's odd! Where are First through Sixth Avenues? And there's only one building on the entire street, so why is the building designated as Number 7?"
The house itself was unique in both shape and size. Seven stories high, it was shaped like a heptagon, a seven-sided polygon.
"This can't be a single-family dwelling. It must be an apartment house."
It was with some trepidation that the twenty-three-year-old war widow walked up the seven steps to the front porch and rang the bell. A woman wearing a dark blue uniform answered.
"I've come to see Adelaide Marquette about her ad in the paper," the nervous applicant announced.
"Yes. Please come in. My name is Barbara Allred, but people call me Babs. I work on the second floor. There are seven of us here—or there will be if you're hired. Right now, we're down one since Flo passed away. She was the first-floor maid."
"Do you mean to say this is all one house?"
"Yes. All seven floors."
"The Marquettes must be a big family."
"You would think so," Babs laughed. "But the mistress lives here alone—except for us maids. If you take the job, you'll be expected to live on the ground floor."
Kit was unaware that the position came with room and board; however, it was a perc she found appealing, given her marital and financial situation.
"Why don't you wait in the library, and I'll go fetch Mrs. Marquette?"
As she waited for the homeowner to come downstairs, the young widow let her eyes wander around the room. It was large, as were all the rooms in the house. It contained seven chairs and seven bookcases, each of which had seven shelves. On each shelf were placed seven books. In a time where few people knew about OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder), women like Adelaide Marquette or Sarah Winchester—who, over the course of nearly forty years, built a six-acre, one-hundred-sixty-room mansion in the hope of warding off the spirits of those people killed by the Winchester rifle—were thought of as simply odd or eccentric, but basically harmless.
When her prospective employer entered the room, Kit realized the woman's obsession with the number seven was not limited to the furnishings of the library or the size and shape of her home. The blouse she wore had seven buttons down the front; the skirt had seven rows of braided trim. There were seven rings on her fingers, seven bracelets on her arm and seven jeweled hearts dangled from a gold chain around her neck.
"I'm Adelaide Marquette," the regal middle-aged woman announced. "Welcome to Sept Chanceux."
"Is that what you call your house?"
"Yes. It's French for Lucky Seven. And what is your name, my dear?"
Kit introduced herself and explained the reason why she was looking for employment.
"You're a widow?" Mrs. Marquette asked. "So am I. So are Meryl and Hilda, the fourth- and sixth-floor maids."
"Barbara—Babs—told me you employ six maids and are looking to replace the seventh."
"That's correct. Poor Flo. She was with me the longest."
"I'm sorry."
"At least she didn't suffer. It was a stroke, and she went quick. Anyway, you need a suitable position, and I require a maid. Since you were once married, I assume you know how to cook."
"Yes," Kit declared with pride. "My husband often said my cooking was better than his mother's."
"A woman can't always believe what her husband tells her." Realizing her words were tinged with bitterness, the older woman quickly added in a more pleasant tone, "That's not to say you're not an excellent cook, though."
There was a brief period of silence. Since this was the first job she had ever applied for, Kit was not sure how to proceed. Finally, nervously clutching the handle of her purse, she apologized for not having any references.
"I never ask anyone for references since I like to form my own opinions. You seem like a nice enough young woman. When can you start?"
The question took Kit by surprise.
"You mean I've got the job?"
"Yes," the mistress said, rising to her feet to indicate that the interview was over.
* * *
The widow found her duties—like everything else about the home and its owner—strange, to say the least. As the first-floor maid, she tended to her employer's needs and cooked her three meals a day, but only on Mondays. One of Mrs. Marquette's most unusual idiosyncrasies was that each of the seven floors in Sept Chanceux was identical to the other six. The floor plan was the same: seven rooms (parlor, kitchen, maid's room, master bedroom, dining room, bathroom and library). Between each of the floors was a switchback staircase, each section of which had seven steps. On Mondays, the lady of the house spent her entire day on the first floor, moving to the second when she retired for the night. On Tuesday night, she moved up to the third. Wednesdays it was the fourth, and so on.
Kit had been on the job for less than a week when she and Babs were discussing their employer over coffee one Friday morning, a day when the homeowner was eating breakfast on the fifth floor.
"Was she always this ... this ...?" she started to ask but could not think of a delicate way to put her thoughts into words.
"Strange?" Babs said, finishing the question for her. "You can say it. We all know Mrs. Marquette is a bit peculiar. As far as how long she's been that way, all I can tell you is that she built this house in 1927, the year she got married. Obviously, she was already fixated on the number seven when she did."
"How old was she then?"
"Let's see. She was born in 1907. That would make her twenty years old at the time."
"1907? That means she's only thirty-five now. I honestly thought she was ...."
"Older?"
"Yes. I assumed she was in her late forties."
The new maid was being kind; in truth, she thought the woman was in her fifties.
"Her hair started turning gray early in life. And then there are her clothes. She wears outfits that went out of fashion back when Harding was in the White House."
"What happened to her husband?" Kit asked in a lowered voice, although there was no danger of her employer overhearing the conversation when she was four stories above them.
"No one knows," Babs replied uncomfortably. "One day he was here, and the next day he was gone. A few days later she began referring to herself as a widow. None of us ever speak of him for fear it might upset her."
In an attempt to change the subject, Kit asked, "How long have all the maids been here?"
"Flo was the only one of us who worked for Mrs. Marquette before her marriage. The rest of us were hired when the newlyweds moved into the house."
"You've been here for fifteen years, then?"
"All six of us have. You're the first new addition to the staff."
"I find it odd that none of you are married."
"Meryl and Hilda are widows and have had no desire to remarry. Ivy, Cleo and Alva were also married, but they are separated from their husbands. Me, I prefer being single. The last thing I want is to wind up with a man like my father."
Seeing Babs's distress, Kit quickly offered her coworker more coffee.
"No, thank you. I have to get back to the second floor. I want to wash the windows today—all seven of them!" she laughed.
About a month after the newcomer was hired, she realized that the other servants rarely left the house and that the mistress never ventured beyond the garden.
No wonder none of these women ever remarried. Where could they possibly meet a man?
Although Kit grieved the loss of her husband, she did not intend to remain a widow for the rest of her life. Nor was she willing to stay locked away in the bizarre heptagonal house. She hoped to remarry one day and live in a normal home with only one kitchen, not seven, and, most of all, she wanted to be a mother.
Who knows? she thought with amusement. Maybe seven will be my lucky number, too, and I'll have seven children!
* * *
The Fourth of July came and went with no fanfare at Sept Chanceux. The country was still at war, and the mistress of the house did not think it appropriate to celebrate. Three days later, however, was July 7, Adelaide's birthday. Since it fell on a Tuesday, it was up to Babs to host the annual dinner party and see to the preparations.
"I'll have to make a meal for eight," she told Kit as the two women sat in the garden on Sunday afternoon, drinking lemonade.
"Eight? Is the mistress having guests?"
"No. July 7 is one of the two days in the year when we all eat together—all eight of us."
"I'm invited? But I didn't get her a gift."
"That's all right. You can go into town Tuesday morning and buy one. She likes books, so we always get them for her on her birthday and on Christmas."
"But then there will be more than seven on some of the shelves."
"No. After she opens her gifts, she gets rid of seven that she has already read and replaces them with the new ones."
"That means—let's see: seven books per shelf, times seven shelves per bookcase, times seven bookcases per room, times seven floors." Kit tried to do the math in her head but resorted to pencil and paper instead. "There are 2,401 books in the house."
"As you've probably noticed," Babs pointed out, "our employer spends a lot of time reading."
"It's a shame. She's still a young woman; she ought to be enjoying her life."
"She can certainly afford to. With her money, she can buy half the state! Her grandfather was one of the worst robber barons in the country."
When Cleo came out of the house to join them, talk turned to the plans for Mrs. Marquette's birthday celebration.
"If you make a list," the fifth-floor maid offered, "I'll go into town tomorrow and buy what you need."
"Oh, would you? That would be such a help!" Babs exclaimed. "While you do that, I'll start on the cake."
"Let me guess, it will have seven layers," Kit laughed.
"You got it," Babs replied. "And she gets seven pieces of chocolate, imported from Belgium."
"How is that possible with a war going on in Europe?"
"You can find anything on the black market," Cleo said.
"Mrs. Marquette's father had very ... influential friends," Babs added in a conspiratorial tone. "And she relies on their help from time to time."
Kit assumed the other woman referred to politicians or important businessmen. She did not realize this group of influential friends also included members of organized crime. But, then, she was naïve to the ways of the world, and she had yet to learn the awful secrets that lay hidden within the seven brick walls of Sept Chanceux.
* * *
One year later, Adelaide's birthday fell on a Wednesday. Although it was Alva's turn to host the party, the other six maids helped out. Kit volunteered to go into town to buy the groceries. She would also take the opportunity to run several personal errands for herself and her coworkers. While waiting in line to purchase stamps at the post office, she met Conrad Hudgins, who owned the barber shop on Main Street. She was surprised that a man his age was not in uniform and even more surprised that one so handsome was still single.
"You must be new in town," he said with a friendly smile.
"Actually, I've lived here a little over a year, but I don't get out much. I work for Mrs. Marquette at Sept Chanceux."
"Ah! No wonder I've never seen you before. You ladies keep to yourselves. Forgive my poor manners," he apologized and politely introduced himself.
The maid did likewise. Both the smile and the twinkle in his eyes vanished when she referred to herself as Mrs. Kit Willetts.
"Obviously, your husband doesn't live with you at Sept Chanceux, so I assume he's fighting overseas."
"My husband was killed. I'm a widow."
"I'm sorry."
"That's all right. You couldn't have known."
From the post office, the two walked across the street to the corner drug store where Conrad bought Kit a milkshake. They talked of many things including the war and the reasons he was rejected for military service.
"Without my glasses, I'm as blind as the proverbial bat. And for some strange reason, the Army expects its soldiers to see what they're shooting at," he joked.
At the end of the conversation, as the maid rose to leave, the barber asked her out to dinner. Having missed male companionship since her husband enlisted in December of 1941, she immediately accepted.
That evening, as the guest of honor celebrated her thirty-sixth birthday, her maids chatted amongst themselves.
"Tomorrow night, after dinner, we're all getting together in the garden," Babs announced in between the soup and the main course. "Hilda is going to teach us how to crochet."
"I'm afraid I can't make it. I've got a date," Kit explained.
Suddenly, every woman at the table stopped speaking. All heads turned in the direction of the first-floor maid, who was sitting in a chair taken from the kitchen since there were normally only seven places at the dining room table.
"What do you mean by a date?" Adelaide asked.
"Mr. Hudgins, the barber in town, has invited me out to dinner."
The employer's tight lips and narrowed eyes signaled her displeasure.
"You ought to have consulted me before you accepted," she declared imperiously from her place at the head of the table.
"Why? Tomorrow is Thursday, not Monday. I don't see why I can't do what I want to do with my free time."
"We are a house of eight women, living alone without men. We cannot give the impression that we are of low moral character."
The six other maids lowered their heads, but Kit was not about to be cowed by Mrs. Marquette, paycheck or no paycheck.
"I see nothing immoral about going to dinner with someone," she answered defiantly.
"People are bound to talk, and I cannot abide any gossip about my girls."
"I'm your employee, not your daughter. If you are unhappy with my job performance, then by all means discharge me."
For several minutes, the silence in the room was broken only by the rhythmic ticking of the antique grandfather's clock (one of seven in the house).
"I suppose a young woman such as yourself must have some sort of social life. Very well, you have my permission to go to dinner with this barber."
Had she not relied on Adelaide Marquette for her livelihood, the first-floor maid would have told her she did not require permission, but she wisely held her tongue. She had exhibited enough rebellious behavior for one evening.
* * *
There was no need for Conrad to ask his date where she would like to go for dinner since the small New England town had only one eatery: Ava's Diner. It was a small, family-run establishment where Ava and her teenage daughter did the waitressing, and her husband was the short-order cook.
"It doesn't have the best atmosphere," he apologized as he opened the door for Kit to enter, "but the place is clean and the food is good."
"That's what's important."
"Hi there, Conrad. You and your friend come on in and take a seat," Ava welcomed them. "I'll be right over with your menus."
"Take your time," the barber told her. "We're in no rush."
On the contrary. Since there was no movie theater in town he could take Kit to afterward, he prolonged dinner as much as possible.
"Would you like some more coffee?" Ava asked when the two finally drained the last of their first cups nearly two hours later.
"I really shouldn't," the young maid replied. "I'll never get to sleep tonight if I do."
"What about a glass of warm milk?" the barber suggested, hoping to enjoy her company a little while longer.
"All right," she quickly agreed.
It was nearly nine o'clock when Ava finally brought the check to the table. Conrad paid the bill, left a generous tip and escorted his date out the door.
"Let me get my car, and I'll drive you home," the barber offered.
"That won't be necessary. I can walk."
"Don't be silly. It's too dark to walk."
"I had a wonderful time tonight," Kit announced when he stopped his Ford Prefect in front of Sept Chanceux.
"I hope that means you'll agree to go out with me again."
"I'd love to."
"Perhaps we can drive to Maple Grove. There's a cinema there."
"Sounds great. I haven't been to the movies since Jim and I saw Gone with the Wind."
Unlike today, where multiplex theaters have several screening rooms that offer multiple movie options, back in 1943, the movie house in Maple Grove showed only one film at a time. When Conrad took Kit to the pictures, the theater was playing For Whom the Bell Tolls, starring Gary Cooper and Ingrid Bergman. Four months later, the couple (who were seeing each other two or three times a week by then) returned to the theater to see Son of Dracula and Girl Crazy.
It was on the ride home after seeing the latter film that Conrad made his intentions clear.
"I know it's too soon to make any definition plans," he said, "but I want you to know that I intend to marry you someday."
His announcement took Kit by surprise.
"Don't I get a say in the matter?"
"Of course, you do. Just as long as you say yes."
"Let me think about it," she teased, but she had no doubts about accepting his proposal.
Since the couple chose not to make their engagement official until after the holidays were over, Kit shared her good news with only one person: Babs.
"You're getting married!" the astonished second-floor maid exclaimed.
"That's usually what people do when they're engaged."
"But what about your job?"
"Don't worry. I won't leave Mrs. Marquette in a lurch. I'll give ample notice so that she'll have enough time to hire a replacement."
"No one has ever quit before. The only person who has ever left the mistress' employ was Flo, and that's only because she died."
"They say there's a first for everything."
"She won't be happy about it," Babs predicted.
"There's nothing she can do. We're not slaves, after all. She doesn't own us."
The following Saturday evening, after Conrad picked Kit up for their date, Mrs. Marquette received visitors in her sixth-floor parlor. Two men wearing dark coats and fedoras came to call on her in secrecy.
"Is this going to be like the other job?" one of the men inquired after she explained what she wanted of them. "Are there to be seven of us like the last time?"
"That won't be necessary," she answered. "All I ask is that you get the job done. I'll leave the specifics up to you."
* * *
"I'll take care of the first floor this week," Babs offered as she comforted her weeping friend. "I don't mind working two days in a row."
"Thank you," Kit sobbed. "The viewing is going to be held on Monday, and I want to attend it."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes, I'm sure. I have to go. I owe it to him to be there."
"But in light of what's been found out about him, why do you ...."
"Please!" the grieving woman cried. "Don't remind me."
After Conrad Hudgins had been found dead in his barber shop, the apparent victim of an attempted robbery gone wrong, police searched his house and found evidence that not only had he been previously married but that he had murdered his first wife.
"It's just so hard to believe he was capable of that," Kit sobbed. "He was always such a sweet, gentle man."
"Men can be like that. Believe me, I speak from experience. One minute they're all lovey-dovey and the next they're blackening your eye. My father was such a man. He put me and my mother in the hospital several times."
"Conrad never even raised his voice to me, much less a hand."
"You weren't married yet. Mark my words. Once he had a ring on your finger, he would have changed. If you don't believe me, ask the others. All six of us have been at the end of a man's fist. And Mrs. Marquette! She had it worst of all."
"Her husband hit her?"
"He beat the living daylights out of her. And she was with child at the time, too! She was inconsolable after she lost the baby."
"The poor woman! I had no idea," Kit said, sympathizing with her employer's ordeal. "No wonder she's become so reclusive."
However, Babs's attempts to talk her out of attending Conrad's funeral fell on deaf ears. She was determined to pay her respects to the man she had planned to marry.
Whatever he might have done in the past, she reasoned, he was always kind and generous to me.
Wearing the only black dress she owned, Kit walked teary-eyed into the funeral home. Other than herself and the undertaker, the place was empty. Not even the morbidly curious had come to gawk at the man the rumor mill claimed was a murderer. When she looked down at the face she had grown to love, tears welled in her eyes and rolled down her cheeks. Like her, Conrad had wanted a family. Now, the dreams of a house with a white picket fence and children playing in the backyard would be buried along with the town's barber.
After the viewing came to an end, Kit walked down Main Street to the diner. She wanted a cup of coffee before returning to Mrs. Marquette's seven-sided mansion. Ava's face conveyed a strange mixture of compassion and anger when she saw her enter the building.
"You must have gone to the funeral parlor," she said, taking note of the customer's black dress.
"Yes."
"I'm sorry for your loss."
"Thank you."
When Ava put the cup of coffee in front of her, Kit quickly wiped the tears from her eyes with an already moist handkerchief.
"All the terrible things people are saying about him now," the waitress said, "I just can't believe them. I've known Conrad since he moved here, fresh out of barber school. He wasn't even old enough to vote at the time. He was one of the nicest men I've ever met."
"I thought so, too."
"And now they expect us to believe he was some kind of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde? No. I just don't buy it."
Apparently, though, Ava was the only person in town besides the maid who believed in Conrad's innocence. From the day the police entered his home, everyone referred to him as "that barber who killed his wife." Worse, they avoided any and all contact with Kit, as though she were guilty by association. Rather than endure their cruel shunning, she stopped going into town. Whenever there was the need for a trip to the grocer's, the post office or the hardware store, one of the other six women went. Like Mrs. Marquette, the first-floor maid became a recluse.
* * *
Time went by quickly. In the world outside the walls of Sept Chanceux, a great many things changed over the ensuing years. The Allies defeated Hitler and Japan to end the Second World War. Peace did not last long, however. Soon there were armed conflicts in Korea and Vietnam. (In fact, the most recent addition to the domestic staff, hired to replace Ivy, who died after suffering a sudden heart attack, was a woman whose husband was killed during the Eastern Offensive of 1972.) On the home front, things were not much better. There was the ongoing battle for Civil Rights, protests over the war and the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert Kennedy.
Inside the seven-story, heptagonal house, however, life went on much as it had when Kit first crossed the threshold back in 1942. Since Conrad's death, her dreams of being a wife and mother lay buried with the bullet-ridden corpse of her late fiancé, whose body had been sent home to his family in Pennsylvania. With no television or newspapers delivered to the house, what little she knew about current events she learned from the other maids who still went to buy groceries every week. A new president, a Georgian named Jimmy Carter, sat in the White House, but it mattered little to her. She had stopped voting when Roosevelt was still in office.
"I got a letter from my sister today," Alva announced one evening in June of 1977 as a group of maids sat in the second-floor parlor, nibbling on a batch of Cleo's fresh-baked snickerdoodles. "My nephew is getting married."
"I assume you're going to attend the wedding?" Babs asked.
"Yes. Mrs. Marquette has graciously given me her permission to take three days off."
There was a time when Kit would have thought it most unfair that the maids never took a vacation and that they only visited their families for weddings and funerals. But that was long ago when she actually cared about things other than housekeeping and what to cook for dinner each Monday.
Once the cookies were gone, the first- and second-floor maids, who had become as close as sisters over the years, went out to the garden. Kit brought her embroidery with her.
"There's something I need to tell you," Babs said, her normally rosy complexion having gone pale.
"What is it?"
"When I went into town the other day, I stopped by the doctor's office."
From the mournful expression on her friend's face, Kit could tell the news was not good.
"I've got cancer."
"How bad is it?"
"Pretty bad. I've only got three months to live."
"I'm so sorry."
What more could she say? It had never been easy for her to talk about death. Babs, on the other hand, had a lot to say.
"It's time you know what went on in this house," she declared with a slight quiver in her voice. "You've been kept in the dark long enough."
"I don't know what you're referring to."
"Dashiell Marquette, our employer's husband. He didn't run off. He's still here—kind of."
"What?"
"After he beat his wife and she lost the baby, she wanted nothing more to do with him. She called on her father's friend, Bruno Carlucci. He was the man who provided the Belgian chocolate during the war and many other black-market items. He also kept her father in alcohol during Prohibition."
"You mean he was a bootlegger?"
"Not exactly. Bruno didn't sell bootleg liquor, only the best stuff that he smuggled down from Canada."
"That's still dishonest."
"Oh, he was no angel; that's for sure! He was a gangster in every sense of the word."
"I can't imagine why Mrs. Marquette would call on such a man."
"Can't you? In addition to chocolates and alcohol, he was known to provide paid killers."
"She had her husband murdered?" Kit asked with astonishment.
"Yes. And in a manner one would expect of her. Bruno had seven of his hitmen stab Dashiell seven times. Then they shot him seven times and cut his body into seven pieces. The two arms, two legs, head, upper torso and lower torso are buried in seven different locations in the backyard."
"And the police never found out?"
"No. She got away with murder."
"How long have you known about his?"
"Since the night it happened. Bruno's men used silencers so that no one would hear the shots. But Dashiell was killed on the third floor, right above me, and I heard the body fall. I ran up the stairs, thinking Mrs. Marquette might be injured. I walked in as they were finishing the job. The mistress swore me to secrecy, but one look at Carlucci's assassins was all it took to guarantee my silence."
"I don't see how you could remain here—knowing what she was capable of!"
"I started working for Mrs. Marquette when I was only thirteen years old, and I was just nineteen in 1933 when the murder occurred. Where was someone my age to go? Back home to an abusive father? No thank you. Besides, what she did to her no-good husband did not affect me. I had a roof over my head, food on the table, clothes on my back and money in my pocket."
Perplexed about what she herself should do now that she knew the awful truth, Kit stared at the branches of the towering maple tree above her head. Even if she did not report the murder to the police, she ought to at least hand in her notice, pack a bag and leave the house. But where would she go? She had no family and no friends besides the other maids. She had some money saved up, but not enough to support herself. No doubt, she would need to find another position. Who would hire a fifty-eight-year-old woman whose only previous work experience was as a housemaid?
Damn it! she thought. I have no choice but to remain here.
She tried to justify her decision by branding Dashiell Marquette as a wife-beater who viciously caused the death of the couple's unborn child.
"He probably deserved what he got," she said.
"There's more. Your Mr. Hudgins."
"No. Please don't say it," Kit cried in horror.
"Mrs. Marquette didn't want to lose you. Sadly, it wasn't enough that she had gotten rid of him. She wanted to make sure you would never trust another man again, so she had Bruno Carlucci's man plant incriminating evidence in his home after he killed him."
"So, Conrad didn't murder his wife?"
"He was never married."
"You knew this!" Kit screamed. "And yet you said nothing!"
"I only found out after it was all over. I didn't want to upset you any more than you already were. I ...."
Any further excuses and apologies were pointless. The first-floor maid left the garden and never spoke to her former friend again.
* * *
Kit examined the sixth-floor dining room while the guest of honor was in the master bedroom getting dressed for the celebration. The seven balloons were hanging down from the chandelier above the table where seven chairs flanked the large, throne-like one at the head. Meryl, who was hosting the seventieth birthday party, placed seven pieces of Belgian chocolate beside the crystal wine glass.
"Is there anything I can do to help in the kitchen?" the seventh-floor maid inquired.
"No. I've got everything under control."
When Adelaide entered the room and took her seat, six of the maids sat down. Meryl went to the kitchen and returned shortly with the soup tureen. Several times during the meal, the ailing Babs looked across the table in Kit's direction, but the first-floor maid continued to ignore her.
As usual, there was constant chatter during the meal, but nothing of importance was discussed. The talk centered on the books being read, the progress the women were making on their needlework and plans for future meals. Kit kept silent, occasionally looking up from her plate to glare at her employer.
After the cake and coffee were served, the women went into the parlor where Mrs. Marquette opened her birthday gifts. As usual, she received seven books including The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens, My Cousin Rachel by Daphne du Maurier and John Steinbeck's bestselling East of Eden. When she unwrapped a copy of Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls, Kit was reminded of the first time she went to the cinema with Conrad. The bittersweet memory steeled her resolve.
"Here, open mine next," she said.
"Murder is Easy," Mrs. Marquette announced when she unwrapped the gift. "This is one of the few books by Agatha Christie that I haven't read."
"I thought it appropriate," the maid replied cryptically.
A look passed between the two women, one that the six other maids missed.
"Thank you," the elderly employer said, knowing her secret had been revealed.
Once the presents were opened, the birthday celebration came to an end, and the maids returned to their respective floors. Adelaide went up to the fifth floor, and the maids returned to their rooms. The mistress and her servants were creatures of habit. They woke every morning at six, were in bed by ten every night and were usually sound asleep only minutes after their heads hit their pillows.
It was almost half past eleven when Kit, still awake, looked at the first-floor grandfather's clock. She rose from her seat just as the Westminster Quarters began to chime its eight notes. With the stealth of a cat burglar, she walked down the hall to the staircase. There were seven steps followed by a landing and seven more steps. All was peaceful on the second floor. She repeated her motions, climbing to the third, fourth and then fifth floor. Briefly, she stopped and listened. The only sounds were the ticking of the fifth-floor clock and the soft snoring coming from Cleo's room.
A nightlight, one of seven in the house, burned in the hallway. Heart pounding in her chest, she made her way to the master bedroom. She quietly turned the doorknob and entered. As expected, Mrs. Marquette was asleep.
"I hope you enjoyed your birthday," she whispered in her employer's ear.
Adelaide's eyes opened and her head lifted from the pillow.
"... because it's the last one you're ever going to have."
"What ...?" the sleepy woman asked, confused and not fully awake.
Kit moved quickly, encircling the frail neck with her makeshift garrote. Adelaide's hands immediately went to the expensive hosiery that was strangling her, but she was unable to loosen the constricting silk. As the aged fingers continued to claw at the seven intertwined stockings, her body heaved from side to side and her legs kicked. The septuagenarian put up quite a fight, but in the end, her strength gave out. Barely clinging to consciousness, she collapsed and lay limp on the bed.
"You weren't satisfied with having a good man murdered, you had to ruin his name, as well," Kit accused, no longer fearful that Cleo might hear her and come to Mrs. Marquette's aid. "Because you had a miserable life, you made sure none of us would ever be happy."
"Kit!" the fifth-floor maid screamed when she walked in and saw the dead body on the bed. "My God! What have you done?"
"I killed her because she had Conrad Hudgins murdered."
* * *
Kit Willetts was being held in police custody the day Adelaide Marquette's will was read. With no family to leave her considerable fortune to, the old woman divided it up between her seven maids. Unfortunately, cancer would take Barbara Allred before the will was probated and the money distributed. Kit used part of her substantial inheritance to hire a good lawyer. He wisely put his client on the stand. When the jury heard her testimony, all twelve jurors, male and female, felt such pity for the woman that not one of them voted for conviction.
Once freed, the former maid spent several years traveling the world. Eventually, she married a retired accountant, and the couple bought a condo in a seniors' community in Florida. Although her remaining years were full and happy ones, she could not completely erase the memory of Adelaide Marquette or Sept Chanceux from her mind. Once a year, on July 7, she celebrated her victory over her murderous employer by enjoying seven pieces of imported Belgian chocolate.
Even Adelaide Marquette would draw the line at having seven cats like Salem!
