glass was on the floor beside her. She saw him, picked up the tray, and stood up.
“I’m that upset, sir,” she said, “ that upset.”
“Something has startled you?”
“Startled! Glory be, sir—what with this bringing back of the dead and the missus gone into a coma—if it wasn’t for them three cops at the downstairs doors I’d be out of this house this minute, and so would the rest of us, too.”
“How many of the ‘rest of you’ are there?”
“Sure and including the housekeeper there’s eight of us, sir.”
The Endicotts, Lieutenant Valcour was now quite certain, must be multimillionaires.
“All women?”
“Except for the houseman and chauffeur.”
“And do they sleep in the house?”
“The chauffeur does not, sir. He has an apartment for himself and his wife and his three-year-old child, named Katie, over the garage in East Sixty-sixth Street, sir.”
“Have all of you been in service here a long time?”
“Indeed and we haven’t, sir—except for Roberts and the housekeeper. I’ve been here a month myself, and the rest of us not more than two or three.”
“And Roberts has been Mrs. Endicott’s maid for the past several years, say?”