Chapter 6
The afternoon shadows lengthened across the East Wing corridor, where the wallpaper was faded floral silk that smelled faintly of lavender and old paper. Martha moved quietly from room to room with her cleaning cart, her dusting cloth flicking across mahogany tabletops with mechanical precision. Her heart was still pounding from the morning's confrontation in the library. She had worked at Vance Manor for fifteen years, long enough to know that when Eleanor Vance suffered a defeat, the backlash invariably fell upon the domestic staff.
A soft knock sounded at the service door near the linen closet. Martha opened it to find Arthur standing in the dim hallway, holding a thick ledger bound in black buckram.
"Is the coast clear?" Arthur asked in a low whisper, glancing down both ends of the corridor.
"Mrs. Vance is resting in her private suite, and Mr. Harrison left for town twenty minutes ago," Martha whispered back, stepping aside to let him enter the small utility alcove. "What is that book, Arthur? You look like you're carrying a dead weight."
"It's the maintenance and security log from the past ten years," Arthur replied, setting the ledger down on the folding table with a dull thud. He flipped open the heavy pages, revealing neat rows of handwritten entries detailing repair requests, key issuances, and visitor logs. "If Harrison and Eleanor think they can stonewall David with corporate jargon, they're forgetting that every lock changed, every door bolted, and every restricted area in this house has been documented by my department."
Martha leaned over the ledger, her finger tracing a line of ink from three years ago. "Look at this entry... the east guest wing was locked from the outside for three weeks after Cousin Robert questioned the trust disbursements. She told everyone he went abroad for health reasons."
"Robert didn't go abroad," Arthur said grimly. "He lived in the dower house until he signed over his voting shares, and then they shipped him to a private clinic in upstate New York where he died six months later. Eleanor has been running this estate like a gulag for decades, and until now, no one had the leverage—or the courage—to look closely at the paperwork."
"Are you afraid, Arthur?" Martha asked quietly, looking up into his weathered face. "Mrs. Vance has friends in high places judges, politicians, bankers. If she fights back, she won't just ruin Camille; she'll make sure nobody who helped her ever works in this county again."
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"I've lived long enough to know that fear is just another kind of lock, Martha," Arthur replied, his voice steady and reassuring. "We spent years turning a blind eye because we wanted a paycheck and a quiet life. But watching Camille locked in that alcove... that changed things for me. Some doors are meant to be broken down, no matter who holds the key."
Down the hall, a floorboard creaked with a sharp, dry snap. Both of them froze, listening intently. A faint rustle of silk whispered against the runner rug outside the alcove door. Martha held her breath, her fingers gripping the edge of the cleaning cart as the shadow of a carved walking cane stretched slowly across the doorway threshold.
