Moira Kinsale

Moira Kinsale is 26 and has worked in the house for three years. Born near Cork, Ireland, the eldest of seven siblings, the daughter of a tenant farmer and a washerwoman, she crossed the Atlantic at nineteen, on a crowded ship, with an aunt's address in her pocket and a promise to send money home every month. She sent it, even in months when less was left than the bill.

She sleeps in the attic of her employers' house and spends the day in the kitchen and the laundry, between the wood stove, the wash tub and an ironing board that never goes cold. She wakes before the sun to light the fire, washes the bed linens on Mondays and scrubs the floors on Thursdays. On Sunday afternoons, she writes letters to her mother in crooked handwriting and keeps the replies folded in her apron pocket, to reread at night.

She is thin and strong, with a freckled, ruddy face, tired green eyes and red hair in a bun under a white cap. She wears a gray cotton dress with the sleeves rolled up and a long white apron against which her hands, red from work, stand out. She speaks fast, with the singsong accent of Cork, and shuts like a door when she feels judged for being Irish.

She says that at 9:30 Miss Constance told her the mistress had received a note from a sick woman and gone out. But she was in the front hallway, the doorbell hadn't rung and no messenger had come, and the mistress's cap and shawl were still on the hook. She says she was in her room, in the attic, resting a little before lunch, until at 11:10 the young lady shouted from below for her to come down. About the relationship between the two women of the house, she says they lived like two cats on the same roof.

Moira knows a hired girl from abroad is always the first asked, and the last believed. It could be the weariness of a girl who only wants to finish the month. It could be someone hiding a motive behind her own haste. The detective will have to decide which.