Chapter 5 .

A knock came at the door. It had been four hours since I got to the Snow House.

"You can come in," I called, pulling the duvet up to my chest. I had on a black lace pajamas.

The housekeeper turned the golden globe door knob and appeared in my room.

"The table will be set in 35 minutes," she said.

"Oh right, thank you." She turned around immediately to leave and I called, "I didn't get a name."

She paused, tilting her neck only enough for me to see her face. "Grace," she said and continued out of my room.

I didn't quite get it. There was something eyebrow-raising about Grace's niceties. It showed in the way she carried herself with caution as if she had walked into a museum of invaluable potteries that could crumble to powder if she dared to be anything but professional. I couldn't take it that anyone could be that subservient in their duties. Reeves had even been friendlier than she was being. Although he was particularly untalkative, Reeves offered answers to my questions.

However, Grace was unusually close-lipped and seemed eager to return to what she was being paid to do - or perhaps, an excuse to escape conversations that would make her sing like a bird - even though the indifference in her dark eyes and the permanent frown in her razor-slit mouth showed she wasn't a happy employee. So, where did Grace find the motivation to be about her duties?

I could be making a wild guess here, but I knew I had a hunch. Something, even though I couldn't exactly tell what it was yet, could be scaring Grace into feigning dedication to her work and not wanting to be found doing otherwise. Her disguise wasn't foolproof, I could tell. She hid behind a beanie mask that was so close to snagging apart from all the threads of fear hanging loose from it. Could it be that why Reeves appeared more confident than Grace was because Snow's interest was in women? After all, Dudley had described him as a very 'sad misogynist'.

I lifted myself and propped up against the bedpost. I leaned over to the bedside table and grabbed my backpack that I had kept on top of it. Unzipping the backpack, I took out my laptop, the new notepad that I had got for this assignment and a ballpoint. I had made my first observation, I concluded in silence. I was here on a mission after all, right?

When I was done writing what I thought of Grace's shifty eyes and unusual professionalism at Snow's residence as a housekeeper, I reached for my phone and unlocked it. The time was 5.45 p.m. I climbed out of the bed, stretched and walked over to my trolley bag.

I took out a balloon cobalt blue dress and slipped out of the pajamas I had on, I put that on. I stepped in front of the large mirror that hung from the wall. I stared for a while and I couldn't decide if my autumn brown skin and the cobalt dress were really a match. I worried about how much I showed because the dress stopped at my thighs. Of course, this was Molly's idea. She had parted with ninety-four dollars just to get me this dress. The catch was that I should be in it when I meet Snow for the first time. Yeah, Molly was all about first impressions and since I grumbled bitterly about this assignment, she had cajoled me into taking the dress as it could be just what I'd need to hasten the completion of the assignment. I blew out my cheeks as I turned away from the mirror. I took out my purse from the trolley bag. I grabbed my phone from the table, toggled on my recorder and dropped the phone in my purse. Barely satisfied with all I had done, I started to open the door.

As I walked through the terrace to the outdoor dining lounge on Snow's patio, I could see the figures of seated people. The closer I got, the more detailed those figures got and the higher the murmur of their conversation grew. There were two male liveried stewards beside the sitting men.

The dining lounge bubbled with the vibrancy of a colorful set of a long table and eight wicker armchairs – three armchairs on either side of the table and one on either end. The armchairs had royal blue cushions and white metal frames. Seated around the glass-topped table were five women and a man. I was almost on the patio before I was spotted by one of the women, who paused mid-sentence, our eyes holding up each other's gaze before she broke up to have a laugh, throwing her head back on the armchair she sat on. Everyone else at the table zipped around to look at me, their faces smacking of mirth.