What Kind of Man || Jim Moriarty

Three

"The oven needs cleaning today Lucy." That was only one of the chores Abigail had listen off in the past ten minutes since Lucy had arrived. 7:35. She was impressed with herself, although she had purposefully intended to start early to allow herself more time to snoop around the Samson's draws. "And if you could hoover under the bed this time." She was so tempted to roll her eyes, so so tempted but Mr Samson was stood beside his wife for the first time in...well since Lucy had started to work for them honestly, and he was watching her.

They were going shopping together, how sweet, and would be gone for most of the day and possibly the evening. Lucy didn't know why Abigail had felt the need to tell her this, but she guessed it was to flaunt her husbands 'generosity', known otherwise as his bank balance. Either way it all made out for a good day in terms of Lucy's plans...she could take as long as she wanted to have a nice look around. Especially since the Donovan's were only a fortnightly family so she had her full day free after cleaning this mansion.

"I'll do the oven first for you and then remember under the bed." Lucy only nodded her head with a smile as she moved around the formally dressed couple to retrieve her supplies hidden under the stairs just a little way down the corridor.

"Good, good." Mr Samson, or Peter, nodded his head strongly and followed behind his wife as she finished looking in the hallway mirror and moved to the front door finally. "We will see you next week Lucy." With that, the Samson's left in the awkward way they always did, without a second glance or wave her way. But at least Peter acknowledged her a little.

When the door shut, Lucy started her cleaning just like she did in every house, six days a week every week. Top to bottom for every floor including that damn oven. She kept glancing around her as she cleaned, looking over the multiple trinkets and items that were scattered around every room. There were statues and paintings and vases stood on tables and in the corners of the four floors, each of which looked as expensive as the next. However, she couldn't take anything like that. Lucy wasn't sure Abigail and Peter Samson were the brightest of sparks but she was sure that even they would notice if one of their large antique vases suddenly went missing from their living room.

Her best bet of finding something good was in the bedroom, that's where she normally started and was where she had taken 90% of previous things from other homes. So when she finished cleaning the last room of the house, the master bedroom, she stayed there. Smiling wide as she looked around at her finished work for the day and turning to increase the volume of the portable radio she had brought up from downstairs. No one was going to be home anytime soon so she may as well clean to music while she had the chance, they'd never know.

"So I'm gonna fight, gonna give it my all. Gonna make you fall, gonna sock it to you."

Lucy quietly sang along to the familiar lyrics under her breath, she wasn't usually a follower of current chart music but this one in particular seemed to be played every hour.

"That's right I'm the last one standing, another one bites the dust."

The cloth was dropped into the bucket of soapy water which had been warm at some point and the rubber gloves were ripped from her hands and thrown to the floor as she pushed the vacuum into the corner of the room to clear space for her real work.

Firstly she fell to her knees, with as much grace as she could muster, in front of Mrs Samson's dresser and decided to start from the bottom up. Since starting to do this she had developed some sort of ritual for searching, and you couldn't go wrong with starting from the bottom. Besides, all of the good stuff was normally kept at the bottom since all of the regularly used stuff was stored by the owners at the top.

Lucy slowly pulled open the first door, it didn't matter that the house was completely deserted, she still made sure to do it silently. But there was nothing to jump out at her at first. There were a few paper bags scrunched up inside, making the contents rattle and crunch as she began to go through it. Underneath however the findings were....well poor to say the least. There was a worn out plastic hairbrush and a tub of half used drug store moisturiser. It was times like this which made Lucy ask why some people never chucked their old stuff away. From the looks of the moisturiser, it was close to growing a life of its own from the amount of time it had spent in a warm draw next to the radiator.