62 pages • 2 hours read
Nita ProseThe Maid
Fiction | Novel | AdultA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 4, Chapters 15-18Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 4: “Thursday”
Part 4, Chapter 15 Summary
Molly dreams of dirt and blood along with fingerprints and serpents whose eyes are those of people she knows: Cheryl, Mr. Snow, Wilbur, her landlord, Detective Stark, Rodney, Giselle, and Mr. Black. She wakes with a scream and hears knocking at her door. Throwing on her robe and slippers, she opens the door and finds Detective Stark with three other police officers.
Detective Stark arrests her for possession of drugs and a firearm and first-degree murder. Molly faints. She wakes in a holding cell with vague memories of being brought to the station and fingerprinted. Detective Stark takes her to the interview room. There, she informs Molly again that she is charged with possession of drugs and a gun and for the murder of Mr. Black. Molly insists that she has never hurt anyone and certainly never murdered anyone. Detective Stark says that Mr. Black was asphyxiated and there were only three pillows on the bed instead of four. She asks what happened to the missing one.
Molly replies that she didn’t kill Mr. Black and that she wouldn’t have anything to do with drugs. Detective Stark says that Cheryl told them Molly spent a lot of time with Giselle and took money from Mr. Black’s wallet. Many of her coworkers describe her as awkward and standoffish. The detective accuses Molly of stealing Mr. Black’s ring.
Molly admits she shouldn’t have taken the ring. She applied the wrong rule. She applied finders keepers rather than do unto others. It was a wrong choice, but she isn’t a thief. The detective says she is known to have stolen other things. Mr. Snow saw her stealing food from leftover room service trays. Molly admits that she helped herself to unopened crackers and jam that would have been thrown away, but that is the waste not want not rule. It isn’t theft. She doesn’t mention that she has very little money and often does without lunch. A few crackers and a little jam might be all she eats between breakfast and dinner.
Molly asks Detective Stark whether she spoke to Rodney. She feels sure Rodney would stand up for her. According to Detective Stark, Rodney replied that he believed Molly was “more than capable of murder” (169). Some of the staff stood up for her. Sunitha told the detective she worries that Molly can’t recognize danger, and Mr. Preston described her as “blameless,” which the detective thinks is an Interesting choice of words.
The detective asks why Molly asphyxiated him rather than using the gun they found in her vacuum cleaner. Molly realizes the only person who knew about the ring and the gun was Rodney. The police also found traces of cocaine on Molly’s housekeeping cart. The detective says they know Molly isn’t smart enough to be the brains behind the murder. They think Giselle arranged for Molly to work for her husband. Somehow it went wrong, and Molly killed him. Molly realizes it’s time to exercise her right to speak to a lawyer. She calls Mr. Preston.
Part 4, Chapter 16 Summary
Mr. Preston arrives with his daughter Charlotte, a lawyer. Charlotte posts Molly’s bail.
Part 4, Chapter 17 Summary
At Molly’s bail hearing, the judge grants her release and, after hearing Molly speak and seeing that she is represented by Charlotte Preston, he suggests to Detective Stark that she may be making a mistake.
Part 4, Chapter 18 Summary
Charlotte and Mr. Preston take Molly home. Charlotte assures Molly that she sees why her father is so sure she is innocent, but to prove it, they need to figure out who committed the murder.
Molly describes what she saw when she entered the Black suite, including Giselle’s unmarked pill bottle. Charlotte asks Molly to explain the drug and weapons charges against her, and Molly tells her about the gun. She also confesses about Mr. Black’s wedding ring. She doesn’t have the faintest idea how her cleaning cart could have come in contact with drugs.
When Charlotte asks how the police found the gun in Molly’s vacuum cleaner, Molly is forced to admit that she told Rodney. Reluctantly, Molly asks if it’s possible that Rodney and Giselle are working together, and Mr. Preston nods. Molly then explains Juan Manuel’s situation. The jigsaw pieces come together and Molly realizes Juan Manuel is being exploited by Rodney. Mr. Preston confirms that yes, Juan Manuel is being used to traffic drugs, and the gang has been using Molly to clean up after them.
Part 4, Chapters 15-18 Analysis
Detective Stark continues to misread Molly. She regards Cheryl and Rodney as reliable witnesses, possibly because they are better at dissimulation than Molly and they fit Stark’s idea of how people behave. The detective is suspicious of someone who doesn’t act or react exactly like other people.
Because Molly doesn’t fit the detective’s expectations, Detective Stark relies too heavily on other people’s interpretations of Molly. She is also predisposed to accept the testimony of liars and cheats. The interview with the detective overturns everything Molly believes about who her friends are. The detective’s discovery of the gun and the ring can only mean that Rodney betrayed her. The reader knew all along that Rodney was no friend to Molly, but it comes as a complete shock to her. Molly is also mortified to learn that Mr. Snow knew about her “stealing” food from discarded trays. If it was a genuine problem, a good manager would have discreetly called it to her attention. Mr. Snow overlooked far worse crimes than a hungry girl taking food that would have been discarded. Detective Stark interprets Molly’s “stealing” food as a predilection for theft in general.
Mr. Snow once again shows his weakness when he allows his opinion of Molly to be influenced by Detective Stark in defiance of his own experience. As the archetypal naive father, he fails the maiden who deserves his support and guidance.
Mr. Preston is a more reliable character witness than Mr. Snow, yet Detective Stark is quick to twist his statement that Molly is “blameless” to mean “not morally accountable” rather than innocent. Once again, Stark is more comfortable with the weak and the criminal than with the honorable people who defend Molly.
Mr. Preston comes to Molly’s rescue with Charlotte. They act as allies with powers that Molly lacks, but their role is to help her toward adulthood rather than to shield and protect her. Charlotte has some of the qualities of a fairy godmother in the maiden archetype, but she doesn’t take any of Molly’s agency or autonomy from her. Molly’s defense depends on figuring out who committed the murder. This presents a problem for Molly because she knows who committed the murder but doesn’t want to expose the first Mrs. Black.
Molly finally sees how she was used and deceived by people she trusted. They have been revealed as either false or too weak to support her. This is Molly’s awakening and a turning point. She takes into herself some of the qualities of the predator (Rodney) and turns them on him. She will still need coaching and encouragement from her true friends, but the burden of the task will be on her.
