Miss Blacklock’s employment and protection of Mitzi

Miss Blacklock’s employment of Mitzi combines practical dependence with a guarded form of care. Mitzi is a refugee employed as a cook’s assistant at Little Paddocks, and Miss Blacklock finds her difficult and often exasperating; nevertheless, she believes that Mitzi’s extravagant claims conceal real trauma and makes a point of asking others not to dismiss her outright. When Mitzi fears that someone is coming to kill her, Miss Blacklock does not share her alarm, but neither does she force her to remain: she offers her the choice to leave, advises against it, and redirects the conversation to lunch.

Employment and Daily Life

Miss Blacklock describes Mitzi to Inspector Craddock as a foreign refugee who works as a kind of lady’s cook help. The phrase places Mitzi within the household’s practical arrangements, alongside the village woman who comes five mornings a week and the jobbing gardener who visits on Tuesdays and Fridays. Her position is useful but not easy: Miss Blacklock admits that Mitzi can be difficult, while also noting that she can cook very nicely when she wants to.

The employment is therefore marked by both dependence and irritation. Miss Blacklock sometimes thinks it might be easier to do all the housework and cooking herself than to cope with Mitzi’s recurring “nerve storms.” Yet she continues to employ her and recognizes her skill in the kitchen. The relationship is neither sentimental nor simply transactional: Mitzi’s work matters to the household, but Miss Blacklock’s account also shows her trying to understand the person behind the disruptive behavior.

Mitzi’s Fear and Wartime Loss

In a conversation with Miss Blacklock, Mitzi announces that she intends to give notice and leave at once. When asked why she is upset, she says she does not wish to die and recounts that her mother, little brother, and niece were killed in Europe. She says she escaped, hid, reached England, and now does work she would never have done in her own country. Her fear is rooted in the possibility that the danger has returned: she insists that people have come again to kill her.

Miss Blacklock has heard versions of Mitzi’s account repeatedly and knows that the stories have expanded. When speaking to Craddock, she explains that Mitzi may attach every distressing story she has encountered to herself or her relations, exaggerating and inventing details. But Miss Blacklock distinguishes those accretions from the underlying experience. She believes Mitzi suffered a severe shock and witnessed at least one of her relations being killed. Her judgment is not that every claim is true, but that the claims have a real foundation.

Protection Without Credulity

Miss Blacklock’s response to Mitzi’s fear is measured. She says she cannot believe anyone wants to murder her, and that she sees no reason anyone would want to murder Mitzi either. When Mitzi repeats her account of her family, Miss Blacklock stops the flow of the story, but does not turn the conversation into a punishment or dismissal. She tells Mitzi that she cannot prevent her leaving at short notice, while advising her that leaving would be foolish.

That answer preserves Mitzi’s choice while expressing a wish that she stay. Miss Blacklock does not promise that Mitzi is safe or claim to know the source of her fear. Instead, she combines reassurance with the practical fact that the household still needs to manage lunch: she says the butcher’s beef will have to be stewed because it looks tough. The shift back to cooking makes care here matter-of-fact. Mitzi’s distress is acknowledged, but ordinary domestic obligations remain the means through which Miss Blacklock tries to steady the moment.

Miss Blacklock’s Account to Craddock

When Craddock learns that Mitzi works in the house, his private judgment of her is colored by a constable’s description of her as a liar. Miss Blacklock intervenes against that simple label. She says Mitzi is suspicious, sulky, easily feels insulted, and can exasperate everyone; at the same time, she asks Craddock not to be prejudiced against her. In Miss Blacklock’s view, exaggeration does not erase the initial injury or the loss behind it.

Her explanation also places Mitzi’s behavior in the situation of displaced people who may feel that their claim on others’ attention and sympathy depends on the extremity of what they have suffered. This is Miss Blacklock’s interpretation, not an independent verification of each of Mitzi’s stories. Its importance lies in how she uses it: she asks the investigator to approach Mitzi with sympathy rather than accepting a dismissive character judgment as the whole truth.

The Relationship’s Significance

The relationship is defined by a tension between fatigue and responsibility. Miss Blacklock is candid about the strain Mitzi creates, and her briskness shows that sympathy does not mean accepting every dramatic account at face value. Yet she keeps Mitzi employed, recognizes her cooking ability, and argues that her lies have a substratum of truth. Her protection consists less of grand gestures than of refusing to reduce Mitzi to the behavior that makes her inconvenient.

The exchange also establishes a contrast between Mitzi’s fear and Miss Blacklock’s composed handling of it. Mitzi sees a renewed threat; Miss Blacklock doubts that anyone intends to harm either of them, but gives Mitzi room to leave and a reason to reconsider. In speaking to Craddock, she carries that same balance into the investigation: Mitzi should not be presumed reliable in every detail, but neither should her refugee history and genuine bereavement be ignored. The bond is thus one of employment shaped by practical need and protection shaped by qualified belief.