Deal Me In: Week 18 "Suspicion" by William B. Maxwell

I'm still working my way through Jay's Deal Me In Challenge . In a nutshell--we line up 52 short stories for the year, we match those stories up to a card in a regular deck of card, and each week we shuffle our deck (of real cards) and draw a card from whatever remains in the deck. This week I drew the Ten of Clubs which corresponds to "Suspicion" by William B. Maxwell (from The World's Best One Hundred Detective Stories Vol. 7 edited by Eugene Thwing.

The title tells you everything you need to know about Maxwell's short story. Old Mrs. Mayhew lives in a house crammed with knick-knacks and personal treasures. Things may be overflowing, but she knows exactly what she has and where things ought to be. When she can't find certain of her treasured items, she decides to have a "big tidying" to return misplaced items to their rightful place. But the tidying session fails to bring them to light. That's when the air of suspicion settles on the house. Did her nephew remove them--thinking Aunt Kate would never notice? Or was it the faithful cook who had been with her for years? Or maybe it was the housemaid who had that one unfortunate incident long before she ever came into Mrs. Mayhew's service? Everyone looks suspicious when there's no evidence...Will Mrs. Mayhew get any of her treasures back?