The Mystery Guest: A Maid Novel

In the Prologue, rats and spoons combine to take on a specific symbolic meaning, after Gran’s whimsical story about a rat being discovered with a missing spoon, the dual images reappear at certain points in the text to indicate the identity of the murderer. Throughout the novel, villainous characters are either called rats, or they are otherwise associated with rat-like imagery and descriptions. For example, when Mr. Snow is alerted to Cheryl’s theft, Molly tells him that he has a major vermin problem to take care of, and Lily flat-out tells them, “Cheryl […] she’s your rat” (198). To emphasize this further, Cheryl is often described as having “greedy paws” (160) instead of hands, and she is characterized as demonstrating the trickiness of the species. However, Cheryl turns out to be the red herring for the actual killer, Beulah, who has turned her hotel room into a metaphorical rat’s nest of messiness and clutter. Additionally, Beulah herself is constantly covered in animal hair, and she steals a spoon from the hotel restaurant, thereby perfectly resembling the description of the thieving rat from Gran’s story, especially when the stolen spoon indicates her guilt. To further emphasize this symbol, Molly remembers Gran describing the murderers in Columbo as rats, and because Columbo himself likes to set traps for them, the rat trap metaphor inspires Molly to do the same in order to catch Beulah.

Both Cheryl and Beulah exhibit classic rat-like tendencies of hoarding and pilfering, and both are rats in the metaphorical sense when they shift blame and guilt onto others. Just as actual rats are often seen as dirty, the morals of the two women associated with the symbol are portrayed as sullying themselves with questionable activities. While there are other examples of zoomorphism in the text, such as the author’s comparison of Grimthorpe to a wolf, the symbolism of the rat and the spoon are the major literary elements and clues used to point out villains in The Mystery Guest.