Content Warning: This section describes violence and domestic abuse.

Police officers enter the house, and an unnamed woman thinks to herself that she should have run when she had the chance; now, she fears that she’ll leave in handcuffs. One of the officers questions her about the body in the attic upstairs. She asserts that she went up there an hour ago, when she heard a sound, and found the body there.

Three months earlier, Wilhelmina “Millie” Calloway interviews for a job as a housekeeper with Nina Winchester. Nina is a woman in her late thirties; she’s extremely wealthy and dresses stylishly in all white. Millie has underdressed to make sure that Nina doesn’t feel threatened by her looks, even wearing fake glasses to the interview.

Millie assures Nina that she’s a good cook and can watch Cecelia, Nina’s daughter, as part of her duties. Millie has a car that she can ferry Cecelia around in; she doesn’t tell Nina that she’s currently living in it. The compensation that Nina is offering is an extremely attractive amount, and Millie suspects that no one offering that amount would actually hire her.

The position is a live-in one, and Nina offers Millie a tour of the beautiful and expensively furnished house.