The Butler Did It: A Mysterious Comedy
an excerpt

Simon Brownlee, Sir Edmund and Lady Clarissa’s footman was enjoying a flirtatious interlude with Alice, the new housemaid, when he heard Miss Pringle headed in his and Alice’s direction. Ticktickticktickticktickticktickticktickticktickticktickticktick –her shoes sounded like a woodpecker angry with its tree against the black and white marble tiled foyer. Simon was experienced, he knew how to listen for his superiors and either hide, or if that were impossible, put on a good show of being attentive to his duties whenever he heard Mr. Carruthers or Miss Pringle approaching. Furthermore, he had a sort of sixth sense concerning their moods. When he could get by with appearing to dust the hall statues and polishing the brass on the front door, and when it was politic to be nowhere in evidence lest his superiors find some fault with his execution of his duties.
“Hide!” he whispered to Alice. He opened the hall broom closet and stepped in, pulling her in after him. It was a small space, but luckily, Alice was a small, slim girl. Simon didn’t mind her standing pressed close to him whatsoever in the closet confines, even though the handle of the vacuum cleaner was digging into his kidneys. The door was not quite closed, and through the crack, he watched Miss Pringle approach down the corridor. Her cheeks were sucked in as if she were eating a lemon, and her thin eyebrows had united at the center of her forehead above her nose. She was striding along the corridor, her arms pumping away Hiding had been a very good call—Old Pringy would not be good company right now, although most of the time, Simon rather liked her. But her mood was definitely antithetical to flirting, and he had been getting on nicely with Alice.
“Whew, that was a close one,” Simon whispered to Alice, when Miss Pringle was gone. He made no move to open the door though and was even stealing his arm around Alice’s waist.
“Is she that fierce?” Alice whispered. She took a step away and pushed open the cabinet door. Simon was nice, but rather older than she liked her boyfriends, although he’d been very helpful letting her in on some of the unwritten rules of the household. She’d only been here for two weeks. “Annie warned me that she can be very strict.”
“Oh, she’s all right. Do your job, look sharp and don’t spill food or drink at the table Upstairs and she’ll let you be,” Simon answered. But if you ever hear her coming when she’s walking that fast, don’t try to be friendly. Hide under, behind or inside anything you can find until she’s gone. She never stays mad very long, but a scolding from Old Pringy is not something you forget in a hurry. Got a look at her face as she went past—she looked like she were loaded for bear.”

Down in the servant’s sitting room off the kitchen, Carruthers hardly looked up when Miss Pringle came in. He was stretched out on the leather sofa with his feet up and his shoes off. The sitting room was rather nice for servant’s quarters, for it was all furnished with cast offs from Upstairs. Good, well-made furniture and lamps that Lady Clarissa had grown tired of, and had therefore donated to her servants. Even with his sore spirits, Carruthers found the room soothing.
Rather than his customary last cuppa, Carruthers was drinking a finger or two of brandy from his closely hoarded stash. He felt dreadful after his conversation with Sir Edmund. After all his years of service, did Sir Edmund really expect him to write a novel? In a mere thirty days, yet? It was the most preposterous thing Carruthers had ever heard. Definitely not in the usual job description of a butler. But he was loathe to complain too much. For a man in his early fifties whose only real skill was to be a butler for a man dedicated to living in the distant past, there weren’t a great many other employment options to choose from. Running an almost Edwardian household made him an enormous anachronism, too. Who except people like Sir Edmund even had butlers, these days? His skills were hardly au courant with the 2007 job market. And he was well paid, here. After twenty years of seniority and liking the feeling of authority and accomplishment, Carruthers was in no rush to start over at the bottom of the pay and seniority scale doing dull work he hated. Not to mention that he’d also have to find a place to live and feed himself on much more meager wages than those he earned now. Here he was comfortable, he had a routine and even if his hours were long, he took pride and actually enjoyed his work.
But write a novel? Good God, he barely had time to read the London Times! And too tired by the time he went to bed to stay awake long enough to read more than a page or two of the mystery novels he enjoyed. He had no more thought of becoming a writer than he had of becoming a lion tamer. What on Earth was he going to do?
The door opened and Miss Pringle entered, looking tired and out of sorts. She crossed the cozy sitting room and poured herself a cup of the stewed tepid tea—one more reason why Carruthers had decided to indulge in brandy tonight—then sat down hard in her favorite wing chair, kicking off her pumps with a sigh of relief. There she sipped her unappealing tea with some vehemence, her face all but forbidding conversation. She looked as riled as Carruthers felt. Normally, he would ask her about it, but just now, he appreciated her not requiring any conversation of him.
“I just can’t believe it!” Miss Pringle burst out, setting aside her tea and glaring across at Carruthers lounging on the couch. “She’s gone too far, this time. You’ll never believe it, Mr. Carruthers!”
“What won’t I believe?” Carruthers grunted. “Wait until I tell you what Sir Edmund ordered me to do, tonight.”
“I thought I’d heard it all when she adopted those wretched pot-bellied pigs and then wanted to get rid of them all a month later” Pringle growled. “Or when she told me about that Sunday charity luncheon for the orphans of Kosovo late one Friday evening. But this is beyond everything!”
Carruthers craned his neck to look at her, wondering if, just by chance, their employers had conspired together to play some elaborate joke on them to test them both. Both Sir Edmund and Lady Clarissa were capable of astonishing thoughtlessness and lack of consideration, but they were seldom both impossible at the same time.
Tonight, Miss Pringle’s cheeks were bright pink with temper. Normally she was a stoic woman—very hard to rattle.
“So wot’s up, Meg?” Carruther’s accent had been born in London’s East End even if it had been smoothed, polished and mellowed in the West End, just as his original surname of Carter had been refined into Carruthers. Now he sounded like an ordinary working man. He and she only rarely addressed one another by their Christian names, and never if any of the other servants were around.
“Maybe you’ll feel better if you spill it.”
“Lady Clarissa’s sister, you know, Mrs. Liddell-Boothroyd?”
“Oh, aye,” Carruthers spoke with feeling, although he was curious and anticipating amusement. Mrs. Liddell-Boothroyd’s schemes were almost always good for a laugh, as long as he was not one of those called upon to execute them. In which case they became infuriating, time-consuming and inconvenient. “What’s the latest?”
“She’s writing a novel.” Miss Pringle’s voice was rich with contempt.
“A what?”
“A novel, Gerald! Next month, fifty-thousand words in thirty days. One of the most empty-headed women in all Mayfair thinks she can write a novel. What’s worse, she’s got Lady Clarissa all excited about it, too, now.”
Carruthers had been about to laugh, but now he flopped back onto the couch, the awful suspicion confirmed.
“They have been conspiring!” he declared. “That has to be it!”
“It’s prepos—a conspiracy, Gerald? I think it’s the most absurd thing I ever heard, but really, two silly society women planning to write novels is hardly conspiratorial.”
“No, no, no, it’s more complicated than that, even. Let me tell you what Sir Edmund told me when he came home, tonight.” Carruthers sat up and swung his feet to the floor, arms braced on the edge of the sofa cushions as he faced Miss Pringle.
“He was out to supper tonight at his club—dined with his nephew, Mr. Robert.”
“Oh that hopeless case,” Miss Pringle snorted. “What of it?”
“Sir Edmund told me Mr. Robert had the self-same plan that Mrs. Liddell-Boothroyd. says to me clear out of the blue ‘Carruthers, do you think I should write a novel?’ I was so shocked, I just about dropped the stilton plate on the library Bokhara!”
“Gordon’s ghost!” Miss Pringle whispered. “Mrs. Liddell-Boothroyd is one thing, but what on Earth made Sir Edmund think of it?”
“That’s why I say they’re conspiring,” Carruthers muttered out of the corner of his mouth. “They’re both annoying and demanding, but they’re rarely annoying about the same things at the same times. I tell you, they’re testing us both with this novel poppycock.”
“I shouldn’t think any of them would be interested,” Miss Pringle muttered, swallowing the last of her cold tea. “I mean, Mr. Robert, Mrs. Liddell-Boothroyd, Sir Edmund, and Lady Clarissa—four of the least literate people I can think of all writing novels and getting the same idea at once?”
“Oh, Sir Edmund isn’t planning to write his novel himself, he’d have to work too hard,” Carruthers grunted. “I haven’t finished—he expects me to write his novel for him! The blasted, bloody cheek!”
“Maybe you’re right after all,” Miss Pringle whispered, fingertips pressed to her lips. “About the conspiracy, I mean. Just after I settled Lady Clarissa in bed, she let me know that she expected me to write her novel for her, too!”
“They’ve gone too far, they’ve both gone too far, this time!” Carruthers jumped to his feet and started pacing over the Persian carpet, one retired from the Library when it was judged too faded and worn for upstairs.
“When on Earth do they suppose either of us will find time to write novels?”
“Maybe they are having a joke,” Miss Pringle muttered. “As you say, we’re hardly people with the time to write novels. Perhaps if we don’t say anything, they’ll forget all about it?”
“Yes, but can we take the risk?” Carruthers answered. “What if they ask about it on November twenty-ninth, and get shirty about it if we confess we never wrote anything? Sir Edmund can make himself dashed unpleasant.”
“Well then maybe next year, they’ll write their own!” Miss Pringle sighed and took her empty teacup to the little sink and rinsed it out. “You’re right though. If we don’t do it at all, they’ll both be sure to create.”
“They’ll create because we didn’t create,” Carruthers gave Miss Pringle a grim smile as she started to laugh.
“But we’re still on the hot seat, both of us. And you know they’re not going to make any allowances for the house keeping, just because they’ve ordered us to write their bloody novels for them.”
“Oh I’m sure of that.” She leaned against the sink, her arms folded. “Do you suppose we should just go look at the website, perhaps? Get some idea of what it’s all about? ”
“That’s another problem!” Carruthers burst out. “I don’t own a computer of my own and I don’t think Lady Clarissa would appreciate my using the household computer to write a novel. And honestly, am I supposed to go out and buy a computer just for writing a novel I never meant to commit because my employer is a demanding fool?”
“I’ve got a laptop up in my room,” Miss Pringle said. “For tonight, we can use that. Gerald, if Lady Clarissa and Sir Edmund insist upon our writing their novels for them, they haven’t got much call to get upset if you go and use the household computer for writing your novel. It is absurd for you to spend nine hundred odd pounds on something you may never use, again.”
“I never saw this coming, did you?” Carruthers asked as they climbed the creaky wooden backstairs to the top floor where Miss Pringle’s room was.
“The novel writing? No, not in a thousand years.” Miss Pringle shook her head. “Lady Clarissa’s excesses are more in the line of short notice for major parties she intends to give. Or else falling in love with some cute animal, and then falling out of love with it when it’s not cute, anymore, or it’s care becomes too complicated or inconvenient.”
“Like the potbellied pig episode?”
“Yes, that exactly. Although she was told that they would be miniature ones and they turned out not to be when they grew up. Really, you can’t keep animals like that in a house anywhere, let alone in Mayfair.”
“I should hope not,” Carruthers snorted. “I mean, pigs of any kind in Lady Clarissa’s boudoir! A bad combination from the start. All those china figurines of hers!”
“Not to mention having to clean a room with even one potbellied pig living in it,” Miss Pringle said, giving Carruthers a sour look over her shoulder as they reached the top of the last flight of stairs. “And she had three! And when she gets tired of any animal, she wants it out of her life within twenty-four hours and never wants to acknowledge its existence, again.”
“And then there was the Persian cat phase,” Carruthers added. “She got it into her head to breed show cats, remember?”
“After going to the cat show in Chelsea,” Miss Pringle agreed. “Not only did she buy a stud cat that shed and peed all over everything, the kittens ended up not even being show quality. But at least it’s easier to find people who will adopt a nice little cat. Just try finding homes for three huge, adult pot-bellied pigs at short notice in the middle of London! All I can say is, I was really grateful to those two Peruvians with that petting zoo for taking them off our hands.”
“Thank goodness Sir Edmund isn’t interested in animals.” Carruthers waited as Miss Pringle opened her bedroom door and turned on the overhead fixture. Like the sitting room off the kitchen, this room was furnished with items no longer wanted in the main part of the house. In this manner, Miss Pringle had inherited a very nice sleigh bed with a queen-sized mattress and a yellow counterpane, another Persian carpet with a yellow, green and ivory color scheme, a large ivory and gilded wardrobe and tall narrow bureau in the far right-hand corner, and buttery yellow drapes at the two windows. A silver Persian cat lounged on the center of the bed with a lordly air Sir Edmund could hardly have bettered.
Having both seniority and status in this house, Miss Pringle naturally had the largest corner room. She’d also inherited a nice little eighteenth century cream and gilt writing desk which rested in the nook beneath the north-facing window. She stepped over to it, and booted up the sleek little silver notebook computer resting on it.
“Sir Edmund just has no concept of how long anything really takes, and how everything concerned with dinner parties or house parties costs more if you have to order them to be ready within twenty-four hours.”
“Or how to keep a harassed cook from giving notice effective immediately if she’s just been told first thing the morning that she has to cook a sit down luncheon for fifty the next day. And that includes deciding on the menu and ordering all the food, as well as cooking it.” Carruthers added with feeling. He’d had to be the one to deliver such news to her the previous month as well as be the one who had to humble himself in order to beg her to stay.
He found an extra chair by the bed and placed it beside Miss Pringle’s desk chair so he could observe her at work at the computer.
“Mrs. Soames is an irritable old cow, but she has grounds for being disgruntled in those circumstances,” Miss Pringle agreed, her long strong fingers rattling over the keyboard with confidence as she connected to the internet wireless network, typing in Sir Edmund’s own password. “Sir Edmund has a very good wireless connection,” she informed Carruthers, with a wink. The connection can be a little spotty in the day up here, but I can almost always get connected up here late at night. He’s never once cottoned on.”
“You have the energy to go online after your duties downstairs are finished?” Carruthers asked, amazed.
“Well yes. You see, I have a blog that I update every night. I just like recording what I’ve done during the day. If it’s been a trying day, it’s a good way to blow off steam or work off my frustration. Mostly though, it’s just a sort of diary.”
Carruthers watched with interest. Miss Pringle typed with the same competence she did everything, and soon brought a pale blue web page up on the screen.
“Ah here we are, www.nanowrimo.org,” Miss Pringle murmured. “Let’s have a look at the forums, shall we? Let’s see what’s got these people all excited about this noveling business.”
“Good idea—oh look, they have a forum for almost everything!”
“They certainly do,” Miss Pringle murmured. She clicked on the forum saying ‘Nano tips and strategies.’ “I figure we can use all the help we can get on this one, Gerald.”
“Could we have a look at the research threads?” Carrthers indicated the top forum. “Good lord, they have a thread for everything. Why on earth would anyone need to know if a nine year-old could fit down a badger hole, for mercy’s sake? What could they be writing that would cause them to need to know that?”
“Badgers adopting a founding child or a whole new take on Alice in Wonderland, maybe?” Miss Pringle said. “And look at this one—‘spiritually abusive communities.’”
Carruthers scanned further down the screen and in spite of himself while still nursing his grudge, he laughed. “Here’s one for us—‘animal control and crazy cat ladies’!”
Pringle laughed too. “Look at this one! ‘Knocked unconscious by a fish’.”
“What? How would that even happen? Does the victim get bludgeoned by a mad man armed with a fish?”
“Do I know? Maybe it was self-defense. Suppose the victim were a cook, like Mrs. Soames, and was assaulted in the kitchen. Maybe she just grabbed the first thing she could reach to defend herself which happened to be a fish?”
“But if it were a boned fish, I don’t imagine being smacked over the head with it would even hurt!” Carruthers cried. “Let alone knock anyone out. What if you’d grabbed an anchovy or a sardine? Your assailant would laugh themselves silly! It would have to be a great big fish to do any damage.
“Anyhow, think of filing that police report. ‘Intended victim wards off would-be assailant with an anchovy.’ No one would believe it.”
“If it were a live lobster, it might work all right as a weapon although that would be cruel to the lobster. Or it might work if she chucked a whole tin of kippers at them while the kippers were in the tin. And it might hurt a bit if it the fish was hot out of the oven. But I’d think a cooked fish would just fall apart completely at the first blow. Not to mention that it would be hard to hold—all hot and slippery and everything.”
“A fish is hardly what I’d choose as a murder weapon, although I suppose it would count as a blunt instrument. But very impractical as a weapon no matter what she actually did with it. She’d be more likely to grab her cleaver.”
“A fish would be an unusual killing thingy,” Miss Pringle murmured, stroking her chin with her hand. “Pity the poor detective who had to keep a fish on hand at the police station as the murder weapon. Assuming they caught the murderer, the weapon wouldn’t last until the trial. He’d need to pop it into the fridge all the time to keep it from stinking up the whole station. And imagine the headache if someone accidentally ate the murder weapon for lunch one day.”
“Unlikely,” Carruthers muttered. He shuddered “Kippers stink enough when they’re fresh. A six month-old kipper would smell putrid enough to kill by itself. No one would eat it unless they were forced. That could be an act of murder in and of itself.”
“Interesting how we both immediately start thinking of murder weapons and police procedure, isn’t it?” Pringle said. “Are you thinking of writing a murder mystery, Gerald?”
“Er, if I were going to write a novel—and I haven’t committed to doing it yet!—I’d probably write a mystery,” Carruthers admitted with a sheepish smile “I like to read a few pages of a mystery in bed at night, although I almost never have the energy to read more than a few pages at a time.”
“Because our employers expect long working hours from us,” Miss Pringle whispered. “And we have to deal with all sorts of strange situations, high expectations and do huge amounts of work at very short notice.”
Their eyes met for a somber moment, each of them almost able to verbalize what the other would say about their situation, about the possible murder motives of harassed, over-worked servants with inconsiderate employers.
“Shall we see if there’s a mystery writer’s forum?
“Let’s do.”