Excellent Intentions by Richard Hull

Author:Richard Hull [Hull, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781464209765
Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press, Inc.
Published: 2018-05-22T21:56:55+00:00

“A nasty business, Raikes, and one which I dare say you do not like talking over.”

“Very nasty, sir. No doubt you have been told that I couldn’t bring myself to touch the—the door on which he was.”

“I had heard something about it. You had been in his service for some time, hadn’t you?”

“Yes, and despite his little tricks and a lot of funny ways that he had, I had a considerable respect for him. He had a way of saying, so to speak: ‘Take it or leave it,’ so that you knew where you were with him which made it easy to handle him if you knew how.”

“And you did know how to handle him?”

“I venture to think so, sir.” There was a quiet confidence about the elderly butler which was totally removed from conceit. “I suppose,” he went on unexpectedly, “that it was his heart that made him funny.”

“Funny?” Fenby echoed.

“Well, sir, if you knew that you might die at any moment, you’d look at things differently. When you saw other people fussing and getting into a state about things that upset them, and all the time you knew that you had got one thing real to worry about, you’d rather despise them and not worry much if you trod on their corns. In fact you would rather like to give them something to think about. At any rate that’s what I think that he did, and then people would say that he was tactless, and hard, and inconsiderate, and ought to do this and ought not to have done the other. The village people round here, for instance. They’re stupid and they didn’t understand him, and that vicar, he would keep on interfering and making things worse. Miss Knox Forster, she didn’t understand him either and she’s got very strong views, and just to annoy her he used to take the opposite view and then they’d start arguing about politics and things and she never knew that he was pulling her leg.”

“Then you don’t think that he always meant what he said?”

“Not he. If you come to think of it, it was a plucky thing the way that he kept up all his hobbies—making money and collecting stamps like a kid and so on. All the same his tricks were trying if you didn’t know how to meet them. That is when he was in the mood.”

“What sort of tricks? Do you mean just the way he went on in general or have you got something particular in your mind?”

“One particular little game that he was always playing. He used to have days when he liked to pretend that people were trying to steal things from him. When that mood was on him, he would do it all day to everyone who came near him, and a great nuisance it was too. I suppose he went a bit funny sometimes. Personally I always knew when it was coming on and so I took precautions, but those who didn’t know it, used to find it troublesome, because he was clever about it.

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