Crime doesn't pay enough (part 3 of 3)

Often I had to physically fight intruders, who refused to leave, and more than once I had to spend a few days at a hospital where doctors patched me up. During these stays, I never managed to relax, as I kept thinking about the big risks of someone else finding the romantic invoices.

During this time, I did not have a single day of holiday, unless you count as holiday the times when his lordship travelled abroad and I had to go with him (at my own expense) to protect him against all sorts of unwanted curiosity. We went both to Hawaii, which was very pleasant, and the Amazonas, which was much less pleasant, as his lordship explored different kinds of tropical invertebrates, which fascinated him intensely. Often, during our trips, there was nothing to eat but the local food, something his lordship enjoyed immensely, while it often made me sick for days.

Attempts at raising the black mail amount failed, as his lordship pointed out that he was a very poor man, and there was simply not enough money to pay me anything more. Looking at the trinkets in the manor, I was inclined to believe him.

After seven years, I was exhausted. At the beginning of my employment I had been a young man exploring the possibilities of life. After seven years, I was thin and grey and knackered.

It was at this time that his lordship left us. He left all his money to charity. It was much more than I had imagined possible. There was not a penny to me, of course. I was after all the criminal who had extorted money from him for seven long years. The charity organisation got not only his money, but also the manor, the grounds and all his papers, including one that beyond doubt proved that he was a fraud from beginning to end. He had killed the real lord B many years ago. The handwriting on the invoices from lady F did not resemble the handwriting of the real lady F at all.

That was his real secret. He had only pretended to be blackmailed by me, while in fact he had employed me as a bodyguard to protect his deeper secret, the secret that could have ruined his life completely and sentenced him to a long prison sentence.

I was tired, a mere shadow of my former Special Forces self. Having paid all my travels myself, I was as poor as I had been when I began my black mailing butler career.

But at least I had learnt a valuable lesson. Unfortunately, in my current economic situation, I cannot divulge the actual lesson for free. To learn what it is, send me a package with a large amount of money in small unmarked bank notes, and you will receive an answer as soon as I have spent it.

Crime doesn't pay enough (part 2 of 3)

It was one of the easiest investigations imaginable. When his lordship was out, I sneaked into his room and browsed through his papers. Not among his main piles of letters, but in a separate drawer in the writing table there were letters written in a distinctly female handwriting. I had brought a small camera and took photos of some of the juiciest passages. It turned out to be a lady F, married to one of the big landowners in the next shire. The letters did not contain any romantic drivel, but they were straight to the point. They contained one amount after the other, for this night here and that night there. They were quite simply invoices for romantic services. Lady F was a prostitute and lord B was her (perhaps only?) customer.

There was definitely money in this. I could either sell the story to the press or just exert some classic blackmail on his lordship. I decided to follow the second path, as I considered it a more long term investment.

His lordship was very understanding. He expressed his understanding in tears and prayers that I would never reveal this scandal to anyone. A further sign of his understanding was a sizeable increase in my salary.

My first intention had been to retire and live on whatever money I could get from the old man, but I realised the risks. If it had been this easy for me to discover his secret, anyone else might find out as well, and then the secret would no longer be mine. If a journalist got hold of it, my extra income would cease immediately.

That's why I went for the more discreet solution to stay in his lordship's service but with a much increased salary. That meant that I could make sure no one else approached the incriminating papers.

The snag was that this was much more demanding than I had anticipated. My salary had increased, but so had my workload. The fact that his lordship was such a loner had raised interest in him from journalists and tourists, and every week there were people who tried to penetrate the grounds with cameras big as pikes. I set up an alarm system, making sure I would be able to get them before they came any close to the manor, but the alarm system often woke me up in the middle of the night when deer or wild boars triggered the traps.

(To be continued. Fairly certainly. But no one knows why. Yet.)

Crime doesn't pay enough (part 1 of 3)

Several years ago I managed to get employment with lord B. I do not know how I managed to do it. Sheer luck, I suppose. Or he liked me due to bad judgement. His – not mine. I turned up for an employment interview in my best clothes of course, but I had arrived by train to the village B-upon-C in dirty sloppy clothes the day before. The people at the inn must all have noticed me when I came in, still coughing from the dusty train voyage.

When I got to the manor, I recognised lord B from the inn, where he had sat all alone in a corner with a fish and chips and a vintage bottle of Châteauneuf-du-Pape. It was clear during the interview that he remembered me from the inn, even though he did not mention it. I guess that kind of things are not mentioned in his kind of family.

Anyhow, I did get the job and butled away.

At first I was disappointed. I had imagined that there would be plenty of opportunities to pinch small valuables and blame it on the other servants or visitors. However, there were a few flaws with that plan. One was that there were very few other servants, and they rarely left the kitchen or the garden. Another was that there were no visitors. The lord was a devoted lone wolf, who seemed to have no family left and no friends to invite. The next flaw was that there were no valuables at all. Apart from a few hideous huge paintings there was nothing that would get more than a few pounds at a flea market. There was no shortage of things. Cutlery, tablecloths, clothes, tools, souvenirs from distant countries, books and other bits and pieces filled rooms, cupboards and drawers. However, they were all of abysmal quality. It was as if his lordship wanted to prove to the world that one could live cheaper than with IKEA products.

The real treasure at the manor seemed to be the building itself and a perfect garden with flawless lawns and magnificent flowers under old trees. None of this I could steal, of course. The best I could do was to enjoy it in my spare time.

My salary was decent. There was nothing I could complain about there. The only thing that nagged me was this desire I always had had, to get a little more than I had, through lawful means or others.

One night I thought my luck had turned. For different reasons, I was unable to sleep and walked out to enjoy the garden at around two o'clock in the morning. It was a beautiful full moon, and with the reflections in the French windows, the garden was almost as bright as just after sunset, when the sunrays still bounce against the clouds.

I heard a crack from the main building, and I quickly turned around. An old reflex from my time in the SAS. I managed to see a shadow of a woman running over the open lawn and into the nearby forest. There was still a light in his lordship's window, and I decided that this was worth investigating.

(To be continued. Some day. Probably.)