Butler Did It

by Donna McLean

  “And by that time it was too late for her daddy to do anything about it!”

  The gossips bent their graying heads together and whispered and glanced, and Tilda shrugged and turned away. She trotted toward the old house and Addie fell into step beside the spry lady.

  “Good gracious, those three have got to be talking about somebody all the time! I get right tired of hearing it, myself.” She caught Pearce Allen’s eye between photographs and called out, “Mayor, can we come up the steps and take a look around?” She didn’t wait for an answer, but carefully picked her way across the shaky wooden steps, followed by Addie.

  The mayor scolded her in an affectionate tone. “Now Ms. Tilda, you be careful! The house hasn’t been inspected yet and we don’t want anybody falling through these old rotten boards and things.” Mayor Motley then realized that having his photo taken with a happy citizen enthusiastically supporting his most recent announcement would be just the thing for the front page of the Harbinger. He beamed at Tilda MacArdan, grasped her hand, pulled her across the porch, put his arm around her shoulder and ordered Pearce Allen to take the picture.

  Addie noticed Mrs. Motley watching from the shadows. She started toward the well-dressed lady with the intention of introducing herself, but the mayor’s wife suddenly saw her with wide, startled eyes and slipped around the corner of the house and out of sight. Addie paused, a puzzled frown upon her pretty face. “Definitely not the way most politicians’ wives behave,” she remarked to herself.

  A sudden crash drew everyone’s attention back to the front lawn, where an odd sight met their startled eyes. It seemed that Delcie Needles, a couple of lawn chairs and the shabbily dressed old man were doing a circus balancing act upon the brick border of the town’s main attraction, proudly called The Cow Steed Fountain. The man held one chair upside down over the crook of his elbow, his arm between the metal bar of the chair and the webbed strap, his spindly fingers grasping the collar at the back of Delcie’s crisp white blouse in an attempt to steady her and keep her from falling into the water. His other hand held the spout of the fountain, which happened to be a cow’s open mouth with water shooting out of it in all directions, spewing through his parted fingers and right into Mrs. Needles’ finely teased hairdo! This lady bellowed at the top of her magnificent lungs and effectively drowned out the town’s one o’clock bell chimes.

  Magda and Peggy, her trusty cohorts, stood helplessly by. Their faces were aghast as the odd couple twisted this way and that on the fountain’s rim, each trying to regain balance without falling into the water, and by doing so both made the other’s position more unstable.

  Addie was only numbly aware that Pearce Allen’s camera beside her was clicking and whirring and capturing every ghastly movement for all posterity. After what seemed forever and a day, the shabby man released his grip on Delcie’s formerly crisp white collar and the gaunt woman pitched forward onto the grass, somehow managing to take both lawn chairs with her, a foot landing in one and a clutched fist punching through the webbed seat of the other.

  The shabby gent topped this performance by accidently sliding backwards against the gallant marble Cow Steed and landing in the fountain basin with a splash that drenched every stunned onlooker!

  A deadly silence hung in the humid air for an eternal second. Then Mrs. Delcie Needles cut loose with the full force of her wrath.

  “Butler Jenks!” she bellowed, her face red with rage, her fists clenched in fury. “Butler Jenks!” she spat, quivering with anger.

  The old man in the fountain blinked at her like a confused owl suddenly awakened in the bright and shocking sunlight.

  Addie couldn’t help overhearing the mumbling comments that were beginning to grow all around her as she watched the spectacle unfold in stunned silence.

  Magda whispered to Peggy, their eyes wide and frightened but glued on the drama before them. “That old fool! He can’t do anything right!”

  Peggy gulped and nodded. “He ain’t right in the head! Never has been!”

  Delcie, meanwhile, was letting loose a torrent of venom on the feeble old man.

  And Addie was getting angry.

  Needles yelled, “All I asked you to do was to put my lawn chairs in the car. And you can’t even do that right! Not even a simple little thing like carrying two little chairs to a car! Why did I ever ask you to do anything at all, Butler Jenks? You’ve never been able to do anything right in all your life!”

  Addie McRae’s emerald green eyes snapped fire. She ran down the steps and crossed the lawn, followed by Tilda and Pearce Allen, who nervously wondered what the fair haired redhead was going to do.

  The young woman went quickly to the older man’s stooped form. She stood between him and the rude woman. “Those comments really aren’t necessary. Not necessary at all!” she stated in calm fury.

  Their eyes connected and the words forming on the old lady’s lips suddenly dried up. She turned away, but not before casting one more withering glance upon the cringing old man.

  Pearce Allen watched the fiery redhead with undisguised admiration. Then he hurried to Addie’s side. She was carefully disentangling the awkward arms and elbows from the fountain, gently helping Butler Jenks stand up, his overalls soaked and his face chagrined.

  Pearce Allen fished the ratty old cap out of the water and handed it to Jenks. It dripped on the grass with a steady plunk, plunk. “That’ll dry fast in this heat,” the handsome young man said helpfully. “And, er, your clothes too. And your shoes. Your hair. Are you okay?”

  The old man nodded without meeting the eyes of the people gathered around him and shuffled off in shame and embarrassment, his shoulders hunched over.

  “Bless his heart,” Tilda murmured.

  Addie’s fists clenched and unclenched at her sides. “How can those old bitties be so mean to such a helpless old guy? It’s just awful the way they treat people!”

  Tilda sighed. “You’re right about that, Addie. They can be awful sometimes. Then again, poor old Butler sure does get into a mess of trouble faster than a snake doctor hits the water!”

  “A what does what?” Addie asked, puzzled.

  Pearce Allen said, “She means a dragonfly.”

  “Oh.” The young woman thought about that image for a second. The three people began strolling back toward the old mansion. “I don’t think anyone deserves that kind of treatment, especially not in front of a crowd of people, and especially when he knows those people! What in the world has he ever done?”

  Tilda replied thoughtfully, “Well, he doesn’t mean any harm. He just seems to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, all the time! I hired him once to help me with my gardening, although I didn’t really need any help, just felt sorry for the poor man because it seems like he can’t do anything right even though he tries and tries. And I gave him something very easy to do, a whole mess of petunias to plant in big ol’ flowerpots all along the front porch. Probably six or eight big cement flowerpots all together.”

  “So he planted them, sure enough, and they were right purty at first, all green and lively looking, but there weren’t no blossoms on them! I kept telling him what to do. Water them, and keep the dried up blooms pinched off so the new buds would come out. And he did keep watering and pinching, heck, I saw him do that myself, but I didn’t look too closely, you know, I didn’t want him to think he was being watched all the time ’cause then he might think I didn’t trust him with the petunias. It seems like everything he does turns out wrong and everybody knows that. The plants kept getting greener and bigger, but no blossoms at all! I gave him fertilizer to add and he did that. Asked him to move them to get more sunshine, and he did that. Asked him to move them back to the cool shade, and he did that too. Bigger plants and leaves, and bigger and bigger, but still no blossoms.”

  Tilda, Addie and Pearce Allen stopped walking outside the old mansion’s wide wooden steps, and the lady pulled off her hat and fanned herself against the humid midday heat. “Well, I finally fi
gured it out. Do you know what he’d been doing all that time? Bless goodness if he hadn’t been pinching off the blossoms before they bloomed! Said he thought they had already bloomed real fast and that those little buds were the dried up parts that should have been pinched off!”

  Tilda shoved her hat back over her wispy light brown hair with a rapid motion that expressed her annoyance with the inept Butler Jenks. “I declare I just could not believe it! He’d been pinching off the brand new blooms all along!” Her kindly face crinkled in mirth, and the young couple and the spunky senior burst into laughter.

  THREE

  The editor, the strawberry blond and the spunky senior followed the mayor and his wife down the wide front porch and waited for Motley to unlock the door to the old mansion. Pearce Allen grasped the brass knob and pulled hard, then held the carved oak door open for the others to enter. “Ladies and gentleman, the crazy house awaits you!” he cheerfully announced.

  Mayor Motley walked through the doorway, casting a nervous glance back toward the young man whose humor he did not appreciate. Tilda and Addie followed closely, heads bent to hide their smiles.

  The spry lady waved her hands in front of her face. “My goodness gracious, this house is so stuffy! Can we open a window somewhere?”

  “We can have some sunlight, at least.” Maybellanne entered the first room off the long hallway and pulled back the heavy velvet curtains hanging at a nearby window.

  Pearce Allen offered to prop open the front door to let in some fresh air. “There’s an old cast iron doorstop!” he said, pointing. Squatting near the door, in shadows that must have been there since the dawn of time, was a black iron figure in the shape of a crow. Addie pushed the heavy door back as far as its rusty hinges would allow, and the young man pushed the heavy iron doorstop in front to hold it open.

  The Motleys and Tilda MacArdan started off down the hall but Pearce Allen gave Addie a mischievous glance and a smile. He grasped her hand and pulled her into the room opposite the one the others had entered. “Let’s explore,” he whispered.

  Further down the hall and just inside the parlor the mayor’s wife coughed delicately in the dusty air. “Ms. Tilda, dear, you’d better stay close to us. I’m not sure we should even be venturing into this broken down old place without a formal inspection being done first. It could be dangerous.” Her comment, directed towards her husband’s retreating back, was slightly reproving.

  “Oh, these old houses don’t bother me a bit!” Tilda stated with enthusiasm. She paused under an open arch and peered into the parlor. “I’ve heard about this house all my life and always wondered what it would be like on the inside. They say there’s a staircase somewhere that leads to nothing! And a bookcase that isn’t really a bookcase at all, but a big old door that slides open without making any noise!”

  Maybellanne Motley approached Ms. Tilda with nervous steps. “I’ve heard that the place is haunted with all kinds of spooks. And besides that, old man MacGuffin must have been insane to dream up something like this!”

  “I expect he was, at that.” Tilda stated it as a matter of fact. “They say he made his millions in the tobacco trade and started building this house for his beautiful young bride. Before they got married, something happened to her. I forget what. And then he went plumb crazy and started building all these odd rooms filled with tricks and things. They say he was still building on it the day he died. Like he was expecting her to come back.”

  “Sounds like a very sad story.”

  The two women stood still and looked around the vast parlor in the weak sunlight. Dust motes floated on the humid air. A fine gray mist of grime lay thick on everything, from the wooden fireplace mantel to the small, oddly shaped tables covered with knickknacks. Carved mahogany chairs and a settee looked as though they had never been comfortable for sitting on and taking tea.

  “Gracious, look at this ditzy wallpaper! All those scrolling vines and tiny red flowers. Makes me right swimmy headed to look at it. Oh, look at these purty tea cups! So delicate! And that pair of silver candlesticks! Fancy!” Tilda looked around the little room and paused, staring at the other side of the velvet panels Maybellanne had pulled open. “Do you know, that is odd, right odd.”

  “What is it, dear?” Mrs. Motley asked curiously. She studied the tasseled drapes but could see nothing unusual.

  “From the outside of this house I would say that is a single window, but the closed draperies make it look like a double window.” Tilda walked over to it and pulled. The panels split in the middle, just like a real window treatment would do, but behind them there was merely a wall. “Well I’ll be dogged!” Tilda said, partly baffled and partly in admiration. “Never seen anything like it!”

  The wall had been expertly painted to look like an outdoors scene, complete with a wooden window frame that matched the real frame right beside it. On the wall the view mimicked what the town’s Main Street must have looked like at the time the house had been built, and the sunlight in the painting made it a lovely, cheerful scene of an early spring day. Flowers bloomed in delicate colors that had once been bright, and there were old cobblestones where the paved street now ran. A beautiful young woman in a cornflower blue dress, long sleeves and a full bustle, and wearing a sweetly flowered little hat, peered shyly out at them.

  The two ladies murmured with delight. The mayor’s wife said, “Why, standing here like this and looking at the painting, it looks as though we are looking right out the window at the street outside!”

  “And that the young lady is coming here for a visit! I wonder if she could be the poor little bride who never was?”

  “Oh, such a sad thought. But sweet, too. I suppose that’s just who she is, Ms. Tilda.”

  The mayor’s wife gently pulled the velvet curtain back into place. “Best leave it like that until the renovation team can look at it. We want it to be properly preserved and correctly restored.”

  “Yes, you’re right, Maybellanne, we certainly do,” Tilda agreed. She glanced around the big room and peered out the door into the hall. “Now I wonder where your husband ran off to?”

  Maybellanne drew back as though she had been slapped. She cut her eyes toward the older woman suspiciously, but then realized that Tilda’s comment had been an innocent one. She said with forced casualness, “Oh, he’s around here somewhere, poking around and looking into everything.”

  If only she had known how true that statement was! The mayor was poking around and looking for a way out of the very strange room he had stumbled into. Why hadn’t he waited for the others, he thought, instead of rushing forward into this eerie old mansion all alone? That old man MacGuffin must have been a weird one for sure, because the room that Mayor Motley had assumed to be a library or study was one heck of a strange place.

  He was certain, absolutely certain, that he had entered this tiny room through the larger one preceding it, right off the hall. He cast his mind back and confirmed it. He had gone through the old parlor but Maybellanne and Tilda had stayed there. He had heard them talking, a few feet behind him. He had briefly admired the artwork, the knick knacks and teacups and candlesticks, but wanted to see what was on the other side of the room. He had exited through the arched doorway opposite the entrance, and found himself back in the long hallway. He had entered the next room, a bare looking place compared to the other one, and then, he was quite certain, he had entered this very strange room, that he assumed to be a study, through a narrow door.

  He had crossed the little study to look at the stacks of old books beckoning him atop a wonderful antique desk filled with cubbyholes and drawers that were simply stuffed with papers. There was even an old fashioned quill pen and a brass inkwell! It looked as though old man MacGuffin had just finished writing something, had laid down his pen on top of a letter and stepped away for a moment.

  Mayor Motley bent over the old desk with delight, placing the short fingers of his plump hands together and peering over them like a little boy gazing at a birthday cak
e. The handwriting on the letter was scrolled and flourished, and difficult to read. He decided to leave deciphering that for another time and turned to look at the rest of the room.

  At this point things seemed to take an odd and unexpected turn. He was certain, absolutely certain, that the desk had been facing the door he had just entered, and thus, because he was facing the desk, the door should have been directly behind him. But when the mayor turned around, there was no door directly behind him. In fact, there was no door at all!

  The puzzled and pompous man stared aghast at the wall of books before him. He had most definitely entered through a doorway, or through something, only a few minutes earlier. But now he was faced with a long, a very long, bookcase that stood as tall as the ceiling and wrapped around every wall without breaking for window, door, or anything else. No matter which way Mayor Motley turned there was no escape from that bookcase, other than three thin transom windows at the very top of the shelves on one side. The weak sunlight barely penetrating the dusty window glass was the only thing that made anything visible to the mayor at all.

  Motley pressed chubby hands to pudgy cheeks and gasped. He remembered stories he had heard as a youth. Stories about old man MacGuffin, crazy old man MacGuffin, and his torture chambers! Mysterious rooms hidden deep within the mysterious house! Rooms in which his helpless victims could enter but never exit! Rooms that no one could ever find! Not even if one screamed, and screamed, and screamed!

  * * * * *

  Pearce Allen and Addie stopped in their tracks and stared at each other in the long hallway.

  “What the heck was that?” Addie asked.

  “Sounded like a scream,” Pearce Allen responded. He looked at her frightened face and tried to continue as though he were not the least bit worried. “Couldn’t be a scream, though. Couldn’t be.”

  Another bloodcurdling shriek rent the air.