Late yesterday, sources confirmed that Norville Topsington, the butler of Tuftenshire Hall, a remote manor in the English countryside, has been accused of murder for the fourth time this month.
For more on this story, we spoke to Agatha James, Topsington’s lawyer, who decried the arrest as a shameless example of police profiling:
“My client has no criminal record, and yet whenever some drunken aristocrat is pushed down a flight of stairs or a small-town vicar gets a knife in the back, my client is hauled off for questioning. This blatant lack of diligence among the detectives is an insult to justice and to butlers everywhere just trying to do their jobs. This horrible stereotype has marred my client’s life for years, and today I’m here to put an end to it. The butler did not do it.”
For a more personal take on this issue, we sent our Managing Editor Caleb Levy to meet with first-time contributor Aloysius Pellinore, an eccentric gentleman detective who currently works at Wales Yard (Scotland Yard’s much less prestigious sister station).
“While the butler is often a suitable first suspect, the local constabulary has greatly befouled this particular investigation. The blood spatter from the murder was arranged as an oblique reference to the novel Crime and Punishment. We can also see that there was a small amount of sand found in Lord Brackenbury’s shoe, the coarseness of which suggests that it was obtained from the Dalmatian Coast. These clues point to the tutor Alexi, as he was born in Russia and raised in Croatia, but the heraldry found in his book bag reveals that he was Brackenbury’s illegitimate son. An illegitimate son would not stand to inherit, so these “clues” are just red herrings left by the real murderer, not Alexi, not the butler… the legitimate son Edmund! Knowing his father would legitimize Alexi and divide the inheritance, Edmund resolved to kill him.”
At press time, Topsington was released from custody and has gone on to form a support group for frequently arrested butlers. All seemed to be going well until the end of the first meeting when all the lights went out at once. When they came back on, Norville Topsington was dead, bludgeoned by a candlestick in the parlor.
