My name is Robert Bernard. Like my father, and the 5 generations preceding him, I am a butler. For centuries, the Bernards have served the appetizers and poured the wine of our affluent employers with all the care in the world, never desiring anything more than to take care of them. So WHY do we keep getting framed for murder?
There never was a butler more well-meaning than my father, Arthur Bernard, who arrived at the Rogers mansion at promptly 5:30 each morning to organize the day’s schedule for Sir Rogers. He never had a speck of dirt on his vest, never a crease in his white gloves. But one day, as he watered the roses on the front corridor table, a thorn poked through his left glove, leaving a drop of his blood on the table and his fingerprint on the vase. How tragic that that was the day Sir Rogers was brutally stabbed in his sleep, and the killer left a rose on his dead body before he escaped. My father was devastated at the death of his boss and even more so at his own wrongful conviction.
My grandfather, Reginald Bernard, never spoke an ill word of his employers. Although the Simmons children often made fun of the long scar running down the side of his face, he was always happy to play with them. So it was heartbreaking for our whole family when he was arrested on the day that Mistress Simmons found her baby strangled to death in the cradle, with a bloody cut running down the side of his face, with Grandpa Reggie’s favorite cheese knife next to him. I mean what would he have against that poor baby, other than him being the heir to the world’s largest collection of sealing wax?
What you have to understand is this: no one in my family would ever dream of hurting his boss! We care too much for the art of our craft! Besides, my master, Lord Richardson, is the most important person in my life. I would even die for him! So it is natural that the maid has heard me muttering his name and the word “die” in my sleep.
But the reality is that it is getting harder and harder for legacy butlers like me to find work. Despite my charm and expert coat-taking-technique, when I walk into an interview, employers just see my Bernard name and the polished letter opener I keep poking out of my chest pocket, and assume that I am after their wealth. It’s not my fault that my last boss died of food poisoning on the same day that the gardener saw me sneak his vitamins into his cup when he wasn’t looking! Until the world learns that not all butlers are malicious, I’ll just have to live with the misfortune of being a well-meaning butler in an anti-butler society!
- LS ’23
