“By the way, you failed to prevent tonight’s disaster, so I assume you won’t expect me to pay you.” This sounded like a royal proclamation. I didn’t argue, but I did consider suing him for pain and suffering.
I returned to the bar where Joves’s business had declined drastically. “Another drink, Mr. Tuff?” My stomach lurched. Was he joking or being sarcastic? It was like asking a sailor who has just been flogged if he wants a dozen more strokes.
“No, thank you. I just learned about your father’s accident. I’m sorry.”
A strange look flitted across his face. “It was completely unnecessary.”
“Unnecessary?”
“Yes. Mr. Endicott’s then-current mistress had just called and he was on his way to a late-night rendezvous.” I was surprised by Joves’s frankness with a stranger. He must have been very bitter, understandably. “When he offered me this job, perhaps to soothe his conscience- if he has one- I took it. I thought that if I was close to him, I might find some way to get even. At first, I imagined some big act, then I decided on a series of smaller incidents, such as sabotaging like this.”
I was beginning to feel sorry for Joves who was, like King Lear, “a man more sinned against than sinning.”
“You poisoned some guests, including me, but spared others, like Ms. Friend. Why?”
“I suppose it gave me a feeling of power to choose the victim.” Like Caliban upon Satebos on Browning’s poem, I thought. “Besides, Ms. Friend is a beautiful woman with real class, unlike many of Mr. Endicott’s female friends. I suppose I’ll be prosecuted when you tell Mr. Endicott. I am technically a criminal.”
I remembered Francis Bacon’s line “Revenge is a kind of wild justice.”
“He’s already said that I failed to protect his guests and that he won’t pay me, so why should I solve the case ex post facto? What will you do?”
“Quit this job and look for another, not as a butler and far from Blandsville.”
I wanted to shake his hand, but people might have thought it strange.
As we left, I said to Amanda: “You are a beautiful woman and you have real class.”
“Why, thank you, Rock.”
“Thank Joves. That’s what he said.”
As we drove home, I paid her a compliment of my own: “It was very observant of you to notice Joves spiking the drinks. Maybe you should be a detective. How about Ruff and Friend?”
“No,” she said, “there is only one Rock Tuff. Besides, this was a classic case.”
“In what way?”
“The butler did do it.”
