The Butler's Master

Lost - Part 1

[Lost – Part 1]

A few hours ago...

A polite knock on the door forced Louise to look up from the annual report she had on her hands. Her face was expressionless, but it took someone who knew her well to see the small signs on her face –her irritation at being interrupted when she had very explicitly told her butler that she wished to be left alone for the hour.

"Come in." Her invitation was neither warm nor cold, but Keyron knew that his mistress was not particularly pleased when he opened the door with a humble, almost-apologetic bow.

"Miss Louise, I apologize sincerely for disrupting your time despite your explicit orders." Keyron offered, hoping that his soft words offered some sincerity to soften her irritation. "But the nature of business that has come knocking is urgent. Mr. Branwell has come to see you."

"Branwell?" Louise repeated, the irritation cleared quickly from her face as she closed the book of annual report immediately, sitting upright. "Let him in."

The reaction from his mistress surprised Keyron, but he did not let it show as he politely left to invite the man in question into the office.

This Branwell person was a very non-imposing man –and Keyron supposed that that characteristic was very good for the man's occupation. The man was a private investigator after all. Having dealt with many private investigators both working for his master's family and working against the family, Keyron knew if there was a private investigator in his master or mistress's office, then it would probably be something that they could not afford to use him (as their butler) for.

Still, Branwell's presence confounded Keyron, even as he opened the door for the man, then closed it politely behind him, returning to his duties. Branwell had been assigned a job by Louise that neither Keyron nor Brandon were privy to, and not knowing something going on within the Household was something that Keyron as a Head Butler was not comfortable with. Still, he had been given strict orders by his mistress to never ask and never tell anyone about Mr. Branwell's incoming and outgoing from the mansion, and there was little that he could do against his mistress's order.

Sighing, but with nothing else he could do to change the situation, Keyron sighed at how things had changed since the departure of the young master from the mansion and walked away.

________________________________________________________________________________

"Thank you for sparing your time, Mr. Branwell." Louise greeted formally as she gestured for the man to take a seat across her at the table.

"Please, call me Jason." The man answered, but like the many times that he had been here, Louise had no intention to speak on casual terms with him or address him casually with first names. While nearly everyone knew her as either the Mistress of the Greaves-Crawford Household or Miss Louise, this did not mean that she was obliged to call others by their first names in reply.

"What do you have for me today, Mr. Branwell?" Louise answered pleasantly, hiding the weapons behind her smile that any rightful private investigator would be able to detect without an issue. Branwell was an efficient private investigator –he was thorough and he often did not try to overstep his boundaries. Unfortunately, he was a little ambitious at times and tended to try to make links between things even if the events that had transpired may have occurred in isolation.

"Not encouraging news, I'm afraid." Branwell answered, looking a little nervous now. When he had been contacted for this particular task, Branwell had been taken aback. It had been the first time that Branwell's services had been requested for personally by Louise Greaves-Crawford (she had called him personally) instead of through the contact of the household's butler. When he had appeared in the mansion to receive the task, the Head Butler –the famed Butler in White –had been invited out of the office for the two of them to discuss in private. It had stunned Branwell; his experience in dealing with high society had taught him that whenever masters/mistresses kept their personal butlers out of the loop, then it had to be something very serious.