“None,” said Jefferson candidly. “In fact, the whole thing absolutely beats me. It’s the last thing you’d have expected of old Stanworth, if you’d known him as well as I did.”
“You knew him pretty well, of course?” Roger asked, applying a match to his cigarette.
“I should say so. I was with him longer than I like to remember,” Jefferson replied with a little laugh that sounded somewhat bitter to Roger’s suspicious ears.
“What sort of a man was he really? I thought him quite a good sort; but then I’d probably only seen one side of him.”
“Oh, everyone has their different sides, don’t they?” Jefferson parried. “I don’t suppose Stanworth was very unlike anyone else.”
“Why did he employ an ex-prize-fighter as a butler?” Roger asked suddenly, looking the other straight in the face.
But Jefferson was not to be caught off his guard.
“Oh, a whim I should think,” he said easily. “He had plenty of whims like that.”
“It seems funny to meet with a butler called Graves in real life,” Roger said with a little smile. “They’re always called Graves on the stage, aren’t they?”
“Oh, that isn’t his real name. He’s really called Bill Higgins, I believe. Mr. Stanworth couldn’t face the name of Higgins, so he called him Graves instead.”