“Jeeves! I require a wipe!”
The shrill, high-pitched voice pierced through the hordes of pompously dressed patricians sporting lavishly overdone pompadours talking in pretentious tongues of pompous things. It blasted through the unethically acquired furs of the coat check, reverberated off every glass of the makeshift cocktail bar and traveled in a full circle around Campus Center’s atrium before returning to its source: a shrill, pompously dressed patrician sporting a lavishly overdone pompadour standing by the bathroom awaiting the assistance of his faithful butler.
But the butler was nowhere to be found. He wasn’t in the allotted butler closet where each elitist guest tucked away their servant to await their beck and call. He wasn’t assisting another master with adjusting their tie or getting a forkful of caviar safely from their plate to their mouth while saying, “Here comes the choo-choo train, Sir.” He wasn’t even on the lower level savagely critiquing that weird painting of the flowers that looks like a man who’s been skinned alive.
It wasn’t until a week after the university’s philanthropy dinner rang its last supper bell that the missing butler turned up. He was found roaming Wheatley’s halls covered in blood and babbling incessantly of something absolutely horrid: a student had been discovered bludgeoned to death in a utility closet on Wheatley’s fifth floor.
The entire campus was wondering if the butler did it, but after being asked his story, Jeeves claimed his master was responsible and that he was simply tasked with cleaning it up. This was difficult for even UMass Boston’s sharpest detectives to prove, so they decided to call in every rich asshole who attended the philanthropy dinner to see if anyone could identify Jeeves.
However, this was apparently an unanswerable question, akin to asking them to identify a specific droplet of sweat that secreted from their unibrow the last time they counted their money by hand.
Each butler was completely indistinguishable from the next. They were all named Jeeves, they all had the same height, the same weight, the same complexion, the same hairstyle, the same disdain for anything they deemed uncivilized, and to top it all off, they all had the same social security number. In the eyes of the law, Jeeves wasn’t anybody’s butler; he was everybody’s butler.
Just when the case seemed at a loss, one of the pompous pompadours, an entitled husk of old money named Bartholemule Stinkopuss, Earl of Saint Dragonsbane, stepped forward and boldly announced:
“If this is about the dead boy, the killer was I. He crossed my path in the lavatory and had the most sickening sense of style I had ever laid my eyes upon, so I beat him with my cane until he ceased to be. I instructed my Jeeves to wipe him up, but apparently, good help is hard to find these days.”
Jeeves was ashamed, falling to his knees and begging. “Sir, please forgive me!”
The audience was unamused by his display of weakness, and in unison, with their pinkies extended, they wailed, “JEEVES! I REQUIRE A WIPE!”
Within moments, the sound of a small army was heard thundering up the stairs to the atrium. Soon, the disgraced Jeeves, who was still covered in the blood of the student, was covered in the blood of himself, beaten out of him by a mob of his identical brothers. After a couple of minutes, the brutal beating was over, and the crowd of Jeeves cleared out of the way to reveal the dead corpse of their comrade, so battered that he would have made Mussolini look like handsome Squidward.
“I WANT A NEW ONE!” shrieked the Earl.
Producing a small canister of gasoline from his vest, one of the Jeeves lit his murdered brother ablaze. The butlers joined hands and danced around the flame humming a deep, ominous melody until the body was completely broken down into soot. Born from the ashes like a phoenix, the new Jeeves rose, small and childlike.
“I live to serve, Sir,” said the baby butler in a baby voice. It would take a couple of months for him to grow into a fully-grown old man like his brothers, but with ample time under indirect moonlight and with large quantities of plant fertilizer shoved into his mouth, the process could be expedited.
But what of the Earl of Saint Dragonsbane who confessed to the senseless killing? Would he be charged for the crime? The university was quick to release a statement to address the matter:
“As a university that preaches forgiveness, we realize that everybody makes mistakes. We would therefore like to reassure our most gratuitous donors that next year’s philanthropy dinner will not be intruded on by non-fashionable plebeians. We are deeply sorry to the Earl of Saint Dragonsbane for any distress this event has caused and hope you keep us in mind the next time you’re feeling generous.”