The Butler Did It - My Curious Friendship with a Serial Killer (Chapter 1)

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The Butler Did It by Paul Pender

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THE BUTLER DID IT

My Curious Friendship with a Serial Killer

by

Paul Pender




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Being the true life and extraordinary adventures of Archibald Hall, alias Roy Fontaine ² charmer, conman, killer

He was butler to the aristocracy.

He took their jewels.

And then he took their lives.




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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Author·s Foreword 2B or Not 2B

Chapter 1 The Bogie Man

Chapter 2 Interview with the Vampire

Chapter 3 True Crime and Other Fictions

Chapter 4 Roy the Boy

Chapter 5 Oedipus SchmedipusChapter 6 The Perfect Gentleman

Chapter 7 A Review To Die For

Chapter 8 The New Arabian Nights

Chapter 9 By Any Other Name

Chapter 10 The Devil·s Disciple

Chapter 11 The Tin Man

Chapter 12 Rough Diamond

Chapter 13 Here·s To You, Mrs. Robertson

Chapter 14 Aladdin Sane

Chapter 15 The Lady Varnishes

Chapter 16 Buttlemania




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Chapter 17 Scarface

Chapter 18 The Crown Jewels

Chapter 19 Deep In the Heart of Torquay

Chapter 20 The Man Who Knew Too Much

Chapter 21 The Great Escape

Chapter 22 The Fugitive

Chapter 23 Sheik Your Money Maker

Chapter 24 Harem Scare ·Em

Chapter 25 From Russia With Love

Chapter 26 Blood Sports

Chapter 27 Murder Most Foul

Chapter 28 The Bastard Verdict

Chapter 29 Bloody Mary

Chapter 30 Dying for your Art

Chapter 31 My Brother·s Keeper

Chapter 32 The Butler Did It

Chapter 33 The Hunger Artist

Chapter 34 Paradise Cove




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Author·s Foreword - 2B or not 2B

¶ You can always rely on a murderer for a fancy prose style.·

Vladimir Nabokov, ¶Lolita·

This book is in one sense the record of a friendship, if friendship can be held to

include death threats. To this day I cannot sharpen a pencil ² and as a writer I

sharpen a lot of pencils - without experiencing a frisson of fear. Roy is once

again thrusting the pencil·s needle-sharp point towards my retina, threatening

to ram it through my eye and into my brain, as he helpfully informs me ¶This·ll

kill you outright, you cunt!·

Medical experts I have subsequently consulted tell me he was right: that is

indeed a very effective way of killing someone. One of the many strange things

about Roy is that though he may have been a pathological liar, in his own

peculiar fashion he was a stickler for the truth.

Despite the fact that a sharp object through my eye would have been a very

literary way to go (oh so Christopher Marlowe) I realised even then that the

finality of the act would greatly outweigh any posthumous glamour.

That was to be the first of many threats Roy would make, either in person or

through surrogates. Other threats were less anatomically precise but no less

frightening. Once, late at night, I saw that the light on my home phone·s

answering machine was blinking. I had a message. I pressed the play button,

only to hear ¶Pender, I·ll have your balls for garters!· delivered in a rasping,

guttural and strangely other-worldly voice, reminiscent of the Devil in The




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E xorcist. Fear mingled with admiration as I marveled that Beelzebub had

somehow managed to adapt his cloven hoof to the delicate art of dialing.

I do not wish to tax your patience, dear reader, by speculating on the feasibility

of converting balls into garters. Fortunately, at the time of writing my testicles

are mercifully intact. Suffice it to say that such threats take on extra credibility

when they are made by a man who, with no sign of remorse, has killed and

killed again.

Why was it, then, that ten years later, safely ensconced in California, at the

other end of an ocean and a decade, I felt genuinely saddened when I read of

Roy·s death? I had expected to feel only relief, yet I remembered him with

something like affection.

I realized that I missed our conversations, which were quite unlike those I have

had with anyone else, before or since. California was in the midst of a

heatwave, and as I looked out on the parched landscape, Roy·s death made me

reflect that in our society of spin, doublespeak and political correctness, an

authentic conversation between two people is as rare and as welcome as desert

rain.

I left my office and walked along Santa Monica beach, where I picked up a large

flat stone, thinking fondly of our discussions about skimming the stones we

called ¶skiters· in Rothesay Bay on Scotland·s Isle of Bute, the lost paradise of

Roy·s childhood and of mine. The fun we·d had, generations apart, the simple

joy of making those stones dance defiantly across the waves.




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¶This is for you, Roy,· I thought, as I threw the stone with all my might. It

skimmed the surface of the Pacific, hopping and skipping several times before

it sank.

¶You danced across the waves, Roy!· I said to myself with a smile, ¶Just like you

said you would.·

I turned back to my office and went to my writing desk.

I had a promise to keep.

I braced myself and sharpened a pencil.




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C hapter One The Bogie Man

Polonius: What do you read, my lord?

Hamlet: Words, words, words. (Hamlet. Act 2 Scene 2)

As the taxi meandered through a leafy English lane in the sleepy cathedral

town of York, I felt my pulse racing. Soon I would be face to face with him. I

was excited and a little nervous. I'd never met a murderer before.

I hope you found those opening sentences arresting, dear reader. Arrests and

sentences feature largely in the narrative which follows. But I jump ahead of

myself. I hate to drag that sweet English rose Julie Andrews into this tale of

death, deceit and debauchery, but as she so memorably trilled, ¶let·s start at

the very beginning, a very good place to start.·

As in all Good Books, in the beginning was the Word.

When this adventure began, words were my bread and butter. I was gainfully

employed as a television script editor in the Drama department of BBC

Scotland, where my job was to work with writers, unknown and established, in

an effort to get their scripts into shape for broadcast as TV drama. Having

written some plays myself, I was to an extent a poacher turned gamekeeper:

the job enabled me to revive my own dormant career as a writer.

I had spent the low dishonest decade of the nineteen eighties in a squalid

London bedsit trying to write the Great Novel. It was to be about the rise of

Hitler, and humanity·s apparent inability to resist the glamour of evil. When I·d

spent longer researching the book than Hitler took to lose the war, I began to




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suspect that like him I was fighting a losing battle. But I persevered, trying to

convince myself, like the little mustachioed man in the bunker, that tomorrow

belonged to me.

I would be the great writer or bust.

For the bulk of the decade I was on the verge of going bust. When I ran out of

money for the electricity meter (a regular occurrence), I would sit freezing in the

dark, pondering the unsolved mystery of why my bedsit smelled of cat·s piss

and gas leak, even though the room was all-electric and I didn·t have a cat.

The nadir came when I found myself taking mouldy bread out of my rubbish

bin, scraping off the mould and toasting it to make it more palatable. My early

love affair with London had rapidly turned sour. The metropolis had become

the City of Dreadful Night.

So it was with joy, pride and a reborn sense of purpose that I finally swallowed

my artistic pride, got real, applied for the Script Editor·s post at BBC Scotland,

and to most people·s amazement, landed the job.

I was lucky. Bill Bryden, who ran the Drama Department, was brave enough to

take a risk on me. I vowed I would finish off the Hitler book later. After years

spent in the Teutonic Twilight, it was time for me to climb out of the bunker.

It was early in January of 1993 when the call came which changed everything.

Scotland was recovering from its collective New Year·s hangover and I had

settled into my BBC job. Convinced I was striking a blow for the Romantic

tradition, I dedicated myself to what I called ¶Shaving the day·.




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I defined my working day as beginning at ten. I would work till twelve thirty

then have lunch with a writer at the TrattoriaTrevi, the delightful restaurant

around the corner from my office. Fine Italian wines often contributed to the

creative flow of ideas. When I got back, I would ensconce myself in my swivel

chair, prop a script up on my desk and instruct my secretary that I was only to

be interrupted if the call were urgent. This was euphemistically known as my

¶afternoon read.·

I would swivel so that my back was to the door. By placing the waste-paper bin

at a strategic angle anyone entering would clatter it. This was usually enough

to arouse me from the sleepy penumbra into which I would inevitably have

drifted as a result of my long lunch. Startled into consciousness, I would

immediately resume my pose as a dedicated reader of scripts.

On particularly cold days, such as that icy January morning, I would wallow in

a compensatory fantasy which involved me, an unspecified Mediterranean

island, and Maria, the island·s most beautiful and sensuous woman, a sultry

golden-brown Latin beauty.

In the comfort of my warm room I would daydream that I had morphed into a

hugely successful writer, a kind of heterosexual Somerset Maugham, now living

abroad for tax purposes. Maria, who combined the literary sensibility of FR

Leavis with the body of a Playboy centerfold, would mop my creatively fevered

brow as she gently critiqued my day·s literary output.




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I would show my gratitude by rubbing copious amounts of sun lotion onto her

voluptuous breasts, accompanied only by the chirruping of the cicadas in the

Mediterranean haze.

But on that fateful morning the cicadas were chirruping longer and more

loudly than usual ² so much so that they pulled me out of my dream state ²

and I realised that it was not the cicadas which were chirruping, but my office

telephone.

I lunged towards the offending implement, cleared my throat and tried to

sound businesslike. The voice at the other end of the line had a clipped cut-

glass accent: ¶Hello, may I speak to Paul Pender?·

¶Oh no,· I thought, ¶It·s the Director General of the BBC, about to reprimand me

over his memo on the great shit/ shite debate.·

A few weeks earlier I had received a memo from BBC headquarters in London,

from the office of the Director General himself. Such memos were met with a

degree of enthusiasm hitherto matched only by those receiving the black spot

in ¶Treasure Island.· They always began with the dread phrase ¶In the opinion of

London.·

Whenever BBC Scotland employees received an ¶ In the opinion of London·

memo we felt as we were meant to feel ² like humble functionaries in a distant

outpost of Empire, receiving a command from Caesar to be obeyed on pain of

death. The subtext was ¶Listen, Jocks. We know you enjoy your delusions of

independence, but never forget we are your Lords and Masters. Yes, wear




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tartan skirts. Paint your faces blue if you like. But never forget who·s running

the show! Tug your forelock and do as we say, or the crucifix awaits.·

The memo concerned a script I was editing - a working class TV drama very

much in the then fashionable tradition sometimes described as ¶prolier than

thou.· You know the kind of thing. Every Scotsman is hard, angry, drunk,

drugged and violent, given to slashing men with razors and pummeling women

with his fists. The anti-heroes of these dramas spent their lives shooting up,

throwing up, or beating up. Such dramas gave our effete Lords and Masters in

London a frisson of danger, the literary equivalent of a bit of rough. The lives of

Glaswegian hard men seemed to offer an authenticity their own safe, soft little

button-downed lives lacked.

My memo from London read as follows:

¶In the opinion of London, the language used in the drama in question may be

deemed offensive by the majority of the viewing public. Although we appreciate

that the language must reflect the harsh life of the characters, it is the opinion of

London that 1 ¶shite· is as offensive as 2 ¶shits.· Using a points system on that

basis (1 point for a shit, 2 points for a shite) the script must contain no more than

10 points worth of the offensive material.·

My job was to communicate this profound insight to the writer whilst

maintaining credibility, not to mention a straight face.

I had found this memo so entertaining that in a well-oiled moment of Festive

exuberance I had passed a copy round at the Christmas party. I now assumed

some quisling had leaked it and I was about to be fired.




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When I said ¶This is Paul Pender speaking·, in what I hoped was an educated

Scots accent, to my amazement the voice on the other line instantly became

working class and guttural. It was as if Begbie from Trainspotting had just

headbutted the Director General and grabbed the phone from his hand. I was,

to say the least, confused.

¶Ah knew ye must be a Glesga Boy!· the voice on the other end raved. The

words poured out in a torrent. ¶Ah loved yir film The Bogie Man . That Robbie

Coltrane·s some actor, so he is! Funny as fuck! You·re the boy to write my

story! None of thae English wankers can get it right! I·ll tell you all about all my

fantastic scams, my stings, my cons. The Sting was a great film, but none of

their scams were as good as mine. I pulled off one of them a week. My name·s

Roy, by the way. Roy Fontaine.· After a short pause, he obligingly spelt it for

me.

¶Oh, hello, Roy,· I said, nonplussed. This was to be the beginning of a very

peculiar friendship.

The Bogie Man was a TV film which I had adapted from the graphic novel of the

same name. Remember when we use to call graphic novels ¶comics·, before we

started pretending they·re literature?

The film, which had been broadcast over the Christmas season on BBC2,

brought together in comedic form the themes of criminality and madness, and

featured a flamboyant, charismatic character who was convinced of his own

genius.




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Its hero, Clunie, played by Robbie Coltrane, escapes from a Glasgow lunatic

asylum, in the belief that he is Humphrey Bogart. He thinks that everything

that happens to him is part of a Bogart movie. Hence the title The Bogie Man.

I wrote lines like, ¶Clunie had a troubled childhood. His father was a heather

beater. Unfortunately, Heather was his mother.·

OK, I never said it was Citizen Kane , did I? It was never intended to be

anything more than a bauble on the BBC·s Christmas tree, a little Festive

present to the nation.

Clunie the Looney was a madman with a swaggering style, a mastery of accents

and an unshakeable belief in his own destiny. I didn·t know it at the time, but

that was the story of Roy·s life.

¶You·ve probably heard of me,· he said, as if the name Roy Fontaine were

famous. ¶I·m sorry, I haven·t, Roy.· I replied.

After a brief pause to massage his bruised ego, he continued.

¶I was Britain·s top jewel thief and confidence trickster,· he said proudly, ¶until I

was detained permanently at her Majesty·s pleasure. Looking at Her Majesty·s

sour old face I·d say she needs as much pleasure as she can get: it·s obvious

Prince Philip isn·t giving her any!·

I smiled at the thought. Whoever this Roy might be, he was already

entertaining me.

¶My story·s funny·, he added. ¶Funny as fuck.· I just need somebody to write it.

Somebody who gets the humour. I·m convinced you·re the man for the job.

Come down and see me in the next couple of weeks.·




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Telling him this was all a bit sudden, I said I·d do a little research and call him

back in a day or two. After a brief pause (was there something he wasn·t telling

me?) he agreed. We set a time for me to call him back and bade each other a

fond farewell.

I was intrigued. I wanted the Cole·s Notes version of Roy·s story to see if it was

as promising as he·d claimed. I needed what Auden called A Shilling Life to give

me all the facts. I called down to the BBC library, one of the research wonders

of the pre-digital world. This was 1993, remember, and though it now seems

incredible, Google did not exist, ¶You Tube!· was a term of abuse in Glasgow

(politely translated it means ¶You Idiot!·), and the Information Superhighway

was still a dirt track. Fortunately the BBC library was its very own Ministry of

Information.

A couple of hours later Moira the librarian called back, apologising for the

delay. ¶Sorry it took so long. He was filed under Archibald Hall. It took us a

while to work out that Roy Fontaine and Archibald Hall are the same person.·

That was my introduction to Planet Roy, where nothing is what it seems.

Moira delivered a buff-coloured folder bulging with press cuttings. I untied the

red ribbon like an excited kid opening a Christmas present, and saw a bunch

of headlines screaming out at me: I had my shilling life all right, and some

golden guineas to boot.

I stared at the photographs of the man to whom I had just been speaking. His

forehead was high, suggesting intelligence, and he had the full, sensual lips of

a libertine. He was handsome, and looked self-confident, even arrogant, with a




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rakish grin and an undeniable charm. The headlines made it clear that

everything he had told me was true.

Yes, he was a great confidence trickster. Yes, he brought panache, imagination

and (I can·t resist it) sparkle, to the world of jewelry theft, pulling off several of

the most inventive, ingenious and funny scams in the history of crime. He was,

up to a certain point in his criminal career, a loveable rogue, a real-life Raffles.

Roy had, however, left out one tiny but significant detail.

He·d murdered five people.

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The Butler Did It - My Curious Friendship with a Serial Killer (Chapter 1)