Externally, ffinch Hall was one of those gloomy, sombre country-houses which seem to exist only for the purpose of having horrid crimes committed in them. Even in his brief visit to the grounds, Wilfred had noticed fully half a dozen places which seemed incomplete without a cross indicating spot where a body was found by the police. It was the sort of a house where ravens croak in the front garden just before the death of the heir, and shrieks ring out from behind barred windows in the night. Nor was its interior more cheerful.
And, as for the personnel of the domestic staff, that was less exhilaraing than anything else about the place. It consisted of an aged cook who, as she bent over her cauldrons, looked like something out of a travelling company of Macbeth, touring the smaller towns of the North, and Murgatroyd, the butler, a huge, sinister man with a cast in one eye and an evil light in the other.
(from Meet Mr. Mulliner, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
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