“You know, there’s nothing wrong with my life that couldn’t be solved with one thing,” I said.

“What, money?”

“No — a butler! I just need somebody whose entire job it is to solve my problems!”

My beloved frowned. I knew what he was thinking. “You’re thinking that’s why you married me, aren’t you?”

“That’s ridiculous,” he sputtered — a full confession. “Anyway, what in our perfect life needs fixing?”

“Oh, the garage needs a power wash and painting, and the bedroom windowsill has dry rot, and the basement’s a swamp, and none of my clothes fit anymore, and there’s nothing to eat in the house.”

“Is that all?”

“No, the car’s inspection is overdue, but we have no appointment, plus it needs a replacement part I can’t even pronounce. And I have so many books all the bookshelves are full, but I don’t know which ones to give away. Plus, I’m sure I heard something scrambling over the bedroom ceiling last night, which probably means something unauthorized is living in the attic!”

I said the last part with a little shudder.

“That is rather a long list of woes,” sympathized my husband. “I hadn’t realized. Where do you want to begin?”

I didn’t answer. I was already daydreaming. What would Bunter do?

Bunter is the man servant (or, as he would prefer to phrase it, “the gentleman’s gentleman”) to Lord Peter Wimsey, who was the creation of British mystery writer Dorothy Sayers. In “Busman’s Honeymoon,” her 11TH and final novel featuring them both, Peter invites Bunter to join him and his recent bride Harriet at a pub for dinner as a break from their recent discovery of a body in the cellar of their newly purchased house.

“But Bunter respectfully requested to be omitted from the party — unless, of course, his lordship required his services. He would prefer, if permitted, to utilize the leisure so kindly placed at his disposal in a visit to the local pub. He should be interested to make the acquaintance of some of the local inhabitants.

“Which means,” said Peter, interpreting the decision to Harriet, “that Bunter wants to get a side-line through the local gossip on the late victim and all his household. In addition, he would like to establish diplomatic relations with the publican, the coal-merchant, the man who grows the best vegetables, the farmer who happens to have cut down a tree and can oblige with logs, the butcher who ages his meat longest, the village carpenter and the man who does a job about the drains … Nothing is ever gained by diverting Bunter from his own mysterious ends.”

All through the pandemic, this list of accomplishments kept rattling through my head. How, I wondered, would Bunter have gotten that dry rot fixed in the midst of a pandemic, when not even a handyman could come inside the house?

Somehow I felt sure that Bunter would find a way, even if he had to rent a Scuba-diving suit for the handyman and a window-washer’s scaffold. Perhaps the man could keep the suit on and check the attic for rodents.

As for my car, I’m sure Bunter’s call to the nearest pub would find someone willing to help. Maybe they could even pronounce the name of the whatever that came off the car. Don’t ask me. All I know is that it made a terrible scraping sound and must be back-ordered from a factory on the dark side of the Moon.

Murder mysteries feature butlers of every shape and size. Magersfontein Lugg, a former burglar and prizefighter, is the man servant to Margery Allingham’s Albert Campion. He is most un-dapper, but he knows how to pick locks; how to spot a criminal henchman from across a field; even how to mix a “pick-me-up” for the man who has everything, including amnesia.

Arguably the most famous butler of all — Jeeves — is the central genius of P.G. Wodehouse’s comedies about Bertie Wooster. Bertie is affable, wealthy, and a mainstay of the Drones Club for idle gentlemen, but he is also “mentally negligible,” as his disapproving Aunt Agatha would put it. And he would be taken terrible advantage of by every drifter, conman and ambitious floozy on either side of the Atlantic if it weren’t for Jeeves, who somehow has everything sorted out by the end of each story.

Suddenly, the answer to at least one of my problems is crystal clear. Whatever else I do, I must hang onto my murder mystery and Wodehouse books. The life advice they contain is priceless!