Smithers & Shananigans At Shufflebury Manor

It was a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of trouble. Not the kind of trouble that involves sinister plots or clandestine dealings—no, Reggie's troubles were far more.accidental. Whether it was a misunderstanding over a misplaced umbrella or an unintentional engagement to a lady he scarcely knew, Reggie had a talent for tumbling into chaos with the grace of a giraffe on roller skates.

And so it was, with great reluctance, that Reggie once again found himself at the mercy of social obligation, this time in the form of his friend Algernon "Algy" Phipps—a man whose idea of subtlety was shouting "Surprise!" at his own birthday party. Algy had issued an invitation-or rather, a forceful summons-to spend the weekend at Shufflebury Manor, an ancestral estate that was better known for its absurdity than for its grandeur.

Shufflebury was the sort of place where idiosyncrasy thrived. The Duke of Shufflebury, a man who for reasons no one knew obsessed with obscure poetry, ruled over a household that included a dachshund called Herr Schnitzel who was loyal to the point of obsession, a collection of guests ranging from the delightfully peculiar to the downright bizarre, and a history of lost wills, secret passages, and family feuds that could fill several volumes.