I Bought a $6 Million Lake Mansion at a Tax Auction Without Ever Going Inside. It Came With a 74-Year-Old Butler

I put the key in the lock, and the front door opened from the inside.

A tall old man in a black waistcoat looked down at me. Silver hair combed straight back. Posture like a flagpole. A pocket watch on a chain.

“Mr. Fitzpatrick,” he said. “Welcome home, sir. You’re late.”

I looked at the key in my hand. I looked at him.

“Who on earth are you?”

“Penhallow, sir. Alistair Penhallow. I am the butler.”

“I didn’t buy a butler.”

“No, sir,” he said. “You bought the house. I was already in it.”

I’m Ronan Fitzpatrick. Forty-nine. Single, Irish on both sides, and the son of a tractor mechanic from Janesville, Wisconsin. I built a chain of farm equipment dealerships across three states and sold it last spring for more money than my father earned in his whole life.

I’d always wanted a house on Lake Geneva. As a boy I’d stared at the old mansions from the tour boat and promised myself.

So when the county put Thornbury House up for a tax auction, I bid. Stone walls, a slate roof, eleven bedrooms, four hundred feet of shoreline. The heirs had been fighting over it in probate for two years and never paid the property taxes.

I won it for a fraction of what it was worth. I’d never been inside.

“Tea is in the library,” said Penhallow, stepping aside.

“How long have you lived here?”

“Fifty-one years, sir.”

He took my coat.

“And I’m afraid we need to discuss the roof.”