Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. Vol. 49, No. 1 & 2, January/February 2004

The house had belonged to the brigadier’s father, Major-General George Thundackaray-Harding, who had filled it with beautiful old furniture. Actually, that wasn’t quite true. His wife Viola had furnished it, and because the general was very old, and his wife very young, well, much younger than the general, he had let her furnish it as she desired. Viola Thundackaray-Harding had furnished the whole house with superb antique furniture, lovely old china, beautiful carvings, and tapestries. The house and its contents went untouched to their only son William, who followed his father into the army, but, unlike him, did not wait to retire from the army before he took a wife. He married Violet Gumfries, and they lived happily in the large house he had inherited. Had the war lasted longer than it did, or had there been more wars, he probably would have made major general. But fate was unkind to him. When hostilities ceased, he retired as brigadier.

Once he came home, his wife Violet had found that she could not cope with the amount of housework required by such a large establishment and a husband as well. Her part-time maid just would not do, and refused to move in. There was no need to look far for help. The general’s batman, a local St. Albans man, had not survived the war, and his wife was available. She accepted the post of housekeeper, moved in with them, and the three settled down contentedly to middle and old age.

It was the housekeeper, Mrs. Stammers, who suggested the three major additions which occurred in the appearance of the house, within and without. The first of these was the installation of central heating. Mrs. Thundackaray-Harding said she could not bear all those men tramping over her house, putting their rough hands on all that well-polished furniture, and, perhaps, breaking her beautiful china. Mrs. Stammers, on the other hand, had set her heart on having the house centrally heated. She proposed a compromise in the best tradition of British public life. Every year, all three of them moved for a month to Spain, where the brigadier rented a villa by the sea. Mrs. Stammers suggested that the two go ahead without her, and as soon as the central heating was installed, she would clear up the mess, repolish the furniture, and then join them for the rest of the holiday. The brigadier, a brave man who had borne the hardships of military service with Spartan fortitude, gallantly offered to eat in Spanish restaurants till she rejoined them, to save his wife the rigors of preparing meals. All this agreed upon, the general and his wife set off. Mrs. Stammers coped extremely well. The workmen were bribed with meals and an occasional tot from the general’s supply of whisky, and in the event, there was no need to repolish the furniture or pick up bits of china.

The brigadier’s wife, when they all returned from Spain, complained that such a modern innovation as central heating spoiled the internal appearance of the house, clashing with the furniture, the china, and the tapestries. But when winter set in, and she was warm and snug, she decided that the contrast was really quite interesting, and one must not stand in the way of progress.

About ten years later, Mrs. Stammers felt able to introduce yet another innovation: the television. The brigadier’s wife was adamant in her refusal to have one, but she had been equally adamant about central heating. The brigadier declared a state of neutrality.

There was no doubt at all that had those been the days when women were allowed as equals within the ranks of the Foreign Office, Mrs. Stammers would have written her name in large letters as a peacemaker, a precursor of the great Dr. Henry Kissinger. She suggested that the television should be installed in her quarters (she had a bedroom and a small sitting room, which she hardly ever used, spending most of her time in attendance or chatting to the general and his wife in their sitting room). Brigadier and Mrs. Thundackaray-Harding could come and watch it whenever they wished. If they liked it, it would be moved to their sitting room. It took Mrs. Thundackaray-Harding a little longer to become reconciled to this innovation, but the brigadier, a keen sportsman, found watching the horses (inter alia) on television so much more interesting than listening to the races on the radio. Mrs. Thundackaray-Harding gave way, on the grounds that the brigadier should be spared having to climb all the way up to Mrs. Stammers’s quarters. When color television arrived, the largest and best set was installed in the sitting room and the old black and white set relegated to the attic (this was not a household that threw anything away). The notion of Mrs. Stammers watching television on her own was never entertained, of course.