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

“I must tell you something else, dear lady. That very lovely, that very beautiful china cabinet, I really don’t know how to break the news to you, but I am sure you would rather hear it from me than from someone else, less well disposed towards you...” He leaned forward and his voice began to drop. “That very beautiful china cabinet, full of all those very beautiful china pieces, I notice it has woodworm.” He stopped dramatically. “It’s got woodworm in several places. Too late to be treated! And do you know what that means? It will spread. It will spread to other pieces of furniture, till they too are full of woodworm. And when all your furniture, all your beautiful, beautiful furniture is full of woodworm...” He paused and very dramatically jabbed a finger into the air, all the while fanning out the banknotes in his other hand. “The woodworm will permeate the floor,” he said very slowly, drawing out every syllable, “and when it has permeated the floor...” By this time his voice had dropped so low she had to strain her ears to hear what he was saying. He waved his hands to show everything collapsing, “The house will collapse with all your lovely, lovely things in it. Dear lady, what are you going to do then?”

Mrs. Stammers got terribly agitated. “Cannot anything be done?” she wailed.

“Ah, but yes,” he said gravely, and paused, “ah, but yes.”

“What, what can be done?”

“Harry Clauson to the rescue. I shall take that cabinet off your hands, and I shall even pay you enough to get another.”

“Oh, but I couldn’t. I just couldn’t... it’s not as if... I am only here as, as...”

“A guardian, a worthy guardian of the past. But what of the future? Think of the future. Think of all that woodworm permeating the house and then... boom boom!”

Here he began to lay out the banknotes as if they were so many cards being laid out for solitaire.

“Would you like me to see if there is anything else which has woodworm?”

She nodded dumbly.

Clauson went round the sitting room and then the dining room. There was woodworm there... and there... and there... and, oh what a shame... here too. And every time he found woodworm in a piece of furniture he laid down banknotes on it, as if this would remove the infestation. After a while, Clauson got quite carried away himself.

“There are several things I’ll have to check tomorrow — I’m not sure how bad the woodworm is, but I wouldn’t like to remove anything which could be saved. Besides, I’ve run out of money and a gentleman never pays by check... certainly not... it’s cash amongst friends.”

It just so happened that a friend of Mr. Clauson had a large van, that he was close by, and they would take all that woodwormy stuff away with the least possible inconvenience to the dear, dear lady.

The very next day Mr. Clauson called again with Bill. Bill, he explained, was a woodworm inspector, a woodworm inspector of the greatest expertise and probity. It wouldn’t cost her anything. Bill would do it as a personal favor to him, because he, Harry Clauson, had given him a testimonial which led to his present employment.

Bill declared certain items as being safe, others as being not too advanced in infestation, and therefore capable of being saved by appropriate treatment, and still others as beyond hope. The items to be treated, he told her, she could rescue herself by using some of the special liquid available only to the trade. Since she was a friend of Mr. Clauson, who had been so good to him, he’d brought her a goodly supply, which she could apply at leisure. But she was never to tell anyone where it had come from. The tin was, of course, unmarked.

As for Harry Clauson, the sight of all the furniture and china which he hoped to lay his hands on was causing him to lose his cool, his gentlemanly manner. His speech was no longer as polished as it had been the previous day. He actually referred to the readies

(meaning cash), and he gulped down the sandwiches instead of nibbling at them. He drank more of the general’s whisky than he should have, and pressed it on Mrs. Stammers, who drank it, and coughed and spluttered because she wasn’t used to that amount of the stuff.

Harry Clauson and his partner went out and celebrated that night. “I haven’t even started on the upstairs,” he said, “and then there is all that china. That’s what I’d like to get my hands on.”

“Don’t overdo it, Harry” said his partner. “The old lady might tumble to you yet.”

“So what,” said Harry dismissively. “It’s all perfectly legal! There’s no comeback. If she’s stupid enough to sell at the price I offer, it’s her lookout. It’s not as if I’m stealing it.”

As work on the roof progressed, Mrs. Stammers fed the workmen, bringing out the food and tea or beer to them, managing to keep them out of the house as much as possible, confining them to the kitchen, so that they could not see the house being progressively emptied... unless they wondered what the van was constantly taking away.

Harry Clauson called on her daily.