Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 44, No. 7 & 8, July/August 1999

Father watched him go. More than that, my usually polite and circumspect Father shadowed him part of the way. He had reason, though: he wanted to discover which room was Claud’s so he wouldn’t accidentally walk into it uninvited.

Which isn’t to say that my parents immediately accepted this puzzling situation. They did not. On the contrary, I learned much later, they stayed up half the night discussing it. Mostly they tried to recall exactly what the real estate broker had said about Claud Heister and the way he’d said it. They finally went to bed after agreeing that the following morning Father would drive into New York to see the broker and discover exactly who Claud was and what he was doing in their new house. One thing only Father was certain of: there was no mention of Claud Heister in the real estate sales agreement.

The next morning Mother fixed waffles for breakfast. Normally she didn’t. Waffles were always something of a treat. Usually we had Quaker Oats or cream of wheat on cold mornings, and pancakes, bacon, and eggs or cold cereal on other mornings. It was obvious that she’d made them for Claud. It was the polite thing to do, of course.

“My oh my,” he said after he’d tasted one, which he’d saturated with Brer Rabbit molasses. “That is certainly a first-class waffle, Mrs. Hinton.”

“Is it as good as Mrs. Carstairs’ waffles?”

He took another bite, chewed very carefully, his eyes up at the ceiling, as though carefully weighing the question with both his brains and his tastebuds. We all watched him and waited for his verdict.

“You know,” he said at last, “I believe they are as good.”

Everybody breathed in relief. Even Father appeared pleased by the judgment.

That did not prevent him from driving into New York to see the broker. It did not help his disposition that the broker was out of town showing a house and that he had to wait at the man’s office until midafternoon.

I was not present for the meeting, of course, and only learned about it years later. Although polite as ever, Father was adamant in demanding an explanation. The broker said he’d told Father that Claud came with the house, but Father was having none of that. He had taken it as a joke, he said. Anyone would take such a comment as a joke. I don’t know what the broker thought he was doing when he tried to excuse the situation so lamely because obviously the effort would fail. Nobody would believe himself legally informed by such a casual statement.

In the end the broker had to provide a full explanation that made some sort of sense. I say “some sort” because no complete sense was ever made of the situation.

According to the broker, Claud Heister had lived in the house for at least three decades. No one — or more accurately, no one the broker knew of — was exactly sure how long he’d been there. He literally came with the house. He was not mentioned in the contracts, but he was there. Every new owner had been surprised in turn by his presence (apparently it was a practice of both seller and broker not to inform the buyer of everything he was getting) but had eventually accepted it.

“They recognized that Claud is a benefit,” said the broker.

“A benefit? How is it beneficial to have a man we don’t know living in our house?”

“Your country house,” corrected the broker. “You’re usually not there.”

“What’s that got to do with it?”

“Claud’s presence is a deterrent to thieves and vandals. Your house is safer because he’s in it. And when you are there, he’s barely noticeable. He occupies one bedroom.”

“But he’s not a member of my family.”

“Look at it this way. You have a watchman on your property, guarding it day and night twelve months of the year, paid for by the government.”

“The government?” asked Father.

“He lives on his Social Security. You pay him nothing. In return, your house is protected. You suffer no real inconvenience at his hands. All you give up is one bedroom in a five-bedroom house.”

“But... but he isn’t part of my family.”

“Mr. Hinton, he’s lived there for at least three decades. At least three. Do you really want to be responsible for evicting this man from his home?”

Of course that was the best argument in the world to use with my father. He caved. Claud became a permanent fixture at the Hinton country house — as he’d been before the Hintons had the country house.