Parson's Pleasure (short story)

"Parson's Pleasure" is a short story written by Roald Dahl, first published in 1959. It is included in Dahl's 1960 short story collection "Kiss Kiss".

Plot summary

Mr Cyril Boggis is an antique dealer in Chelsea, London. He does not have a large shop, but he still manages to make a profit each year by buying the most remarkable pieces of furniture at very low prices and selling them for large profits. His friends in the trade wonder where he finds such rare items so regularly. It turns out that Mr Boggis's scheme is rather simple: he dresses up as a clergyman and visits English farmhouses under the pretenses of writing articles for the Society for the Preservation of Rare Furniture. When he finds something valuable, he makes the person an offer and then sells the item in his shop for twenty times as much.

On this particular trip he is travelling the county of Buckinghamshire and comes across three locals (Claud, Bert, and Rummins) near a dirty, ramshackle farmhouse. Once he convinces them to let him inside, he is astonished to see a Chippendale Commode standing in the living room. The Commodes were made by the famous 18th-century furniture maker Thomas Chippendale, and only three others were known to be in existence. Boggis nearly faints when he realises that this piece could fetch up to twenty thousand pounds in an auction. He recovers, though, and mentions that he needs a new set of legs for a table he has at home. The ones on the commode, he says, would just fit. Rummins is doubtful, and so Boggis cons him into thinking that the piece is simply a worthless Victorian reproduction. He finally ends up purchasing the commode for the grand total of twenty pounds.

After he leaves to get his car, the three men decide to help him out by cutting the legs off for him. Rummins also speculates that the parson might cancel the deal if he cannot fit the entire piece into his car (he does not know that Boggis has a station wagon), so Claud takes an axe and breaks the commode to pieces. "I'll tell you one thing," he says. "That was a bloody good carpenter put this job together and I don't care what the parson says." At that moment, Mr Boggis drives up in his car.