Whilst winding up his late father's affairs for his invalid mother Paul Standing finds an invoice from a London shop and goes to meet the owners, who claim that Paul's father owes them money for pornographic books they sent him. In fact the brothers are crooks who scour the obituary columns for the names of deceased worthies and then hit their relatives with the lie that the dead man owed them for erotic reading material, knowing that the ignorant next of kin will pay up to avoid a scandal.