Candle in the Attic Window(33)

And now I was ready, by my father’s will. The firm, now owned by Stephen Larabie, had apparently kept an eye on my own various comings and goings, as well as the house. And so, three days after Amelia and I had returned from our honeymoon, I received the telegram that had brought me back to this place, at best still scarcely half-recollected, that yet had so overshadowed my first years.

So ran my thoughts now as I reached the bridge and, turning my lights on low, carefully picked my way across it. Fortunately, the fog seemed less thick on the river’s town side and, even though it was starting to get dark, I found the hotel I had made reservations at with surprisingly little trouble. Since I was tired from a full day’s drive, I checked into my room, and showered and changed first, then decided to have a couple of drinks and something to eat in the small restaurant I had earlier spotted just off the lobby.

When I sat down, the hostess smiled at me. Somehow, I found that I couldn’t help thinking how much the opposite, and yet, in terms of the abstract of beauty, how much the same she was as Amelia. Where, for example, my own wife was blonde and her figure slender, the restaurant hostess was every bit as buxom and dark. Where Amelia was quiet, the hostess appeared, as other customers came to be seated, almost too vivacious. And afterward, when she winked at me while I took out my card to pay the bill, I learned that even her name was much like my wife’s, and yet unlike it, as well.

Her name was “Anise”.

When I returned to my room later on, I placed my wife’s picture on the dresser and went to sleep quickly. The first thing next morning, I looked up Attorney Larabie’s office. As soon as I strode in through the door, I was struck by how quickly my mind recalled the tiniest details of my visit, some thirty years past, down to and including the stain on the wood floor where I had dropped one of the young lawyer’s pens. The man who confronted me now, however, must have been fifty-five or sixty.

“Mr. Parrish?” he said, extending his hand. “Mr. Joseph Parrish?”

I nodded and accepted his handshake.

“Are you Stephen Larabie? I got your telegram ....”

“Yes,” he said, before I could add more. Still gripping my hand, he pulled me over to a table and sat me down, then produced a thick sheaf of papers. “Couple of things I’ll need you to sign first,” he continued. “That’ll most likely take up the whole morning, so, unless you have some objection, I thought we might have a quick lunch after that and then take a look at the house together.”

I nodded, wondering somewhat distractedly if lunch would be at the hotel restaurant and, if so, if the hostess, Anise, would be on duty for that meal, as well. I shook the thought away and, soon enough, became lost in contracts and deeds, instead. Lunch, in fact, turned out to be a quick affair at a hamburger place just outside of town, on the way to the bridge. And then, as river fog started to thin, giving some hope of a clear if not wholly sun-filled afternoon, we found ourselves on the steep and winding road up the cliff on the other side.

Larabie turned to me while I was driving. “How much do you remember of your father?” he asked. “Or, for that matter, of your mother?”

“Very little,” I had to confess. I searched my memory and nothing came, yet I had the feeling that if I just waited – waited until I was inside the house that they had lived in ....

“You do know, at least, that your father was murdered?”Larabie paused, reacting, perhaps, to what I imagined was my blank expression. I had no such memory.

“That’s what the police said, in any event,” he finally continued, after some seconds. I did remember that when, with my cousin, I had been in his office before, the younger Larabie had struck me as being every bit as taciturn about giving out excessive information.

“Did they catch the man who did it?” I asked. Again, attempt to recall as I might, I had no memory – at least not yet – and hence no real feeling one way or the other. But I was beginning to have a foreboding.

“Figured it was probably a drifter,” Larabie answered, his voice sounding thoughtful. “A lot of people were moving from town to town in those days – mostly farmers who’d been foreclosed on. Big farms forcing out smaller holdings. And you’ve got to realize that this was a small town. People generally disliked sharing local troubles with outsiders. So, the police just poked around a little outside the house – set up a few roadblocks – but they never did catch him.”

“M-my mother wasn’t murdered, too, was she?” It had suddenly occurred to me what he might have been trying to hint at and, while I didn’t really remember her any more than I did my father, the thought of my mother’s death by violence somehow was shocking.

“Oh no,” he said quickly. “In fact it was her who phoned the police. Figured she must have been out when it happened and had you with her, but came home just after. Sort of a lucky reversal for her, though, that that’s the way it worked out.” He hesitated for a moment.

“What do you mean?”

“It was your father who usually went out while she and you were the ones left behind.” He hesitated, again, then frowned. “I may as well tell you; your father was somewhat of a ladies’ man. Good-looking man even in his late thirties, just like you, and everyone knew it – except maybe her. Used to be a whorehouse where the hotel is now and some said he spent more time in that than he did in his own house.”