Candle in the Attic Window(34)
“Really?” I asked. I was about to ask him more when we reached the crest of the hill we were climbing. The road widened and, just at that moment, a ray of sun burst through the clouds overhead. The house could now be seen suddenly rising, dominating the next ridge over, in all its flamboyant, old-fashioned splendor.
As we approached, it loomed higher and higher, the light glinting off the gingerbread scrollwork that framed the huge front third-story gable. I pulled up into its curving driveway, got out of the car and let my eyes wander – below the trim of the gable, in shadow, the arch of a balcony pointed yet higher to the great tower, half-impaled by the slant to its right, and the cast-iron finialed crest of the main hip roof behind it. And yet above that, thrust to the sky, the three major chimneys – the tallest one crowned with a wired, glass-balled spire that was meant to catch lightning, my new memory prompted – added their own bursting streaks of colour. An almost blood-coloured patterned-brick red, when the sun struck full on it, that, in the jumbled gray and white of friezes and rails of the building below them, was matched alone by the stained-glass red of the tower’s downward-spiraling ovals.
I walked, as if in a dream, to the house – apparently long-repressed memories came back of the tower windows lighting a second and third-story staircase before it curved backward up into the attic. Others of diamond-panes in the front parlour. I scarcely noticed Larabie’s presence until we stood on the broad front veranda.
“You’ll notice we kept the property up for you, Mr. Parrish,” the lawyer said. “Painted it most recently only last summer, in fact.” He pulled a notebook out of his pocket, along with a large, old-fashioned iron key. “You’ll notice we nailed up the lower-floor windows with furring strips – this far from town, why take any chances? – but, once we’re inside, the smaller fireplaces you’ll see sealed off were boarded up in your grandfather’s time. After they put in the central gas heating.”
I nodded dumbly. Yes. I remembered. One of the lesser, back-left chimneys went down to the basement. I watched as he twisted the key in the door, only half-noticing that it opened with hardly a squeak. I smelled the fresh oil – they had, apparently, kept up the inside as well as the outside – not just of hinges, but of the darkly polished woodwork that surrounded us as we stepped into the shallow, box-like reception hall.
“Just a moment, now, Mr. Parrish.” Larabie spoke in almost a whisper. He handed me the first of the keys then produced a second. He twisted it in a smaller lock, across from the entrance we had just come through, then pushed back the double sliding doors that opened the wall to the huge, oak-paneled, main staircase hall.
“Your mother went with this house, Mr. Parrish,” Larabie said, as he stood aside to let me look. To try to remember. Second only in size to the large formal dining room, the hall, with its stairs angling up to the right and around the back wall, was the dominant feature of the first floor. “Your mother was frail, white-skinned and slender, with pale-blonde hair,” the attorney continued. “There were times when she would descend, the white of her clothes standing out, as well, from the dark wood around her, and look the perfect Victorian lady. Times when I’d come here on legal business ....”
I nodded. I saw. I remembered my mother on that staircase, saw in her now, in retrospect, the thin, almost-sickly Romantic ideal that would have held sway, not so much in her time here, but generations before when the house had been first constructed. I longed now to climb the stairs – now I remembered how she would pause at the corner landing, letting me dash to her so we could go to the main hall together. But first, I had to know something more.
I turned to Larabie.
“You told me, just before we came to the top of the cliff, that my father was murdered. But not my mother ....”
“No, Mr. Parrish. She was the one who called the police – I think I may have said that, already – but, when they arrived here, they came through the sliding doors, just as we did, and the only person they found in the hall was you. You told them your mother had gone away. That was all you would tell them. But when they asked you about your father, you pointed, silently, to the rear archway that leads to the kitchen.”
More memory came back – the memory of blood. Of wanting to forget what I ....
“Under the circumstances,” I heard the attorney continue, as if at a distance, “no one blamed your mother. For leaving you that way. She must have been so horribly frightened – and she did keep her wits about her long enough to make sure help came. She had always been such a frail woman ....”
Incongruously, I thought of my wife, then – fragile and pale. The bride I would send for who, people might say, would fit comfortably in with this house, as well. Then – stark contrast – of yet another detail I suddenly found I remembered. My father had been murdered in the kitchen, had almost staggered out past the pantry, past the back stairs and into the service hall, when he had fallen.
An axe in his back.
I must have begun to look Victorian-pale, myself. I felt the attorney’s hand on my shoulder. Now I remembered the men in uniform, blood being cleaned up in the kitchen later by neighbours, my own panic at missing my mother. My wondering when I would see her come down the main staircase again.
“Mr. Parrish?” Larabie’s voice was very low. “Mr. Parrish – perhaps you’d like to come out for some fresh air?”