Seldom Go By

For starters, I was an eyewitness. I can bring out details that were skipped or garbled and throw new light on the players and moves.

Further, I admit, my interest is personal. Perhaps in writing it all down, I can escape my ghastly recurring nightmare. It’s hell! I still wake in a cold sweat and sit up for hours, afraid to close my eyes. According to my shrink, the demon is guilt. . . .

But let’s begin at a beginning--say, when I arrived in Washington that torrid afternoon in 1951.

What a drag to have to come fifteen or twenty miles from Union Station by streetcar in the evening rush! I had told my aunt I was broke, but the check she sent barely covered the train fare. In her view, penniless students didn’t rate planes or taxis.

I mention this petty resentment so as not to seem evasive about anything as grave as murder. "It goes to motive," as the prosecutors like to say. All right, I confess that Aunt Esterline often drove me to distraction. I hasten to add, though, that the guilt, which I acknowledge, was from neglect, not the darker crime. I had a feeling for her that went much deeper than her stinginess, and her trying to run my life, and even the famous will in which we were all to share. Besides, I couldn’t possibly have executed the murders in that gruesome way. But I was a suspect and I want to explain that, and why the police badgered me until they finally nailed the killer.

The lack of cab fare wasn’t the only thing that irked me around that time. There was also her holding back on my tuition for the fall term; her invitation to "come join the fold," whatever that meant; the prospect of a prolonged visit with a middle-aged, widowed aunt. The trip itself was nothing. In fact, I like trains and streetcars.

But it was early August, and hot. Muggy, like only Washington can be. If I had taken the conductor’s word and ridden to the next stop and walked back down the hill-- But I walked up, past half the eateries and junk shoppes and phony antique stores in historic old Georgetown. A young man in his shirtsleeves, even lugging a suitcase containing everything he owned, shouldn’t have been so bushed, but I was out of condition. Then I staggered down the long side street, past town houses and mansions and, at last, cooling trees. When I reached the cemetery, remembered well from childhood, I started to look for Seldom Go By.

And there it stood, stately, imposing, venerable. Ivied brick, with slate roofs and gables, portico in front, verandah on the side. I opened the rusty gate and followed the stone walk past the concrete bench where my father once sat, locked out by the Virtuous Sisters (Esterline and Kathleen, my mother). The sundial, too, was still there, still fouled with weeds and bird dung, for even time had forsaken that abandoned garden, if nothing else. I mounted the stone steps, raised the tarnished knocker on the studded door. . . .

What happened next is a little confused. Evidently I blacked out as I stepped from the hot brightness into the hall. When I came to, maybe only a minute or so later, I was sitting by the door and Valerie was asking from afar if I was all right. I didn’t know her name yet, of course. She didn’t tell me until she had brought water and I had stopped seeing spots in place of stained glass or faded wallpaper or the young woman’s anxious face.

I wanted to ask, What are you doing here? What’s your relationship to Esterline Hill? She was petite and pretty, even shapely, and thus a pleasant surprise in that setting. It was almost as hot inside as out (few old houses were air conditioned then), and her face was flushed and a little moist. She wore a loosely buttoned silk blouse, tight white slacks, and sandals. Let’s say I was equally puzzled and impressed.

We traded platitudes while I wondered whether I would pass out again and why she was being so attentive. She seemed to regard me as someone important. I can’t say, though, that I felt she was attracted.

Then Aunt Esterline called from upstairs. "Valerie, who’s that?"

Half addressing me, Valerie replied, "I suppose it’s Roger Kent--your not-so-dashing nephew."

"What? You’ll have to speak louder."

Valerie repeated my name, more toward my aunt’s voice, and added, "I’ll bring him up."

The staircase creaked and motes swarmed in amber sunbeams at the landings. The grandfather clock struck a wrong hour. An orange cat slunk across the Oriental

rug in the foyer below. Quaint; but I was still hot and dizzy, and not in the least affected by the ambiance. In fact, weeks were to pass before the spell of Seldom Go By would touch me--with its skeletal fingers, properly gloved.

**********

And that, more or less, was how it all began. I’ve tried to recapture the triviality, the lightness of tone. It will be easier to describe what happened later than to remember how we were then, before tragedy changed our views and lives.

Murder, I discovered, does that. It changes and effaces so that even one’s memory of the persons involved becomes warped. It’s more than a death, more than terror and catastrophe; for the players and sets, the very stage itself are ever after tainted. I’ll never be able to think of those people or the old house without . . .

But let me resume now, and recall who and what I was, and how we all were, before horror came to Seldom Go By.