“Here goes,” I muttered, and pointed my car down the driveway - whose condition suggested that the owners had given up maintaining it about the same time they’d abandoned the poor boxwoods. The driveway seemed longer because I had to drive three miles an hour, but still - this was a large lot. And when I emerged from the boxwood tunnel in front of the house, I was so startled that I almost ran into a crumbling sundial.
If Alfred Hitchcock hadn’t modeled the house in Psycho on this place, then surely Edward Gorey had found inspiration here. It was a three-story gray Victorian, complete with a widow’s walk on the top, and sporting several dozen odd turrets, gables, bay windows, balconies, and other architectural flourishes. I spotted one tall, stately window that wasn’t marred with either cracked glass or boarded-over panes, but if there was a square foot of unpeeled paint or undamaged gingerbread, it had to be on the back of the house. A lugubrious weeping willow appeared to be dying of some wasting disease in the front yard. I followed a trampled path through the foot-high weeds to the porch.
“A real fixer-upper,” I said, craning my neck to see if the shingles had finished falling into the yard or if there were still a few lurking up there, waiting to land on unwary visitors.
Someone had nailed unpainted boards in place of the missing porch steps, and the porch floor seemed sound enough to hold me. Fighting the tendency to look over my shoulder - not to mention the superstitious expectation that if I did, I’d see a tall, cadaverous figure with a black cape and very pointed teeth - I managed to unlock the door.
And almost turned and ran. Not that the inside was scarier than the outside. Quite the contrary. Although equally neglected-looking, the interior was so unrelentingly cozy that I had a moment of panic, thinking that I must have come to the wrong house and was about to be arrested for trespassing.
“Don’t be daft,” I told myself. “It’s the right address, and the key fits.”
I closed the door behind me - yes, it creaked - and began slowly and carefully making my way through the house. Slowly and carefully, because nearly every square foot of floor was covered with furniture or small, fussy throw rugs, and nearly every square inch of horizontal table or shelf space with objects, most of them small and breakable.
Three sets of wind chimes and a bumper crop of cobwebs dangled from the crystal chandelier in the foyer. Three drab coats, a tangled mass of canes, and several dozen battered black umbrellas occupied the huge Victorian coat stand to my left, while to my right, a hall table displayed a heterogeneous collection of marble obelisks, painted china eggs, miniature foo dog statues, seashells, mineral specimens, and brass bells. I made the mistake of trying to draw aside the velvet curtain that partly filled the archway from the foyer to the living room, and the resulting dust cloud sent me into a fit of coughing so violent that all the tiny spiders I’d dislodged had managed to hide themselves by the time I recovered.
The living room held four mismatched velvet couches, their colors softened by time except where someone had recently moved one of the lace doilies or antimacassars, and so covered with needlepoint pillows that I doubt a small child could have found room to sit on them.
The massive velvet curtains might be wonderful insulation in the winter, but I longed to jerk them aside and fling open a few windows. The temperature outside had finally begun to drop, but inside it was near one hundred degrees. But touching the curtains would disturb months - maybe years - of accumulated dust. I didn’t want to leave that much evidence of my visit.
So I blotted the sweat from my face with the hem of my shirt and tiptoed past glass-fronted bookcases bulging with faded, dusty books and odd bric-a-brac. A collection of elegant glass paperweights shared space with several dozen souvenir models of buildings and landmarks from around the world. I particularly liked the way the plaster Statue of Liberty seemed to be conversing with the miniature of The Thinker, and how the Eiffel Tower seemed to be in the backyard of the White House.
“Okay, Ted,” I said aloud as I dodged a giant dead fern perched on a tiny fretted Victorian plant stand and narrowly missed overturning a whatnot filled with tiny china cats and shepherdesses. “I can think of three explanations for this. One - you were going to give up programming for an exciting new career selling antiques, collectibles, and kitsch. Especially kitsch.”
On the whole, I thought that explanation unlikely.
Wouldn’t a dealer have better taste? I paused for a moment, distracted, to inspect a small curio cabinet that seemed to be entirely filled with the kind of little ceramic birds and frogs florists use to decorate inexpensive potted plants.