Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 44, No. 7 & 8, July/August 1999

I first saw him when I was seven years old. A realtor who specialized in country estates was showing us the living room of a house on a seventy acre nonworking “farm” in Connecticut. It was a red brick house with white storm shutters, and nearby there was a gentle rock-strewn brook that tumbled quietly through an ancient oak grove. The house would be ample for my parents, my two sisters, and myself without requiring a housekeeper or other help. The living room had a vaulted ceiling, built-in bookcases, a maple floor, a stone fireplace, and tall, clear, very large multipaned windows. The broker, a perpetually smiling middle-aged man of lofty stature and prematurely silver hair, was pointing to a three-pronged electrical outlet as proof that the old house had been rewired. Being a child, I saw no significance in the fact, since the wires were inside the walls, i.e. invisible, and therefore it shouldn’t matter whether they were old or new, but my father seemed pleased to hear it. I assumed that he was only being polite. My father — and my mother too, for that matter — were polite to a fault. It was at that moment that a lanky, slightly stooped man of sixty or more years dressed in a denim workshirt and faded overalls walked through the front door. He nodded to us as he crossed the living room toward a door that led into the hall. He disappeared through the door.

For a moment everyone was too stunned to say anything.

“That’s just Claud Heister,” said the broker at last. He laughed. “He comes with the house.”

My parents laughed, so I and my sisters — although too young to understand the joke — did also. The broker resumed showing the remainder of the property, and Claud Heister was forgotten.

After the tour my father told the broker that he would call tomorrow to let him know if he was interested in making an offer. I was hoping that he would be interested. I really liked the place. There was plenty of room to play and to ride the horse that I believed I would receive someday. My sisters, who at five and four were too young to understand what was happening, watched and listened to the conversation without perception or bias. But I wanted him to buy.

My parents had been actively looking for a house in Connecticut for almost a month. It was to serve as a weekend and holiday retreat from our home in New York City. Most of our friends owned retreats in Connecticut or the Hamptons. For me, the place we had seen that day was perfect.

It turned out that my view wasn’t an isolated one. After we’d all slid into my father’s Imperial, my father asked Mother what she thought of the farm. “I think it’s perfect,” she said.

“Good,” he said. “I feel the same. It’s larger than we’d discussed, and will cost more than we’d budgeted, but we can swing it.”

Swing it they did. Several days of negotiation ended with the purchase. There was a further delay in our going there while Mother acquired exactly the right sort of furniture she wanted for the living room, dining room, master bedroom, and the two bedrooms that we kids would occupy. Furniture for the other rooms could wait, but Mother insisted on acquiring the basic stuff immediately.

Finally, after days of impatient waiting, moving day arrived. This was the long-awaited moment when the movers would haul all the furnishings from the storage warehouse in the Bronx to the house in Connecticut. They would follow the Imperial, and later Mother would direct them in the placement of the new furniture. Actually, because Mother had complete charge of where things went, there was little need for the rest of us, but Father was the family’s only licensed driver and they couldn’t have kept us children away without enduring more crying, whining, and complaining than it would have been worth.

When we reached the farm, my father parked beyond the front porch so the movers would have plenty of room. He had already cautioned us children to stay out of the way and out of the house, and he did it again right after we left the car. When Father went to open the front door of the house, he found it unlocked. He looked surprised but not concerned. The movers backed their van up to the front porch and began unloading. I remember that the first item they took out was the long mahogany cabinet that now belongs to my sister Alicia. Mother followed the movers into the house to show them where she wanted it, while Father strolled over to a garage that once had been a barn. My sisters and I stayed to watch the movers.