Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 125, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 763 & 764, March/April 2005

I have made the decision to do away with Aunt Gloria twice in my life. The first time was when I was eight years old, but the execution was baulked. The second was quite recently. I am now thirty-six, which I mention to demonstrate just how long the period was when, despite a continued smouldering stern resentment, I succeeded in stemming a justified and singular murderous urge.

I mean, I have never ever wanted to liquidate anyone else.

Despite my initial failure, it would be unfair to dismiss the seriousness of my intention that first time. I wasn’t a particularly precocious or rebellious child, and certainly not, in the ordinary way, even remotely a homicidal one. I was certainly curious and inventive. At that age, understandably, I might well have lacked the tutored ingenuity and facility to pull off the deed.

I do still clearly remember what precipitated and justified my resolve at the time. Aunt Gloria had grossly insulted my mother, whom I adored. Like Sir Lancelot, my then favourite fictional character, I took an affront to my fair lady as a challenge.

To explain the circumstances: I had taken it upon myself to dye the curtains of the dormer window in the garret bedroom I always occupied when we visited Uncle Wilfred and Aunt Gloria. Their substantial country house was near Stratford-upon-Avon, in the pretty Shakespeare country, and twenty miles south of Uncle Wilfred’s factory in the industrial area that centres on Birmingham. The curtains were small, like the window they covered. They were also fairly old and faded. It had seemed to me that turning them from a boring pale green into a vivid, unmissable scarlet would be a service to my hosts as well as a pleasing surprise.

I had bought the packet of dye on impulse for sixpence in the local village shop. A specific use for my purchase had not suggested itself to me until I was on the way home. In any event, at the moment of revelation it seemed an admirable purpose, and a small price to pay for such a desirable transformation — as well as a good deed deserving gratitude.

After all, it had been my sixpence.

The instructions on the packet of dye seemed simple enough. All you needed besides hot water was a bucket and a pair of rubber gloves. The first accessory I borrowed from Uncle Wilfred’s garage, the second, more stealthily, from the kitchen. Fortunately, my aunt’s daily help had small hands.

It was simply unfortunate that my juvenile effort inadvertently and often patchily altered the hue of many other things besides the curtains. These included two towels in the small bathroom on the same floor as my room; a section of the newish, light-blue carpet in the corridor; the yellow coverlet on my bed; a surprisingly large section of wallpaper; inexplicably, bits of the corridor ceiling, as well as the fronts of the shirt and short grey trousers I had on at the start; and, after I had discarded those, my bare chest and my underpants. The exercise had been completed without interruption on a sunny July afternoon when my aunt was hosting a tennis party on the other side of the house. I had been relying on the sunshine to dry the curtains quickly outside my window, which it did, but not before they had turned the terra cotta tiles there what I have to admit was a hideous and permanent shade of vermilion.