The Evil Seed

by Joanne Harris

  What had he seen?

  ‘Dan …?’ The voice rose, waveringly; my eyes caught the gleam of his in the shadows.

  ‘Dan,’ he said again.

  ‘I’m here.’

  ‘I’m sorry about last night,’ he said. ‘You must have thought me a damn fool.’ He smiled at me appealingly. ‘I can hardly remember what I said,’ he went on. ‘You must have guessed I wasn’t quite sober. All the upset about Rosemary, you know. I wasn’t myself, you understand.’

  I listened as Robert retold the tale more rationally, in the light of day.

  I nodded when it seemed expected of me, hardly able to mask my contempt. I was relieved that he suspected nothing, of course, but at the same time I felt disappointment in him. To think that Robert, whom I had always thought of as being so shrewd, could have been face to face with that terrible glamour and not seen it; that he could have held it in his arms, and not seen it for what it was …

  He had even managed to convince himself that he had been drunk the night before; better to believe that than to be forced into believing that the world is a wheel within a wheel, and that a beloved red-haired girl may walk the night with monsters. After coffee, I managed to persuade him to leave. By this time I was feeling very tired; bright motes danced behind my eyes, and besides, I had my own truths to confront, alone, in the privacy of my room. I was supportive, comforting, sympathetic, and between my comfort, my sympathy and my support, I managed to manoeuvre him to the door at last. I closed it with a sigh of relief, moved to my armchair, sat down. I stuck my hands in my pockets, and my fingers encountered the rolled-up cellophane package in which Elaine had wrapped her present. For a second, I was reminded of my schooldays, of the neat little packets of sandwiches with which my mother always crammed my pockets – ham, cheese, pickle and onion, and sometimes a thick slice of plum cake, to be opened and eaten with great care, under the lid of a school desk, in the dim yellow light of the winter schoolroom – the memory was so unexpected and so incongruous that I gave a shocked snort of mirth.

  Suddenly, someone knocked on the door.

  I stopped, all hilarity gone. Silence. Not a sound.

  ‘Who’s there?’ No answer. Only that eerie silence.

  I opened the door, bracing myself for horrors. For a split second, I actually saw them; the shambling Freudian beasts of my imaginings; a monster’s monsters. Then the shapes coalesced into one shape: neither small nor tall, a neat and felt-hatted shape, features sharp and hard, cynical blue-grey eyes like broken glass.

  It was Inspector Turner.

  Two

  DOCTOR MENEZIES WAS older than Alice had expected: a big, fat man of about fifty, with thick, black hair and a full beard, who wore his blue pinstriped suit with reluctance and unease, as if he would have been more at home in a lumberjack shirt and jeans. His voice seemed less sharp than it had sounded on the phone, and Alice noticed that he moved his legs with difficulty, as if the joints were painful. Sharp, colourless eyes caught her glance as she preceded him into the office, and he smiled.

  ‘Polio,’ he explained shortly, manoeuvring himself into an armchair by the window. ‘Do take a seat.’

  He gestured towards a couple of chairs by the side of a desk; Alice sat down. Her eyes flicked over the room, liking it. Green plants in front of a wide, sunny window, a Thai sculpture on a stand, some Indian abstract prints.

  ‘Nice room,’ she said, pausing a moment to marshal her thoughts, and fidgeting nervously with the handle of her raffia bag.

  ‘Take your time,’ said Menezies, turning a paperweight over in his large sunburned hand.

  His colourless eyes gave nothing away; his body language carefully studied to give the impression of quiet interest. He asked no questions, simply allowing Alice to talk, and when she finally stopped, he waited for a long time before he said anything in reply. When he spoke, it was to ask a question.

  ‘Have you been to the police?’

  Alice shook her head. ‘I didn’t think they’d believe me,’ she said. ‘Besides, I don’t have proof of anything. It all sounds crazy.’ She shrugged. ‘But somehow it seems to make sense. That’s why I wanted to find out about Ginny … I needed an explanation.’

  Menezies watched her for a moment, then his eyes hardened and left hers.

  ‘I’m sorry, Ms Farrell,’ he said. ‘I can’t deal with your problem. However, I’d be happy to recommend a colleague who …’

  ‘Why?’ Alice was completely thrown. ‘I … I want you to help. Why can’t you?’

  He shook his head. ‘I don’t feel qualified,’ he said. ‘I’m too much involved already. I’m sorry, but I don’t want to have anything more do with this.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Alice was dismayed. ‘How can you say that? At least give me a chance. Read the manuscript. Daniel’s manuscript. I tell you, it all makes sense. Read it!’

  Menezies gave a sigh and ran his hands through his thick hair.

  ‘Ms Farrell,’ he said. ‘I don’t have to read his manuscript.’

  Alice opened her mouth to say something.

  ‘Please don’t interrupt,’ he said irritably. ‘I don’t have to read it because I already know what’s in it.’

  Alice looked at him questioningly, but he continued in his new, weary voice, as if every word was a little too heavy for him to enunciate.

  ‘I used to share a room with Jeff Pryce,’ he began, ‘back in the days when we were young doctors and didn’t have very much money. We were still training; we were each assigned an “incurable” patient at the hospital to write part of our thesis on. Jeff got Daniel Holmes.’

  He swallowed, almost painfully. ‘For three years he worked with Holmes, night and day. It began as professional interest, and developed into a real friendship. He used to go to libraries all around the country to try and find the books Holmes was always asking for. In a way, I think he loved that old chap. I met him a few times, but most of the time Jeff and I discussed him. He was casebook schizophrenic, intelligent, erudite; and Jeff always claimed he was non-violent, despite his fixation with violence. He was a chronic alcoholic and he was taking a lot of heavy medication, but it never seemed to do much good. Jeff and he used to talk psychology together, and he would show Jeff the chapters of his book. In turn, Jeff showed me.’

  He paused for a moment, reminiscing. ‘The arguments we used to have about Daniel Holmes! I used to twit Jeff all the time about how much effort he wasted on the man. I wrote the whole of my thesis on the basis of a few preliminary visits to my “incurable”, but Jeff … there was no stopping him. I think he would have gone on seeing Daniel Holmes for ever, if he’d lived. What was worse, I’m not sure Holmes hadn’t convinced him, in some odd way, that what he believed was true.’

  Absently, Menezies traced the lines on one worn palm.

  ‘He’d been talking about dying long before his suicide,’ he continued. ‘Making arrangements and the like. He seemed to think that the people he was afraid of were getting closer, that they wouldn’t let him live much longer. I took that for a typical paranoid delusion, and if Jeff had had any sense, he would have too, and taken steps to protect Holmes from himself. But by that time Jeff was nearly as bad as he was. Out of bloody-mindedness he wouldn’t give the case to anyone else, so it was too late before anyone got an inkling of the old boy’s deterioration. Then one day Holmes cracked and hanged himself, and the whole thing came out. It nearly ended Jeff’s career.’

  For the first time since he had begun to speak, Menezies looked at Alice and smiled. ‘For years after, Jeff Pryce was a man consumed by guilt,’ he told her. ‘He blamed himself for Holmes’s suicide, kept saying that he should have looked after him better. I think the reason for his being such a good doctor was something to do with the fact that he never forgot about Daniel Holmes, and spent his life trying to make up for that first mistake.’

  ‘But I don’t understand,’ said Alice. ‘If you already know about Daniel, why can’t you help me? You’re probably the onl
y person who might …’

  ‘No,’ Menezies shook his head. ‘Because that isn’t the end of the story.’ He pulled at his tie to loosen it, and went on. ‘Because when you phoned me about Virginia Ashley the other day, and I said I didn’t know her, I lied.’

  Alice’s eyes widened.

  ‘She was Jeff’s patient,’ said Menezies. ‘I told you the truth about that. She was admitted for a few months only. She had been taking drugs, amphetamines mostly, but some hallucinogens too, things like belladonna and muscarine. She was in a state of emaciation, she was addicted to the amphetamines, and she had had experiences while under the influence of hallucinogenic toxins which she could no longer distinguish from reality. Jeff and I had been good friends for a long time; he used to tell me about the most interesting of his cases. Nothing unprofessional, you understand, but enough for me to see that he was really quite excited about this girl. I never saw her, but I think he was quite taken by her. Then one day he came to my house to see me. He looked terrible. He was shaking. I thought he was going to have a stroke. I tried to calm him down, but I really couldn’t get much sense out of him, except that he’d seen something or someone who had disturbed him. I gathered that it was something to do with Ginny, or some friends of Ginny’s, but on top of that he was also ranting about Daniel Holmes and some things he had read in his manuscript. It didn’t help that he was more than a little drunk.

  ‘I did the only thing I could. I gave him a Valium and put him to bed. The next day when I tried to talk to him, he wouldn’t tell me anything, and pretended he didn’t remember. That night he took an overdose.’

  Alice stared at Menezies for a moment.

  ‘He saw Rafe and Java,’ she said.

  ‘I don’t know what he saw,’ said Menezies. ‘But maybe now you see why I won’t help you.’

  He shook his head. ‘That damned manuscript.’

  ‘Look,’ said Alice desperately. ‘Don’t you see? No one else can help me! You’re the only one who will believe me. You knew Daniel, you knew Doctor Pryce. You have to help me. If Daniel is right, then Ginny is Rosemary.’

  ‘I don’t want to know.’ His voice was flat. ‘I’m a doctor. I do my job, and I’m good at it. But I do know my limitations, and this is where my involvement ends. I’m not interested in finding out any more about this case, and I wouldn’t be any good to you if I was.’

  ‘But she may have killed Daniel,’ Alice said. ‘And probably Jeff Pryce, too. Who knows what else she might do?’

  ‘I don’t know!’ His voice was strained, almost cracked. ‘I don’t want to know!’

  ‘If she went to the trouble of finding Jeff Pryce,’ went on Alice, ‘how do you know you won’t be next?’

  Menezies was silent for a long time. ‘I won’t promise anything,’ he said eventually.

  ‘You’ll think about it?’

  He shrugged. ‘Just leave the manuscript with me. I’d like to read it all the way through. But don’t expect anything more; any help I can give you will be for my own interest, and nothing to do with my personal practice. OK?’

  Alice nodded.

  ‘OK.’ She drew the manuscript out of her bag, took it out of the box she had carried it in. ‘I’ll ring you up tomorrow. Is that all right?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Don’t get your hopes up,’ he warned. ‘You’ll probably find that I can’t help you.’ Then he seemed to reach a decision. He reached up to a shelf above his desk where a number of old books were stacked.

  ‘You might as well have this,’ he said. ‘I’m sure you’ll find it interesting.’ Alice looked at the spine of the book, and smiled. It was Daniel’s book, The Blessed Damozel, a Study of Pre-Raphaelite Archetypes. Glancing at it briefly, she saw that it had no illustrations except for the black-and-white reproduction on the cover (a rough-looking sketch by Burne-Jones of his own Blessed Damozel, Maria Zambaco), but she held it tightly, her eyes bright, impelled by the sense of rightness she felt at having it.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Thank you so much.’

  Menezies gave a twisted smile. ‘I’ll take the manuscript. Nothing more. No promises,’ he told her. And though Alice smiled and nodded agreement as he stood up, carefully placing the manuscript into a big post office envelope, and though she kept her features carefully indifferent while she shook hands with him and left his office, she still felt a tiny lifting of tension within her ribcage, as if a small bird imprisoned there had just begun to sing.

  One

  I CANNOT BELIEVE that he did not see the guilt written so clearly on my face; it seemed to me that for an endless moment we stood there, speechless, in the little circle of the knowledge we shared. My head spun as his cold eyes held me, appraisingly. Then I recognized my paranoia for what it was and slipped into my artless role. There. I was committed. I had declared war against the light.

  ‘Inspector Turner!’ I said. ‘Do forgive me; I really wasn’t expecting you. For a moment I even found myself forgetting your name.’

  The Inspector raised his hat with meticulous politeness. I recognized the technique; he wanted me to speak too much, thereby giving something away. I smiled at him.

  ‘Do come in. I’ve just made some coffee; would you like a cup?’

  ‘I wouldn’t refuse one,’ said Turner. As I showed him in, I noticed his eyes flick over the room, taking in the unmade bed, the cold grate, the rows of books on the shelves by the fireside.

  ‘Please take a seat,’ I said. ‘In fact, I’m rather glad you’ve come.’

  He gave me a mildly questioning look.

  ‘I’ve been wanting to thank you for your support last time we met,’ I said, with a mixture of openness and slight embarrassment in my voice.

  ‘I wasn’t myself, you know,’ I said. ‘I’d had a bad shock, as well as having just recovered from a severe illness at the time, and I’ll always appreciate the way you put me at ease.’ I wondered if I were overdoing the act; turned, rinsed him a coffee-cup in the sink, and began to fiddle with the coffee-pot, waiting for him to state his business. He did not. I poured, set the cup on a saucer, offered the biscuit tin, watched him help himself to two iced rings. He dipped them, methodically, in his coffee, with the same serious watchfulness, and I began to wonder whether my earlier awe of him had not been the product of my imagination. Then I realized that the biscuit dipping was an act; he was watching me from beneath his eyelashes, waiting to see if I would break.

  ‘Anything I can do to help?’ I said. ‘Have you found out anything new about that poor woman?’

  ‘No,’ said Turner.

  ‘There’s been another murder?’ I said. It wouldn’t do for me to seem too obtuse.

  Turner shrugged. ‘It’s rather early to say,’ he said. ‘So far, there’s no reason for anyone to think that the deaths are even related.’

  ‘So there has been another death?’

  The Inspector nodded.

  ‘Two,’ he said. ‘A waitress and a bartender of the Swan public house late the night before last.’

  I frowned.

  ‘Wasn’t that the place that burned down? I read about it in the paper.’

  Turner nodded. ‘That’s right. But the pathologist’s report seems to suggest that the two victims hadn’t been killed in the blaze, as we first thought. The bodies weren’t badly charred, you know. It takes quite a big fire to destroy bodies.’

  ‘So the criminal tried to hide his tracks by setting the place on fire?’ I said, pouring another cup of coffee. ‘It’s amazing what modern science can discover, isn’t it?’

  ‘Certainly.’

  ‘Do you think it’s the same man?’ I kept my voice interested, though inside I was reeling with panic. He knows, my God! He knows.

  ‘I don’t think anything.’ His tone was final. ‘I’m not in charge of the case; Scotland Yard are better equipped to deal with that. It’s just that, well, I do like to keep a professional interest in these things.’

  ‘Ah.’ His face was unreadable, but
I thought I was beginning to understand a little. Turner had struck me from the beginning as being a forceful character. He had questioned me himself instead of asking someone else. His manner was understated, efficient. And this had been his case, the body in the weir had been ‘his’ body; quite natural, in fact, that he might feel some resentment at the way his case had been taken in hand, so publicly, by the Yard.

  The Inspector changed the subject abruptly. ‘I see you’ve changed your lodgings,’ he said. ‘Was there a reason for that change? Your landlady tells me it was very sudden. You left without even saying goodbye.’

  ‘Ah, yes. There was a reason for that.’

  Turner waited patiently.

  ‘I was beginning to be … intimate … with a young lady,’ I said. I did not need to feign embarrassment; my unease was real enough. ‘There are reasons, for which the young lady and I—’

  ‘Of course,’ said the Inspector. ‘Please don’t feel that I am prying into your private life. Everything you say will remain confidential, naturally.’

  I nodded. ‘Thank you,’ I said.

  ‘I wonder,’ he continued, ‘whether you could recall whether you were in the company of this young lady the night before last, Mr Holmes?’

  He saw my change of expression. ‘A routine question, I assure you,’ he said.