The Bad Seed

by William March

  She awoke one morning thinking if she did not take herself in hand, did not make a greater effort at self-control, she’d soon become as overwrought as Mrs. Daigle. It occurred to her then that if she questioned Rhoda’s normality, if there were true grounds for her feeling that the child had criminal traits, she should no longer avoid the issue; it was her duty, if her fears were grounded in fact, to educate herself, to read and study the things she’d avoided in the past—to accept any reality that faced her, no matter how unpleasant, with courage and resourcefulness; to remedy the situation if possible; if not, to make the best compromise she could with facts. It was only through knowledge that she could help her child, could guide her with both understanding and intelligence to more acceptable attitudes, toward more conventional goals.

  Her mind turned automatically to Reginald Tasker, to the talks they’d had together. She wanted to telephone him instantly, to ask his guidance; but already doubt had undermined her good sense a little, and she felt fearful at doing so, as though he would guess the true motive of her interest; then, although she despised her guilty deviousness, she decided to handle the matter another way. She’d give a cocktail party and ask him to it, along with other guests in whom she was not momentarily interested at all; she’d make an opportunity to be alone with him, and she’d ask him with misleading casualness, as though the matter had just occurred to her, to advise her in her reading. Certainly under those circumstances he would attribute no motive to her except the idleness of her mind; but if he did, she’d be forced into another untruth. She’d tell him she was thinking of trying her hand at a novel, now that Kenneth was away and time hung so heavily on her hands.

  She gave her party on the last day of June. She arranged that Rhoda stay with Mrs. Forsythe across the hall; but Rhoda wanted to come in for a little while to meet her mother’s guests. Christine consented, and when the guests were all there, Mrs. Forsythe brought in the child. Rhoda was dressed in white lawn embroidered in yellow, a frock her mother had made her a few days before. She wore white shoes and yellow socks, and her hangman braids were looped back with little yellow bows. The guests were enchanted with her. She smiled her hesitant, charming smile; she curtseyed in the manner Mrs. Forsythe had recently taught her; she listened with solemn intensity when she was complimented, her eyes wide and innocent of guile; she was polite, dignified, and serious, and when Mrs. Forsythe said they must leave, she nodded gravely, and, making the soft sound a contented and pampered animal makes, she ran to her mother and embraced her with calculated spontaneity; and then smiling again, looking down in modesty, her shallow dimple plain for all to see, she held Mrs. Forsythe’s hand, pressed close to her thigh for protection, and left with her.

  When the child had gone, and her guests no longer needed her attention, Christine went to Reginald and said that since that time at Monica’s when he’d told the story of Nurse Dennison, she’d found herself more and more interested in his field; she’d even read the accounts of the Ponder trial. Then, touching his arm, her head tilted to one side and lowered in gracious surrender of her mind to his, she said she’d never be reading such shocking things if he’d not first introduced her to them—and wasn’t he ashamed of himself for going about town corrupting old married ladies? Reginald said he wasn’t in the least ashamed. On the contrary, it was one of the things he’d boast about in his old age, or use in an expanded and flattering version in his memoirs.

  Behind them on the balcony, his voice coming through with shrill clarity, an intellectual young man said, “A great novelist with something to say has no concern with style or oddity of presentation. Now, take a man like Tolstoy. I’ve just read Anna again. Tolstoy had no fear of the obvious. He wallowed in platitudes. That’s why his work has survived.”

  Christine said, “The last time we talked about crimes, it was about the crimes children commit. You said, although I found it hard to believe, that it wasn’t rare for children to commit major crimes. You said the ones destined to become famous in their field almost always began young. Were you serious, or were you taking advantage of my innocence?”

  “Well, I never thought of Tolstoy as dealing in platitudes. Dickens, yes. But hardly Tolstoy.”

  Reginald said he’d been serious, indeed. There was a type of criminal he was particularly interested in. The type was his specialty, and for a long time now he’d been clipping and saving reports of cases, and making notes for a sustained study of the type. In this sort of criminal, which seemed different from all others, there seemed to be as many women as men, which was unusual to begin with. His type, if they weren’t too stupid or too unlucky, ended up as murderers on a grand scale. They never killed for those reasons that so often sway warm but foolish humans. They never killed for passion, since they seemed incapable of feeling it, or jealousy, or thwarted love, or even revenge. There seemed to be no element of sexual cruelty in them. They killed for two reasons only—for profit, since they all had an unconquerable desire for possessions, and for the elimination of danger when their safety was threatened.

  “I’m very interested,” said Christine. “Will you let me look at your material? I’ll take very good care of it.”

  Mrs. Breedlove, a Martini in her hand, moved through the crowd and came closer to them. She stood listening in a sort of dramatic astonishment, then impulsively she said, “But, dear Christine, what’s come over you? Why have you done such an about-face?”

  Christine smiled self-consciously and said, “I doubt if there is a reason.”

  Mrs. Breedlove shook her head in patient denial, sat between them, and said, “There’s a reason, dear Christine; there’s a sound psychological reason for everything we do, if we can only find it.” Then, with seeming inappropriateness, she said, “When I was in analysis with Doctor Kettlebaum, I used to go early, having such a positive transference to the poor man. There was an attractive young Englishman who preceded me, and we met in the waiting-room quite often. Sometimes when Doctor Kettlebaum was tied up on the phone between patients, and was late in calling me, we talked together. This young man—I’ve forgotten his name years ago, which is symptomatic, too, as you’ll soon see—once told me that he considered me unusually attractive; except for one detail, I’d be his ideal, he said. His temperament was an odd one, you see. He said he adored only one-legged women, and I so plainly had two.”

  Reginald whistled between his teeth and said, “Boy, is that a new slant.”

  Monica continued. “So I said to him, ‘I’ll admit you’re very handsome. I’ll even go further, and say you’ve got the nicest eyelashes I ever saw on a man—but if you think I’m going to cut off a leg to please you, superior though you may be, you’re dreadfully mistaken, my dear!’ ”

  Reginald and Christine laughed at the same instant; and Mrs. Breedlove, herself giggling in memory, continued. “And so this young man with odd tastes stared at me in that composed manner the British have perfected, and said, ‘I didn’t expect it, I assure you.’ ”

  “But where did he find one-legged women?” asked Christine.

  “My dear,” said Monica. “My dear, our minds are so in accord; now that’s precisely what I asked him, too; but he looked at me in the completest astonishment, and said, ‘Find them? My dear lady, the problem is, how do you avoid them! London is full of one-legged women, as you’ve surely noticed. You see them everywhere you go.’ ”

  There was silence, and then Christine said, “Is the moral meant for me? Is it that the eye finds what the mind is seeking?”

  “But of course!” said Mrs. Breedlove. She went on to say that she’d always considered Mrs. Penmark’s unwillingness to accept sordid or criminal data as symptomatic. In other words, she regarded it as a positive wish concealed under a negative reaction. It meant, really, that for a time she’d been emotionally unable to examine with a necessary detachment her drives toward hate and destruction; but now, with her anxieties so plainly abated, she was able to do so at last. On the whole, she was pleased with Christine’s s
udden preoccupation with crime, with her new, more wholesome attitudes. It indicated a wider tolerance, a greater maturity than she’d had before.

  She turned and looked searchingly at her friend, and, in confusion, Christine gave the explanation she’d prepared in advance, the explanation she was later to use so often in justification of her actions. There’d always been a desire at the back of her mind to write a novel, although she doubted that she could really pull it off. Nevertheless, the things she’d heard from Reginald were so fresh, so off the beaten path—or so they seemed to her—that she’d been tempted to use them in this autobiographical book she was turning over in her mind—a book to be reinforced and supported by the details of actual cases. She stopped with sudden wariness, thinking: Why did I say an autobiographical book? That’s strange, I think.

  She waited for Mrs. Breedlove to catch her up on the slip, but since she did not, she got up and said she must go now and see to her other guests. It was then that Reginald offered to lend Mrs. Penmark the case material he’d collected. He’d digested many of the cases, and had sorted them roughly into categories. His own book, if he ever got round to doing it, would be factual, so there’d be no conflict between them. He asked if she’d decided on a plot for her novel, if she’d worked out as yet any of its details. She said she had not; she knew only in a general way that the novel would be about a mass murderess and her disastrous effect not only on her victims by violence, but on those who survived her. It wasn’t much to go on, she knew; but it was all she’d worked out so far.

  The following morning Mrs. Forsythe suggested, as a special treat, that she and Rhoda go to the corner and have an ice-cream soda together. She was a thin, tall woman in her late sixties with wide, flat hips and sloping shoulders. She had been a great beauty in her time—the perfect Gibson Girl, Mrs. Breedlove said—and she still wore her streaked, fair hair in a variant form of the pompadour of her triumphant days, a smaller, less imposing, more rounded pompadour with a tight, solid knot at its center, so that the effect now was that of a cushion held in place by a paper weight. She and the child came out of the door together, and Rhoda saw Leroy waiting for her near the sidewalk. All at once he thought of a new way to tease her, a variant method of showing his enamored hatred of the child. The idea seemed both subtle and witty to him. He went to the basement and took a dead rat from the cage where it had been since morning. He tied a bow about the rat’s neck, and put it in one of the Christmas gift boxes he’d saved. Then, wrapping the box in colored paper, and tying it with Christmas ribbon, he had it ready when the child returned.

  He winked knowingly when Mrs. Forsythe’s back was turned, and made a suggestive gesture toward the back of the building, but the child ignored him; she remained standing on the flagstones, as though she awaited some more explicit explanation, and as the old lady went up the steps, paused, and fumbled in her untidy handbag for her keys, Leroy came closer, and hummed softly, as though he were serenading the little girl, “I got a real nice present! Yes, I got a real nice present! I got a present I been saving all for you!”

  Rhoda nodded, and he went to the basement, standing inside the door where he couldn’t be seen. Rhoda joined him quickly, and he said in a whisper which was unnecessary, since there was nobody near to hear him, “I figure you and me ought to be real good friends. So I got you a present to make up for the mean things I already said to you. When I seen this present I’m talking about, I thought right away of you. I said, ‘That present sure makes me think of Rhoda Penmark.’ ”

  “What is it, Leroy? What did you get me?”

  “Open it. Just open the box and see.”

  The child opened the box. She lifted her head and stared at Leroy with a peculiar faraway look in her eyes. Leroy laughed and sat down on his bench, overcome with the wittiness of his gesture; but he laughed guardedly, as though he and the child were involved together in a conspiracy which must never be revealed.

  “You know what your present puts me in mind of?” he asked when he could get his breath again. “It puts me in mind of Claude lying dead in his coffin.” He waited for the child’s response, but since there was none, he went on. “I thought first of getting you some sweet-smelling flowers, but I didn’t have time to go to the graveyard and steal some off Claude’s little grave.”

  Rhoda got up, but Leroy, catching at her hand to detain her, said, “Tell me one thing, now that we’re good friends again. Did you find the bloody stick you washed off so good? If you didn’t, you sure better hurry up and find it. I might get mad with you again and tell the policemen to go look for it.”

  That afternoon Reginald called at the Penmark apartment to leave the cases he’d promised. Clipped to each case was a digest of its particular contents, and often his own comments, too. When he’d gone, when Rhoda was in the park reading, Christine took up one of the folders and read three cases marked: Young. Simple situation. Offenders not too bright. Caught early.

  Raymond Walsh, a sixteen-year-old boy, shot his even younger friend to death for a few dollars. Beulah Hunnicutt and Norma Jean Brooks, both young girls, killed a farmer who had befriended them for the two dollars he had in his pocket. Milton Drury murdered his mother and set her on fire for the money she carried on her person.

  There was a note in Reginald’s handwriting attached to the folder that contained, as he said, these simple, and in a sense relatively wholesome cases. They’d all acted with the greatest stupidity; they’d all been caught young—perhaps at the beginning of their careers. Greed, he felt, was the driving power behind them all, the common denominator of their kind. None had any conception of human morality; none was able to understand loyalty, affection, gratitude, or love; they were all cold, pitiless, and entirely selfish. Perhaps the general type could be seen more clearly in these simple kindergarten cases than in the more elaborate cases to be dealt with later on.

  Mrs. Penmark sighed, lit a cigarette, and put the folder down, leaving the other cases in it unread. She went to her window, knelt on the seat there, and looked for a long time at the green untroubled street, and trees shimmering in the hot sun of July; then, coming back to her chair, she read again. These were cases concerned with more experienced practitioners, people who were perhaps more intelligent than the first group, but not too much so. At least, they’d been lucky for a time, and they were perfecting their various techniques when caught.

  Tillie Klimek of Illinois poisoned five husbands for their insurance; Houston Roberts of Mississippi murdered his two wives and one of his grandchildren for the profit involved in their deaths. He tried to murder a second grandchild, but she recovered, and he was caught. Daisy de Melker of South Africa was a poisoner for gain on a major scale. She was executed at last for the murder of her son whom she’d insured for five hundred dollars.

  Mrs. Penmark put the cases away in her desk, went to her back window, and called her daughter in to lunch. Rhoda walked slowly out of the park, but as she passed the basement door, Leroy stuck his head out and said, “When the policemen find that stick and make it turn blue, they going to put you in the electric chair. They going to fry you out real slow. You ever seen your mamma cook bacon and watch it swivel up? That’s what you’re going to look like in that electric chair. You going to turn brown, and you going to swivel up all over.”

  “The electric chair is too big for me,” said Rhoda. “I wouldn’t fit in it.”

  “That’s what you think,” said Leroy laughingly. “Now, let me tell you something. They got a special chair for mean little girls like you. They got a little pink chair that’s just your size. I seen it plenty times, miss. It’s painted a real pretty pink, and it looks nice, but of course it don’t look so nice to the little girl that’s frying up like a pork chop inside it.”

  “What you said about making a stick turn blue was something you made up. You’re not going to heaven if you keep on telling stories the way you do. You’re going to the bad place when you die, that’s where you’re going, Leroy.”

  �
��Go on in the house, and eat your lunch. Your mamma told you not to talk to me no more, and she told me not to talk to you, either. So I’m not going to talk to you no more. But you better find that stick, is all I can say. I could tell you a lot of things you want to find out, but your mamma said not to talk to you no more. Go on in the house and quit bothering me.”

  When she had gone, Leroy lay on his improvised bed thinking of his cleverness. He knew how to manage that one now; he sure had that mean little girl worried, and worried good. It wouldn’t be long before she’d jump and fidget when he spoke to her. Just wait and see if she didn’t.

  Rhoda came into her apartment and ate her lunch; then, after she’d practiced her piano lesson, she said casually to her mother, “Is it the truth that when blood has been washed off anything a policeman can still tell it was there if he puts powder on the place? Will the place really turn blue?”

  “Who’s been talking to you about such things? Leroy?”

  “No, Mother, it wasn’t him. You told me not to talk to Leroy. It was some men I heard talking about it when they passed the park gate.”

  Mrs. Penmark said she didn’t know about the bloodstains, although she’d call Uncle Reginald, who was an authority on these matters, if Rhoda really wanted to know; but Rhoda, in sudden alarm, shook her head from side to side, and said, “No.” It was then Christine went back to her kitchen, to finish the luncheon dishes there; but her suspicions were now aroused, and she wondered why the child had asked her strange question, for she knew now, and had known for a long time, that Rhoda asked nothing idly, for the pleasure of hearing her own voice, as other children did.