She learned that Bessie Denker had been born Bessie Schober in 1882, on a farm in Iowa, the eldest child of Heinz and Mamie (Gustafson) Schober. She had had a brother and sister, both younger than herself. The little boy died from an accidental dose of arsenic which Bessie had, in her seven-year-old innocence, spread on his bread and butter, mistaking it for sugar. The little girl, while helping her sister draw a bucket of water, somehow fell in the well and was drowned. Years later, when Mrs. Denker was charged with other crimes, and on trial for her life, it was said by neighbors who remembered the family, at that time, thanks to Bessie’s energy and determination, entirely extinct, that her Grandfather Gustafson had been shot one Sunday afternoon as he nodded in his rocking chair on the back porch. Nobody had ever known how it happened, or who had done it. Certainly, at that time, nobody has suspected quiet, wide-eyed little Bessie Schober, who had been alone with him, and who was only eleven years old in those days.
Mr. Cravatte apologized for his inadequate presentation of these early, speculative affairs that concerned his ideal; but if the reader wanted a more detailed picture, a truly profound study of the early years of Bessie Schober Denker, he referred them to the remarkable series of articles by the late Richard Bravo, who had reported Mrs. Denker’s trial, and who had studied her life in the minutest detail; who was, in fact, the acknowledged authority on her early antics.
Mrs. Penmark’s hands were sweating; they shook as she put aside the folder and lighted a cigarette. She wondered why her father had never spoken of the Denker case, if he were the recognized authority on certain aspects of it, as he’d spoken of other affairs of his time in which he’d played a journalistic part. Or had he spoken of it, and had she, being uninterested, merely heard and forgotten? If the latter were true, she could understand why the names Denker and Schober and Gustafson seemed so familiar to her now, as though she’d known them all in some distant time in the past, why she could at this moment, even before she’d read the facts, anticipate some of the things that were to happen later on. She did not know. And suddenly she did not want to know. She felt that she’d been unwise in reading these cases of calculation and cold greed. Really, they served no purpose. The whole idea had been a mistake. She’d read no more.
But, against her will, she kept remembering the Denker case, and saying to herself, “There was a boy called Sonny, I think. Was his real name Ludwig, do you suppose? There was another boy, older than Emma, named Peter.… Yes, I’m sure his name was Peter. And there was another girl, the youngest of the Denker children, but I can’t remember what her name was now, although I certainly knew it at one time.”
She went to her mirror and stared at herself in astonishment, thinking: Have I lost my senses? How could I have ever known such people? Then she told herself she’d read no more. She meant it this time. She’d return the files to Reginald the next morning. She would dismiss from her mind those implications that struggled so strongly to be recognized. She glanced at her clock, and seeing it was after midnight, she went to bed, although again she was restless and could not sleep. She said to herself, “How can Bessie Denker concern me? I don’t want to know anything more about her. I have my own problems to solve.”
NINE
On July tenth, Mrs. Breedlove and her brother Emory Wages closed their apartment in town and went each year to the Seagull Inn for the days that remained in that month, and for the entire month of August. Usually, before departure, Monica gave a big buffet supper at the country club, as though to console her friends for the loss of her society over such an extended period. This time she planned her supper for the Fourth of July, since an elaborate display of fireworks was scheduled at the club that particular year, a display which, she felt, she and her guests might as well take advantage of and enjoy. She’d been making plans for the party since middle June. She’d discussed matters exhaustively with Mrs. Penmark, debating with her the appropriate drinks to be served, the proper dishes to be ordered from her caterers this year.
She was a little surprised, therefore, when, on the morning of the Fourth, Christine telephoned to say she couldn’t come, after all, she wasn’t well, as Monica knew. Then, too, Rhoda was something of a problem. Mrs. Forsythe had been so kind in the past about looking after her, that she couldn’t possibly ask her to do it again.… Of course, she could call in a regular babysitter, but for reasons of her own, which she wouldn’t go into at the moment, she didn’t want to do that, either.
Mrs. Breedlove laughed at the suggestion of a babysitter for Rhoda, a child so poised, so calmly mature in outlook. The idea seemed faintly absurd. If anything, it should probably be the other way round! She said, “Don’t worry about Jessie Forsythe. She adores Rhoda. She’ll jump at the chance of having her to herself for a few hours. She told me just the other day she enjoyed talking to Rhoda more than anybody she knew. I wanted to say, ‘But don’t you find her a little advanced for you, Jessie dear?’ but of course I didn’t. Her own grandchildren can’t abide the poor woman, and they make fun of her to her face. But of course Rhoda, being such a little lady, has more tact and consideration for older people.”
“Perhaps so. Perhaps you’re right, Monica.”
“The truth of the matter,” said Mrs. Breedlove cheerfully, “is that you’re brooding too much. You’re neglecting your social obligations so much lately that even Emory, who notices nothing at all as a rule, remarked on it. Now, you must disregard your little depression of the moment and come to the party, even if you don’t feel up to it. You’re sure to be the belle of the ball, as you always are, with the settled married men yearning at you, and wishing their horrible wives looked more like you. Just leave everything to me, dear Christine; all you have to do is look your prettiest. I’ve got to be at the club early to see about the decorations, but Emory has been instructed to pick you up around six.”
At the party, Mrs. Penmark sighted Reginald at once, and pushed her way through to him. They sat on the terrace together beside the open French doors, and he asked her how she was getting on with the case histories. She said she’d got into the Denker case a little way; she’d read a few pages of it, but it disturbed her so she’d had to put it aside. She paused, shook her head in puzzlement, and said, “Did you ever go to a strange place, or meet a strange person, or even hear a conversation for the first time with the feeling that everything that was happening then had happened before?”
“Yes, fairly often. There’s a name for it, but I’ve forgotten what it is.”
“Well, as silly as it sounds, I have the feeling about Bessie Denker. I don’t understand it.”
“You’ve probably read the case before, and just forgot it.”
Christine said after a moment, “I was surprised to find my father’s name mentioned in the case. I didn’t know he’d ever met these people.”
“Maybe that’s why the case seems familiar to you. He probably talked about it when you were a kid.”
“I don’t think so. It’s something else, I’m sure.”
Reginald said enthusiastically that Bravo’s reports of the trial had been far more than the accurate reporting of journalism; they’d been little chiseled essays, really; and already they’d become classics of their kind. Her father had set a standard in the Denker case which other reporters had imitated, but never equaled.
“I’m always finding out things about him I didn’t know before.”
Reginald nodded in agreement, finished his cocktail, and said, “How far did you get into the Denker case before you put it aside?” And when she told him, he said he’d save her the trouble of reading the earlier aspects of the case, some of which were entirely incredible, by telling them to her.
He took another cocktail, closed his eyes for concentration, and said in his light, rather rapid voice, that Bessie’s father, old Heinz Schober, had died oddly in an accident which had involved a threshing machine, an accident never adequately explained. Later on—years later—Mrs. Denker’s admirers had seen significance in the fact
that Bessie was working beside her father at the time, but if she was involved in his death, such an involvement was never established. At any rate, the old man had left his widow comfortably fixed. Bessie was about twenty years old in those days and eager to embark in earnest on a career already auspiciously, if haphazardly, begun. But she felt she could do better in a city, and already her thoughts turned toward Omaha, Nebraska.
But she remained on the farm for a time, to look out for her mother, who’d suffered from indigestion since her husband’s death; then, when her mother died on schedule, and Bessie had the farm and the insurance money for her own, she sold out and moved away. In Omaha she married a man named Vladimir Kurowsky, a man of considerable substance. At the insistence of his bride, he had himself heavily insured. He left his widow of less than a year to her grief and quickly earned possessions. So the Widow Kurowsky cashed in her policies, sold her property, and moved to Kansas City. Not long afterward she met and married a young farmer named August Denker. He came of a well-to-do family, although his particular branch of it had little. When Mrs. Denker closed her Kansas City residence, and embarked with her new husband for his farm, she began the major phase of her career, the phase that was later to both delight and astound her contemporaries.
Reginald lighted a cigarette for both himself and his listener, and then went on to say that Richard Bravo had done a remarkable study of August Denker, whom he considered the class victim, the preordained one who turns up over and over in the career of the mass murderer—the one who, through his natural trust and the innocence of his outlook, makes possible the murderer’s triumphs over such extended periods of time. He had seen a photograph of August Denker, taken about the time of his marriage to his incredible wife. He was blond, with delicate, almost feminine, features; and his eyes had looked out at the world with innocence and candor. He was quite handsome in a negative sort of way. He played the violin, but not very well, it was said.…
Mrs. Penmark pressed her hands against her eyes, shook her head, and said under her breath, “No. No, it wasn’t the violin. I’m sure it wasn’t. It was a wind instrument of some sort—at least it was something you blew into.… I think it was a cornet.”
A group came onto the terrace and stood chatting near by, and Reginald was silent until they passed out of earshot; then he talked once more of Mrs. Denker and the remarkable things she’d accomplished. At the time she married August Denker, she’d already worked out a master plan for the annihilation of his family, and for a long time everything went according to schedule.
Christine interrupted him after a moment. “How did she get away with it so long?” she asked. “Wasn’t anybody suspicious, with all those deaths?”
In Reginald’s opinion, the fact that Bessie Denker had escaped detection so long wasn’t nearly so implausible as Mrs. Penmark seemed to think. In the first place, good people are rarely suspicious. They cannot imagine others doing the things they themselves are incapable of doing; usually they accept the undramatic solution as the correct one, and let matters rest there. Then, too, the normal are inclined to visualize the multiple killer as one who’s as monstrous in appearance as he is in mind, which is about as far from the truth as one could well get. He paused and then said that these monsters of real life usually looked and behaved in a more normal manner than their actually normal brothers and sisters; they presented a more convincing picture of virtue than virtue presented of itself—just as the wax rosebud or the plastic peach seemed more perfect to the eye, more what the mind thought a rosebud or a peach should be, than the imperfect original from which it had been modeled.
He stretched delicately and went on to say that Bessie Denker must have been one of the truly talented actresses of her time with her church-going, her visiting around with other members of her husband’s family, her tireless baking of pies and cakes for church bazaars, and her little thoughtful errands of mercy for those less fortunate than herself.
He talked on and on, but Mrs. Penmark, growing restive, interrupted him to ask, “Who was Ada Gustafson? What part did she play in Mrs. Denker’s affairs?”
Reginald flicked cigarette ash onto the grass, laughed, and said, “Oh, that one!” Then almost at once he went on to explain that Ada Gustafson had been a poor relation of Mrs. Denker, an eccentric spinster who’d come late into the picture, after most of the Denker members had been accomplished, in fact, and who was usually referred to in the record of Bessie’s trial as “Old Ada Gustafson.” She had been a woman in her late sixties at that time, but she was still spry and strong; and having no place else to go for the remaining days of her life, she had sought asylum with her distant cousin, Mrs. Denker; and once taken in, she had earned her keep by cooking, scrubbing, nursing Bessie’s four children, or even working in the fields with August and the men. She was shrewd and observant with, perhaps, more than a touch of Bessie’s own temperament in her; and she was to be Bessie’s stumbling block at last, the Nemesis of her defeat. She had observed everything that went on at the farm with a cynical lifting of eyelids, a wry pouting of her old lips. For a long time she said nothing, but she fell into the habit of following Cousin Bessie about with her eyes, nodding thoughtfully, as though collating and winnowing the impression she’d already formed of her. It was for the murder of Cousin Ada Gustafson, and not for one of the Denker murders which would have been more difficult to prove, that Mrs. Denker was tried and eventually executed.
Christine listened in silence to the long description, thinking: I remember Cousin Ada dimly. None of us liked her at home. She had a dog named Spot. He used to snap at Emmy and Sonny, and at me, too, but we made friends with him. But he’d never make friends with Peter, I remember.
Suddenly she moved forward in her chair, put her glass down, and locked her fingers together; there was a sense of inescapable knowledge that she could no longer deny, a feeling of approaching doom which she sought to avoid, but knew now that she could not. She half-turned in her chair, looked steadily at the hedges beyond the green lawns, and said in a voice which was almost inaudible, “What was the name of the youngest of the Denker children?”
Reginald said cheerfully, “Why, her name was Christine, the same as your own. And apparently she was just as pretty as you are, too. She was blond like her father, and she had his fine features. Your own father met her and was greatly taken by her. His essay on her plight was one of his finest. It’s still reprinted occasionally today.”
Suddenly Mrs. Penmark got up, swayed against her chair, and said she was not feeling well. She thought she’d better go home immediately. Reginald said he’d drive her there, but she insisted it would be simpler to call a taxi. She went at once to Mrs. Breedlove, to explain her sudden indisposition, and the latter said in a provoked voice, “What’s the matter with you these days? You aren’t like yourself at all. Your face is drawn and quite white, my dear. There’s a distinct twitching over your eye.”
Christine, unable at that moment to answer, trembled and turned away; but Mrs. Breedlove caught her by the arm and said in a concerned voice, “If you must go home, then you must go. But don’t bother with a taxi. Edith Marcusson just arrived—you remember Edith, of course?—and her chauffeur is still turning in the driveway.”
She went outside, halted the chauffeur, gave him instructions, and then said, “When you get home, you must lie down and be quiet. When this thing is over, I’ll look in on you.”
Christine nodded and turned away, saying to herself, “I know who I am now. I can’t delude myself any longer.” She leaned back on the seat and pressed her cheek against the upholstery of the car, knowing herself to be on the verge of nervous tears, but once in her own apartment, with her familiar things about her, something of her panic left her; and a little later she knocked on the Forsythe door to call for her child.
Mrs. Forsythe said, “Oh, what a pity! Rhoda and I had planned a little buffet of our own, and we’re just setting the table. We’re going to turn on the radio while we dine, and have music f
rom the Arbor Room. Can’t you let her stay a little longer? I promise to take the very best care of her.”
Her cushionlike pompadour, which she so carefully buttressed and shored up with hairpins and little amber combs, had strained away from its moorings, and the tight, rocklike knot that anchored the mass tilted with its rounded cushion in the direction of her left ear. She sighed and righted her hair, her big, violet eyes wide and imploring.
“It will be such a disappointment if Rhoda leaves now,” she said earnestly. “Such a disappointment to all concerned.”
Mrs. Penmark said the child could stay. She went back to her own living-room, and then, as though impelled by forces stronger than her anxiety and distaste, her determination to think no more of her mother’s dreadful life, she began to read the Denker case at the point where Reginald’s telling of the story had ended.
According to Madison Cravatte, the Denker relationships had been as complex as those in a three-volume Victorian novel. You needed charts and blueprints and a cast of characters at the front of the book to keep them all straight. But little Bessie Schober, after her marriage into the family, hadn’t grudged the time she’d spent studying them for her own deadly purpose. She had analyzed the personalities and characters of her new relations with a most flattering care. She had studied closely the degrees of relationship they bore one another, the closeness of their blood ties to Grandfather Carl Denker, who controlled the money, with the same concentrated attention that a chess player brings to the moves in his championship game.… And if he might be permitted to carry his somewhat trite figure of the chess champion further, her moves to divert the flow of the Denker money from other branches of the family, and to direct it inevitably in her husband’s direction, were as shrewd, as calculated, as coldly brilliant in her game of murder for profit as any champion’s were in his less violent field.
The Bad Seed Page 16