This she had conscientiously done by poison, the ax, the rifle, the shotgun, the simulated suicides by hanging and drowning; and while it would take far too long to go into these family tragedies in the detail they deserved, he would say that at the end of ten years Bessie had accomplished her goal in twenty-three moves of such boldness, such brilliance of strategy, such remarkable rightness of detail, that she’d become the particular darling of the intellectual murder fan. But if the interested reader wanted more information, to study both this remarkable woman, and the details of each of the varied Denker deaths exhaustively, then he referred him to Jonathan Mundy’s volume on Bessie Denker in the Great American Criminals series.
It was getting darker in the apartment, and Christine went to the table and turned on her reading light; but she stopped to look at the western sky, glowing with muted colors. Birds, flying high, made a thin line across the soft, waning colors; the live oaks lifted rhythmically under the evening winds from the Gulf, showing arches of horizon that were cloudless, polished, and deep blue. She stood quietly a moment, and then she walked nervously through her house, turning on lights without sense, and as capriciously turning them off again.
She came back to the case at length, to read its ending: At the time of Bessie Denker’s trial the only member of the Denker family remaining alive was the little girl Christine, about whom so much has been written. What happened eventually to this tragic child who somehow managed to escape her mother’s “master plan” is not known, although it is generally believed she was taken for adoption by some respectable family. But one cannot help wondering what her life has been like since. Where is she now? Is she married, with children of her own? Has she forgotten the horrors she must have known in her early childhood? Did she ever really know, or understand what her mother had done? One can only wonder at the fate of this tragic, frightened little girl who somehow escaped her mother’s fury. The chances are we will never know now what became of her. Her new identity has been well guarded indeed.
Christine dropped the folder in confusion, lay on her bed, and pressed her face into her pillows. She wept and said, “Here I am, if you want to know. Here I am.” And then, after a moment, “I didn’t escape after all.… Why did you think I escaped?”
Again Mrs. Penmark could not sleep. She lay on her bed staring up at the white ceiling, faintly luminous in the dark, her eyes fixed on the elaborate decoration of fruits and flowers which originally had been the centerpiece of a chandelier. Outside, she could hear trees rustling as the breeze lifted their branches and moved them gently about. There was the smell of crushed camphor leaves near by; and farther away, the sickeningly sweet odor of the night-blooming jasmine bushes on the Kunkels’ lawn; then, when she could no longer bear the silence, nor the thoughts that went through her mind in a repetitive pattern, she got up, went to her rear balcony, and looked up. There was a light on in Mrs. Breedlove’s study, and in desperation she went to her telephone and dialed Monica’s number.
Mrs. Breedlove said, “I’m so glad you called, dear Christine. I wanted to get in touch with you when Emory and I came back from the party, but it was after eleven, and I was sure you’d already retired. But you know how guests are, I’m sure. They never go home, once they get high.”
Then in a softer voice, as though just remembering that her brother was asleep, she lowered her voice, and said, “I was sorry you couldn’t stay to the end. Now, take care of yourself. We mustn’t let you get sick. None of us could endure that, dear Christine.” She paused a moment, and then, as though she’d glanced at her watch in the interval, she said, “Why don’t you run up for a little visit? It’s only half past one, and I’m not in the least sleepy. We’ll make a pot of coffee—I’ll put the water on now—and sit in the kitchen like a couple of old peasant widows.”
She met her guest at the door, a warning finger to her lips. She was wearing a flowered kimono, and her face was smeared wildly with cold cream, her hair rolled up in kid curlers. She laughed cautiously, and said, “I’ve always had a passion for the fat little curl, although the fat little curl is plainly not for me. Laugh heartily, if you’d like to, my dear. I’m not at all concerned when others find me ridiculous.”
Christine nodded and smiled as best she could, thinking: I should have left well enough alone. I shouldn’t have gone prying into the past to find out what my secret was. My foster parents were so wise in never telling me. They were right in shielding me from a past I could neither change nor help. But I couldn’t let matters remain as they were. I had to go seeking and prying. And now I know.
When the coffee had dripped, Mrs. Breedlove served it, and they sat together under the harsh kitchen light overhead. Monica talked in detail of her buffet party, apologizing occasionally for the muddiness of her thoughts, the clumsiness of her phrasing; then suddenly the tenor of her thoughts changed, and touching Christine’s cheek, she said, “There’s something troubling you. Won’t you tell me what it is? I think you know by this time you can trust me all the way.”
Christine shook her head, sighed, and looked down helplessly. “I can’t. I can’t tell you. Not even you, Monica.” She went to the icebox, took out a carton of cream, and poured it into Monica’s pewter creamer, thinking: How can I blame Rhoda for the things she’s done? I carried the bad seed that made her what she is. If anybody is guilty, I’m the guilty one, not Rhoda. She suddenly felt both humble and guilty, thinking how she’d wronged the child, even if she’d done so unwittingly. “I’m the guilty one,” she said again to herself. “I was the carrier of the bad seed.”
Mrs. Breedlove waited awhile and then said that if Christine wouldn’t tell her the trouble, she must guess at it. “Tell me this,” she added. “Have you and Kenneth come to the parting of the ways?” She laughed at her own fancy, and went on. “Has he found a little Spanish girl in Chile, and given you the brush-off, with nothing to remember him by except a curt note of explanation?”
“It’s nothing like that, Monica. I wish I were as sure of everything as I am of Kenneth.”
Mrs. Breedlove waited, sipping her coffee, and then said, “The only other thing I can think of is health. Are you afraid you have some disease—something like cancer, for example? If you suspect that, we must face it with courage. We must do everything that can be done, and there is so much that can be done these days; and whatever there is that can be done, we’ll do it.”
“I’m perfectly healthy, as far as I know.”
Mrs. Breedlove put down her cup. “I’m not going to bully you any more, Christine. I’m only going to say I love you truly and deeply, my dear—as though you were my own, in fact. Emory feels the same way about you; but I needn’t tell you that, for you know it already.”
Christine nodded and rested her forehead on the table. Monica stood above her, put her hand on her shoulder, and said in the soft, serious voice she rarely used, “You know you can trust me. You know you can trust me.” Then Christine got up blindly, put her arms about the old woman, and wept without restraint. Mrs. Breedlove said, making soft, sympathetic noises with her lips, “Dear, dear Christine! You’ll feel better now. Perhaps you can manage to get some sleep.” Then, in her customary voice she added, “Doctor Ewing left a bottle of sleeping pills for me a week or so ago when I was a little upset, too. I didn’t use them. I’m going to get them for you now. There’s no sense in your not sleeping.”
She returned with the bottle; but when Christine was in her own apartment, she opened the locked drawer of her desk and put the bottle in with the pistol and the letters she had not sent her husband.
TEN
She slept after a long time; and when she did, she became involved in a terrifying dream. There was a woman with a hatchet in her hand who moved up from the road. She paused at the farmhouse, and searched it; and when she did not find what she looked for, she went toward the barn, holding the hatchet behind her for concealment, and called out in a sweet, patient voice, “Christine! Where are you, Christine? Don’t be afr
aid of me. Do you think your mother would harm you?”
But Christine, hidden in the tall grass, would not answer; and when she looked up again, the barn was full of windows, and each window framed the face of one of her mother’s victims. There was one window vacant, and she heard her mother saying, “Christine! Christine, take your place with the others!” Then the others at the windows chanted in chorus, “You’ll never find Christine. Her present identity is well concealed.”
The faceless woman said, “I’ll find her, no matter where she is. I’m the Incomparable Bessie Denker. I’m the one whose master plan worked so well.”
Then, plainly, she saw her mother’s placid, conventional face, and, trembling, she pressed herself closer to the earth, while the people at the windows turned to one another in concern and said, “The Incomparable Bessie Denker wants Christine this time. Christine, take your place with the others. Has anybody seen Christine? Christine is the one who escaped.”
Mrs. Penmark, turning nervously on her pillow, struggled upward to reality, her wet hands pressed together. She sat up in bed and smoothed out her pillow. She lay trembling for a time, her teeth chattering in an irregular rhythm, as though she were cold. She tried to sleep again, and at length she did. When she woke, it was morning. It was raining, with a wind that threw the rain over the tops of the trees and through the patterns of their tossing branches. The trees in the park looked drenched and desolate as they bent before the wind, shivered, and righted themselves once more. The gutters were overflowing, and water ran down to the courtyard with a quarrelsome sound so close to speech that you felt, if you listened more attentively, you could surely know its meaning.
She closed her windows and mopped where the rain had blown into the house; then, going to the kitchen to fix breakfast for her child, she saw Leroy, wrapped in an old plastic raincoat, his wet shoes squashing as he walked, carrying out ashes from the basement. She stood irresolutely beside her window, as though already she’d forgotten her purpose, hearing the banging of the cans as Leroy set them in the alley for the garbageman to pick up at nine. He came back to the courtyard, and bent down to clear a flooded, leaf-stopped drain; and though she could not hear his mumbling voice, she could almost know the words he said by the petulant motion of his lips.
When Rhoda had eaten her breakfast, had folded her napkin and put it away in the sideboard drawer, she asked permission to visit Mrs. Forsythe. The old lady, she said, had promised to teach her to crochet; and now that it was raining, and she must stay inside in any event, she thought it a good time for her first lesson. Mrs. Penmark frowned in indecision. Now that she knew the horror of Rhoda’s inheritance, could chart with a reasonable certainty what her career would be, she wondered if she were morally justified in allowing her to be alone with anyone; perhaps she should no longer let her out of her sight, should even warn others of her criminality; but knowing how difficult these hysterical things were of accomplishment, she looked down helplessly, and renewed her intention of making no decision until her husband returned. She said, “If I let you go, you must promise not to do anything to Mrs. Forsythe. Do you understand me?”
“No, Mother. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Please, Rhoda! Let’s not have any more charm or acting. We understand each other very well. Let’s be natural with each other from now on. You know quite well what I’m talking about.”
Rhoda giggled, nodded her head, and said in a matter-of-fact voice, “I know what you mean. But I won’t do anything to her.” And then, pressing her hands together, rolling her eyes roguishly, she added, “Aunt Jessie hasn’t got anything I want.”
When her child had gone, when her routine tasks of the morning were partly done, the implications that had lain so strongly in Mrs. Penmark’s mind since she knew, at last, who she was, broke through strongly. She paused while polishing her rosewood console table, and turned away frowning; a moment later she could not remember what had brought her to her bedroom in the first place. She put down her chamois cloth, and stood in confusion beside her bed, her hands making futile gestures in the air.
The discovery of her true identity had clarified much which had once seemed so baffling in her child. She could see now that Rhoda was not responsible for the things she’d done. She, not Rhoda, was the guilty one, for it was she who had passed on the inheritance from Bessie Denker to the little girl, the inheritance that had lain dormant for a generation, but had bloomed once more to destroy. Knowing these things, how could she blame her child? How hold her accountable?… The more her poor, distraught mind dwelt on these matters, the plainer her guilt seemed to her, and she kept saying to herself, “I’m so ashamed. I’m so ashamed.”
She sat down at length, despair flooding her mind; then, in a final effort to ease herself from the guilty knowledge she knew would destroy her, she wondered if the circumstance of grandmother and grandchild being alike in their criminality was anything more than coincidence, an accidental fact like any other—one with no implications behind it. Perhaps, in taking her guilt for granted, she assumed too much. Perhaps she was not the inevitable link between Bessie Denker and her child; was blameless, after all. She felt that if anybody knew about these matters, Reginald Tasker would know; but for a long time she debated with herself the wisdom of calling him, fearing he would not consider her question an abstract one as she hoped, that he would connect it quickly with the problem she faced, would thus know the secret she was determined to guard from everyone.
She came to the conclusion that he would probably not suspect the true purpose behind her question. He knew a little of the reality that faced her, but not enough. She alone knew all the parts of the puzzle—the death of the old lady in Baltimore, the death of the Daigle boy at the picnic, the horror of the child’s inheritance—those parts which, like an elementary jigsaw puzzle, a puzzle with less necessary pieces than the ones Rhoda loved to assemble, implacably revealed the whole.
She walked about in perturbation, unable to make up her mind, and at last Reginald solved the problem for her. At noon he telephoned to ask if she were now feeling better. At once he said, “Did you get a chance to finish the Denker case? We were just getting hot when you had to go.”
“Yes, I finished it.”
“That Bessie Denker was really something, wasn’t she?”
“Yes. Yes, she certainly was.”
He talked on and on; but when he paused for a moment’s concentration, she asked her question quickly, more bluntly than she’d planned. He said it wasn’t a point he’d particularly considered, but, after all, he didn’t see why not! The thing that made these people what they were wasn’t a positive quality, but a negative one. It was a lack of something in them from the beginning, not something they’d acquired. Now, color blindness and baldness and hemophilia were all caused by a lack of something or other, and nobody denied that they were transmitted. Feeblemindedness was a lack of something, too; and certainly it was passed along from generation to generation.…
She had asked him for reassurance, but she had not received it, and she said in a small desperate voice, “But what do psychiatrists think?”
Reginald laughed at her simplicity. To answer her question, he said he’d first have to ask a few questions of his own: What did what psychiatrist think? And what year did he think it in?… He’d recently read the testimony in the old Thaw case, and it might interest her to learn that six psychiatrists, among the most learned of their day, testified to one thing for the prosecution, while six others, equally distinguished in the psychiatric field, testified to the opposite for the defense.
When she hung up, Mrs. Penmark walked about her apartment, feeling as though she’d surely collapse; and it seemed to her then that the essential and terrifying pattern of her life was now plain. But this thought was too dreadful for her to face at once, and sitting beside her window, watching the trees bending under the force of wind and rain, she said in a thin, frightened voice, “Oh, please! Oh, please!”… Then, o
verwhelmed with guilt so powerful that it was not bearable, she walked about the room in nervous panic, her damp hands pressed together, as though imploring some remote implacable power to give her peace once more, to deny for her the truth she could herself no longer deny.
She wrote her husband another of her long passionate letters.… In a way, she’d married him under false pretenses, she said. She told him who her mother was, and how she’d made the discovery. Richard Bravo had been closely associated with the Denker case. It wasn’t difficult to understand now how he and his wife had come to know her—the one who had survived—and later to take her for their own; but she kept wondering why they’d done it. Perhaps they’d hoped to rescue me, for they were both most kind and gentle people; to save me from the things I’d seen and knew about even at that age. They very nearly succeeded, but not quite.
She wrote: I’ve been thinking, since I’ve discovered the truth about myself, of your mother’s objections to our marriage. She was right to be suspicious of me—only the reasons she gave for her suspicions were wrong. She must have known by instinct there was something dreadfully wrong about me, that I would bring you only ruin and despair. And that is what I will bring you, my darling. I see it now with such a frightening clarity.
But if your mother was instinctively right in opposing your marriage to me, I was instinctively right in telling you nothing of the things I’ve found out about Rhoda since you went away. I wonder now if I can ever bring myself to tell you those things. I do not think so. You see how shameful that would be for me, don’t you? How humiliating? I must think things through clearly, or as clearly as I can, and I must live my life with Rhoda with some sort of courage which I do not possess at the moment. I must do the best I can.
The Bad Seed Page 17