The Bad Seed

by William March

  Then, in sudden resolution, as though summoning the last of her strength, Christine stood up, and, supported by Mrs. Forsythe and a man she’d never seen before, she went to her own apartment, and lay flat on her bed. She turned on her side, thinking this time it was surely her fault. She might, with some justice, have found excuses for herself before, but not this time. She said under her breath, “This time I knew what would happen, or I should have known. And I should have stopped it. I should have done something about Rhoda weeks ago. Something must be done quickly now.”

  Mrs. Forsythe went to the kitchen to take ice from the trays; and Rhoda came into the room and stared contemptuously at her mother. She said casually, in a whisper that hardly carried to Christine’s ears. “He knew about the shoes. He was going to tell on me.”

  Mrs. Forsythe came back with an improvised ice pack for Mrs. Penmark and said, “He must have been smoking in the basement again, which he’d been told not to do. They think he went to sleep with a lighted cigarette in his hand. Several of us predicted it would happen some day. Oh, I feel such sympathy for his wife and family. I doubt if his wife has enough to bury him decently. It was such a sad accident, really.” She went to the window and adjusted the blinds so that light fell on the wall in small, precise slats that moved and shifted design when the trees moved, with the effect of sunlight shimmering on water. She said, “I’m going to take Rhoda to my apartment, where she won’t disturb you. You must get some sleep if you can. You’ll feel better after a nice sleep. But you must quit worrying so, or you’ll make yourself ill. Just leave everything to me. Just sleep.”

  She slept after a time, a deep, dreamless sleep such as she’d not had for a long time; and when she woke, she felt a stolid quietness which was, in its way, more frightening than the wildness of her turmoil had been. It was as though she’d reached at last the windless center of the hurricane that had destroyed her.… Calmly she bathed her face, brushed her hair, put on new lipstick, and called for her child.

  Later that afternoon, the telephone rang. It was Mrs. Breedlove. She had heard about the fire and Leroy’s death, and she wanted to know at first hand what had happened. Christine told her what she knew—there was no damage to the apartment house; there was little damage to the basement itself; it was thought Leroy had gone to sleep with a lighted cigarette in his hand. Monica said in an earnest voice, “I’m pleased to see you’re taking it so sensibly. To tell the truth, I was afraid you’d be upset and nervous again. I really called to see how you were getting along. I wouldn’t blame you if you were upset, my dear. After all, it was a most terrible tragedy.” Then, repeating the little anecdote she’d thought up for the occasion, she laughed for the first time, and hung up her phone.

  When it was dusk, Mrs. Penmark called a taxi and went to Leroy’s house on General Jackson Street. The place was filled with people, and she went only as far as the door; she could not bring herself to go inside. The widow, being summoned, came out to see who her visitor was, and sat with her under the blossoming althea tree near the porch. Christine identified herself and said, “I want you to give him the kind of funeral you want to give him. Don’t worry about expenses. I’ll take care of all the bills.” Thelma stared at her in astonishment, and Christine went on. “You know who I am. Have the undertaker and the others telephone me. I’ll tell them what I’ve told you.” Then, getting up, she went to the waiting taxicab.

  She awoke next morning with an obsessive desire to read the volume devoted to her mother in the Great American Criminals series. She drove to the library, took out the book, and returned with it to her apartment. She sat beside her window, reading again the things she already knew, but in greater detail this time.

  When August Denker came into the property his wife had won for him, a change came over him, and he ceased to be the unquestioning, good-natured husband. He took on an air of sudden importance; he began giving orders to others; and, what was worst of all from Mrs. Denker’s standpoint, he seemed bent on dissipating the estate through his impractical plans for its increase. She had not planned to remove him so soon, but seeing her lifework threatened, she departed for the first time from the cunning conservatism of her master plan and gave him his arsenic in buttermilk.

  Her plan had now worked out to its final detail; the dreams of her girlhood had all come true; she was in possession of the Denker money at last. She settled back to enjoy the fruits of her labor, to play the role of the bereaved but courageous widow. It was doubtful that she ever regretted the things she’d done, or thought with remorse of her acts. She probably regarded herself not as a criminal but as a cunning little businesswoman who traveled in an unusual line of merchandise, whose foresight and skill lifted her above the fates of those less gifted than herself.…

  But even as she rocked so contentedly in her tidy house, the first baying of the first hound was heard at the edge of the swamp; for Cousin Ada Gustafson, the silent, suspicious one, began to go about the countryside and speak her suspicions aloud: “August hadn’t died of no congestive chill, like the doctor said, and nobody could tell her different. Cousin Bessie put something in August’s buttermilk just as sure as God made little apples!… And Grandfather Denker dying like he did—so sudden, and all—sounded real funny, too. Why, that old man had been strong as a bull.… Then, too, there were those stories they used to tell about Bessie back home when she was a girl. It seemed real funny to her that things didn’t start happening to folks until Cousin Bessie got interested in them.”

  At first the neighbors listened to the old woman with amusement and disbelief; then Ada went to the sheriff one afternoon and told her story. “Let’s dig up August!” she said. “Let’s dig up August and see!”

  Then the county asked permission to exhume August Denker’s body; and when Bessie weepingly refused to have her husband serve as the playing field of Cousin Ada’s spite, the officials got a court order and dug up the body anyway; and for the first time in her life, perhaps, Mrs. Denker felt blind, unreasoning panic. She lost all the ordinary good sense that had served her so long. She devised a plan for her protection so foolish that it seemed incredible: she told everyone that August and Grandfather Denker had been poisoned, all right, but she wasn’t the one who’d done it. Cousin Ada had committed these crimes, she said, and probably others, too. She’d suspected her from the first, but she’d kept quiet in fear of her own life, and in fear of the lives of her children, too. Cousin Ada had threatened time after time to kill her and the children, and burn the house down, too. If anything happened to her and the children, she wanted them to remember what she’d told them about Cousin Ada, and act as witnesses against her later on.…

  That night she killed Ada Gustafson and all her children except the youngest, Christine. Apparently, she’d first stunned Old Ada with the blunt side of her hatchet, and then with a cleaver she’d severed the old woman’s head. When these things were accomplished, she’d dressed the old woman in her own clothes, even putting her wedding ring on Ada’s finger. For her escape, she dressed herself in a suit of her husband’s clothes, and then, going out of her door for the last time, she’d paused long enough to set fire to the place. She’d hoped, although the hope proved to be a forlorn one, that the authorities would mistake the body of the old woman for her own, would assume that she, Ada Gustafson, had committed the crime, had been the murderer all along.

  She had wrapped Old Ada’s head in a newspaper parcel, and, taking the bundle with her, she made her escape from the flaming farmhouse; but her disguise mislead nobody. They caught up with her the next morning as she sat in the waiting-room of the Union Station of Kansas City. The circular parcel was resting in her lap, and when the police cut the string and opened it, Miss Gustafson’s head rolled off the seat and halfway across the tiles of the waiting-room floor.

  Why the youngest child had been spared was anybody’s guess. There was a story which still cropped up occasionally that Ada Gustafson had loved Christine more than the others, and fearing wha
t might happen, she’d sent her to a neighboring farmhouse for the night; but there were no facts to support the story. Richard Bravo was of the opinion that Christine had been spared because the mother considered her too young to understand what had happened, or to testify against her later. Alice Olcott Flowers believed Bessie Denker expected, with the narcissistic arrogance of her kind, to outwit her pursuers and make good her escape. She’d probably want to start all over again some place, and she’d saved Christine for that future just as she might have conserved any other asset. After all, the child was an insurable piece of property that could be realized on later for working capital.…

  Mrs. Penmark closed her eyes and said, “No. It didn’t happen that way. They’re all wrong.… I wasn’t asleep when she hit Sonny with the hatchet; I saw her do it, and I ran out and hid back of the barn in the weeds. It was dark there, and she couldn’t find me. When she’d killed the others, she came to look for me. She called me and called me. She said she wouldn’t hurt me if I came to her. But I’d watched through the window while she killed the others, and I wouldn’t answer her.”

  TWELVE

  Mrs. Penmark fell into the habit, immediately after breakfast, of dressing herself and the child and riding aimlessly about the countryside. On these trips they rarely spoke, as though, understanding each other so completely now, there was no longer reason for communication. Sometimes, when she did not feel like driving her car, Mrs. Penmark and Rhoda took bus rides that had no definite destination. To see them, sitting in separate seats, one would not have thought they were together, except that the child turned from time to time to watch her mother, as though awaiting the signal that would reveal to her the thing they were to do next.

  In the center of the town, there was a square filled with azalea bushes, camellias, and live oaks. There was a big iron fountain with four graduated basins beneath to catch the cascading water from the top of the structure, to hold it a moment, and to pass it at last to the circular moat below. There was always a breeze at that place, and sometimes she’d take the child to the square, knowing they’d not be likely to meet anyone but strangers in such a public place. They’d sit on the iron benches, while Christine looked vacantly about her, and Rhoda, on a separate bench, would go on with her needlework.

  The park was the haven of the rootless stranger who had no other place to go; but one afternoon Christine looked up and saw Miss Octavia Fern approaching. The old lady stopped in doubt, then nodded, as if still not sure of herself. She said, “You’re Christine Penmark, aren’t you?”

  “Yes. Yes, of course, Miss Fern.”

  “I thought you must be, but I wasn’t too positive. Then I saw Rhoda sitting across the walk and, of course, I knew.”

  Christine smiled gently, but she neither answered, nor asked the old lady to sit down.

  “I remember our morning at Benedict so well, with so much pleasure,” said Miss Fern after a moment. “It was a charming day, really. The oleander cuttings rooted easily, and I transplanted two of them to our back garden just the other day.”

  Mrs. Penmark nodded in recognition that she heard, and Miss Fern went on. “I’d hoped you’d find time to visit me, but I know how occupied you must be these days.” She paused again, feeling as though she addressed a stranger, as though she’d ineptly trespassed on the privacy of others, as though her presence in the park were a thing of others, as though her presence in the park were a thing to be explained and condoned. She said hurriedly, “I rarely come through the square; but Burgess is waiting for me down the street, and this was a shortcut.”

  She moved away, caught Rhoda’s eye, and waved; but the child ignored her with a placid disinterest. Miss Fern stood in uncertainty, as though undecided what to do next, how to get herself in motion once more. She gave the impression that she was about to sit on the bench beside Mrs. Penmark; and then, as though the impulse were canceled at the instant the movement was contemplated, she fumbled in her handbag needlessly, as though searching for a card to give a stranger, and said, “We must have our visit sometime soon.… But I mustn’t keep Burgess waiting. She fidgets so when she’s kept waiting.”

  Late one afternoon, after she’d returned with Rhoda from the square, Mrs. Penmark’s doorbell rang, and she went to answer it. She found Hortense Daigle in the hall. Mrs. Daigle came into the living-room, embraced Christine, and said, “I’ve been wanting to return your visit for such a long time; but I’ve been in mourning. But I said to Mr. Daigle this morning, ‘What do you suppose Christine thinks of me? I must go see her today without fail.’ ”

  She was a little drunk, and Mrs. Penmark placed a chair for her. She sat down, and seeing Rhoda reading beside the window, she said, “So this is your little girl? What’s your name? Claude spoke of you so often, and in such high terms. You were one of his dearest friends, I’m sure. He said you were so bright in school.”

  “My name is Rhoda Penmark.”

  “Come let me look at you, Rhoda.… Now, how about giving your Aunt Hortense a big kiss? You were with Claude when he had his accident, weren’t you, dear? You’re the little girl who was so sure she was going to win the penmanship medal, and worked so hard. But you didn’t win it after all, did you, darling? Claude won the medal, didn’t he? Now, tell me this—would you say he won it fair and square, or that he cheated? These things are so important, now that he’s dead. I’ve called Miss Octavia Fern on the telephone a dozen times, but she just gives me the brush-off. She—”

  Christine disengaged her child from the hot, damp arms of the visitor, saying, “It’s time for you to visit Mrs. Forsythe. She’s looking forward to seeing you. You mustn’t disappoint her.”

  Mrs. Daigle straightened in her chair. “Go, by all means. I mustn’t keep you from your social duties, I’m sure. Even my husband tells me I’m tiresome. Why don’t you come out in the open and say so?”

  Rhoda gave the woman a shrewd, amused look, smoothed down her bangs, and went through the door. Mrs. Daigle said, “Have you got anything to drink in the house? Anything at all. I’m not the fussy type. I prefer bourbon and water, but anything will do.” Mrs. Penmark went to the kitchen and began taking out ice cubes. She put a bottle of bourbon and one glass on a tray, and Hortense, following her into the kitchen, said, “Aren’t you going to join me, Christine? An old gentleman, a friend of Mr. Daigle’s, has some sort of a heart condition; and you know what—the doctor said for him to take three drinks a day. It’s supposed to relax your arteries. Only this old gentleman was a strict prohibitionist and said no, he wouldn’t do it.”

  She staggered, lost her balance, and bumped against the wall. She said, “As though three drinks a day was any trouble. Three drinks a day isn’t what I call trouble. Talking about trouble, what would he do if his little boy got drowned, and then was beaten against pilings? Now, you may disagree, but that’s what I call trouble; not having to take three drinks of whisky a day.” She laughed loudly, pushing her hair up, and said, “When Mr. Daigle told me, I laughed until my sides ached.”

  Christine put a bowl of ice cubes on the tray and brought it into the living-room. Mrs. Daigle downed a drink of straight bourbon, took a swallow of water, and went on. “What I came here for was to have a little chat with Rhoda; but, of course, I didn’t know she had all these social obligations. I thought she was like any other little girl that stayed home and minded her mother, and didn’t go traipsing over town to see people just before suppertime. I’m sorry I interfered with Rhoda’s social life. I hope you’ll pardon me, Christine. I offer you my deepest apologies. I’ll apologize to Rhoda, too, when she comes back.”

  “Are you comfortable?” asked Mrs. Penmark. “Shall I turn the fan more in your direction?”

  “I’ve talked to so many people about Claude’s death. I wanted to talk to Rhoda, too. There’s nothing wrong about that, is it? She must know something she hasn’t told; maybe something she thought wasn’t important, and forgot. But everything that has to do with Claude is important to me. I wasn’t goi
ng to contaminate her in the slightest degree, I assure you. I was just going to rock her in my arms, and ask her a few simple questions.”

  “Perhaps another time would be better.”

  “I’m not intoxicated in the slightest degree. Kindly don’t talk down to me, Mrs. Penmark. I’ve been through enough without that.… But Rhoda knows more than she’s told anybody, if you’ll pardon me for being so presumptuous as to disagree with you. I talked to that guard, remember. It was a long, interesting conversation, and he said he saw Rhoda on the wharf just before Claude was found among the pilings. She knows something she hasn’t told, all right.”

  The telephone rang, and Christine answered it. She heard Mr. Daigle’s worried voice. He wanted to know if his wife was there. He’d been phoning all over town, trying to find her. Mrs. Penmark said she was, and he promised to come at once and pick her up. Mrs. Daigle, hearing the conversation, said, “Did you tell him I was drinking and making a spectacle of myself? Did you tell him to call the patrol wagon, dear Christine?”

  “You heard what I said. I only said you were here.”

  “That’s what you said aloud—yes. But what were you thinking? You were thinking, ‘How can I get rid of this pest?’ That’s what you were really thinking.… For your private information, let me tell you something. I don’t care what you think of me. Understand? I don’t know who you think you are, being so high and mighty, and thinking you’re better than other people. You may fool some with that mealy mouth, but you look like ‘Ned in the Primer’ to me.”

  “If that’s what you really think, perhaps you’d better not come here again.”

  “I wouldn’t come here again for a million dollars laid out in a line. I wouldn’t have come this time, if I’d known about Rhoda’s social life. I didn’t live on Easy Street when I was growing up, the way you did. I lived on the Road of Hard Knocks, as the fellow says.” She poured herself another drink, downed it, and continued. “You think you’re important, don’t you? Going around being kind to people. Nobody asked you to come to my house the night Claude was killed. Nobody asked you to come that second time, either. I wondered ever since why you came that second time. You had something on your mind, but didn’t say what it was. I said the same to Mr. Daigle, but he said I was out of my mind.”