Wicked Angel

by Taylor Caldwell

  She nodded; she was beyond speaking. But then there was the belt, and Mark uttered a furious cry. It was impeding him, just as it had saved her.

  “Grab the stake with your right hand again,” he said. “That’s right, higher up. Now I’ll have to let that hand go. Hold on!” He tightened his grip with one hand on her left wrist, and used the other hand to unfasten the strap. It fell. He seized her right hand once more and pulled her up. She gave no thought to anything now but obeying him; when her knees reached the tearing and crumbling edge of the bluff she thrust them into the soil. Now her head was on the level with the log below the top one. Her face was close to Mark’s; they looked into each other’s eyes. He smiled. “Good Allie,” he said. “Brave, dear Allie.”

  Then Kathy appeared at the fence, deathly pale, and Mamie. Kathy reached over and grasped her sister’s hair; Mamie seized her under the right armpit. That was all she remembered clearly about her rescue.

  She was standing in safety now, in Mark’s arms, sobbing desperately on his shoulder, clutching him. Then her knees bent under her and she fainted for the first time in her life.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Alice lay in peace in Kathy’s pretty rustic bedroom. Her right arm was in a plaster cast, for all the ligaments were tom, the muscles wrenched. She had slept. She had been given a sedative by the doctor. But now she was awake in the twilight and Mark was alone with her, sitting by the bed.

  She watched him a moment or two through her lashes. He looked old and weary, and his face was gray and spent, the cheeks fallen in. He was smoking and staring at nothingness.

  He knows something! was Alice’s first coherent and agonized thought. He suspects something! But he mustn’t know, he mustn’t suspect. She let herself moan a little, and moved her head, as if awakening. Instantly, his hand was on her forehead. “It’s all right, Allie,” he said quietly. “You’re safe, Allie. Just rest.”

  Her arm throbbed with fire; the shoulder ached like death itself. She whispered weakly, “Where’s—Bruce?”

  “The doctor gave him a sedative, too,” he replied, and stroked her damp hair. It had an ashen gleam in the twilight. And now he bent over her and looked into her eyes. “Tell me about it, Allie.”

  “Didn’t Bruce tell you?” she said feebly. “It seems all confused to me.”

  He spoke without any emphasis or emotion, and he watched her. “He said you were sitting on the fence, and that was a damn fool thing to do, Allie, and he was on the porch, and then the next minute you had lost your balance and you fell over. He—he said he tried to help you, but couldn’t.”

  Mark paused. His eyes were closer to hers; she could not shut her own; his gaze held her and she could not turn away from it.

  “He said he tried, and then you told him to go and call the police.” Mark paused. He said flatly, “And he did. He was at the telephone just as we pulled into the drive. He was hysterical. The police arrived as you fainted. They stayed around for a little while. Don’t you remember talking to Chief Hanley?”

  But, terrified, Alice could not remember. She had a vague memory of strange faces floating about her in a shifting pattern of light and shadow. What had she said? She moved her head in assent, and watched Mark with distended eyes.

  “You told him the same thing; you said Bruce tried to help, but he was too small to reach you. And then you sent him to telephone—for the police.”

  Alice gave a great, sinking sigh.

  “The only thing,” said Mark, in a strange and awful voice, “is that the doctor said that from your injuries he would judge you’d been hanging there for a considerable time, and not for about five or ten minutes. If Bruce had called the police just as we got home, after you had sent him away, right after you fell, the time element would not have been long enough to hurt you like this. The blood was crusted on your arm; your wrist was enormously swollen and purple. That takes much longer than a few minutes, Allie.” He paused. “Are you going to tell me the truth, dear?”

  But the truth will kill your heart, thought Alice. She tried to smile. “It was just as—we—told you.”

  Mark slowly shook his head from side to side. He looked at the floor between his knees. “I don’t believe you, Allie,” he said, and her heart jumped. “Do you know what I think? I think that you fell over that fence at least half an hour before we and the police came. I think that Bruce saw you fall, and heard you scream; I think he—I think he lost his head, and that when you sent him away he hid himself in his room. He does that often, when he’s confronted with an emergency. I can’t forgive him, Allie. He’s a bright boy; he should have known better. If he’d called the police immediately, they’d have rescued you long before we arrived. Am I right, Allie?”

  “I—it was so awful; I don’t remember just how long—” Alice whispered. The relief made her feel sick and faint again. “But I don’t think it was half an hour; perhaps only a quarter, if that long. Don’t blame Bruce too much, Mark. He’s only a little fellow, after all.” Her words were slow and painful. “Just because he’s so—intelligent—we forget his age. We expect his actions to match his mind. Children—aren’t like that. They grow—kind of lopsided, even the most intelligent.”

  But Mark was silent. He was still staring at the floor, and then he lifted his eyes and she saw, even in the dusk, that some horror lay at the bottom of them, some fearful suspicion. She forced herself to look at him steadily; her white lips were stiff and unmoving.

  “Allie,” he said, and his voice was hoarse. “Tell me the truth. After you fell—do you think Bruce deliberately ran away, and waited as long as he could before calling the police?”

  “How can you think that?” she cried, and sat up in spite of the blaze of pain in her arm. “It wasn’t that way at all! Why should he do that?”

  Truth rang in her voice, but it was not the truth he understood.

  He wiped his face with his palms, and sighed. “Bruce doesn’t like you, Allie. Wait. Let me finish. I’ve known for a long time that he didn’t, ever since the day he smashed the things in your purse. Don’t you see I’ve got to know the truth about this, for Bruce’s sake? I’ve got to know if, after he saw you fall, and heard your scream, that he thought that was the end of you, even though he came running to the bluff where he never usually goes. And then he saw you hanging, and you told him to go to the police, and he—he waited, hoping you’d have to let go. And die. Allie, if that is so, then he attempted to—”

  The frightful word hung between them, unspoken. Then Alice shook her head. “It wasn’t that way, Mark. You know I don’t lie. But I swear to you, in the name of God, that it wasn’t as you say. I swear to you.”

  They looked at each other in another silence. Then Mark sighed once more, and smiled faintly. His forehead was wet. “I believe you, Allie. If—it was as I thought originally, I don’t know how I’d stand it. My son. I’d know, then, that he was sick, sick beyond any help.”

  Kathy opened the door and came in. She was still very shaken. She ran to Alice, put her arms about her sister, and burst into tears. “Oh, my God!” she sobbed. “Oh, my little sister! Oh, what would have happened if we hadn’t come home then? Oh, and my poor little boy! He’ll never forget this. He’ll have nightmares! Oh, you poor children!”

  “How is Bruce?” asked Alice faintly, feeling her sister’s tears on her face, and attempting awkwardly to pat her back with her left hand. “Hush, Kathy dear. How is Bruce?”

  Kathy sat down on the edge of the bed; she clutched Alice’s left hand tightly. She sobbed with helplessness. “I don’t know! He woke up an hour ago, and I brought him his tray, and then he cried and couldn’t stop. I had to feed him like a baby, and then I had to rock him in the rocker until he fell asleep again. And Alicia! Do you know what he asked me to do? He asked me to find out how you were, just before he fell asleep, and he sent you his very best love!” Kathy wept again. “Doesn’t that break your heart?”

  Alice leaned against her sister and closed her eyes, and the n
ausea was a great and swelling lump in her throat. “It’s all right,” she murmured thickly. “Please, Kathy dear, don’t cry so. It’s all right. Everything will be all right.”

  It was very early the next morning when Mamie came into the bedroom with the breakfast tray for Alice. But Kathy was already bathed, and out of the room. She had promised Angelo to get him some of the red raspberries he particularly loved, and she had gone down to the village, “to get them early and sweet and fresh, before they’ve been handled by others.” Mark was still sleeping in exhaustion on his couch in the living room. Mamie put the tray beside Alice’s bed, and smiled at her encouragingly. “Want me to feed you, Miss Knowles? My, that was an awful day, yesterday, wasn’t it?”

  “I can feed myself, thanks,” said Alice, with a grateful smile. “I’m ambidextrous, you know. That means I can use each hand equally well. Yes, it was a bad day.”

  Mamie looked about the room cautiously. Then she tiptoed to the door, opened it and glanced at the sleeping Mark at the end of the living room. She came back to the bed and her pleasant face was stern.

  “Mrs. Saint said you insisted you would leave this morning, and that Mr. Saint would drive you into the city,” she said. “And Mrs. Saint says that’s nonsense, with your cast and all, and you’ll be here for a week or more, until you can use your right arm.”

  She paused. Alice shook her head, and drank the orange juice. “No, I must go back, I really must, just as soon as I’ve finished this good breakfast and can get dressed. Will you help me, Mamie?”

  “You mean, you’ll leave before Mrs. Saint gets back?” The woman’s eyes were inscrutable. “She says she won’t be here until about lunchtime. She’s shopping in the village.”

  “I’ll have to leave, I’m afraid,” said Alice, making her voice sound regretful. She could not stay here and see Angelo again. She asked about the boy. “Oh, he’s still asleep. Doped up.” At the curious sound in Mamie’s tone Alice looked up alertly. Mamie’s mouth had taken on a hard line. She began to whisper.

  “They don’t fool me any, Miss Knowles. I can put two and two together. You know what I think? I think you were sitting on that fence and he pushed you over! He wanted to kill you!”

  Alice put down her glass; her hand was trembling. She began to speak, but Mamie interrupted her almost fiercely. “I can see by your face! And I saw his face, yesterday, when we pulled you up.” She crossed herself, with simple honesty. “I can tell a murderer when I see one, and he ain’t no kid. He ain’t a kid at all. Miss Knowles! I’ve lived sixty years, and I know people. I’ve watched him for two months. I’ve staved just because of Mr. Saint. who’s really a saint, in a kind of way. A foolish way.” She tried to smile, and her mouth quivered.

  “You mustn’t—” said Alice, and looked at Mamie with terror.

  “Oh, I won’t say anything to Mr. Saint.” She regarded Alice wisely. “You’re an awful good girl, Miss Knowles. One of the best I ever saw. Don’t ever be around that kid again; you’ll never know what he’ll do. Do you know something else? I think he killed that poor little dog, just because he was treating it rough, and it bit him.”

  Alice stared at the breakfast tray emptily; she had no strength for denials.

  “And that’s why, when you go this morning, I’m going with you,” said Mamie grimly. “I’m already packed. I’ll tell Mr. Saint. I won’t wait until she gets back. I’m afraid, now, to stay here myself. The kid can sort of read minds; he looks at you and it’s like mind-reading. And if he gets onto what I know about him, about yesterday and the dog, why, he might stick a knife in my back or something!”

  Alice tried to laugh. “Oh, Mamie!”

  Mamie shook her head with vehemence. “Miss Knowles,” and she lifted a solemn finger. “I don’t think it’s right not to tell Mr. Saint. Maybe there’s a hospital they can put that boy in; he’s a devil. Maybe they can cure him.”

  Alice could not keep from saying, “No, he can’t be cured. He was born that way.” Her heart was shaking in dread. “The psychiatrists have a name for him. I know a young psychiatrist in the city; we’re friends. He’s not as dogmatic and ridiculous as some of the others. He told me once—and he never knew Bruce but described his kind to me—that the only thing to do with children like Bruce is to take them to a large city and abandon them in a crowd, and never see them again! But, of course, you can’t do that. You can’t even put them in hospitals, for they aren’t insane, not legally, not insane as the law regards it. You see, Bruce is a psychopath.”

  “Words!” said Mamie, shaking her head. “I just say they’re devils.” She heaved a gusty sigh. “And kids like that boy grow up, and then they murder people.”

  “Not always,” said Alice sadly. “Not very often, I think. But they create misery and unhappiness among others. Deliberately.”

  “And you can’t whale the devil out of them, when they’re little, and change them?”

  “No, Mamie. You can’t change them. But the time will have to come when they’ll be recognized, and then—”

  “Then what?”

  “I don’t know, Mamie! I don’t know! We don’t even know what percentage of such children are born! Some-times not even psychiatrists can recognize them, for they’re often very clever and very intelligent. You can only tell by looking at their families, and seeing how wretched they are that there is one among them, a husband, perhaps, or a wife, or a child. You see, Mamie, conscience is a new development in mankind. At one time, before the rise of civilizations, men had no more conscience than other animals; they were what we call primitives. And psychopaths, as that doctor told me, are resurgences of primitiveness, throwbacks as far as a lack of a conscience is concerned. It’s like being born color-blind, which is another form of primitiveness.”

  “Dear God,” breathed Mamie. “Well, anyway, Miss Knowles, I’m leaving with you.”

  Alice was glad of this, though sorry for Kathy. There would be, then, no private, no dangerous conversation with Mark in his car when he drove her back to the City.

  Alice and Dr. John McDowell sat and smoked cigarettes after the excellent dinner they had had at the Tavern near the Parkway. The Tavern stood at a height, and looked down at the running river of lights going to and from the City. Alice felt drained; she smoked and sipped listlessly at her brandy, and glanced about the large rustic room in which she and her friend sat, and wondered, dimly, how so many people could be happy and full of laughter and without any sign of unhappiness in their faces. After following her wandering gaze, the doctor looked at her with affectionate curiosity, and yet he was very anxious and disturbed. He was very subtle, and he said, “Don’t let their faces deceive you, Alice. They’re probably as wretched and frightened as you are, many of them. No one could tell, looking at you, that you were upset.”

  Alice, in her dark-blue linen suit, and her small blue hat, looked very beautiful, the doctor thought, for he loved her and wanted to marry her. He glanced down at her right wrist; the cast had been removed two weeks ago, but the wrist was still discolored and swollen. Alice had told him the long and terrible story while they ate dinner, and he had listened in silence.

  “There are things you have to accept, no matter how horrifying,” he said. “They’re part of reality, Alice. If you’d told me about that boy earlier, informing me he was your nephew and that you hated each other, I’d have warned you to keep a big distance between you. Now, don’t jump to conclusions; you’re thinking of other children like him, and there may be millions—we don’t know—in the world, and being born every day. It’s a rare intelligent psychopath who commits murder, for they love themselves too much and want to protect themselves. When they do commit murder, it’s after long, cool months, and perhaps even years, of consideration and weighing the dangers. I think that most unsolved murders are committed by intelligent psychopaths. The stupid psychopaths are usually petty criminals, or drug addicts. There is one thing about the intelligent ones: they very rarely commit crimes impulsively, and that’s w
hy the law makes a distinction between those who kill on furious impulse and those who premediate murder. The boy has been thinking of destroying you for a long time.”

  He smiled at her, but she regarded him gravely. “So, keep away from him. I’m sorry, for my own sake, that you’re going to Boston, but I can understand.” Now he stopped smiling. “And I can have some hope, then, that you’ll forget Mark Saint and begin to think about me.”

  But Alice said, “And there’s no hope for Angelo? Shock treatment, or something?”

  “No. Except reducing him to a sort of vegetable existence through lobotomy. And that would be as terrible as the way he is now. Cheer up, Alice. I know half a dozen brilliant and successful and respected men, in the professions and in business, who are psychopaths. As far as any of their friends know, they’ve never committed a crime in their lives, and it’s possible they never did, and never will. Angel is now about to enter another stage in his development: he will have to pretend to have a real conscience—and he must make many friends. You’d be surprised to discover how many devoted friends psychopaths have! So, within a few months, perhaps a year, you’ll see a change in him. He will imitate all the virtues of others, for his own purposes. Virtue rises out of conscience; psychopaths have no conscience, but they watch and see what is socially desirable and approved, and then they do it. They normally have uncontrollable fits of passion; they learn to restrain themselves among strangers and friends, and give way to their rages only when safe among their husbands and wives, who won’t betray them. They are violent, but to strangers they appear the most agreeable and affectionate and cooperative and helpful people in the world, and only among their families do they become tigers of greed and cruelty. They appear absolutely lovable, but they are incapable of selfless love, just as they are incapable of respecting virtue and goodness. All these are civilized attributes, and the psychopath, as I’ve told you, is absolutely uncivilized in the nobler meaning of the term, ‘civilized.’”