The Evil Seed

by Joanne Harris

  I wiped my mouth gingerly on a handful of the coarse, gritty grass of the river-bank, and stood up, legs weak and head spinning. I shouted: ‘Help! Police!’; began to stumble and slide my way back along the muddy bank towards the bridge. There was a man standing on the bridge, looking my way; a tall man, slightly hunched, collar turned up against the damp. He did not walk away, but seemed to wait for me, his very presence a comfort to my shock and fear. Tears of gratitude filled my eyes; I reached out towards him.

  ‘Thank God!’ I cried fervently. ‘There’s a body there by the weir.’ I stumbled towards him, one knee printed with mud as I fell, tears in my eyes. Through their mist, the man seemed vaguely familiar. For an instant, I felt his eyes meet mine, though the expression on his face was still unclear. A tiny sound escaped his lips, a white hand twitched and withdrew into the pocket of his coat … then, with a single movement, he turned away and ran, in long, jerky strides, away from me, away from the bridge, and disappeared through a gateway out of my sight.

  I must have cried out loud, because, just then, a group of students rounded the corner, laughing and talking, and in an instant I was surrounded by friendly, sympathetic faces, hands touching mine, arms around my shoulders.

  Their cries of: ‘Make room!’ and ‘Give him air!’ surrounded me.

  I tried to smile, to breathe normally, to tell my story, to stop the dreadful palsy in my arms and legs. Slowly, the tilted world righted itself. One of the boys ran to the police station, bringing back with him two constables and an ambulance. I refused to get into the ambulance but accepted a drink of brandy. I began to feel better. I told my story three times, once to the students who had helped me, once to the policemen, once again to the hard-faced young inspector with a surprisingly gentle voice who interviewed me at the station and gave me a cup of tea. I did not mind telling the story; every time I did it seemed to remove it a little further into the realm of fiction. Over the teacup, looking into the grey eyes of Inspector Turner and comforted by the sympathy in his voice, I felt almost a hero. I had been in the war, yes, but now it was over.

  ‘What made you think there might have been a body there, Mr Holmes?’ asked Turner softly. ‘The two men I sent out tell me there was nothing to be seen from the bridge, and … you tell me yourself that your eyesight is not good.’

  ‘I know,’ I replied. ‘I can’t explain it.’ I told him some of the events of the previous spring, about Rosemary and how I had pulled her out of the river, and he nodded, as if he understood.

  ‘I see,’ he said. ‘And did you recognize the deceased? ‘I shuddered, but this time it was a controlled reaction, and my tea did not spill.

  ‘I didn’t see her face,’ I said in a low voice. ‘When she … turned over … I was sick.’

  Turner smiled narrowly.

  ‘Don’t be ashamed of that, Mr Holmes,’ he said briskly. ‘I’ve seen more corpses than you have, and this one is enough to make any man wish he hadn’t had any breakfast.’ He paused and closed his little book.

  ‘That’s it for now, you’ll be glad to know,’ he said. ‘Are you going to be all right to go home now, Mr Holmes?’

  ‘I think so, thank you, Inspector.’ I smiled, hesitated, fumbled with the buttons on my coat for a moment, then asked the question he had known I would ask all along.

  ‘Are you treating this case as a … I mean … do you think it’s murder?’

  The Inspector sighed and appeared to contemplate my question.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Do you?’ And for that moment, I felt as if he were asking me a serious question, as an equal, as if he thought I really might be able to tell him something.

  ‘Well … maybe a marauding animal …’ I suggested, feeling foolish.

  The Inspector cocked an eyebrow.

  ‘Maybe,’ he said mildly.

  ‘What sort of person would do that to someone?’ I asked, helplessly.

  Turner shook his head and sprang his last question.

  ‘Are you sure you’ve told me everything you saw? ‘he asked, and his grey eyes were cold in the middle of his smile.

  ‘Of course … at least … I think so,’ I stammered. ‘Why? I’m not a suspect, am I?’

  ‘No.’ The Inspector’s denial was offhand, almost disinterested. ‘There can be no suspect until there has been a murder, and that will be for the pathologist to decide.’

  ‘Oh.’ The syllable sounded lame, and I immediately began to feel suspect, guilt spilling unbidden into my mind. ‘I see.’

  I looked at Turner’s smile, and a secret chill crept up from my feet and raised the prickly hairs on my thighs. I am not good at lies, and I think the Inspector knew that I had not told him everything, but this thing was too much, too secret for me to hand it to him just yet. Besides, I hardly believed it myself, and I had to know before I acted, before I decided what to do.

  Because, you see, the man I had seen on the bridge, the man I had called out to, and who had run away with the abrupt graceless movements of total panic, the man whose eyes had touched mine in a second of horror and understanding … I had known him.

  It was Robert.

  One

  WHAT I HAD seen of my friend Robert plagued my mind for some time before I gained enough courage to do what I did. I remembered his grey face and the way he had looked at me before he ran away – not the look of a sane man – and I was afraid. When I eventually went in search of him, it was as much for my own peace of mind as it was out of concern for Robert, for I had brushed with horrible death, and I was certain that my old friend had somehow the key to the secret, whatever it was.

  The Cambridge News had published an article on what they called the ‘Body in the Weir’ case, describing how I had found the woman, ‘as yet unnamed’ but presumed to be ‘a missing person’. Apparently the pathologist’s inquiry had been inconclusive over the cause of death, but had uncovered the fact that the injuries I had seen on the body, which the newspapers had euphemistically termed ‘a massive internal insult’ had been inflicted after death. No one knew at the time of printing whether it had been murder or not. Except, perhaps, Robert.

  It took me some time to locate him, for since we had lost touch with each other, he had moved from his lodging and had left no forwarding address. I contacted his college, but his tutors were as bewildered as I; they had not seen him or spoken to him regularly for weeks. At last, after another three days of fruitless enquiry, I was directed to an unwholesome cellar-bar at the end of Mill Road, where, my informant told me, the drink was cheap, ‘If you’re not particular about the company’; and there I found Robert, alone at a table with a bottle of wine. The change which had been wrought in him even in those few days was horrific. His hair was unkempt and had grown too long, and he had not shaved. He was wearing no tie, and his suit looked crumpled, as if it had been slept in, maybe more than once. His eyes were red-rimmed, like a drunkard’s, his face drawn, his cheekbones too prominent in his sunken face. He gave me one brief, incurious glance and poured himself another glass of wine, propped up on his elbows on the greasy table like an old man.

  I sat down beside him, saying nothing, but my mind boiled over with questions. He drank again, the smell of the cheap red wine overpowering in that small, close place, but even then, not managing entirely to camouflage the under-smells of sweat and dirt of the cellar.

  After a while, he spoke.

  ‘What d’you want?’ His voice was only slightly slurred by alcohol, but his tone was expressionless.

  ‘Oh, Robert …’ I think my voice was unsteady; I felt close to tears at seeing him like this, in this place. ‘What are you doing to yourself? Why didn’t you come to see me if you had any trouble? Why hide away in this awful place like …’ My voice failed me, and I laid a hand on his arm, more to steady myself than to comfort him. Robert had always been my touchstone in times of trouble, he had always been stable, carefree, happy. What could have changed him so much?

  The answer leapt unbidden to my mind
… in fact, it had never been very far from my thoughts anyway.

  ‘Rosemary …’ I whispered. ‘Is it something to do with Rosemary?’

  The reaction was immediate.

  ‘No!’ he snapped. ‘Nothing. Nothing! Leave her out of it. It’s me. My business. Leave me alone.’ His voice was a bitter, self-pitying whine. The facetious and affected Robert I had known had coarsened, his nerves stripped raw, and with the terrible underlying current of weakness, of helplessness one can sometimes see in drug addicts or mental patients, that sense of abyss. For a moment I was disorientated, everything I had thought solid and permanent in my world dissolving around me.

  ‘But I’m your friend …’ I protested. ‘If you’re ill, need help, I can always—’

  ‘I don’t need help!’ His retort was so loud that the coarse woman behind the bar glanced his way, wondering, perhaps, whether he was going to cause trouble. Robert saw her reaction and lowered his voice, but his eyes were still overbright and hostile, and there was venom in his voice.

  ‘I don’t need help,’ he repeated. ‘I’m very happy with Rosemary. In fact, I’ve asked her to marry me.’ He paused. ‘And she said she would,’ he added, as if to dispel any doubt I might have as to the authenticity of his story.

  ‘Oh,’ I said in a small voice. ‘Marry you? Congratulations, I, really. When?’ His announcement had taken the wind out of my sails to such an extent that I could hardly string two words together without stammering.

  Robert saw my confusion and made an effort to speak normally again.

  ‘Rosemary thinks … in August. That will give us plenty of time.’ He tried to smile; the result would have been a good approximation if the eyes had not been so blank. ‘I don’t know what bee you’ve got in your bonnet about me, old man, but there’s really no need, as you can see. I would have called, of course, but I’ve been very busy, you know, with Rosemary and the preparations for the wedding and so – family to contact – not much time …’

  ‘You look ill,’ I said, lamely.

  ‘A few too many late nights. A little attack of Weltschmerz. You caught me on a bad day, what else can I tell you? Rosemary was busy tonight; I went out a-roving on my own and ended up on the edge of Lethe.’ His tone was deliberately flippant; the fact that he was trying hard to deceive me frightened me even more than when he had snapped at me. I looked at my friend and saw a total stranger, bright psychopathic eyes behind the carnival-mask. A sudden pain in my heart as I realized that I had never known him at all.

  ‘I saw you on the bridge, Robert. You ran away, but I recognized you.’

  ‘What bridge?’

  I told my story, beginning with my finding of the body, then how I had seen him and called for help. His reaction was frankly incredulous, touched with the old half-good-natured contempt of the old days.

  ‘It wasn’t me, Dan,’ he said. ‘You’re really off on the wrong track here.’

  ‘I’m certain it was! You were wearing the same coat … you looked at me, for heaven’s sake!’

  For the first time that evening, my friend looked me straight in the eye, and put his hand on my arm.

  ‘Look, old man,’ he said, not unreasonably. ‘If it had been me, and you had called me for help, do you really think I would have run away?’ I shook my head helplessly. ‘What’s more,’ he went on, ‘you say yourself that you’d had a shock. And I know what bad eyes you’ve got. You were feeling rocky, you saw a man in a coat like mine, shouted to him … your imagination did the rest. No wonder the poor devil ran away.’ He tried the smile again; this time, I was almost convinced.

  ‘And as for being ill,’ he said, ‘you don’t look so good yourself. Too much worry, old chap. Now take yourself home and get some rest, and stop fretting. I’ll call round one of these days, and we’ll go out and have a drink. Just like the old days. Right?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Just like the old days. See you later, Dan. Now push off, that’s a good chap, and come to see me when I’m more sociable.’ And at that he turned to pour himself another drink, leaving me feeling isolated and rejected. Helplessly, I went up the cellar stairs and out into the fresh air, thinking furiously to myself. There was something wrong, I knew there was something wrong, and none of his arguments could change that, but why did I think he had lied to me? Why would he have needed to lie to me?

  Rosemary. Everything came back to Rosemary. She was the root of it; she was the one who had changed him and taken him from me. Maybe she could give me an answer; maybe she could explain. I halted at the top of Mill Road, the germ of an idea forming in my mind.

  Then I went back to the cellar.

  A few words with the female behind the bar were enough to obtain what I needed to know; she remembered Rosemary, though not by name, of course. She had seen her with Robert often enough, yes, and she knew where she lived, described a row of shabby apartments outside the town and overlooking the river. I looked at my watch; it was just past ten o’clock. Maybe, if I was lucky, I would catch her before she went to bed.

  I quickened my pace, trying to tell myself that it was only the unaccustomed exercise which made my heart beat faster, and it was only twenty past ten when I came to the row of apartments, a long terrace which had once been lodgings for one of the colleges, and was now privately owned. The building was mostly dark, but here and there a light shone, tinted red or blue or purple with the colour of the curtains, and at the base of each staircase there was a lighted porch for the letter-boxes bearing the name of each resident.

  I tried six staircases before I found the plaque which said ASHLEY 2; then I made my way up the stairs to apartment 2. I knocked, but no one answered. I knocked again, straining my ears, but no one came, and there was no light under the door. Rosemary was out. I looked at my watch and frowned; it was twenty-five to eleven already; rather late for a young woman to be out on her own. But maybe she was not on her own. I thought about that for a while. Had she found another waitressing job, or a job behind a bar?

  Had she found another man?

  I wondered if I had not hit the nail on the head. The fact that Rosemary was in love with someone else might possibly account for Robert’s despondent, almost aggressive mood. It would explain why Robert had been less than eager to see me: maybe he thought I still harboured some resentment against him for having taken Rosemary from me. I resolutely pushed the episode at the bridge from my mind; that had been explained already. I went down the stairs again, intrigued, but with a certain satisfaction that I had solved the mystery. Poor Robert. No wonder he had snapped my head off when I asked him about Rosemary. The first time he had ever taken a real interest in a woman, had even gone as far as to propose marriage to her. Not that I hadn’t suspected something of the kind before this, in view of her disloyalty towards myself. I was pondering this as I happened to halt at the window of the first landing, and a movement from outside caught my eye. There was no reason for me to believe that it was Rosemary; and yet, with an obscure certainty, I knew. Maybe there was something about the way she moved, the way she held her head, though how I could have been sure, how I could still have been so poignantly aware, even after all this time, of her every gesture, even half-glimpsed through a first-floor window, I cannot say. Maybe it was simply that Rosemary, once seen, however briefly, was not so easily forgotten.

  I wasted no time in trying to distinguish her features through the blurry glass; instead I ran as fast as I could down the staircase, steadying myself with my hands as I crashed against the wall on the landing and again, in the porch. I tore out of the front door and into the night, her name on my lips, my face flushed, my cry wasted on the cold air. She was gone.

  I ran down the road after her, searched every side-street, every porch, every archway. I ran back on my tracks and tried the back of the building, the alley where the dustbins were kept in neat rows; nothing. Rosemary had vanished.

  Cursing, I even went back to the dingy cellar in which I had met Robert, but by now it was closing do
wn, and Robert was gone, too.

  I went back to Rosemary’s apartment then, and I waited for her to come home; I waited for a long time, but she never came.

  From that night, when I waited outside Rosemary’s door, I felt outcast from my life and from the lives of ordinary people. It was then that I began to dream again; dreams of Rosemary, overpowering in their imagery, and the more I dreamed, the more my dreams became reality and my life spun meaninglessly away around me, like water down a drain. I dreamed of her every night in longing and a transfixed kind of fear … she was the witch of my secret desires, my Blessed Damozel, her hair the blood-red veil through which I beheld my dreams. I was sick with renewed longing for her, sick with guilt and worry for my friend Robert. I forgot to eat, forgot to work, spent my days in idle and morbid contemplation of my bewitchment. I sat in coffee-shops, hoping for a glimpse of her, as if seeing her again would solve everything, while around me the summer blossomed, and Cambridge grew heavy and restless with the coming of it. There must have been something in the air of the place even then, for the papers were full of reports of crimes, thefts and assaults, and the continuation of the police investigation on the ‘Body in the Weir’ case (now being treated as murder and coupled with warnings to the public to stay away from the river, or any isolated place at night), but I hardly noticed them, moving through life as I did without a ripple.

  Twice I caught sight of her, once from afar, alone, and once with Robert. They stopped when I greeted them; Rosemary looked pale and ill, her face robbed of all colour in the strong sunlight, but she was still beautiful, her pale lavender eyes fathomless in her angular face, her bright hair tied strictly back beneath a dark-green scarf. Robert, to my astonishment, looked rested and well, with no sign of the haunted, hunted look I had noticed in him before, and he responded to my cautious enquiry with good temper and a friendliness which reminded me strongly of our earlier friendship and of the old days, before Rosemary. She, however, said little; she had been unwell recently and had had to stay in bed; nothing but a touch of influenza, Robert assured me, but he knew that she was not yet in the best of health; she was delicate, she was too thin, and she needed rest.