Read Online The Bad Seed by William March - Free Book Online

matters thoughtfully in the past, and had come to the conclusion that the greater the impulse, thegreater must be the defense against the impulse, if one were to survive as a social animal.
    She got up to change the angle of the Venetian blind, and Reginald, who had known her all his life, leered horribly and pinched her well-stuffed buttocks. Instantly she went into gales of merriment, her laughter resounding through the apartment. She poured him another cocktail, and when he had taken it, he wound up his facts quickly.
    Later the child had been taken to a hospital, but only to die there. The doctors, seeing her condition, asked for an autopsy, and the arsenic was quickly found. Again Christine put her hands over her ears. She thought:
I’m very vulnerable. I have no strength of character at all.
She laughed nervously and said, “Oh, please! Please!”
    Reginald laughed with her, patted her shoulder in sympathy, and said that, in his opinion, the case was destined to become one of the classics of its kind. For one thing, there was the thrifty reasoning of Nurse Dennison about payment of the lapsed policy, a circumstance which gave the dreadful affair the wholesome, ordinary note it needed; for another, there was one of those unconsciously humorous asides which seem to distinguish the classic from the lesser crime, for after the autopsy, when her guilt had been established and confessed, Nurse Dennison, in a moment of contrition, said that she regretted the poisoning of her niece far more than she could ever say; she wept and said that she would never have done such a terrible thing, either, if she’d known in advance that such a little bitty old pinch of arsenic could be found later.…
    At half past two, when lunch had been eaten, Reginald said that he had to go, and while the women straightened up the kitchen, Emory turned on the radio to get the three-o’clock news. The commentator spoke briskly of world conditions for a time, then lowering his voice, he continued gravely. “I have beenasked to announce that one of the children on the annual outing of the Fern Grammar School was accidentally drowned in the bay this afternoon. The name of the victim has been withheld until the parents are first notified. More news of the tragic affair is expected momentarily.”
    Mrs. Breedlove and Christine came into the living-room at once, and stood anxiously beside the radio. “It was not Rhoda,” said Mrs. Breedlove in a positive voice. “Rhoda is too self-reliant a child.” She put her arm around Christine’s waist and continued. “It was somebody more like myself when I was a child. It was some timid, confused child who was afraid of its own shadow, as I was, and had no self-confidence at all. That does not sound like Rhoda.”
    A little later, toward the end of the broadcast, the announcer returned to the local tragedy; he was now authorized to say that the little victim was Claude Daigle, the only child of Mr. and Mrs. Dwight Daigle of 126 Willow Street. He added details to the story; there was an old wharf on the Fern property, a wharf which had not been used for a long time. It was a mystery how the little boy got on the wharf, for the children had been explicitly told not to go there; but apparently he had managed somehow, for his body had been found there, after the routine check at lunchtime had shown him missing, wedged among the old pilings. The discovery had been made by one of the guards who brought the body ashore, and applied artificial respiration. One mysterious element of the affair was the fact that there were bruises on the forehead and hands of the boy, but these bruises, it was assumed, were caused by the body washing against the pilings.
    Christine said, “Poor child! Poor little boy!”
    The announcer continued. “Only a few days before, the little Daigle boy won a gold medal at the closing exercises of the Fern School. He was wearing the medal when last seen, but when hisbody was discovered, the