Harry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (part one - Murder Your Darlings)

Chapter 5

Myrtle was horrified, she could scarcely believe her luck. What a story this would make! Newspaper headlines, one after the next, spun furiously to the forefront of her mind. Extra! Extra! Read all about it! "Gross miscarriage of justice sets double murderer free." "Schoolboy killer lets own father hang." Stop the press! Hold the front page! This certainly beat writing about bingo.

But she must maintain her composure; not allow her excitement to betray her inexperience. Dutifully, she took a prim sip of her tea, striving now to keep her own hands from trembling, and, after daintily replacing the teacup on its saucer, asked calmly:

"And what about your mother and you? How did you cope with the..."

Words failed her.

"...the whatchamacallit... the... you know, the...?"

"Aftermath?" suggested Bitterman helpfully. "The backlash?"

"Yes," said Myrtle. "The backlash. How did you cope with that?"

"There wasn't one, quite frankly," Bitterman went on. "Or if there was it amounted to little more than a few sideways glances and some talking behind our backs. My mother paid it no heed. She was, as we've seen, a hard headed woman. Some of the neighbours were even sympathetic to our plight, imagining, no doubt, that we had been living in stoic silence, for all these years, with a monster. At school the headmaster did his level best to ensure that the sins of the father would not, under any circumstances, be visited upon the son. He needn't have bothered. Most people were content to keep out of my way. Some even showed me a new found respect. In fact everything, more or less, simply carried on as normal. Except... "

And here old Mr Bitterman faltered. His lower lip quivered ever so slightly and his eyes, fixed firmly on the past, became glassy.

"Except what?" blurted Myrtle despite herself.

"Except our relationship had become somewhat strained, my mother's and mine. She knew the truth, you see. About the murders, I mean. Had known all along. And, simply put, she was conflicted. She loved and resented me in almost equal measure; perhaps even feared me. Oh, she tried not to show it, of course, but I could sense that her affections now were a sight less than genuine. She was constantly fussing over me, all but pinching my cheeks or chucking me under the chin every chance she got. Her politeness was the politeness of strangers. Gone was the familiarity bordering on contempt found in most loving families. I couldn't stand it. Her behaviour offended me. But I could hardly blame her either. It was, needless to say, a difficult time. I could hear her most nights sobbing herself to sleep. But mercifully this state of affairs did not continue for long: she died - God rest her soul - just six months to the day after the tragic loss of my father."

Myrtle looked suitably sympathetic.

"Was it a broken heart?" she wondered aloud.

"No," replied Bitterman. "A perforated eardrum."

"A perforated eardrum?" queried Myrtle. "But surely you don't die from a perforated eardrum?"

Bitterman begged to differ.

"I suppose that all depends," he said, "on what it's perforated with..."

Young Harold seated himself obediently at the dinner table. Obedient, that is, to his own sense of propriety. As far as his mother was concerned it was perfectly all right if he preferred to eat his dinner in his bedroom lately. Lord knows, a young man needed his privacy. But Harold wouldn't hear of it. Standards must be maintained, family values respected. What kind of a world would our grandchildren inherit if the older generation starts kowtowing to the younger? No! Much more than privacy a young man needed discipline, and if his mother lately lacked the courage to instill it in him, then Harold would just have to instill it in himself.

"It's your favourite," his mother was saying as she brought him the meal from the kitchen. "A nice bit of sirloin from Galbraith's on the high street. Just what a growing boy needs."

She laid the plate on the table in front of him and playfully tousled his hair. Tutting, Harold jerked his head out of her reach and started in on the dinner. He pronged the meat moodily and began slicing into it; the serrated blade of his steak knife tore soothingly into the flesh. Reddish blood trickled thinly from the cut meat, tinting the edge of the mashed potatoes and mixing with the juice of the peas.

His mother meanwhile was bustling about in the kitchen, washing and drying the dishes and putting things away. She could hardly bear to be in the same room as him anymore, let alone sit across from him at dinner. It was one thing to know the truth but another to confront it. And she was whistling too, in a pathetic attempt to hide her sorrow, both from her son and from herself.

Harold again stabbed the meat with his fork and cut off another slice. And another. And another. He cut right through it until the blade of the knife scraped back and forth on the plate's porcelain surface, screeching and scratching in notes shrill and sinister. Screech, scratch, screech, scratch. He could restrain himself no longer. Without even waiting for his mother to excuse him he left his place at the table and walked coldly to the kitchen. He stood by the door watching and listening until tears ran down his cheeks. Then, concealing the steak knife behind the small of his back, he silently stepped inside, gently closing the door behind him.

If Myrtle had been holding a pen at this point it would have been poised above it's paper in rapt anticipation.

"What happened in the kitchen?" she hardly dared to ask.

Bitterman was perplexed. Had he not made that clear in the telling?

"I stabbed my mother in the ear with a steak knife," he said. "To put her out of her misery. In actual fact I intended only to slit her throat but she bent at just the wrong moment to put away a pot and the opportunity was lost. I was forced to improvise and her ear at the time seemed the next best thing. I pushed the knife in through the eardrum as hard as I could, all the way up to its handle. There was a spurt of blood and a sharp intake of breath, but I don't recall an outtake. She did not suffer for long."

"My God!" gasped Myrtle. "You really killed your own mother?"

Bitterman took a mouthful of tea. He had little desire to elaborate.

"It was a mercy killing," he conceded eventually. "The right thing to do at the time. I had caused my mother terrible pain, from which there could be no relief. And I couldn't bear to watch her suffer. I had to finish what I started. Granted, my chosen method left a lot to be desired but I cite in my defense the impetuousness of youth. Perhaps, in hindsight, pills or suffocation...ah, but there is little to be gained from dwelling on past mistakes."

"And what about the neighbours?" asked Myrtle. "The community? Didn't they begin to suspect something was wrong when your mother stopped appearing round town?"

But Bitterman simply shrugged.

"I left town that night with my mother in two suitcases," he said. "And to the best of my knowledge she was never even reported missing. What with one thing and another at the time I imagine everyone simply thought that we'd gone off to make a fresh start."