John Gardner - Never send flowers

`She speaks through the oracles. She says there are enough. That you will take charge of them." David March was utterly wrapped in this bizarre belief. `It is just as she told me. They have started to speak in a chorus." The Superintendent added, `It seemed very important to him that we believed what he said. A matter of extreme significance, not in any legal or judiciary sense. This was a man proclaiming that he had done what was asked of him." `Everything,' March continued. `I did all that she asked. They were picked with great care.

Fair-coloured white women. I showed them love, as Isis commanded, and each was sacrificed just as she told me, at the exact time and under the correct conditions. I promise you it was done according to her word, for she is the mother of life.

She would speak only through the oracles.

Through them she says you will take them from me.

`Good, David." Seymour realized that he was trembling. `Where are they?" `They're safe. I've kept them safe.

`Then it's time for us to see them.

The heads were in large jars sealed carboys floating in formaldehyde, turned pink from the blood which had flowed from the terrible ragged necks. The serrated skin flapped, creating an eerie sense of life. The carboys had been placed in some obvious order in the large refrigerator in David March's kitchen: two were on a top shelf, one in the centre middle and two more on the lowest part.

March even had a pair of great padlocks on the door of the thing, and the heads moved as he opened up, their hair lifting in the liquid, their dead eyes staring with half-surprise and half-terror, the pinkish stain below the horrible jagged necks rising and adding an almost supernatural glow in the confined light.

`Talk to them,' March said in a whisper which had about it a sense of wonder. `Are they not marvelous, the way they speak so softly?" Sergeant Bowles vomited, and there was a side note from the Superintendent saying that he suffered from nightmares for some time after.

David March's trial, while sensational, did not yield everything to the public. His plea of insanity was so strong, and supported by both the defence and prosecution, that only the bare facts came out.

Certainly the Press reported hyped-up stories gleaned from the victims' friends, and from bits and pieces they scavenged from the gardener and live-in cook at the March seniors' house but only after the verdict of guilty but insane was returned, and David had been sentenced to be `Detained at Her Majesty's pleasure' which is the British way of saying life plus ninety-nine years in an institution for the criminally insane.

The trial was almost an anti-climax. It was the brutality of the murders, and the discovery of David March that overshadowed everything else.

The picture was so strong in Bond's mind that he shivered, looking up, surprised that he sat in this pleasing Swiss hotel, other guests' laughter and talk going on around him. The long report had taken him almost half an hour to read, and, even though it was written baldly, without emotion, the Superintendent had somehow conveyed all the revulsion and shock. Seconds before, Bond had felt he was in that kitchen, with March and the refrigerator, looking at the hideous sight of the five heads floating in their clear, thick, glass carboys.

Now he was staring straight into Fredericka's green eyes which seemed to pull him in, hypnotically, as though they were whirlpools drowning him. Then he shook himself free and saw that she was gazing at him as if his own sense of fear were being transmitted to her. The dread passed between them like static.

`You see what I mean?" She poured coffee for him. `Black?" she asked.

`With a little sugar." His own voice seemed to come from far away.

The detective's bland report had the power to stir, like the strength of some long-forgotten force which returned to influence mind and action. `And this is the victim's brother?" he asked, almost of himself.

`Read what the shrinks have to say. That's the clincher, and it's one of the reasons why Laura had to keep the business covered up. He reached out, took a sip of coffee, then said, `I don't think I need to even look at the conclusions of the shrinks." Bond had always remained dubious of the psychiatrists' powers.

`Let me guess at what they had to say,' he smiled, trying to bring humour back into Fredericka's eyes. `I imagine that one of the first things they hit on was that David March had nursed an unhealthy interest in things occult since he was very young.

Right?" She nodded. `The Egyptology had begun as a kind of hobby, harmless and instructive. As he grew, he started to believe that the real truths about the universe could be found only in ancient Egypt.

His parents became concerned when they found he had built an altar, in the garden, to worship Isis when he was only sixteen." `I'm not playing Sherlock Holmes,' he gave a short, almost humourless laugh.

`But my next guess is that the mother had a dominating personality.

That her will was law in the March household, and that it was not only David who was affected by her, but also his sister, Laura which is why this is important to us." `Yes. Two of the psychiatrists spent a long time taking David back through childhood and his teens. Mrs March appeared to have been some kind of martinet. She was also a bit of a religious fanatic. Laura was only, what fifteen?

sixteen? when her brother was arrested, but the trauma went quite deep, because by then her mother had absolute control over her in matters religious. She, Mrs March, was a practising Christian, but took everything to extremes.

Sundays in the March household were like stepping back to Victorian times. Church in the morning and evening, reading the Bible or some other worthy book-in between: no games, nothing frivolous." `I should imagine that young David told the same story to each of his victims,' Bond mused.

`Which story?" `That his father was old and ailing, and that his mother was dead. We know that's what he told the second one Bridget Bellamy." `He admitted that. It seemed he really considered his mother dead." `Makes sense. Did they help him at all I mean at the institution?" `They diagnosed a complex series of symptoms.

He seemed to be a very unhealthy mixture, a witch's brew of all the worst kind of mental problems manic depressive, psychotic, hysteric, psychopath. They controlled him with drugs for a while, but he was highly intelligent. Went through long periods I mean months at a time of appearing perfectly normal, likeable, friendly Then, out of the blue the terrors would strike. -`There was a need to kill?" `That's what was said. He tried to murder another inmate, and also attacked a nurse on one occasion. Nearly did her in.

`Mmmm. And, from all this, you think Laura was also affected?" `Don't see how she could avoid it. One of the shrinks had a very long session with the father, and came to the conclusion that he was seriously unbalanced. The entire mating situation was fraught with dangers. A hyper-religious, superdominant mother, and a weak, mentally unstable father. They produced one monster. It makes you wonder if they spawned two of them." `Let's say Laura March was unbalanced.

She's the victim here, so, when we begin to examine her murder, we have to take her possible mental state into consideration." He gave another short laugh, heavy with irony. `Her colleagues must be going through all kinds of hell. Courts of Inquiry, investigations on those who did her PVs. Couldn't happen to nicer people." He looked up, and saw the fear still deep in Fredericka's eyes. Touching the bulky file on his knee, he said, `This thing's really spooked you, hasn't it?" `More than I can say. I was concerned up on the mountain, at the crime scene. This story's so horrible that I'm genuinely frightened. Damn it, James, in their wisdom, our respective services want us to go in there and carry out our own clandestine investigation. I'm even nervous of looking through Laura's effects." `The cops haven't taken them away?" `As a favour to us, the room she had at the Victoria-Jungfrau in Interlaken has been left as they first found it." `They've removed nothing?" `That's what they say. Of course who knows when you're dealing with cops. The room's been sealed. The hotel expects us, but, since reading this stuff, it's the last thing I want to do." She paused, her hand going to her hair, once more raking it with splayed fingers.