Cain's Stigmas.Script.Full Treatment by Michael Kokkinari

                                                 Cain’s Stigmas

Ean Sherwin is a professor of Molecular Genetics at the University of London. 

His assistant,Stuart Wallas, who will become the ‘observer’ of his life, soon wins his confidence and so gains access to a research program which will make its mark on Sherwins’ life.

A year before, a haematologist , had asked him for his opinion on a cellular abnormality which she had noticed in the blood of a patient who suffered from leukaemia.

In other words, in the white corpuscles there were ‘stigmas’ which were immediately transmitted to the blood that the patient was being given through transfusion.

Impressed by the discovery,Sherwin and the haematologist requested to see the patient without they themselves knowing what they would come across if they examined him.

However, on that formal visit the professor will meet and fall in love with Anna, the daughter of the patient, an otherwise ordinary man who has realized that he is dying.

Anna’s father was an ordinary patient, who at the age of sixty-five was suffering from leukaemia.

A widower for the last twenty years, he was an accountant for a construction company, that is to say, nothing unusual.

But when he died and his will was read, it left open many questions which in their turn gave birth to the theory of ‘Cain’s Stigmas’, a genetic factor which would probably lead to criminal behaviour in its carriers.

It turned out that the old man had been leading a double life.

On the one hand, the one that his daughter knew about, and on the other hand, that of the will, which  took lawyers three hours to describe the  stocks, properties and bank deposits it contained.

The majority of these had been left to a Ms. Daisy, who was his daughter’s age.

After getting over the initial shock, Anna erased her father from her memory and asked to stay with the professor on condition that he also ‘forget’ the whole affair with her father.

The only person who did not forget the ‘affair’ though, was the haematologist, especially when she happened across ‘Cain’s Stigmas’ in the white corpuscles of a blood donor.  And, indeed, when she sought him out she learned from his relatives that he was wanted for a curious case of murder and fraud involving a large sum of money.

Thus she began to pressure the professor to continue their investigation into this genetic factor, whose carriers, in both the cases where it had been observed, had demonstrated criminal elements in their behaviour. 
Sherwin eventually gives in, probably flattered by the haematologist’s confession that she was in love with him and that he was the reason for the failure of her marriage.  The research, after the examination of many blood samples, will lead to the initial conclusion that these ‘stigmas’, called ‘Cain’s Stigmas’ by the professor, are a

genetic factor which, however, has nothing to do with the normal genes in the nucleus of the cell, but with the cell plasma which appears to negatively affect the carrier’s behaviour.

This general and albeit vague theory of ‘Cain’s Stigmas’, however, acquires particular interest when the accountant’s heir, Ms. Daisy, in an effort to overcome the legal obstacles posed by the daughter in the implementation of the will, meets the professor and gives him an account of an incredible story of eroticism and crime that she had lived with the otherwise elderly accountant, with whom she had even born a child…

A few months later, the professor will marry the accountant’s daughter promising her that, for him, the affair about ‘Cain’s Stigmas’ is all over.

At least, that was what he thought…

It seems, though, that things had taken a different turn, especially as after the wedding the haematologist left for Huston to work for a big institution which carried out research in haematology.

That is when he began to receive strange threats concerning his research program in ‘excore heredity’, an event that forced him to resort to the press claiming that behind the threats was a specific pharmaceutical company which was funding the research centre in Huston where the haematologist was employed.

And as if that were not enough, his wife dies in child-birth and his child is born with a serious immune deficiency.

The chances of the child’s survival are slim.

Perhaps if a transplant were possible…

And if it were successful…

And if a compatible donor were to be found…

And if he had the money…

Except that life has curious twists and turns…

Daisy, the accountant’s heir, already feeling a physical attraction to the professor since she had asked him to intervene on her behalf in the execution of the will, offers to pay the expenses of the transplant.

The real problem, though, is the bone marrow donor.

Will one be found in time, before the child dies of some infection?

And just when it seems that they have lost all hope, some unidentified person sends the particulars of a compatible donor to the professor’s laboratory.

The problem is that the donor has been condemned to life imprisonment…  convicted for murder and fraud, and the ‘unidentified person’ is in fact the haematologist who is taking revenge by putting him in the dilemma of whether he should save his child with the marrow of a carrier of ‘Cain’s Stigmas’.

From this point on, the story acquires a certain interest when the convict attempts to take advantage of the transplant case to escape from prison.

And despite the circumstances, day by day the professor’s great love  begins to bloom for Daisy, the accountant’s former mistress, who appears to be a completely different person in the face of the new situation which is coming into being.

The attitudes in prison, the prison director’s compromise with the convict, the marrow transplant, the escape attempt and death of the prisoner, bring the chapter to a close, leaving many questions in the professor’s life unanswered.

And when everything ends unexpectedly well as far as the child is concerned, and the professor is finally ready to take his place next to Daisy, she and her child become the victims of a car  accident.

The professor resigns from the University and no news is heard from him for twenty-two years.

*     *     *

Twenty-two years later, his former assistant will receive a telephone from him.  Their reunion brings with it a great revelation.

Professor Ean Sherwin has murdered his child…  the one that had received the bone marrow transplant from the prisoner, the hardened criminal, who had remained in the back of the professor’s mind for twenty-two whole years.

Why?

Three unsolved crimes of extreme cruelty provide us with the answer.

The end of the drama is particularly shocking.

The professor commits suicide in the same way that he murdered his child to put a stop to the prisoner living through the deeds of his son, who was a carrier of ‘Cain’s Stigmas’.