Lizzie, p.46
Lizzie, page 46
“Well, is she in the house, or has she gone out?”
“I think she’s in the house, sir.” A pause. “I haven’t seen her.”
“Well, do your windows; I’ll get out of your way.”
“Yes, sir, thank you.”
Lizzie looked once again at the open door to the guest room. She took a deep breath and went down the stairs. Her father was sitting in the dining room. There was a parcel wrapped in white paper on the dining-room table, and alongside that the mail: several legal-sized envelopes, a larger yellow envelope, a long brown pasteboard cylinder. Maggie was coming from the kitchen now, carrying a stepladder. Her eyes met Lizzie’s. Neither of them said a word.
“You got to the post office then,” Lizzie said.
“Yes.”
“Anything for me?”
“Nothing. What’s this ironing board doing in here?”
“I’m waiting for my flats.”
“Will you be ironing then?”
“As soon as they’re hot.”
“Looks messy, things lying about this way.”
“I’ll put it away as soon as I’ve finished. What’s in the parcel?”
“Eh? Oh, an old lock I picked up at the store they’re fixing for Clegg.” He shrugged. “Might come in handy.” He was sorting through the mail now. He picked up the pasteboard cylinder. “I hope this is the survey,” he said, and poked his finger into the brown-paper wrapping at one end of the cylinder, tearing it. He eased from the cylinder a rolled document, partially unrolled the stiff paper, said, “Yes, good,” and in explanation, “Some land that interests me. Out Steep Brook Way. Where’s your mother, do you know?”
“Visiting someone who’s sick,” Lizzie said.
“Oh? Who?”
“She didn’t say. She had a note...”
“Oh?”
“Yes. And went out directly afterwards.”
“I didn’t see anyone with a note,” her father said. “This morning, do you mean?”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t see anyone,” he said again, and shrugged. “I’ll take this upstairs, all this work going on down here,” indicating with a hand gesture the ironing board on the dining-room table, and with a movement of his head Maggie on the stepladder. He went into the sitting room, took his key off the mantelpiece shelf and then came back to gather up the mail. In the kitchen he put the mail down on the table, lifted the stove lid over the firebox and dropped the empty document-cylinder into the hole. “Not much of a fire here, you plan on heating these flats,” he said to Lizzie. “Your wood’s only smoking.” He put the lid back on the stove, and looked at the floor. “Splinters all over the floor here,” he said.
“I’m sorry,” Lizzie said, “I’ll sweep them up.”
“Chop your kindling on the block below,” he said, “where you should. And take that hatchet downcellar, where it belongs.”
“Yes, father,” she said.
“See to it,” he said, and picked up his mail and started up the stairs to his room. Maggie turned to her at once.
“Did he...?”
“Shhhh!”
They waited.
They could hear his footfalls on the back stairs. They heard the door to his room open and then close. The house was still again.
“Did he believe you, do you think?” Maggie whispered. “About the note?”
“I think so.”
“I don’t think so,” Maggie said. “I’m scared to death, I’m not sure I can...”
“You’ll be fine.”
“He’ll want to know what’s keeping her. When she hasn’t come back...”
“Shhh!”
They heard his footfalls on the back stairs again. He went into the kitchen and then the pantry. They heard the water tap running over the pantry sink. When he came through into the dining room again, he said only, “Hot as the devil upstairs; are you about through in here, Bridget?”
“Just finishing, sir.”
“Well, hurry about it, would you?”
He went into the sitting room, took off the Prince Albert coat, moved the sofa cushion and tidy to one side and draped the coat loosely over the sofa arm. He seemed about to lie down. Surveying Maggie at the windows, he changed his mind, went out into the front entry where his wool cardigan reefer hung in the small closet and came back into the sitting room. He put on the reefer, pulled a rocking chair over to the light streaming through the windows, and sat in it. Maggie raised the window near his chair. He turned to look at her, annoyed, and then picked up the morning paper again as she carried her stepladder into the dining room. She went back into the sitting room once, to pick up her water pail and her basin, and then began washing the windows in the dining room. Lizzie came through from the kitchen, one of the flatirons in her hand. Their eyes met again. They said nothing.
In the sitting room the clock ticked.
She did not know how long the silence persisted. She was aware of the ticking of the clock, the minutes falling soddenly on the still summer air. At last she said — loud enough for her father to hear, hoping her voice sounded as it always did, everything normal, everyone in this house going about the normal business of the day, washing windows, ironing, chatting — “Are you going out this afternoon?”
“I don’t know,” Maggie said, her eyes meeting Lizzie’s again, a question in them. “I might. I don’t feel very well.”
“If you go, be sure and lock the door,” Lizzie said pointedly. “Mrs. Borden’s gone out on a sick call, and I might go out, too.”
“Who’s sick?” Maggie asked, idiotically.
“I don’t know,” Lizzie said, a warning in her eyes. “She had a note this morning. It must be in town.”
She glanced toward the sitting room again, hoping her father was listening to every word. Maggie went out into the kitchen with her stepladder, washed out the cloths she had used on the windows, and hung them behind the stove. Lizzie came in a moment later, placing the flatiron she’d been using back on the stove, picking up the flat that was still heating there. In a voice loud enough for her father to hear, she said, “There’s a cheap sale of dress goods at Sargent’s this afternoon, eight cents a yard,” and then, in a whisper, “Are you all right?”
“I feel faint,” Maggie whispered, and in her normal voice said, “I’m going to have one. Sargent’s, did you say?”
“Then go to your room,” Lizzie whispered. “There’s nothing more to be...”
From the sitting room, her father said, “Eh? What’s that?”
“Father?” she said, alarmed.
“Were you talking to me?”
“No, sir.”
“I thought I heard...” His voice trailed.
Maggie gave her a look she could not read, and then went up the back stairs. The stairs creaked beneath her footfalls. She listened to the footfalls, all the way up to the attic, heard the attic door opening and closing. She was carrying the flatiron back into the dining room when she heard her father’s voice again.
“What’s this doing here?”
What? she thought. Where?
“This candlestick,” he said, and she froze in her tracks. “Doesn’t it belong upstairs? In the guest room?”
He turned to her. She stood in the doorway between the rooms, the flatiron in her right hand, staring at him.
“It...” Her mind worked frantically. “I brought it down for Maggie to polish. She must have polished it. Must have been polishing it.”
“Shouldn’t be down here,” her father said.
She kept staring at him.
“I’ll take it up,” he said.
“No...” she said, and took a step toward him.
“Eh?”
“I’ll take it when I go up again. I have some basting to do...”
“Finish your ironing,” he said, and turned away from her.
She watched helplessly as he walked from the dining room and into the sitting room again, and then passed from sight into the front entry. She was not prepared for the discovery just yet, had hoped it would be made later in the day when concern for her mother’s absence would have necessitated notifying the police. She wanted the police to make the discovery and not any member of the household. Nor did she want that candlestick to be found in the room where her stepmother—
The candle!
The broken candle!
It still lay on the floor of the room upstairs, an unmistakable link to the candlestick, identifying the weapon, eliminating the possibility that what had been done was anything but a spur-of-the moment act, no assassin lurking about the house with a weapon brought here for the purpose of murder, no, an object at hand instead, an object familiar to the members of this household of which there were but two present at the time of the bloody deed. Herself and Maggie. Only those two. He would make the connection. He could not fail to make the connection.
She did not want to be in this house when he came downstairs again, could not face the accusing look in his eyes, could not hope to answer the questions he would most certainly put. Her eyes darted. Like a bird poised for precarious flight, she raised her arms, her hands fluttering, and turned from where she stood in the kitchen doorway, and then rushed into the entry and threw open the screen door, knowing only that she had to get away from here, run, hide, run!
Unmindful of whichever neighbors might be watching, she hurtled in terrified flight into the backyard, and then stopped dead when she saw the carriage outside the fence, standing near a tree. An open buggy, a box buggy with a high top seat and a high back. A man was sitting in the carriage. For a shocking instant she thought it was he again, the pale young man returning; had he witnessed what she’d done in that upstairs room? But no, the shutters had been closed. And then she saw that this man was dressed differently, wearing a brown hat and a black coat, and she dismissed him from her mind as but a passing stranger, her eyes darting again, wondering where, where, seeing the barn and running toward it, thinking she would hide in the hayloft, cover herself with hay, hide there forever from the wrath of her father, a witness in effect though he had not been present, a witness the moment he put together candlestick and candle.
She stopped again just outside the barn door, reaching for the pin in the hasp, and then hesitated, pulling back her trembling hand, realizing in a crystal instant that she could never hope to protest innocence if he found her cowering under the hay. She reversed her course at once, turning and starting slowly back for the house, knowing she had to confront him after all, face the wrath of a God sterner than the one who’d banished Eve from the garden, express surprise and shock, grief and concern, claim ignorance and innocence, I know nothing, I saw nothing, I heard—
She heard the sound of horses on the street outside as she crossed the yard from the barn to the house, turned her head to see a team and wagon — the ice-cream peddler, Mr. Lubinsky, his head craned for a look at her as she walked toward the back steps. The team went by, the wagon moved out of sight. She opened the screen door, and went into the house again.
The house was silent.
She did not move out of the kitchen. She stood near the cookstove, waiting, listening for the tiniest sound.
She heard his footfalls on the front stairs.
Unhurried, slow, ponderous.
She heard him entering the sitting room.
She did not move from where she stood near the coal scuttle.
He loomed suddenly in the doorframe between the kitchen and the sitting room. There was nothing in his hands, neither candlestick nor broken candle. Had he failed to make a connection? She looked into his eyes and saw there only stricken confusion. Her heart quickened. There was yet hope; he had not yet put it together.
“Someone has killed your mother,” he said. His voice was dull, lifeless, his eyes wide and staring.
“What?”
“Your mother...”
“What?”
“Your mother lies dead upstairs.”
“No,” she said at once, “that can’t be,” her eyes opening as wide as his were, hoping that her voice conveyed shock and disbelief. “She’s not yet back from town.”
“She’s slain upstairs,” her father said. “Oh, my God, Lizzie!”
“Father!” she said, and went to him, and he took her in his arms, and she stood close in his embrace, her heart fluttering; there was yet hope!
“We must... we shall have to notify the police,” he said.
“I’ll go at once.”
“And Dr. Bowen.”
“I’ll use his telephone.”
“She’s slain, Lizzie, oh, dear God...”
“Come lie down. I’ll run to Dr. Bowen’s. Come in the sitting room...”
“I shall fall if I move. Hold me, Lizzie.”
She held him close. He was weeping now. She patted him as she would a child, listening to the sounds of his grief and his shocked mutterings (“Oh, my God, the blood, the blood...”), consoling him, “Yes, Father, yes,” thinking it would be she herself who sounded the alarm (“Blood on the floor,” he said, “the walls, the bed, a broken candle on the...”), she who would run across the street to Dr. Bowen’s house, telephone the police, alert the neighbors — and suddenly she realized that his words had stopped, and his weeping as well. He moved his cheek from hers and held her slightly apart and looked into her eyes, puzzled.
“The candlestick,” he said.
Her heart leaped.
“Whoever did this... but you heard no one?”
“No one.”
“Saw no one?”
“No one.”
“But you were here, weren’t you?”
“I was here, certainly, but I heard...”
“Didn’t she scream? When he was bludgeoning her with... oh my God, my God!”
“Father, please lie down. I must fetch the police, we must have them here!”
“But how could...?” he said, and hesitated, and she saw in his eyes the same puzzlement again. And then he blinked and said, “No, it couldn’t have been, you brought it down for Maggie to polish.”
“Yes,” she said quickly. “Father...”
“When did you do that, Lizzie?” he asked gently and in the same puzzled voice.
“Do what, Father?”
“Bring the candlestick down.”
“Why... this morning,” she said. “When I came down this morning. Father, I must...”
“I saw no candlestick when you came down,” he said, still puzzled.
“Later,” she said.
“Brought it down later?”
“Yes.”
“Went upstairs to fetch it?”
“Yes.”
“And brought it down for Bridget to polish.”
“Yes.”
“Fetched it from the guest room.”
“Yes.”
“Did the candle fall from it then?” he asked.
He was working it out, oh God, he was putting it together!
“I... I really don’t...”
“When you went to fetch it?” he asked.
“Perhaps... well, yes, it must have.”
“And you didn’t stop to pick it up?”
“Well, I thought of picking it up, yes, I must have, but...”
“When you knew your mother would be having company? And had tidied the room?”
“I planned to do it later,” she said.
He looked directly into her eyes. They stood not two feet apart in the doorway to the sitting room, he in one room, she in the other. His voice when he spoke was stronger now.
“Was your mother up there when you went to fetch it?” he said. “The candlestick?”
“She’d already left,” Lizzie said.
“If the candlestick was the weapon...”
“It couldn’t have been,” she said quickly.
“If,” he shouted, and she fell silent.
He kept staring at her.
“How came it to be in the dining room?” he said.
“I told you. I...”
She hesitated.
“I...”
“Did you do this thing?” he asked.
She said nothing.
“Did you do this terrible thing?”
Still she said nothing.
“Why?” he asked. “Dear God, why? ”
Looking into his eyes, she said gently, “Father, she...” and could say no more, for continuing would have meant revealing to him the precipitating act, herself and Maggie in naked embrace, the act her stepmother had called monstrous and unnatural. When he saw that she would offer neither explanation nor excuse, he said, “Go from my sight, go!” and turned away from her and went into the sitting room. Like a child accepting punishment, she did as she’d been instructed, dutifully, obediently, going into the kitchen and standing silently by the cookstove, facing the wall, listening to the ticking of the clock. In the sitting room, the sofa springs protested under his weight as he fell back upon it. She heard him say, “Oh, God, oh, dear God,” and then all was silent save for the ticking of the clock.
Not five minutes had passed since she’d come back from the barn. Within the next five minutes, he would regain his strength and composure and go to telephone the police. And when they arrived, they would listen to the logic of candlestick and broken candle, and then go silently and gravely upstairs to look upon her stepmother’s shattered, open skull. And they would wonder why. And they would ask her why.
Herself and Maggie in embrace.
The discovery.
The shame.
Is it your passion that shames you so? Then are we, as women, not entitled to the same passion men consider their Cod-given right?
She looked at the hatchet where she had left it in the coal scuttle.
Chop your kindling on the block below, where you should. And take that hatchet downcellar, where it belongs.
She picked up the hatchet.
She picked it up deliberately, not as she had earlier lifted the candlestick, fully aware of her hand closing around the wooden handle. She went into the sitting room. Her father was lying full length on the sofa, his left leg extended, his right leg bent and dangling over the side, the foot touching the carpeted floor. His hands were folded over his chest as if in prayer. His eyes were closed. Tears were running down his face.
“Father?” she said softly.
