Lizzie, p.9
Lizzie, page 9
“Hello?” Albert called. “Anyone home?”
“We’re in here, darling,” Alison said, rising and smoothing her apron. “Come say hello to Miss Borden.”
He came into the drawing room, hatless this time, and dressed rather more somberly than he’d been on the train, wearing a black coat with a low, narrow, rolled velvet collar and trousers of the same cloth. He extended his hand, took Lizzie’s in it and lowered his lips to it, brushing it lightly in the European manner.
“How nice to see you,” he said. “Have you been having a pleasant chat? Is that clotted cream I spy?”
“Do help yourself, Albert,” she said, “I’ll ring for more hot tea.” She turned to Lizzie and added, “My husband is a glutton.”
“For punishment, if your tongue’s any indication,” Albert said, and smiled. “Has she been talking your ear off, Miss Borden?”
“Please call me Lizzie, won’t you?”
“Lizzie then,” he said. “But not Elizabeth.”
“Such a keen memory,” Alison said.
“We’ve had a lovely afternoon together,” Lizzie said.
“Yes, haven’t we?” Alison said.
“Interest rates will be going up from four to five percent,” Albert said, and reached across the table for a scone.
4: Fall River — 1892
Six witnesses were to be examined at the inquest on this Wednesday morning, August 10, and Lizzie Borden was to be the first of them. The clock on the wall read ten minutes to ten. Knowlton sat alone in the courtroom, a copy of the Springfield Republican open on the table before him. The editorial read:
All through the investigations carried on by the Fall River Police, a lack of ability has been shown seldom equalled, and causes they assign for connecting the daughter with the murder are on a par with their other exhibitions of lack of wisdom. Because someone, unknown to them and too smart for them to catch, butchered two people in the daytime on a principal street of the city, using brute force far in excess of that possessed by the girl, they conclude that there is probable reason to believe that she is the murderess. Because they found no one walking along the street with his hands and clothes reeking with blood, they conclude that it is probable, after swinging the ax with the precision and effect of a butcher, she washed the blood from her hands and clothes.
Well that, Knowlton thought. The fact that there had been no visible blood on the girl when the police arrived. True enough. But was it actually so improbable that she might have had opportunity to cleanse herself after the gory acts? To hide, perhaps to destroy, the garments she’d been wearing? Beyond reasonable doubt, he reminded himself. What might have happened was nothing for him to ponder. He was here this morning to inquire again into what had happened, to ask Lizzie Borden again for a recital of the events as she had experienced them and perceived them on that fatal morning.
As for the police, he had no doubt but that they were performing their duties as diligently and as carefully as was within their power. Only yesterday afternoon, after it was reported that a paperhanger named Peleg Blightman had found a bloody hatchet hidden in a laborer’s house on one of the Brayton Farms, close by one of the two farms Andrew Borden had owned in South Somerset, Marshal Hilliard had immediately dispatched Officer Harrington to the scene.
The policeman had arrived there at about four-thirty in the afternoon while Knowlton was still questioning Lizzie, and had talked first with a Portuguese woman who understood English only sparingly, and next to her husband, who was called in from the fields. The man said he knew nothing of such a hatchet, and when the officer searched the house, he found on the kitchen shelf only a hatchet without any blood stains. That very night, an order was adopted by the Fall River Board of Aldermen, stating, “Inasmuch as a terrible crime has been committed in this city, requiring an unusually large number of men to do police duty, it is hereby ordered that the City Marshal be — and he is hereby — directed to employ such extra constables as he may deem necessary for the detection of the criminals, the expenses to be charged to the appropriation of the police.”
The police were doing their job; of that, Knowlton felt certain. He closed the newspaper and looked up at the clock. It was five minutes to ten. Professor Wood was still at the Borden house, he imagined, examining the premises again, after which he would go to the police station to receive a trunk from Dr. Dolan. The trunk would contain, among other things, the two axes and the claw-hammer hatchet that had been found in the cellar of the house. Knowlton wished he were already in possession of the results of the professor’s examination, now, before he questioned the witness again, but that was impossible. He glanced toward the door as Clerk Leonard shuffled into the courtroom. The men exchanged morning greetings. Annie White came in a few moments later, followed by City Marshal Hilliard. If Knowlton had come to know anything at all about Miss Lizzie Borden, it was that she would arrive promptly at the stroke of the hour.
“I shall have to ask you once more about that morning,” he said. “I want you to tell me just where you found the people when you got down. That you did find there.”
“I found Mrs. Borden in the dining room. I found my father in the sitting room.”
“And Maggie?”
“Maggie was coming in the back door with her pail and brush.”
“Tell me what talk you had with your mother at that time.”
“She asked me how I felt. I said I felt better than I did Tuesday, but I didn’t want any breakfast. She asked me what I wanted for dinner. I told her nothing. I told her I didn’t want anything. She said she was going out, and would get the dinner. That’s the last I saw her, or said anything to her.”
“Where did you go then?”
“Into the kitchen.”
“Where then?”
“Downcellar.”
“Gone perhaps five minutes?”
“Perhaps. Not more than that. Possibly a little bit more.”
“When you came back, did you see your mother?”
“I did not. I supposed she had gone out.”
“She did not tell you where she was going?”
“No, sir.”
“Now I call your attention to the fact that yesterday you told me, with some explicitness, that when your father came in you were just coming downstairs.”
“No, I did not. I beg your pardon.”
“That you were on the stairs at the time your father was let in, you said with some explicitness. Do you now say you did not say so?”
“I said I thought first I was on the stairs. Then I remembered I was in the kitchen when he came in.”
“First you thought you were in the kitchen. Afterwards, you remembered you were on the stairs.”
“I said I thought I was on the stairs. Then I said I knew I was in the kitchen. I still say that now. I was in the kitchen.”
“Did you go into the front part of the house after your father came in?”
“After he came in from downstreet, I was in the sitting room with him.”
“Did you go into the front hall afterwards?”
“No, sir.”
“At no time?”
“No, sir.”
“Excepting the two or three minutes you were downcellar, were you away from the house until your father came in?”
“No, sir.”
“You were always in the kitchen or dining room, excepting when you went upstairs.”
“I went upstairs before he went out.”
“You mean you went up there to sew a button on.”
“I basted a piece of tape on.”
“Do you remember you didn’t say that yesterday?”
“I don’t think you asked me. I told you yesterday I went upstairs directly after I came up from downcellar, with the clean clothes.”
“You now say — after your father went out — you didn’t go upstairs at all.”
“No, sir, I did not.”
“When Maggie came in there washing the windows, you didn’t appear from the front part of the house?”
“No, sir.”
“When your father was let in, you didn’t appear from upstairs?”
“No, sir. I was in the kitchen.”
“After your father went out, you remained there either in the kitchen or dining room all the time.”
“I went in the sitting room long enough to direct some paper wrappers.”
“One of the three rooms.”
“Yes, sir.”
“So it would have been extremely difficult for anybody to have gone through the kitchen, and dining room, and front hall without your seeing them.”
“They could have gone from the kitchen into the sitting room while I was in the dining room. If there was anybody to go.”
“Then into the front hall?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You were in the dining room. Ironing.”
“Yes, sir. Part of the time.”
“You were in all of the three rooms.”
“Yes, sir.”
“A large portion of that time, the girl was out of doors.”
“I don’t know where she was. I didn’t see her. I supposed she was out of doors. As she had the pail and brush.”
“You know she was washing windows?”
“She told me she was going to. I didn’t see her do it.”
“For a large portion of the time, you didn’t see the girl?”
“No, sir.”
“So far as you know, you were alone in the lower part of the house a large portion of the time. After your father went away, and before he came back.”
“My father didn’t go away, I think, until somewhere about ten... as near as I can remember. He was with me downstairs.”
“A large portion of the time, after your father went away and before he came back, so far as you know, you were alone in the house.”
“Maggie had come in and gone upstairs.”
“After he went out,” Knowlton persisted doggedly, “and before he came back, a large portion of the time after your father went out, and before he came back, so far as you know, you were the only person in the house.”
“So far as I know, I was.”
“And during that time, so far as you know, the front door was locked.”
“So far as I know.”
“And never was unlocked at all.”
“I don’t think it was.”
“Even after your father came home, it was locked up again.”
“I don’t know whether she locked it up again after that or not.”
“It locks itself.”
“The spring lock opens.”
“It fastens it so it cannot be opened from the outside.”
“Sometimes you can press it open.”
“Have you any reason to suppose the spring lock was left so it could be pressed open from the outside?”
“I have no reason to suppose so.”
“Nothing about the lock was changed before the people came.”
“Nothing that I know of.”
One of them was lying; either the servant girl or the woman who now sat watching him, her gray eyes unreadable. Bridget Sullivan had testified under oath that Lizzie had been upstairs when she’d let Andrew Borden into the house. Either in the entry or at the top of the stairs. She had specifically stated that she’d had difficulty unlocking the door, and had said “Oh, pshaw,” and had heard Lizzie laughing, upstairs. Lizzie herself had yesterday claimed she’d been upstairs when her father came back to the house. She was now claiming she’d been in the kitchen. Why the lie, if indeed it was a lie? And if it was not a lie, he wanted all the details.
“What were you doing in the kitchen when your father came home?” he asked.
“I think I was eating a pear when he came in.”
“What had you been doing before that?”
“Reading a magazine.”
“Were you making preparations to iron again?”
“I’d sprinkled my clothes and was waiting for the flats. I sprinkled the clothes before he went out.”
“Had you built up the fire again?”
“I put in a stick of wood. There were a few sparks. I put in a stick of wood to try to heat the flat.”
“You had then started the fire?”
“Yes, sir.”
“The fire was burning when he came in?”
“No, sir. But it was smoldering and smoking as though it would come up.”
“Did it come up after he came in?”
“No, sir.”
“How soon after your father came in before Maggie went upstairs?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t see her.”
“Did you see her after your father came in?”
“Not after she let him in.”
“How long was your father in the house before you found him killed?”
“I don’t know exactly. Because I went out to the barn. I don’t know what time he came home. I don’t think he’d been home more than fifteen or twenty minutes. I’m not sure.”
“When you went out to the barn, where did you leave your father?”
“He had laid down on the sitting-room lounge. Taken off his shoes and put on his slippers. And taken off his coat and put on the reefer. I asked him if he wanted the window left that way.”
Now surely, she knew that her father had been wearing Congress shoes at the time of his murder, and not slippers, as she now claimed. But why lie about so inconsequential a matter as what the man had been wearing on his feet? Unless, of course, she was determined to weave reality and invention into a web that would totally obscure the truth. Meticulously relate detail after detail, some of them true, some of them false, until it would become impossible for him to distinguish fact from fancy.
“Where did you leave him?” he asked.
“On the sofa.”
“Was he asleep?”
“No, sir.”
“Was he reading?”
“No, sir.”
“What was the last thing you said to him?”
“I asked him if he wanted the window left that way. Then I went into the kitchen. And from there to the barn.”
“Whereabouts in the barn did you go?”
“Upstairs.”
“To the second story of the barn?”
“Yes, sir.”
“How long did you remain there?”
“I don’t know. Fifteen or twenty minutes.”
“What doing?”
“Trying to find lead for a sinker.”
“What made you think there’d be lead for a sinker up there?”
“Because there was some there.”
“Was there not some by the door?”
“Some pieces of lead by the open door. But there was a box full of old things upstairs.”
“Did you bring any sinker back from the barn?”
“I found no sinker.”
“Did you bring any sinker back from the barn?”
“Nothing but a piece of a chip I picked up on the floor.”
“Where was that box you say you saw upstairs, containing lead?”
“There was a kind of a workbench.”
“Is it there now?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
“How long since you’ve seen it there?”
“I haven’t been out there since that day.”
“Had you been in the barn before?”
“That day? No, sir.”
“How long since you’d been in the barn before?”
“I don’t think I’d been into it... I don’t know as I had in three months.”
And, of course, it was entirely possible that she had been to the barn, as she claimed, and that someone had stolen into the house to commit bloody murder while the servant girl lay on her bed in the attic room. In which case, the door...
“When you went out,” he asked, “did you unfasten the screen door?”
“I unhooked it to get out.”
“It was hooked until you went out?”
“Yes, sir.”
“It had been left hooked by Bridget? If she was the last one in?”
“I suppose so. I don’t know.”
“Do you know when she did get through washing the outside?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you know she washed the windows inside?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you sec her washing the windows inside?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know whether she washed the dining room and sitting room windows inside?”
“I didn’t see her.”
“If she did, would you not have seen her?”
“I don’t know. She might be in one room and I in another.”
“Do you think she might have gone to work, and washed all the windows in the dining room and sitting room, and you not know it?”
“I don’t know. I’m sure, whether I should or not, I might have seen her, and not know it.”
“Miss Borden, I am trying in good faith to get all the doings that morning of yourself and Miss Sullivan, and I have not succeeded in doing it. Do you desire to give me any information, or not?”
“I don’t know it... I don’t know what your name is!”
He was confused for a moment. Surely, she knew what his name was. And then he realized she was making reference to his barrage of questions, telling him, in effect, that he had her head in such a whirl she no longer could even remember his name. He debated for a moment whether he should soften his tone and his stance. He decided against it.
Flatly, deliberately, accusingly, he said. “It is certain beyond reasonable doubt she was engaged in washing the windows in the dining room or sitting room when your father came home. Do you mean to say you know nothing of either of those operations?”
“I knew she washed the windows outside — that is, she told me so. She didn’t wash the windows in the kitchen, because I was in the kitchen most of the time.”
“The dining room and the sitting room, I said.”
“I don’t know.”
“Can you give me any information how it happened — at that particular time — you should go into the chamber of the barn to find a sinker to go to Marion with to fish the next Monday?”
