Evan Hunter - Lizzie

“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.