Evan Hunter - Lizzie

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.

He said nothing.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

His eyes opened.

She did not mean to say what she said next, was in fact surprised when it found voice.

“I shall take this downcellar.”

Her father looked at the hatchet in her hand.

“Don’t tell them,” she said. “The police. Please don’t.”

He looked at her uncomprehendingly.

“The candlestick,” she said.

And still he looked at her.

“Please,” she said, “ help me, Father! If you love me...”

“Love?” he said, spitting out the word as if it were poison on his tongue. “I hate you for what you’ve done! I’ll hate you always for it! I’ll regret forever the day I spawned such a foul and murderous creature!” And then, more bitterly, as if he were echoing her stepmother’s words in yet another form, he said, “I shall tell them all, everything, all! Go from me! You disgust me! You offend my sight!” and closed his eyes against her, and turned his head into the cushion, concealing his right cheek again.

She raised the hatchet.

He sensed the motion, seemed to sense the motion, and started to lift his head from the cushion, his left eye opening wide, his legs swinging over the side of the sofa as if he would rise. The last thing she saw in that instant before she struck him was that single glaring eye and the silent accusation in it.

She intended the first angry blow to strike that fiercely accusing eye, but she missed the mark and the chopping edge of the hatchet caught her father immediately in front of his left ear, a crushing wound some three inches and more in length, releasing an immediate gush of blood that took her quite by surprise, splashing up onto her face and the front of the black chintz dress. She raised her left hand to ward off the gush of blood, closing her eyes against it, and then opened them at once, and struck him again, slightly higher up this time, above the left ear, a two-inch-long slash sending up another spurt of blood that spattered the wall behind the head of the sofa. And still she struck for the eye though it was closed now, hitting again, and again, and again, at the area in front of and above his left ear, her blows breaking away the skull bone and crushing through into the brain itself.

The eye, she thought, the eye, and the hatchet slashed downward to open a wound lost in the left eyebrow near its outer end, the eye! striking again to open a wound above the left eyebrow, blood spattering onto the framed picture above the sofa, and now, yes, now the flashing edge of the hatchet passed downward through the eyebrow, cutting deeply through the eye at its outer edge, crushing into the cheek bone on the left side and penetrating the cavity of the skull where the eye rested in the head.

As though blinding that accusing eye had failed to fulfill her purpose or satisfy her rage, she struck out at the other features on that once familiar face, slashing through the nose and the upper lip, hitting him again a fiercer blow that opened a four-inch gash through the left nostril and the upper and lower lips, extending nearly to the tip of the chin. The hatchet felt suddenly heavy in her hand. She struck out less forcefully now, opening a flesh wound above his left eyebrow, and then a short cut in his scalp, and another cut parallel to those, some two inches in length — and all at once she stopped.

She was drenched in blood; she had not expected so much blood. There had not been this much blood upstairs. Her hand where she held the bloodstained weapon dripped blood into her father’s own blood flowing from his head onto the carpet. The bodice of the black chintz dress was covered with blood, and she could feel it soaking through to her chemise and her breasts. She realized all at once that killing him had taken no longer than thirty seconds.

The house was utterly still.

“Maggie!” she shouted, “come down!”

Silence.

And then from above in the attic room on the other side of the house, “What’s the matter?”

“Come down quick!” Lizzie said. She stood motionless by the sofa, unable to move, fearful of trailing blood through the house, yet knowing that she must wash herself, change her clothes, dispose of them and the gory instrument in her hand before someone else arrived at the door, her Uncle John home for the noonday meal, someone, and she shouted again, “Maggie, hurry!” and leaped in surprise when Maggie appeared suddenly in the doorway.

“Fetch me some newspapers,” Lizzie said. “Quick! The old ones. Across the room. In the bucket.”

Maggie stood in the door to the dining room, both hands to her mouth, looking in over the arm of the sofa to where Lizzie’s father lay crushed and bleeding. “Oh, God,” she whimpered, “oh, sweet merciful...”

“Hurry!”

And now all was frenzied haste, though for Lizzie the seconds seemed to drag eternally, the fear mounting that her uncle would barge into the house with a gruff greeting to find her drenched in blood — “Close the shutters!” — Maggie rushing to bring the newspapers and then flying across the room to hurl the shutters closed while Lizzie stripped herself naked save for the bellyband and menstrual towel stained with her own seeping blood. Thirty seconds passed, perhaps a minute — “Burn these in the stove!” — Lizzie running into the pantry, a glance toward the unshuttered kitchen windows, washing and drying herself and the hatchet, Maggie stuffing the newspaper-wrapped garments into the stove, the flames licking up through the open hole.

Lizzie came out of the pantry, put the hatchet on the kitchen table and, without a word, ran through the house and up the stairs to the closet on the landing. She took from its hanger a blue, bengaline silk dress, carried it swiftly into her bedroom, put on fresh underclothing, black stockings, the white underskirt, the dress skirt and dress waist. She studied the felt slippers for bloodstains, found none, and hurled them into her closet. Quickly she put on a pair of low, black tie-shoes, her fingers fumbling with the laces, the clock ticking.

She did not want to go into that spare room again, did not want to see again the evidence of what she’d earlier done. But the broken candle was still on the floor of that room, and so she crossed the landing swiftly and was about to go into the room when she saw the candlestick where her father had dropped it just outside the door, undoubtedly in shock at what he’d seen within. She picked up the candlestick, aware of time, racing against time, not knowing where to put it, not the dining room again, certainly not there, but where ? Where would they not suspect it? She carried it quickly into her own room, put it down on the dresser, and searched in the bottom drawer on the right for a fresh taper. She placed the candle in the socket, pressed it down firmly onto the pricket. She looked at the candlestick once again and then went hurriedly out into the hallway.