Evan Hunter - Lizzie

The first thing she saw when she entered the spare room was a hank of black hair on the bedspread.

She almost backed out of the room.

The hair, flung up onto the bed by the ferocity of her attack, summarized for her the full horror of what she’d done, and she stood staring at it, unable to move, mesmerized by it, realizing at last that it was only a piece of false braid, a switch her stepmother often wore, the knowledge in no way diminishing the fact that the severity of her blows had sent it flying up onto the bed. She forced her eyes away from it.

The candle lay on the floor where it had fallen, its back broken like a serpent’s trod upon. There was no blood on it or near it. She picked it up quickly, studied the carpet for stray scraps of wax, found a rather large piece that had broken off from the base, studied the floor again and then hurried out of the room without looking back at the hank of false hair on the bed or the body on the floor.

In the kitchen downstairs Maggie was still at the stove. She had replaced the lid; Lizzie assumed that the fire had already done its work.

“Burned?” she asked at once.

“All,” Maggie said. “But there’ll be buttons. From the dress. They’ll find buttons in the ashes.”

“Then I’ll burn another dress in plain sight,” Lizzie said.

“The buttons will be different,” Maggie said.

“The buttons will be charred,” Lizzie said. “Do I look...?”

“Fine,” Maggie said.

Her voice was low, scarcely more than a whisper. The kitchen, now that a proper fire was going in the stove, was hotter than it had been earlier. Lizzie lifted the stove lid and dropped the candle and the stray scrap into the fire.

“We saw nothing and heard nothing,” she said. “We tell them all that we did...”

“All that we did,” Maggie repeated dully.

“All but what relates. All but what actually...”

“What you did,” Maggie said.

“What we did,” Lizzie said, and slammed down the stove lid. “You were here in the house. Should either of us stumble, they’ll think us both murderers.”

“I harmed no one,” Maggie said.

The same dull voice, a whisper.

“And will not harm me,” Lizzie said.

Maggie said nothing.

“Promise me.”

“Aye,” Maggie said.

“On your mother’s eyes.”

Maggie sighed deeply. “On my mother’s eyes,” she said.

“Now run for Dr. Bowen as fast as you can. Tell him what happened here. Tell him we need him at once. Tell him my father is dead.”

“And your mother both,” Maggie said.

“We know nothing of upstairs. Only my father. It’s only my father we’ve found. You were in your room, resting. I was out in the backyard, near the barn. I heard a groan, and came in, and the screen door was wide open. Do you have that?”

“I have it,” Maggie said, and started for the entry. The screen door clattered shut behind her.

Lizzie went into the dining room. From the window she watched Maggie as she ran hurriedly up the path toward the street. I was in the backyard, she thought. I heard a groan; the screen door was wide open. She turned from the window, began pacing the dining-room floor, going over the falsehood yet another time, refining it, I was in the backyard, the barn, I was in the barn, her steps taking her closer and closer to the sitting-room door until she remembered what lay beyond that door, and backed away with a start, almost colliding with the diningroom table.

She hurried into the kitchen, lifted the stove lid again, nervously checked to see that the garments had indeed burned and, satisfied that they had, replaced the lid. She lifted the smaller lid near the firebox, hoping no charred scraps of bloodstained newspaper had drifted that way. She saw only the pasteboard cylinder in which her father’s survey had arrived, completely carbonized but still holding its original shape. She replaced the lid — and saw the hatchet still on the kitchen table.

In plain sight where she’d left it!

In a moment Maggie would be back with Dr. Bowen, and the first thing he would see—

She heard hurried footsteps on the walk outside. She picked up the hatchet and turned in panic toward the coal scuttle. The screen door banged open. Maggie came clattering into the house, her face white. She saw the hatchet and stopped dead in her tracks.

“He isn’t home,” she said breathlessly. “I left word with Mrs. Bowen. She expects him any time; she’ll send him over. Are we to stay alone in this house till...?”

“Do you know where Alice Russell lives?”

“Yes, I think so. Yes.”

“Then go and get her.” She held out the hatchet to Maggie. “And take this with you.”

“No!” Maggie said.

“Take it!”

“I want no part of it! No!”

“Dispose of it,” Lizzie said.

“Where? She lives hard by, where would I...?”

“Drop it in the nearest sewer.”

“I shall be seen!”

“Then take it to the river. Go by way of Rodman Street...”

“The long way round? She lives on Borden !”

“They won’t ask you how you went! Take Rodman to Hartwell...”

“There are houses bordering the river there!”

“You can find a way to it. Near Eight-Rod Way, the river’s...”

“They’ll see me; I’ll be seen!”

“Would you have them find it here?” She thrust the hatchet into Maggie’s hands. “A sewer, the river, I don’t care which! Dispose of it! Take it out of here!”

Maggie said nothing. Silently she wrapped the hatchet in a dishrag, and then went out to the entry. She took her hat and shawl from where they were hanging, carefully lowered the hatchet into her fabric marketing bag and went to the screen door. She hesitated there, turned to Lizzie as if to say something, shook her head instead and rushed outside, the screen door slamming shut again behind her.

Lizzie went to the door. She stood just inside the screen, listening to Maggie’s hurried footfalls fading on the street outside, knowing for certain that the moment anyone walked into this house — Dr. Bowen, Alice Russell, anyone — she would immediately crumble and confess all that she had done. And then, suddenly, she remembered something Alison had said a long time ago, and she closed her eyes, almost seeing her lips shaping the words, almost hearing her lovely liquid voice again:

Our greatest secret, our supreme strength, is that no man on earth, no father, no son, could dare admit that a proper lady — his daughter, his sister, his wife — would ever commit a breach that seriously threatened his superior position in the society he has constructed and which he will support with his very life. For should he once believe of any one of us that we might so rebel against the absurd rules and regulations proscribing the periphery of our lives, then he must perforce believe that we are all capable of bringing down bis elaborate house of cards and thereby destroying his faith in the cherished myth of ideal womanhood.

Across the yard she heard a window go up at the Churchill house. She opened her eyes.

“Lizzie?” Mrs. Churchill called. “What’s the matter?”

She took a deep breath.

“Oh, Mrs. Churchill,” she shouted in alarm, “do come over! Someone has killed father!”

Although this is a work of fiction, much of it is rooted firmly in fact.

The inquest material is factual. It has been curtailed only when Knowlton’s questions and Lizzie’s responses became overly repetitious. But the words recorded are Lizzie’s and Knowlton’s own, exactly as they were spoken.