Evan Hunter - Lizzie

“Am I mocking you now?”

“A barn is surely not so uncommon a thing in England as to provoke...”

“But I’ve never had a barn!”

“Well, we do. Just behind the house.”

“And I’ve certainly never had a young swain who behaved badly in one.”

“I told you it wasn’t in the barn.”

“Then where was it? Some deserted pasture? Some idle country lane? An August moon shining above, the stars...”

“There’s the mockery again. I realize Fall River isn’t half so grand as London, but it is a city, you know, and not quite so rural as you’d have it!”

“How fierce, my Lizzie!”

“Yes!”

“How splendid in her anger!”

“I am angry, yes.”

“Your very hair is on fire!” Alison said.

“It has been since birth!” Lizzie shouted, and both women burst out laughing. Neither of them could speak for several moments. Their laughter was the sort of spontaneous explosion Lizzie remembered from her girlhood, when the slightest comment could trigger an endless succession of irrepressible giggles between her and her sister. What was remarkable about the laughter now was that two grown women were overcome by it on a darkening afternoon in the city of London. The very thought of such an unimaginable happening caused a new burst of laughter from her and provoked a similar gust of mirth from Alison, who clutched her knees to her bosom and, gasping, said, “Tell me what this cad did to you!”

“ Un did!” Lizzie said, and burst into fresh laughter. “My corset!” she managed to say, astonished to find herself laughing at what surely had been the most embarrassing event in her life. “Or tried to!” she said, and laughed till tears came to her eyes.

“Oh, the raging maniac!” Alison said, laughing.

“He couldn’t get the ties undone!” Lizzie said. “I was wearing the shorter corset...”

“Yes!”

“Laced down the back, you know, and he kept fumbling about...”

“Mr. Fumblefingers!”

“Oh, my dear Lord!” Lizzie said, and brushed at her eyes with her handkerchief. “We struggled for what must have been a full ten minutes...”

“Under that bright August moon...”

“It was October, actually.”

“He bobbing for apples, then...”

“Apples!” Lizzie echoed, exploding into laughter again.

“Or pears, more precisely. Or at least a pair!” Alison said, and threw her head back and let out the sort of bellow she’d earlier attributed to ill-mannered American girls. “Oh, Lizzie, I can just visualize it! There you were in the hay... your skirts above your head...”

“It was in a carriage,” Lizzie said. Her cheeks were burning. She had never before this discussed the incident with anyone, so embarrassing had it been. And to be talking about it now, relating it in the manner of a... well, yes, a bawdy tale... hearing Alison compare her breasts to apples first and then to pears, and then punning on her own words, and to find it all so hilarious — she simply could not believe herself!

Both women were suddenly and surprisingly sober.

“In a carriage,” Alison prompted.

“On the way home from a church social,” Lizzie said.

“Oh, the heathen!” Alison said, and burst out laughing again.

“I was shocked speechless!”

“I can well imagine!”

“His hands were cold!” Lizzie said, and began laughing so hard she thought she would choke.

“Oh, dear,” Alison said.

“Oh, my goodness,” Lizzie said.

“Your goodness assailed!” Alison said. “So tell me what happened. How did you rid yourself of the bounder?”

“I was obliged to return his ring.”

“Ah? That serious then, was it?”

“Not an engagement ring, no,” Lizzie said. “Nothing of the sort. But he’d given me a simple gold ring he used to wear on his pinky, and which I wore on the third finger of my right hand. I gave back the ring, but it came again in the mail not three days later, together with a note apologizing for his...”

“... beastly manners,” Alison said, nodding.

“He didn’t put it quite that way.”

“How did he put it?”

“He said he couldn’t understand what had come over him...”

“How original!”

“... and he promised it would never happen again.”

“Unless he first warmed his hands by the fire,” Alison said. “And did you forgive him?”

“I never saw him again. Oh, around town, of course, whenever he was visiting his aunt. But not as a beau.”

“Did you return the ring yet another time?”

“No.”

“You certainly didn’t throw it away, did you? Gold?”

“I gave it to my father,” Lizzie said. “He still wears it.”

“How clever of you,” Alison said. “I must confess that the first time a strange man began fumbling with my stays I was less embarrassed than I was surprised. The very thought of a grown man actually desiring to fondle my meager treasures...”

“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.

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.