Evan Hunter - Lizzie

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.”