Evan Hunter - Lizzie

“Have you any reason to suppose the spring lock was left so it could be pressed open from the outside?”

“I have no reason to suppose so.”

“Nothing about the lock was changed before the people came.”

“Nothing that I know of.”

One of them was lying; either the servant girl or the woman who now sat watching him, her gray eyes unreadable. Bridget Sullivan had testified under oath that Lizzie had been upstairs when she’d let Andrew Borden into the house. Either in the entry or at the top of the stairs. She had specifically stated that she’d had difficulty unlocking the door, and had said “Oh, pshaw,” and had heard Lizzie laughing, upstairs. Lizzie herself had yesterday claimed she’d been upstairs when her father came back to the house. She was now claiming she’d been in the kitchen. Why the lie, if indeed it was a lie? And if it was not a lie, he wanted all the details.

“What were you doing in the kitchen when your father came home?” he asked.

“I think I was eating a pear when he came in.”

“What had you been doing before that?”

“Reading a magazine.”

“Were you making preparations to iron again?”

“I’d sprinkled my clothes and was waiting for the flats. I sprinkled the clothes before he went out.”

“Had you built up the fire again?”

“I put in a stick of wood. There were a few sparks. I put in a stick of wood to try to heat the flat.”

“You had then started the fire?”

“Yes, sir.”

“The fire was burning when he came in?”

“No, sir. But it was smoldering and smoking as though it would come up.”

“Did it come up after he came in?”

“No, sir.”

“How soon after your father came in before Maggie went upstairs?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t see her.”

“Did you see her after your father came in?”

“Not after she let him in.”

“How long was your father in the house before you found him killed?”

“I don’t know exactly. Because I went out to the barn. I don’t know what time he came home. I don’t think he’d been home more than fifteen or twenty minutes. I’m not sure.”

“When you went out to the barn, where did you leave your father?”

“He had laid down on the sitting-room lounge. Taken off his shoes and put on his slippers. And taken off his coat and put on the reefer. I asked him if he wanted the window left that way.”

Now surely, she knew that her father had been wearing Congress shoes at the time of his murder, and not slippers, as she now claimed. But why lie about so inconsequential a matter as what the man had been wearing on his feet? Unless, of course, she was determined to weave reality and invention into a web that would totally obscure the truth. Meticulously relate detail after detail, some of them true, some of them false, until it would become impossible for him to distinguish fact from fancy.

“Where did you leave him?” he asked.

“On the sofa.”

“Was he asleep?”

“No, sir.”

“Was he reading?”

“No, sir.”

“What was the last thing you said to him?”

“I asked him if he wanted the window left that way. Then I went into the kitchen. And from there to the barn.”

“Whereabouts in the barn did you go?”

“Upstairs.”

“To the second story of the barn?”

“Yes, sir.”

“How long did you remain there?”

“I don’t know. Fifteen or twenty minutes.”

“What doing?”

“Trying to find lead for a sinker.”

“What made you think there’d be lead for a sinker up there?”

“Because there was some there.”

“Was there not some by the door?”

“Some pieces of lead by the open door. But there was a box full of old things upstairs.”

“Did you bring any sinker back from the barn?”

“I found no sinker.”

“Did you bring any sinker back from the barn?”

“Nothing but a piece of a chip I picked up on the floor.”

“Where was that box you say you saw upstairs, containing lead?”

“There was a kind of a workbench.”

“Is it there now?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“How long since you’ve seen it there?”

“I haven’t been out there since that day.”

“Had you been in the barn before?”

“That day? No, sir.”

“How long since you’d been in the barn before?”

“I don’t think I’d been into it... I don’t know as I had in three months.”

And, of course, it was entirely possible that she had been to the barn, as she claimed, and that someone had stolen into the house to commit bloody murder while the servant girl lay on her bed in the attic room. In which case, the door...

“When you went out,” he asked, “did you unfasten the screen door?”

“I unhooked it to get out.”

“It was hooked until you went out?”

“Yes, sir.”

“It had been left hooked by Bridget? If she was the last one in?”

“I suppose so. I don’t know.”

“Do you know when she did get through washing the outside?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did you know she washed the windows inside ?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did you sec her washing the windows inside?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know whether she washed the dining room and sitting room windows inside?”

“I didn’t see her.”

“ If she did, would you not have seen her?”

“I don’t know. She might be in one room and I in another.”

“Do you think she might have gone to work, and washed all the windows in the dining room and sitting room, and you not know it?”

“I don’t know. I’m sure, whether I should or not, I might have seen her, and not know it.”

“Miss Borden, I am trying in good faith to get all the doings that morning of yourself and Miss Sullivan, and I have not succeeded in doing it. Do you desire to give me any information, or not?”

“I don’t know it... I don’t know what your name is!”

He was confused for a moment. Surely, she knew what his name was. And then he realized she was making reference to his barrage of questions, telling him, in effect, that he had her head in such a whirl she no longer could even remember his name. He debated for a moment whether he should soften his tone and his stance. He decided against it.

Flatly, deliberately, accusingly, he said. “It is certain beyond reasonable doubt she was engaged in washing the windows in the dining room or sitting room when your father came home. Do you mean to say you know nothing of either of those operations?”

“I knew she washed the windows outside — that is, she told me so. She didn’t wash the windows in the kitchen, because I was in the kitchen most of the time.”

“The dining room and the sitting room, I said.”

“I don’t know.”

“Can you give me any information how it happened — at that particular time — you should go into the chamber of the barn to find a sinker to go to Marion with to fish the next Monday?”

“I was going to finish my ironing. My flats weren’t hot. I said to myself, ‘I’ll go and try and find that sinker. Perhaps by the time I get back, the flats’ll be hot.’ That’s the only reason.”

“Had you got a fish line?”

“Not here. We had some at the farm.”

“Had you got a fish hook?”

“No, sir.”

“Had you got any apparatus for fishing at all?”

“Yes, over there.”