Evan Hunter - Lizzie

“This... form... when you first saw it was on the steps of the back door?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Went down the rear steps?”

“Went down toward the barn.”

“Around the back side of the house?”

“Disappeared in the dark. I don’t know where they went.”

“Have you ever mentioned that before?”

“Yes, sir. I told Mr. Jennings.”

“To any officer?”

“I don’t think I have. Unless I told Mr. Hanscomb.”

“What were you going to say about last winter?” he asked.

“Last winter, when I was coming home from church one Thursday evening, I saw somebody run around the house again. I told my father of that.”

“Did you tell your father of this last one?”

“No, sir.”

“Of course, you couldn’t identify who it was either time.”

“No, I couldn’t identify who it was. But it wasn’t a very tall person.”

The clock on the wall ticked persistently. The courtroom was silent except for the ticking of the clock. Time was running out. Beyond this afternoon meeting, if he did not grant her time now, there would never again be opportunity for her to tell her side of the story; Jennings would never allow her to take the stand if this case came to trial. Now was the time, the one and only time. He granted her time.

“Have you sealskin sacks?” he asked.

“Yes, sir,” Lizzie said.

“Where are they?”

“Hanging in a large white bag in the attic. Each one separate.”

“Put away for the summer?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you ever use prussic acid on your sacks?”

“Acid? No, sir, I don’t use anything on them.”

And again, he granted her time. Allowed her at least the small courtesy of time because there was little else he could offer her now. Desperately, recognizing the note of desperation in his voice even as the words left his mouth, he said, “Is there anything else that you can suggest that even amounts to anything whatever?”

“I know of nothing else. Except the man who came and father ordered him out. That’s all I know.”

“That you told about the other day?”

“I think I did, yes, sir.”

“You haven’t been able to find that man?”

“I haven’t. I don’t know whether anybody else has or not.”

“Have you caused search to be made for him?”

“Yes, sir.”

“When was the offer of reward made for the detection of the criminals?”

“I think it was made Friday.”

“Who suggested that?”

“We suggested it ourselves, and asked Mr. Buck if he didn’t think it was a good idea.”

“Whose suggestion was it? Yours or Emma’s?”

“I don’t remember,” Lizzie said. “I think it was mine.”

In his mind the clock abruptly stopped ticking, though surely it had not.

“I have no further questions,” he said.

Their eyes met.

“No further questions,” he said again, and turned away from her steady gaze.

He found her later in the matron’s room across from the courtroom entry. She was sitting there with her sister, her friend Mrs. Brigham and her attorney. He asked Mrs. Brigham to leave. He turned to Marshal Hilliard, who had entered the room together with Detective Seaver. The marshal was holding a sheet of paper in his hand.

“I have here a warrant for your arrest,” Hilliard said, “issued by the judge of the District Court. I shall read it to you if you desire, but you have the right to waive the reading of it.”

She looked at Jennings.

“Waive the reading,” Jennings advised.

Lizzie turned slightly in her chair. Her eyes met Knowlton’s momentarily — he would never forget the glacial look in them — and then she turned stiffly to the marshal.

“You need not read it,” she said.

On the morning after her tea with Alison, she wrote a thank-you note on hotel stationery, and asked the hall porter to mail it for her. He assured her that the postal service in London was without equal anywhere in the world, and that very few letters ever went astray.

“Our delivery is prompt, madam, prompt,” he said. “We’ve between six to twelve deliveries each day, madam, six to twelve of them. Your letter should arrive there in a wink,” he added, glancing at the address. “Kensington’s but a stone’s throw away.”

“Thank you, sir,” she said, and noticed the odd look he gave her. She had not yet learned that in London there was a vast difference between civility and servility. Yes, sir and No, sir were the verbal insignia of a servant, and a proper lady would not have addressed a hotel employee — however ancient he might have been, as was the hall porter — with the word sir. She would learn this later from Alison, who taught her the errors of her ways in Paris; for now, she felt only puzzled. Leaving her letter in what she felt certain were safe hands, walking away from the lobby desk, she wondered if the note had been too formal for the good fun she and Alison had shared yesterday afternoon. Never could she remember having laughed so heartily! Or at such patently bawdy humor! Exchanged by two ladies, no less — she blushed to think of it. Back in Fall River she might on occasion be passing a stable or a saloon and would overhear the men at their jokes or their sly innuendos, but she’d always hurry past, her ears flaming, before the peals of laughter burst forth from inside those dark and secret places where they congregated. To joke about that horrible event — she could still remember Stephen’s cold hands fussing about under her clothing — and to accept his unfortunate groping and grasping as humorous in retrospect was something she could not have imagined herself doing a scant week ago.

Should she have made some allusion in her note to their giddiness? I have never laughed so long or so hard? But no, that would have seemed too plaintive, perhaps, a foreigner blatantly beseeching further invitation. Alison would have her letter sometime today; better to let her decide for herself, without prompting, whether she chose to extend any further courtesies. I seek your friendship, she had said. In which case she knew where to find it. For now, having followed what she was certain was proper etiquette, Lizzie stepped out of the hotel into a gloriously surprising balmy day, eager to explore the city further, this time unencumbered by Felicity’s inane remarks, Anna’s always imminent illness or even Rebecca’s lively chatter.

Today, she wanted no chatter.

I do not much care for it, she’d told Alison, and she’d recognized in that moment that truly too much of her life was spent in conversations she did not enjoy. The other ladies (why did Alison use the words lady or ladies so sneeringly?) had asked her to accompany them to Madam Tussaud’s, but Lizzie had politely refused, however famous that establishment might be. She preferred seeing real people rather than wax dummies, and was delighted to find Piccadilly bustling and alive even at so early an hour of the day.

She was almost to the corner of Old Bond Street, on her way toward Piccadilly Circus, guidebook in hand, when she heard a voice behind her shouting, “Miss Borden, mum, Miss Borden!” and turned to see one of the hotel pages in his gray livery trimmed with red at the collar pounding along toward her on the pavement. He was overweight for his thirteen or fourteen years, with plump apple cheeks and sky-blue eyes, hatless now — she watched as he retraced his steps to pick up his cap where it had fallen to the pavement — and completely out of breath by the time he drew up beside her. “Miss Borden, mum, pardon me,” he said, huffing and puffing, “but there’s someone on the telephone for you, mum. Pardon me, mum, I didn’t wish to interrupt your walk.” He put on his little gray peakless cap with its red piping, and virtually bowed her back to the hotel, where he stood waiting while Lizzie rummaged in her purse for a twopence coin.