Evan Hunter - Lizzie

On the day following the selection of jurors, she had been pleased to read an account in the Providence Journal that described her somewhat more flatteringly than had that in the Sun. She had, of course, been cautioned by her attorneys not to read any of the news stories written about the trial, lest they overly upset her and cause her to appear unlike her true self in the courtroom, where all eyes were upon her, and where the artists’ pencils scratched interminably at their pads. It was far easier to avoid the stories printed in the New York Times and the Baltimore Sun — and, oh, how she wished she had — but those in the Journal were available daily here in New Bedford.

“Lizzie Borden is still a marvel,” the article had begun.

How many lines have been written descriptive of the immobility of her countenance, how many word portraits have been painted of her steady and unfailing nerve, of her remarkable self-possession, of her power of control and self-reliance. Yet at each apparent crisis in her career, the watchers have waited for an evidence of weakness, they have looked for a sign of what — for want of a better name — may be termed ‘femininity’, they have waited for the first sight of nerve failure. And all in vain, for though these seekers are told that in the seclusion of her own forced retreat, when there is no one to gaze upon her every action, the woman is the same as other women: this person of the unflinching nerve and steadfast demeanor becomes the torn and tortured girl. Yet there is no weakening in public, and the curiosity mongers are still unsatisfied. And this, after all, is as it should be, for why should Lizzie Borden expose to the world her sorrow and her pain?

Her face expressionless now, she watched as Moody approached the judges’ bench to argue this question of the admissibility of Anna Borden’s testimony.

From where George Dexter Robinson sat at the defense table, attorney Jennings on his left, attorney Adams on his right, he had an unobstructed view of the bench as opposing counsel approached it.

“Your Honors,” Moody said, “the evidence which we offer is substantially this. That upon the return voyage, after this witness and the prisoner had spent the summer in various parts of Europe in travel, there was this conversation which I am about to state, which was several times repeated. It was, in substance, that she — the prisoner — regretted the necessity of returning home after she had had such a happy summer, because the home that she was about to return to was such an unhappy home.

“This conversation, as I say, was repeated several times, and we submit that it would be competent. I should agree that if at that time there had been any characterization of Mr. and Mrs. Borden such as might come from a passing feeling of resentment, that the distance of time of the conversation would be such as in Your Honors’ discretion would well warrant, if not compel, the exclusion of the testimony offered. But there is no language that can be stronger than the language used to express a permanent condition of things in that household.”

William H. Moody was a good lawyer, and Robinson still regretted the day the district attorney had asked him to join in the prosecution. Together, Knowlton and Moody would be a formidable pair. Dark-haired and dark-eyed, Moody wore a mustache under his prominent nose and was a stocky, muscular, rather short man, the descendant of a Welsh ironworker who’d settled here in the colonies with his wife and son. A cum laude graduate of Harvard College, he’d been admitted to the bar in 1878, and early on in his career — or so courthouse rumor maintained — had formulated the rule that had since governed his practice of the law: “The power of clear statement is the greatest power at the bar.”

As yet Robinson had seen no evidence of this guiding precept; yesterday Moody’s opening statement for the government had been turgid at best, nor had his just begun argument on Anna Borden’s now disputed and pending testimony been anything but convoluted. Somewhere in his notes Robinson had jotted down the words, “Moody fond of horseback riding and literature.” His task now was to make certain Moody did not ride roughshod over the three judges, however un literary his argument might be.

“The word home means a great deal in everybody’s mind and everybody’s mouth,” Moody said, “and I submit that where a person states that he has an unhappy home, states it deliberately, states it more than once, it expresses such a continued and existing state of feeling that it is competent, even though it occurred two years before the homicide into which we are inquiring. This is a case not of the expression of feeling toward persons who are brought casually together, but it is the expression of a feeling by one member of a family in respect to the whole family. And continuously a member, because — according to this testimony — there was no absence except this absence in Europe.

“And, of course, after she returned home, she continued always to live in the family up to the time of this homicide. It is to be taken into account, also, with what we know of the feelings of persons who have been absent from home, unless their feeling about the home is firmly hostile and firmly fixed as a hostile feeling, we would hardly expect such a statement as we offer to show was made in this case. I think I have made the ground upon which we offer this clear to Your Honors. Perhaps I have not expressed it so fully or so well as I might do, but I think Your Honors understand precisely what I mean.”

“Mr. Robinson?” Mason said.

Moody took a seat again beside his co-counsel, and watched Robinson closely as he rose and approached the bench. For all his fifty-nine years, the chief counsel for the defense looked exceedingly fit, a tall, deep-chested, clean-shaven man with pale blue eyes and gray hair turning white. His ancestors — like Moody’s own — went back for generations in Massachusetts history, had, in fact, fought in the Revolutionary War battles of Concord and Lexington. It was near Lexington that Robinson had lived as a boy, working on his father’s farm, attending the district school for only three or four months each year. Like Moody, he was also a Harvard graduate, living on a pittance while a student there. That this man — springing from such mean roots and coming to the practice of the law when he was already thirty-two years of age — had come so far so fast was a testament to his determination and an ominous gauge of the sort of opponent he would be in this trial. Moody was not pleased that Robinson had been governor of the state until a scant six years ago; nor did it please him that many still called the man “Governor.”

In a familiar tone, almost as though he were addressing friends and colleagues (as indeed two of them had been and still were, Moody thought) in his own sitting room rather than arguing to the three men who would rule on this matter of law now before them, Robinson said, “Now, of course, we stand upon this statement: that it is altogether too remote. I cannot see how it can possibly fall within the line of the cases permitting such statements to be made. The witness had been abroad, we understand, in Europe, traveling in Europe during the summer. Two ladies together, perhaps more, I am not informed. And as they are coming across upon the ship, this conversation occurs. Now there is nothing in it that anyone would think of offering an objection to, except that her home was an unhappy one. However much we all want to get home after we’ve been abroad a long time, those who’ve had an opportunity to go — a great many have not — but however much we think of that, I presume there’s not a party that has ever gone on a journey that doesn’t say, ‘Well, we’ve had so good a time I really wish I wasn’t going back.’ That’s about all there is of it.