Evan Hunter - Lizzie

“Can you fix the time a little better?”

“It was about eleven o’clock at night.”

“Won’t you tell what you heard,” Jennings said. “What the noise sounded like?”

“Wait a minute,” Knowlton said. “I pray Your Honors’ judgment about that.”

“She may describe the noise,” Mason said.

“Please describe the noise,” Jennings said. “Tell us about it as well as you can.”

“Well, I couldn’t describe the noise, because I didn’t see it.”

“Well, you don’t often see a noise, do you?”

“Why, no, sir.”

“How it sounded to you,” Jennings said.

“Wait a minute, I object to that,” Knowlton said.

“That’s a proper question,” Mason said. “It calls for a description of how it sounded.”

... Well, the noise sounded like pounding. Like pounding on wood. On the fence. Or a board. It came from the direction of the Borden fence, somewhere along the line of the fence. It continued for about four or five minutes. I didn’t go outdoors to see what it was. I didn’t do anything to investigate the cause of the noise. I was in the sitting room downstairs, on the south side of the house. There’s a room between that and where the noise appeared to be. The dining room. The dining room was between me and where the noise appeared to be. My stepmother was with me when I heard the noise. I don’t remember whether she looked to see what had occasioned it. We couldn’t see out from where we were to the back part of the yard. It was too dark, and the curtains were down.

I’d been away all that day, went off at eight o’clock in the morning, to Providence. I got home at about six o’clock. My stepmother hadn’t gone with me, but she was in the room when I heard the noise. Her name is Marienne. Marienne Chagnon. She was in the room at the same time I was. The windows in that room were all shut. There are three of them in that room, and one of them faces east, onto the piazza. The other two face south. I can’t tell how I knew the direction from which the sound came. It was nothing more than an impression. I couldn’t say positively that the sound came from over the fence, but in that direction. I didn’t go out of the room, and I didn’t look out the window, either. I simply heard a noise, and it sounded to me as if it had come from that way.

There’s an icehouse, the next house but one to ours. But the sound didn’t come from the icehouse direction, it wasn’t from the icehouse, it wasn’t in that direction. There was a dog on the premises. On the piazza. He didn’t leave the piazza at any time when that noise was going on.

My name is Marienne Chagnon, and I live on Third Street in Fall River. My house is in the rear of the Borden house. On the evening before the murders, I was home, and something attract my attention. About eleven o’clock. Some noise. I would describe it as the sound of steps on wood. On a wood sidewalk. Or on a fence. There is a fence between our yard and the Borden yard. And a doghouse there at the corner. At the time I heard the noise, I was on the sofa in the sitting room, on the south side of the house.

I heard the noise coming from the back yard. Near the window of the dining room. We heard the noise and we thought that noise would be — I don’t speak very well — would be the same on the fence as on a wood sidewalk. There’s a short fence between Mr. Borden’s yard and our house. I heard the noise like it was a step on the fence. It lasted about five minutes, with space between the noise. We heard some noise, and after — we wait, and we heard noise again. There was a space of two or three minutes between the noises. I tell to my daughter, because I don’t wonder that she was afraid, I didn’t think it was the sound of a dog. The dogs sometimes come into our yard, I have seen them. I have an ash barrel in the yard, and it sometimes contains bones. And sometimes dogs come to that ash barrel. But...

“Did the noise sound to you like pounding?” Knowlton asked.

“What is it?” Mrs. Chagnon said.

“Did the noise sound to you like pounding?”

“Like?”

“Pounding.”

“I don’t understand that expression.”

“Pounding?”

“No, sir.”

“Don’t you understand what pounding is?”

“Pounding?”

“Yes.”

“No, sir.”

“What?”

“No, I don’t understand it.”

“Don’t know that word?”

“No, sir, pounding.”

“All right, I can’t put the question,” Knowlton said. “You don’t understand the word pounding?”

“No, sir.”

“To pound,” Knowlton said.

“Pounding?”

“Yes.”

“No.”

“All right. Do you remember of seeing the dogs there at the ash barrel at anytime afterwards?”

“We have since seen some dogs sometimes taking some bones in the barrels.”

“And do you remember of your husband pounding that dog one time... excuse me... moving that ash barrel at one time?”

“I don’t understand.”

“What?”

“I don’t understand.”

“Do you remember of Mr. Harrington, the officer, being there one day?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And your husband made a noise with that barrel?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And didn’t you say that it sounded like the noise you’d heard?”

“Yes, sir, but...”

... It wasn’t in the same direction. It was the same noise but I tell to my husband it isn’t in the same direction. It was nearly the noise. But that night the ash barrel was in the barn. In the back yard. It was in the barn that time. The noise of the ash barrel was about that noise, but it was not in the same direction. To make that noise with the ash barrel, my husband strike the barrel near the... the little barn, and he said, “Is it not that noise you heard?” I tell, “Yes, perhaps it is so, but it seems to me it was not in this same direction.” He strike the barrel with his hand. And when he strike the barrel with his hand, it seems like the same noise that I heard.

Because it sounds on the wood like that.

My name’s Charles N. Gifford. I work at C. E. Macomber and Company, the clothing store, and I live at 29 Third Street. That’s the house next north of the Chagnons. Uriah Kirby lives there, too. I was there at the house about eleven o’clock on the night before the murders.

I saw a man on the steps, the steps leading into the yard, right there on the side steps. The man, I should judge, weighed between a hundred and eighty to ninety pounds, and he sat there on the steps, apparently asleep, with a straw hat pulled over his face. I took hold of his arm and shook him, and in shaking him his hat fell off onto the sidewalk. I lit a match and held it up in front of his face to see if I knew who it was, and found that I didn’t. I know most of the people living in that vicinity, I’ve lived there — with the exception of twelve years — about thirty-one years. In that same house, my father’s house. I didn’t smell any liquor about him, got no response from him whatever, don’t know what became of the man. I went into the house and left the hat on the sidewalk. A few minutes afterward, Mr. Kirby came by...

My name is Uriah Kirby, I live in Fall River, on Third Street. The house next north of the Chagnons. I was living there on the third day of August last year. When I went home that night about eleven o’clock, there was a man sitting on the steps, four stone steps leading from the sidewalk which reached up into the yard.

I spoke to him, hollered out to him, spoke loud. No reply. Sat there dormant, as it were, in about the middle of the step, I should think, either the second or third. There was four steps in all, and he was back in this form, laid back against the side of a little fence that ran there, with his hat pulled down nearly over his eyes, and sitting there very quietly. Didn’t seem to move at all, paid no attention to my voice. I put my hand on his hat, on top of his head, and shook him in this form, and spoke again to him. No reply.