Evan Hunter - Lizzie

To this, she made a stiff curtsy, shaking her head, and she said, “No, I can tell you all I know now, just as well as any other time.”

“Mr. Harrington,” Moody said, “without characterizing, can you describe her appearance and manner during the conversation?”

“Wait a moment,” Robinson said. “What she did and what she said!”

“If the witness observes the question carefully,” Mason said, “he may answer it.”

“Your Honor very properly says if he discriminates carefully, he may answer properly,” Robinson said. “The difficulty is he may give his judgment upon her state of mind from what he saw. That’s the difficulty with it.”

“The question doesn’t call for it,” Mason said, “and the witness appears intelligent. Having his attention called to it — that he is to do nothing but to answer the question — he may answer it.”

“I’ll ask a preliminary question,” Moody said. “Do you understand the distinction that I intend to draw?”

“Well, I would like to have the question read.”

“Without characterizing,” the stenographer read, “can you describe her appearance and manner during the conversation?”

“She was cool—”

“Wait!” Robinson said, leaping to his feet.

“Well, that’s the difficulty,” Moody said.

“Well,” Harrington said, “it’s rather a difficult thing to get at, sir.”

“By leading a little,” Moody said, “perhaps I can get at it.”

“It should be stricken out,” Robinson said. “It’s not a completed answer.”

“It’s not completed because you stopped him,” Knowlton said. “I suppose what he said — ‘She was cool’ — is an answer strictly within the rule.”

“If you’re content to have the answer stop there, it may stand,” Mason said.

“I’m content to have it stop there,” Moody said.

“I’m content if it stays there,” Robinson said.

“During any part of the interview, was she in tears?” Moody asked.

“No, sir.”

“Did she sit or stand during the talk with you?”

“She stood.”

“Was there any breaking of the voice, or was it steady?”

“Steady.”

“Now will you state anything more that was said while you were there?”

... I then spoke to her again about the time that she was in the barn. She said twenty minutes. I asked her wasn’t it difficult to be so accurate about fixing the time, to fix the time so accurately. “May you not have been there half an hour or perhaps fifteen minutes?” I said.

She said, “No, sir, I was there twenty minutes.”

I went out the door, downstairs, through the front hall, and passed through the sitting room into the kitchen. There were quite a number of people there, among whom I noticed — or recognized — Dr. Bowen and Medical Examiner Dolan, Assistant Marshal Fleet and the servant girl, whose name at the time, I did not know.

Just as I went to pass by Dr. Bowen, between him and the stove, I saw some scraps of notepaper in his hand. He was standing a little west of the door that led into the rear hall or entryway. I asked him what they were, referring to the pieces of paper, and he said, “Oh, I guess it’s nothing.”

So he started to arrange them so as to determine what was on them, or to learn their contents. They were very small, and it was rather difficult. But on one piece, on the upper lefthand corner, was the word Emma. And that was written in lead pencil, as well as other pieces I saw. I asked him again what they contained, and he said, “Oh, I think it’s nothing. It’s something, I think, about my daughter going through somewhere.” He then turned slightly to his left and took the lid from the stove and threw the papers in — or the pieces in.

I then noticed the firebox.

The fire was very near extinguished. On the south end there was a small fire which I judged was a coal fire. The embers were about dying. It was about as large as the palm of my hand. There had been some paper burned there before, which was rolled up and still held a cylindrical form. I should say it was about that long. Twelve inches, I should say, and not over two inches in diameter...

“Had you paid any attention to that stove before?” Robinson asked.

“No, sir. Any more than to see it as I passed by.”

“And then Dr. Bowen took off the cover in the ordinary way?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And put those papers in?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Did he take off the cover over the little spot of coal you said was there?”

“No, sir.”

“Took it off at the other end?”

“At the other end.”

“So he threw it right down in where there wasn’t any fire?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And upon some embers of burnt paper?”

“No, sir. It went down between that burnt paper and the front part of the firebox.”

“That is, that was a piece of burnt paper?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Rolled up?”

“Completely carbonized.”

“About a foot long?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And I think you said about an inch or two inches.”

“I thought about two.”

“Lying there all charred and burned?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Dr. Bowen, did you subsequently see Miss Borden in her room upstairs?”

“Miss Lizzie? Yes, sir. Sometime between one and two o’clock. At that time, I gave her a preparation called bromo caffeine. For quieting nervous excitement and headache.”

“Did you give any directions as to how frequently that medicine should be given?”

“I left a second dose to be repeated in an hour.”

And here, again, Lizzie understood exactly how carefully her attorneys were preparing the ground for the possible admission of her inquest testimony. The government would without question attempt to introduce into the record all that she’d told Knowlton in Fall River last August. Her own attorneys had asked her repeatedly why her testimony had sounded so confused and contradictory, and she had told them it had naturally been a shocking time, a bewildering time — and then she had remembered that Dr. Bowen had prescribed drugs for her. Robinson had seized upon this immediately.

“The poor girl was drugged!” he’d said to Jennings.

This, now, was the first mention of any medication given by Dr. Bowen in the days immediately preceding the inquest. She knew there would be more. Whatever might be said of Robinson’s sometimes bombastic courtroom tactics, she knew he was a fastidious man who would layer in — as meticulously as an expert mason spreading mortar between bricks — a solid precautionary defense against the possible admission of the inquest testimony.

“Edward S. Wood is your name?”

“Edward S. Wood.”

“You live in Boston?”

“Yes, sir.”

“At present, what is your occupation?”

“I am a physician and chemist — professor of chemistry in the Harvard Medical School.”

“How long have you held that position?”

“As an assistant professor of chemistry from 1871 to 1876, and professor of chemistry since 1876.”

“Have you given special attention to any particular branch of science?”

“To medical chemistry.”

“Does that also include what is also called physiological chemistry?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Have you had experience in that sort of work? In medical or physiological chemistry?”

“Yes, sir.”

“To what extent?”

“To a very great extent in medicolegal cases, poison and bloodstain cases.”

“Have you been called upon as to that branch of science in the trial of cases?”

“Yes, sir.”

“To what extent?”

“I don’t know, sir. Several hundred, I should think.”