Evan Hunter: Lizzie

He scarcely thought of himself as a hero. He was, in his own eyes, a man of not more than medium height, somewhat portly at the age of forty-five, his sandy hair graying at the temples and receding somewhat higher on his forehead with each passing year, strands of gray threaded through his close-cropped beard as well. The beard felt decidedly uncomfortable on a day like today; the temperature at noon had stood at only seventy-nine degrees, but combined with the humidity that was enough to cause distress. Sweltering in black English worsted, high linen collar and black silk scarf, Hosea Knowlton, the people’s hero, district attorney for the Second District, waited for Lizzie Borden — and perhaps a ray of hope.

There was an expectant hush from the crowd below. Knowlton looked toward South Main. Not a sign of the hack yet. The city marshal had served the summons this morning, and she was scheduled to appear at two. It was now almost that. He expected her attorney would arrive at about the same time; Jennings had already made it known that he intended to apply for permission to be present at the inquest. The Borden house on Second Street was less than an eighth of a mile away. The hack, when it came, would undoubtedly avoid Main Street, preferring instead to cross Pleasant and approach the courthouse by the easterly side of Market Square.

Someone had sighted the hack. There! Drawn by two horses, with two ladies on the back seat and two police officers in civilian clothing up front. Men, women and children began scurrying for the narrow alleyway, choking the square. The driver laid his whip on the horses. The crowd cleared a way, and the hack veered in toward the curb in front of the courthouse. The two officers stepped down first, Marshal Hilliard and another he did not recognize. He heard someone shout, “Stand back, stand back!” and then she stepped down out of the carriage, and Knowlton had his first glimpse of her.

She was wearing a blue dress of some sort, a blue hat. Her hair was as red as the heat itself, caught in a bun at the back of her head, stray ringlets spilling from beneath the wide brim of the hat. Odd that she isn’t in mourning, he thought. Head held high as she moved through the silent crowd, followed now by the other woman who’d been in the hack, a friend, no doubt. He had heard them speak of Lizzie Borden’s eyes. Gray, they had said. Steady, they had said, almost staring. Cold, they had said. Penetrating. He could not see her eyes from where he stood above. Nor could he any longer see her as she passed between the pillars and into the building.

God give us answers this afternoon, he thought.

Andrew Jackson Jennings had celebrated his forty-third birthday on the day before the murders; Knowlton could just imagine what a joy it had been for him, as the Borden attorney, to be summoned to the family’s aid almost immediately afterwards. He listened to Jennings’s argument before Judge Blaisdell, knowing full well his plea would be denied but nonetheless admiring the man’s talent and tenacity. Although he was not very much taller than Knowlton himself, Jennings somehow affected the bearing of a man of considerable height, the impression fortified by a bristling gray mustache and a silvery mane of receding hair. Knowlton’s notes told him only that the man was a graduate of Brown University — where he’d pitched for the Varsity baseball team — and later of the Boston University School of Law. Knowlton’s observation told him that the man was skilled in the law and would be a formidable adversary should his client be charged with the murders and the case eventually come to trial. But his request for attendance at the inquest was argued to no avail. Judge Blaisdell listened soberly, intently and patiently, and then ruled against it.

On this Tuesday afternoon, August 9, there were only six people in the courtroom. The wooden doors were locked on the inside and guarded on the outside. The judge sat behind his bench, chin resting on his left hand, his right hand holding a large straw fan he moved occasionally in defense against the heat, his left hand now moving from his chin to seat his pince-nez more securely on the bridge of his nose. Before the bench sat Clerk Leonard, balding head and weary eyes, looking much like Father Time himself with his long white beard spilling over the front of his suit jacket, a Bible on the desk before him. To the right and somewhat apart was City Marshal Hilliard, sitting erect and attentive, shoulders back, his hand reaching up now to touch his handlebar mustache and then to run his fingers over his sloping forehead and short-cropped hair. Sitting near the witness chair, sharpened pencil poised over her open pad, was the court stenographer, Miss Annie White.

“Please make yourself comfortable, Miss Borden,” Blaisdell said. “You understand, do you not, that we are here today only to make inquiry into the terrible tragedy that overtook us this past Thursday, and neither to accuse nor to incriminate.”

Lizzie Borden said nothing. She sat quite still in the wooden chair, her hands clasped in her lap. She was still wearing hat and gloves. The courtroom shutters had been drawn against the glaring afternoon sun, but the room was still unbearably hot, and yet she had not taken off her gloves and, indeed, looked cool and implacable. Knowlton saw her eyes as she raised them to meet Blaisdell’s. There was, indeed, something unsettling about her steady gray gaze, her stony silence now in response to the judge’s placating words. She might have been attractive, Knowlton thought, were it not for a plumpness about the jaw, only partially hidden by the ruffled collar about her neck. A good mouth, with a firm upper lip and a somewhat pouting lower, grimly set now as she continued to stare silently at the judge, not a trace of nervousness about her, sitting rather like a member of royalty called to account by her own retinue.

“Well, then,” Blaisdell said. “Mr. Leonard, would you administer the oath, please?”

Knowlton watched as Clerk Leonard rose from where he was sitting, the Bible in his hand, and approached the witness. Good, churchgoing woman, he thought. Member of the Central Congregational Church for the past five or six years, member of the Christian Endeavor Society, did charity work at the Fall River Hospital — a decent, upright woman. Could she have killed her own father and stepmother? The Reverend W. Walker Jubb, of her own church, had taken for his sermon this Sunday past the first chapter of Ecclesiastes, ninth verse. The thing that hath been is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done; and there is no new thing under the sun. Perhaps not, Knowlton thought. Perhaps there is nothing new under the sun.

At the end of his sermon, Mr. Jubb had stepped to the side of the pulpit, or so the newspaper account had reported, and said, “I cannot close my sermon this morning without speaking of the horrible crime that has startled our beloved city this week, ruthlessly taking from our church household two respected and esteemed members. I cannot close without referring to my pain and surprise at the atrocity of the outrage. A more brutal, cunning, daring and fiendish murder I never heard of in all my life. What must have been the person who could have been guilty of such a revolting crime? One to commit such a murder must have been without heart, without soul, a fiend incarnate, the very vilest of degraded and depraved humanity, or he must have been a maniac. The circumstances, execution and all the surroundings cover it with mystery profound.”

Lizzie Borden took off the glove on her left hand. She placed that hand on the extended Bible and then raised her right hand.

“I think I have the right,” Mr. Jubb had said, “to ask for the prayers of this church and of my own congregation. The murdered husband and wife were members of this church, and a daughter now stands in the same relation to each one of you, as you — as church members — do to each other. God help and comfort her. Poor stricken girls, may they both be comforted, and may they both realize how fully God is their refuge.”