Mark Dunn - American Decameron

“I suppose what I’m saying is that I know the case just as well as most, but unlike some of my colleagues at the Globe , I don’t make revisiting the minutiae of it a lifelong obsession. Are there facts that have come to your attention which you’d like to share with me?”

“I should say so. I maintained a healthy acquaintance with both of the sisters, you know. We had a bond — our love of animals. Both Lizzie and Emma were very supportive of the Animal Rescue League. I sought to make them even more supportive. Here was my thinking, cowboy: neither woman married. They were richer than Croesus from that sizeable inheritance they received from their father. Remember that it was the stepmother who was hacked to pieces first, so her pre-decease put every penny of that miser’s fortune directly into the scrabbling hands of his two surviving daughters. They both died quite wealthy. I have no idea to whom they have left the lion’s share of their many thousands, but I suspect that the Animal Rescue League will get only a fraction. Despite all my best efforts.”

“What efforts are you talking about?”

The singer on the stage had now begun a special rendition of Fanny Brice’s “My Man.” I commended her with an unsteady bow and salaam for classing up the song by returning to the original French.

“Am I to compete with this Negress singer?” asked my suddenly indignant companion.

“She’s distractingly good, but I’ll try my best to give you my undivided attention. To what efforts are you referring?”

“There was a party that was given by Lizzie at Maplecroft back in ’05. Lizzie’s lover was there — let’s just call a spade a spade. Lizzie Borden and Nance O’Neil were lovers. And the house was filled with all of Nance’s intemperate theatre friends, and Emma, who was a good nine years older than Lizzie and was quite temperate by her nature, didn’t much care for Nance and her unruly companions. And so they were having themselves a little sisterly spat just outside the library, where I was sitting primly and patiently waiting for Lizzie. You see, she was supposed to come in and sign a petition I was circulating on behalf of the superannuated draft horses of Fall River—”

“Do you ever take a breath?”

My loquacious companion smiled. She inhaled and exhaled compliantly, then barreled ahead with renewed vigor. “My sweet, dimpled Adonis, you simply would not believe it: I am sitting in that library and I am hearing everything that is said between the quarreling sisters in spite of the pounding of the Ragtime piano and the squeals and screams of those theatrical debauchees. Here is what I hear. I am no actress, so I can’t give you the sort of performance that Nance O’Neil might give, but I’ll do my best. Garçon! Garçon!”

“Is that Lizzie Borden you’re imitating or her sister Emma?”

“Neither. I want another drink.”

The story was temporarily suspended for the waiter to bring us both another drink. I watched as the Negro singer surrendered the stage to a jazz quartet featuring a Beiderbeckian cornetist of no small talent. With musical accompaniment more appropriate for her purpose, Alice Rose began her little play.

“‘Lizzie, I want all of these drunkards and dope fiends out of this house immediately. Their presence here is an absolute scandal!’

“Now you must imagine that I am laughing rudely and raucously, for this is how Lizzie proceeded to laugh in that next moment. Then she crowed, ‘Emma, you forgetful old fool! If you feel that this harmless little gathering constitutes a scandal, then how would you characterize what Maggie and I did, under your perfectly planned orchestration?’

“‘Apples and oranges, Lizzie. One is hardly harmless, for it disturbs my peace and the peace of everyone on this block. The other comprises a chapter of ancient history in which, in the opinion of the law and of this community, we played absolutely no part. Do you understand the distinction?’

“‘The only thing I understand at the moment, Emma, is that there is a letter on my desk in the library of which you should take serious note. It bears a Montana postmark.’

“‘Is it from the murderous housemaid, our very own Maggie?’

“‘Who else? She asks for more money.’

“‘What of it? We’ll send her more money. She’s greedy, but we have more than the necessary funds to accommodate her.’

“‘I don’t like the little hussy blackmailing us like this.’

“‘Then take the train to Montana and hack her up.’

“‘No, dear sister, I think it’s your turn.’

“‘This isn’t funny, Lizzie. Pay her what she wants and then destroy the letter. Where did you say it was?’

“‘On my desk in the library.’

Returning to the role of narrator, Alice Rose said (as she caressed my elbow with a silken hand), “But, of course, my little handsome cowpoke, they didn’t find the letter on the desk in the library, for it was now in my reticule, where I had hastily deposited it, knowing how very valuable such a letter could be to me.”

“And has it turned out to be valuable to you?”

“Oh, goodness, yes. Generous contributions by both of the sisters have allowed my animal-loving colleagues and myself to found the Fall River Animal Rescue League. Of course I wanted more for our abandoned kittens and puppies and those poor, spavined old workhorses than what we were originally able to give them. I was determined, therefore, that with that letter in hand, which indicts both sisters and the family maid, I should exact even more money from the Sisters Borden for the benefit of all of my furry friends.”

“Why did you not use the money for your own gain?”

“I have enough money of my own. The man who stood me up this evening was after my money. I suspect that the adventurer chanced upon some dowager with an even fatter purse, or you and I wouldn’t be sitting here tonight. Anyway, I made it clear to the two sisters that if the first to die didn’t leave the bulk of her whole fortune for the benefit of the neglected animal population of Fall River, Massachusetts, I would publicize the revelatory letter to the detriment of the surviving sister. Prior to her death two weeks ago, I went to Lizzie, knowing her to be in her last extremities due to that terrible surgical infection. I asked if she remembered my request from several years previous.

“She merely laughed at me, as best as one can laugh through the throes of abdominal agony. ‘You have figured this all wrong, Alice Rose,’ she said, with bite. ‘While I share your love of animals, I have no love for my sister, and it should give me no greater pleasure, in whatever afterlife awaits me, than to see Emma finally implicated and brought to late-life ruin. It was always I who had to suffer the indignity of that dreadful schoolyard rhyme, and it was I who in time lost the support of nearly all friends and family. The consensus now is that I did do it — I alone. Whether out of obsessive hatred for my father and my stepmother, whether in some fugue state of menstrual epilepsy. Whatever the reason, the jury of public opinion has now reached a contrary ‘what-say-you.’ They say nothing of Maggie, who sits fat and financially secure with her smelter husband in Anaconda. And they are deafeningly silent as to what part Emma may have played in the scheme — Emma, who, in reality, dreamt it all up in the first place; Emma, who placed herself conveniently out of town at the time of the murders so that I must do the work of cleaving my father’s skull as he lay napping, and Maggie the far more satisfying job of hacking away at the witch. So here is my revenge, beside the point that I plan to leave her not one thin dime in my will — that if she should die first, I will be protected under the constitutional defense of double jeopardy. And if I should go first, which seems the more likely, you may reveal her complicity — no, no, her mastermind brilliance for all the world to know, for I plan to give the Animal Rescue League only $30,000. Which is no small sum, I might add. Oh, and you may have my shares of stock in the Stevens Manufacturing Company.’