by Mark Dunn
“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.’
“Which I assume, my loverman, is the exact bequest that we should expect to see when the will is ultimately probated,” Alice Rose concluded.
“And what of Emma? It seems that her fast-following death kept you from carrying out your plan to get all of her money into the hands of the Rescue League.”
“Yes and no.” Alice Rose smiled mischievously. “When I went to tell her what it was that I was now compelled to do, courtesy of her sister’s long-nursed hatred for her, Emma suffered an attack of nephritis and then fell down her back stairs.”
“And died there as you stood watching?”
Alice Rose shook her head. “A couple of days later. But I cannot help attributing the demise to my threat.”
“Are you pleased with this outcome?”
“I’m not pleased with the fact that I was unable to wring more money for the Animal Rescue League from the two sisters, but I’m quite satisfied that two of the three most notorious murderesses in the long chronicle of New England criminality are now gone from this Earth. And the third—that Bridget, whom Lizzie and Emma insisted on calling Maggie, probably because their previous maid was named Maggie and they couldn’t be bothered to learn a new name—w
ould receive a personal visit from me if there were profit in it. Alas, there is not, and I fear for my own safety, besides, since the maid has already demonstrated that she will not hesitate to use a hatchet when the situation requires it.”
“And what happens to the incriminating letter?”
“I plan to sell it to some future biographer for a kingly sum.”
“No doubt to the benefit of the Fall River Animal Rescue League.”
“That very charity.”
“And where is the letter now?”
“Safe and quite secure. I have just this morning placed it in my safety deposit box in the Union Savings Bank. That was Andrew Borden’s bank, you know.”
1928
MISDEEMED IN INDIANA
Two things crossed Amelia’s mind when she woke that morning. First that she was married. At long last. At the ancient age of thirty-one. When no one in her family thought it should ever happen. Here she was, wed for life to a handsome man, a prosperous man, officer in the local Kiwanis, a man who loved every little thing about her—even the fact that she wasn’t from Richmond and wasn’t (horrors!) even a Hoosier.
The second thing that crossed Amelia’s mind was that the marriage, only one month old, was a mistake—a terrible, grievous mistake. For all his William Haines/Ramon Navarro boyish good looks, for all his charm and bonhomie, for all the respect that he commanded in this very odd community that had welcomed Amelia with, if not open arms, then at least with arms that were not blatantly closed, she should not have wed Chester Bream.
Richmond, Indiana, in the year 1928, was a Midwestern dichotomy of Quakers and non-Quakers; of men who wore white collars and those who wore blue; of men whose collars, in fact, were hidden under white hooded robes, and those men and women who were the object of their disfavor. This last group included Negro jazz musicians like Louis Armstrong and Joe “King” Oliver and Jelly Roll Morton, who recorded with the town’s Gennett record label and were earning Richmond the impressive nickname “The Cradle of Recorded Jazz” in spite of all the Klanimosity.
Richmond had colleges. It had a large artistic community, and a full orchestra. But it also had factories that made farm machinery and lawnmowers and school buses. Amelia’s new husband Chester was employed by Wayne Works, where the school buses were put together. He headed WW’s national sales department. Chester, thirty-eight, had come a long way from his early years as stock boy at Knollenberg’s Department Store, elastic-stitcher at the Atlas Underwear Company, and assistant to the chief ivory procurer for the Starr Piano Company.
Amelia wondered where her husband was this morning. She wondered if he’d gone to work as usual. The night before, as he was stalking out of the house, she’d asked where he’d be spending the night. He said he was going to the Rex Hotel. He packed a large suitcase. This made Amelia think that it might be a while before he ventured back home.
Amelia wanted to go home. Back home to Ohio. She wanted an end to the marriage, an end to this ill-begotten sojourn in Richmond. She didn’t like Richmond. She’d made only one friend since Chester moved her here after their brief three-day honeymoon in Chicago. The woman was a neighbor. Her name was Lurelle. Lurelle was thirty-three and married to a fireman who spent over half of each week at Hose House #3 (on North A between 15th and 16th Streets). Lurelle’s husband Gaines felt guilty for being away from his wife and three daughters for so long at a stretch. He easily agreed to Lurelle’s demand that her kitchen be rewired and fitted with multiple outlets so that she could have as many electrical appliances as her lonely heart desired. On Amelia’s first visit to drink coffee and exchange gossip about people whom Amelia neither knew nor had any desire to know, Lurelle showed off her new electric table grill, her electric corn popper, her flat-top toaster, her no-burnout iron, her electric waffle iron, and her shimmering, newly minted Nicalume four-piece percolator set with gold-plated creamer and sugar bowl.
Amelia woke at seven thirty. Thirty minutes later she was still in bed. She was looking at the roses that climbed the trellis outside her window. At eight fifteen she put her face into her pillow and cried. At eight thirty she studied a robin that had perched upon her windowsill. At eight forty she cried. At eight fifty-five she rose and put on her robe and went into the bathroom and prepared herself for a day filled with uncertainty.
Having dressed and having had some tea and a boiled egg that she cooked with her non-electric New Perfection Oil Cook Stove—or rather Chester’s oil cook stove, because it was, after all, Chester’s house—Amelia was roused from her reflective nibbling of a slice of buttered toast by a knock on the front door.
Was it Chester? Had he returned? Had he forgotten his key? And how did she feel about his coming back?
It wasn’t Chester.
The young man at the door was Ichabod gangly. He had an Adam’s apple protruding from his stringy neck that looked big enough to be an Adam’s grapefruit. His suit looked to have been recently purchased, and ill fitted a man of his height and long pipe-stem limbs, giving too much of a view of his socks. It wasn’t necessary for the slightly nervous young man to explain the purpose of his visit. He was holding it next to him. It was a vacuum cleaner—a new, self-contained, self-adjusted, dust and dirt-proof, lubricant-packed, ball-bearing-motored Greater Energex life-lasting cleaner, and it could be Amelia’s for only $24.95.* (*Without attachments.) The young man, in spite of his greenhorn appearance, was salesman enough to have said all of this to Amelia before she was even able to return his “good morning.”
As he finally took a breath, she wedged in. “Are you always this talkative so early in the morning?”
“Is it early?” He glanced at his wristwatch. The watch was easy to see since his cuffs and sleeves were nowhere in its vicinity. “It’s after nine thirty.”
“Then let me say that it’s early for me. Moreover, sir, I’m not in the market for a vacuum cleaner.”
“Perhaps you would change your mind, madam, if I told you that it’s the best vacuum cleaner in its price range. It has several truly astonishing features. Are you familiar with the ‘Airizer’?”
“No. And I haven’t really much of a desire to be.”
The man flashed a smile that said that he was all but certain Amelia’s statement was only a passing jest. “The Airizer is a marvelous new way to air your blankets, pillows, woolens, and baby’s things. It forces fresh air through every thread and fiber by vacuum. So, you see, our product not only sucks, but it also airs with sanitary precision.”
With a sigh: “Yes. That is truly astonishing.”
“May I step in and demonstrate our wonderful new product?”
Amelia shook her head. “This isn’t a good time.”
“Perhaps I may come in for a few minutes only? I’m eager to have you hold the easy-grip, ebonized wood handle. And we have three different brushes, each of which is earning the praises of thousands of housewives just like yourself.”
“I really don’t think—” Amelia shook her head. Tears began to well up in her eyes.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be so pushy.” The young salesman pulled a handkerchief from his shirt pocket and offered it to Amelia. “Please…”
Amelia took the handkerchief and dabbed at her eyes.
“The fact of the matter is that my husband bought me a new vacuum cleaner just last month. We were married in early June. I’m sorry to say that it isn’t an Energex. It’s a Hoover. He even bought me a Hamilton Beach carpet washer—the industrial kind that professional carpet cleaners use. He wants me to be very happy in our new domestic life together. But I’m not.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Would you like to come in for a cup of coffee? I would love to have someone to talk to, provided you don’t try to sell me a vacuum cleaner I don’t need.”
“I don’t suppose one cup of coffee would put me too much off my schedule. And I have been feeling a little draggy this morning.”
Amelia held the door open for the man to enter.
“Oh,” she said, patting her eyes again. “What’s your name?”
“It’s Ray. Ray Gurson.”
Ray set all of his demonstration equipment down on the floor near the front door and followed Amelia to the kitchen. Over her shoulder, Amelia said, “I also have some muffins. I made them yesterday. Do you like muffins?”
“I do, madam. Very much so.”
“You may call me Amelia.”
While Amelia was making coffee she spoke of her husband. “Do you know him? Chester Bream. The Breams have been in Richmond for three generations.”
“I don’t know too many of the non-Quaker families.”
“You’re a Quaker?”
“I grew up a Quaker. I don’t know what I am now—just a vacuum-cleaner salesman, I guess.”
“I don’t know anybody in Richmond. Except a woman who lives down the street. Her kitchen is an electrical fire hazard, but that’s all right because her husband’s a fireman. And of course, I met some of Chester’s family and friends at the wedding.”
“That’s a beautiful Hoosier cabinet.”
“Chester bought it for me. He loves me very much. That’s the problem. I wonder if I can ask you a question. You’re a man.”
Ray nodded.
“And I don’t get to talk to too many men who aren’t my husband, as a rule. I didn’t have any brothers. And my father was shy—wasn’t very comfortable discussing certain things.”