by Brandy Purdy
Outwardly, it was all very proper, of course. One could expect nothing less from Fall River. No one said a word aloud, but the whispers were deafening. “She didn’t shed a tear!” “Not one tear!” “She wore blue!” “Unnatural!” “Unfeeling!” “Unseemly!” “Heartless!” “Cold!” “Improper!”
They were about to lower the coffins into the ground when a pair of policemen came hurrying up and spoke in hushed, hurried words to the minister. They had come for the heads. We could do what we liked with the bodies, but they must have the heads. To boil the flesh from the skulls, to bare the broken and naked white bones, to better see if any of the blades of the various hatchets they had found fit into the wounds.
I thought all hatchets were more or less the same size, but what would an old maid know about such matters? It made me feel as though I would vomit my heart out, right into Father’s empty grave. I had no idea what had become of “the Great Emancipator.” I didn’t want to know; now that I didn’t need it anymore, I only wanted it to be gone, to forever disappear. I just wanted to forget and not think about any of it anymore!
My ignorance upon the subject of the hatchet was never feigned. I heard the police had found the head of a hatchet in a box in the cellar, the handle broken off, and the blade coated in ashes as though someone hoped to fool the police into believing it was dust, but the glimmer of gilt betrayed it was not as old as someone might like to pretend. If this was indeed Bridget’s handiwork I thought it quite clever of her; it was just like something out of a detective story. I, for one, would never have thought of it. When they said they found a second hatchet, rusty and red, caked with blood and hair, it gave me such a fright, I almost died. I felt my heart jolt like Frankenstein’s monster coming to life, but some clever scientific gentlemen at the college at Harvard did some tests that proved it was very old and the blood and hair belonged to a long-dead cow.
While Emma protested this desecration of the dead and wept on the Reverend Buck’s shoulder, I stood a little apart from them all, lost in my own little reverie, watching dispassionately—everyone said—as the police, assisted by the undertaker’s men, carried the coffins into a nearby vault and a pair of doctors, toting black leather bags, followed grimly in their wake. We didn’t wait to see them come out again.
That night the mayor himself came to the house at 92 Second Street with Marshal Hilliard, the chief of police. They gathered us—Emma, Uncle John, Alice Russell, and me—in the sitting room and delicately informed us that it would be better for all concerned if we did not leave the house for the next few days.
They were worried about the crowds; the curious continued to congregate outside from dawn’s first light to well after dark. Word had spread far and wide thanks to the newspapers, and enterprising cabdrivers met every incoming train, crying out, “Come and see the Borden Murder House! Only twenty-five cents a head!” They would park outside and regale their spellbound audience of out-of-towners with vivid accounts of the murders, and should they spy anyone peeping out from between the curtains or any female coming in or out of the house they would point and cry out, “THERE SHE IS NOW, FOLKS! THE MURDERESS—LIZZIE BORDEN HERSELF!”
Alice Russell nearly died of shame when one of the hackney cabdrivers brandished his whip at her when she was returning from an errand for us. She spent the rest of the day sitting, shaking her head, while her whole body trembled, feeling “mortified, simply mortified, to think that people would think that I . . .”
Doubtlessly if any of their passengers recalled from the news accounts that I was a redhead, not a blonde, the clever cabbies would retort that it was a wig on the lady’s dome and the cunning killer was in disguise to avoid being lynched by the outraged populace for daring to venture out amongst decent God-fearing people.
The denizens of Fall River were angry and afraid, news was spreading across the nation, and even the ocean, and they didn’t like being the center of this macabre spectacle, or worrying that if I was indeed innocent then that meant that the real killer was still at large and they might be murdered in their beds at night or some ax-wielding maniac might suddenly burst in on them in broad daylight while they were sipping their morning coffee or buttering their toast.
Someone might be hurt, the Mayor said. Someone might hurt us, the Marshal said. So it was best that we stay inside.
Emma nodded mutely, and Uncle John worriedly posed a question about how we would get our mail. But I boldly met the Marshal’s and the Mayor’s eyes and asked, “Why? Is someone in this house suspected?”
Of course, gallantry having been ingrained in them since birth, they were reluctant to tell me. There really weren’t any suspects at all beyond our threshold. It was true Dr. Handy claimed that he had seen a person he described as a “wild-eyed young man,” dark haired and mustachioed and of approximately twenty-four years, loitering about on our street the day of the murders, but the police didn’t think much of his story. Fall River was full of dark-haired young men and mustaches were the fashion, so the police were hardly going to go chasing every one down and asking him to account for his whereabouts the day old Mr. and Mrs. Borden died.
To my mind, Dr. Handy’s description sounded suspiciously like David Anthony, and I wouldn’t put it past him to be lurking about, waiting to claim me as his own, like the Devil hankering after another lost soul, but his was a name I’d rather cut my tongue out than speak aloud. The murders seemed to have also killed his “love” for me, and I was heartily glad of it and hoped it would never be resurrected and that David Anthony would stay away from me forever.
“I want to know the truth,” I insisted, staring the Mayor straight in the eye, then favoring the Marshal with the same unwavering gaze. I already knew, but I wanted to hear them say it. I wanted to know that it wasn’t just fear and guilt or my imagination getting the better of me; I needed to hear them say my name and that I was suspected. Uncertainty is always worse than certainty. The unknown is a devil that gnaws and niggles at the mind and soul and only knowledge can stop him even if it also wounds.
“Very well, Miss Borden,” Mayor Coughlin said quietly, “if you must know, then yes, you are suspected.”
I nodded crisply and, calling up every drop of courage I possessed, I stood and faced them. “I am ready to go now.” I held my hands out, bracing to feel the cold steel embrace of the handcuffs closing around my wrists. But both the Mayor and the Marshal demurred; it was not necessary to subject a lady to such an indignity, they insisted, and I should just continue to bide quietly at home for the time being.
Emma wept, Uncle John shook his head and stared speechlessly at the carpet and heaved a heavy sigh, and I wondered how it would all end. Would I ever know the sweet taste of freedom again or would the last time I ever danced be the Gallows Jig when my feet kicked and dangled in the empty air to the music of my own neck snapping?
All we could do was wait, carry on this pretense of mournful seclusion, of politely acceding to an official request to remain indoors to avoid unduly exciting the populace. But we all knew it was only a matter of time before I would be taken away, to await my fate sitting in a jail cell.
We offered a reward, Emma and I, $10,000 to bring the killer to justice, but no one ever claimed it. How could they? It made my stomach ache with fear; I was afraid the lure of an easy fortune would tempt Bridget to turn on me. But Emma said we must, it would look odd if we did not, form must be seen to be observed. “It’s all for the best,” she said. We would discreetly send Bridget back to Ireland in grand style, in the ruched and ruffled green gown with gaudy bows all down the bodice and on the big bouncy bustle she had always “hankered after,” and the golden slippers she was always singing about, with a jaunty red feather waving good-bye to America and us on her hat.
Emma took care of it all. She said it would be best if Bridget and I didn’t see each other again apart from the imminent legalities, since there was no avoiding that of course. When I resisted, Emma said I was acting silly mooning over a servant gi
rl, and the tone of her voice, so scornful, venomous, and biting, and the piercing dark eyes that seemed to stab right into my soul made me give in. Bridget would land on her feet, just like a cat, Emma said, and catch herself a fine husband, and I knew in my heart she was right. But the heart is not an organ of reason, nor does common sense repose between our thighs. I dreamed of Bridget every night and prayed that when it was all over and done she would, of her own free will, come back to me.
But Bridget didn’t love me any more than Lulie Stillwell had. It really was all just a dream. We had no future, only a past that was best forgotten, one that owed more to my forbidden fantasies than any actual truth or tender feelings. Romance was just a word to describe the kind of literature that fed the flames of an old maid’s dreams; it had nothing to do with real life, at least not for the likes of me. Love was a beautiful gift given only to beautiful people who deserved a gift from Cupid.
While I might, if my last rendezvous wasn’t with the hangman, be a lady presiding over a grand house someday, Bridget would never come live with me and be my love. My poor Cinderella masquerading as a maidservant by day with slippers of gold, not glass or the sturdy black leather boots of a typical Irish Maggie, hiding beneath her plain hems, and lying naked in silken sheets in the golden glow of lamplight beside me every night, pampered like a princess, the queen of my heart. She would wear silks, velvets, and laces for me in private, for my eyes alone, so no one else could ever fall under the spell of her black Irish beauty and sparkling green eyes and steal her away from me. I would give her diamonds; I would give her pearls, emeralds evocative of the wistful green dream of Ireland, and rubies red as blood to show her how precious she was to me, she who always called me “macushla,” the Gaelic endearment braiding heart’s blood with true and sacrosanct lasting love. Every time I fastened a necklace of the sparkling bloodred stones around her lily-white throat I would tell her that she was worth more than all the rubies in the world to me. I would reign, as society and appearances dictated, but she would rule my heart entirely. But it was just a dream! Our fairy-tale castle was only in the clouds; it could never exist in brick and mortar in the world we knew. Reality blew it away, scattering it like ashes upon the wind, leaving me in the end with nothing but forbidden dreams and an aching yearning, an undying thirst, and a gnawing hunger I feared could never be sated.
Then came the morning when I had walked nonchalantly into the kitchen with the soiled and dingy blue diamond housedress wadded up in my hands. Emma had been pressing me to dispose of it and now, I knew, was the time to do it.
“I think I will burn this old thing up,” I announced as I headed for the stove, and had shoved it in before anyone had time to approve, or disapprove, of my intentions.
I tried to be blasé about it, treating it like any other old, useless rag I was disposing of. It bothered me how closely the reddish-brown paint mimicked the color of dried blood; I was worried that the resemblance might occur to the police and in some way damn me. I knew just how Lady Macbeth felt with blood that only she could see staining her hands, impervious to soap and water and vigorous scrubbing. I just couldn’t stop thinking about it! I kept seeing the glistening gilt head of the hatchet nestled in those paint-streaked blue folds, feeling it nudging against my leg like a living animal’s head as though a bloodthirsty silver demon possessed it, giving life to the inanimate. Faded diamonds of warring blues, the glimmer of silver, and the ugly brown-red smears all down the left side. They looked so much like blood, I was afraid if people sat and scrutinized those stains they would come to believe it actually was blood. Father had been unexpectedly generous and allowed me to choose the color of paint, and I, feeling grateful, had tried to choose a conservative color that he would like, hence the bloody brown. One thinks the oddest things at times and now I simply loathed that color and wished with all my heart that I had been true to myself and chosen something more charming and cheerful, like apple green, lemon yellow, dusky mauve, or apricot.
“Yes, why don’t you,” Emma said without glancing up from where she sat stirring her coffee at the kitchen table. “That’s a very good idea, Lizzie.” She hated that dress and never understood why I bothered to keep it, much less wear it, after my mishap with the wet paint. She thought it most slovenly and lackadaisical of me, and now that she knew there might be blood on it she didn’t even want it in the house. When she saw it hanging in my closet the night before she had told me it made her sick just to look at it, and that if she were me she would “burn it up.”
Alice Russell had stood right beside me at the kitchen stove and watched as the flames devoured it. Then, as though butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth, that prim goody-good had looked me right in the eye and said, “If I were you, Lizzie, I wouldn’t have let anyone see me doing that. I’m afraid that burning that dress is the worst thing you could have done!” Besides killing your parents of course! her chilly blue eyes silently finished the sentence.
With wide, innocuous eyes, after it was already too late to snatch the dress back from the grasping flames, I turned to Alice, dug my fingers into her arms, and cried, “Oh, Alice, why did you let me do it? Why didn’t you tell me? I never thought . . . Oh, Alice! What have I done?” Whereupon I burst into tears and fled the kitchen.
I knew then that she would turn on me. A friend had become an enemy. And I was right. Alice went and tattled straightaway to the Pinkerton man hired to assist the investigation. Then, two-faced as the head of Janus, she came in tears and told us what she had done. Emma squeezed my hand tight and squared her shoulders and told our former friend, “You must do what you think right.” We would never speak to Alice Russell again.
To make matters worse, that ignorant, imbecilic ass of a druggist Eli Bence had gone scurrying, like the scurvy rat he was, straight to the newspapers to tell his story. LIZZIE BORDEN VISITS A DRUGSTORE TO INQUIRE ABOUT POISONS! the headlines screamed.
I chose to be dignified and deny it. “It’s a LIE!” I hotly insisted. “I was never in that store in my life! I wouldn’t be caught dead there; it’s on the wrong side of town!”
And when a rumor implying that my father’s discovery of a damning secret, that I was with child, provided fodder for more headlines, I demanded a retraction or else I would sue. I received an apology in print two days later, but the damage was done. I always wondered if David Anthony hadn’t been behind it and whispered his “theory” in the right ear. But in the end it didn’t matter. I never saw him alone again. He eventually married and had a family. I would occasionally catch glimpses of them from a distance riding out together, for a picnic I imagined, in first an open black carriage and later a shiny red motorcar. His wife always wore very large hats and kept her veil down—to protect her eyes from the dust or to hide the black eyes he gave her? I suppose both could be possible.
My inquest was like an open-invitation talent show, so many people turned up and took to the stage, seizing on anything they could to have a few minutes of public attention and see their names in the newspapers. And the ears of the reporters and the doors of the newspaper offices were equally open and inviting. I soon ceased to marvel at anything I might hear or read about myself. My hometown papers always used the most unflattering likeness of me they could muster, showing me scowling with protruding eyes and jowls like a bulldog, but the out-of-town papers offered their readers an idealized image, stylishly dressed with a flawless hourglass figure and curves in all the right places. There was one picture of me swooning in court while wearing a hat covered with petunias that I particularly admired, I looked so lovely, fresh, and enchanting. No wonder all the marriage proposals I received came from hundreds of miles away. It really is surprising how many gentlemen are gallant enough to want to offer the protection of their good name and holy matrimony to an accused murderess.
My cousin Anna Borden, who had been with me on the Grand Tour but whom I had hardly seen since, turned up looking more beautiful, buxom, and voluptuous than ever, with her silver-gilt hair and vio
let eyes, complemented by a violet linen suit and a hat heaped high with a colorful array of silken pansies and green silk fern fronds, to tell the Attorney General how upon the return voyage I had often bewailed my misfortune at having to return to such an unhappy home. She looked so beautiful when she lifted her net veil to swear to tell the truth and nothing but, with her lace-gloved hand resting light as a feather upon the Bible; the sight of her made me dizzy.
My mind in a fog of fear and morphine, for three whole days I muddled and blundered my way through the inquest testimony, vexing everyone with my jumbled recollections of the story Bridget and I had hastily concocted at the kitchen table.
When the District Attorney, Hosea Knowlton, questioned me, like a tenacious bulldog, about Abby, referring to her as my mother, I blurted out rudely, raising my voice in a manner I admit was most ill becoming to a lady, “She is not my mother; she is my step mother!”
That caused quite a stir in court. Soon everyone who claimed to know me was running to the newspapers with a mean-spirited tale to tell or to quote rude comments I had supposedly made about Abby, like the dressmaker who said I had called her “a mean old thing.” Maybe I did; maybe I didn’t. I didn’t keep a journal of every word I uttered.
And when Mr. Knowlton asked if my relations with my step mother had always been cordial, I coldly retorted, “That depends entirely on one’s idea of cordiality!”