Alice + Freda Forever: A Murder in Memphis

by Alexis Coe

  It did not take long for Alice to learn about Ashley Roselle, and to make her displeasure known. Freda responded with her usual ambivalence; a dash of concern, a pinch of regret, but in the end, she was always an incorrigible flirt. In a letter to her betrothed, Freda callously reviewed her love for multiple suitors and reminded Alice of her desire to be onstage, yet another threat to their life together—all the while promising lifelong fidelity.

  The whole courtship process seemed to be a game of youthful dalliance that Freda greatly enjoyed; proposals were like trophies, accolades she enthusiastically accepted without seriously considering what came after. And yet, Freda continually assured Alice—or rather, Alvin J. Ward, her fiancé—that their marriage would inspire fidelity, and she would embrace the virtues of true womanhood. Freda blithely encouraged the transition, never truly grasping the peril the terms of their engagement put her in.

  As proof of sincerity, Freda enclosed a copy of a letter she had supposedly sent to Ashley.

  True to form, Freda followed a gesture meant to quell jealousy with one that immediately inflamed it. It just so happened that Ashley was sure to be at a picnic Freda had also planned on attending. She promised, as if her word were reliable, that she would not speak to him—despite admitting to loving him.

  “I will stop,” she assured Alice in a letter, “I will always be true to you hereafter.” Marriage, Freda promised, would fix all of their problems.

  But their marriage would solve nothing if it never came to pass, and this Ashley Roselle was a direct threat to their future. Since Freda could not be trusted, Alice went to meet this romantic rival herself—twice.

  Ashley would later testify that Alice seemed unwell during their conversations, and that she had threatened to harm herself. The long, menacing letter that followed certainly suggested as much. She knew Freda would disapprove of the visits, but she reasoned she had every right to make them. To Alice’s mind, Freda had made a commitment, and her infidelities warranted reprisal.

  Ashley would have to die.

  These were more than just words. Before picking up Lillie for one of their afternoon buggy rides, Alice went downtown alone, with just one goal in mind: She wanted to buy a gun.

  And what would stop her? She had the money, and the right. The pistol was a few dollars less than Freda’s engagement ring, and there were no laws prohibiting a white woman from buying a firearm. The purchase was thwarted by a mere technicality: The guns were all too big. Had any of them been the right size, and had she not been due to fetch Lillie, Alice would have brought a gun home that day.

  Alice returned home empty handed, but the trip was not a loss. She had illustrated, yet again, the deadly sincerity of her intentions. Despite the growing body of evidence, it seems Freda understood lethal threats to be a part of Alice’s ardent manner of speech. Even as the situation devolved and Alice’s plans became concrete, Freda refused to take her words seriously.

  With love weighing heavily on her mind that day, Alice visited more than just purveyors of pistols. She brought Lillie to 319 George Street, to the house Freda had called home in Memphis. Had she still lived there, Alice wrote, she could kiss her, but her visit was instead spent gloomily meandering around the property, collecting ivy and picking roses.

  Burdened by desperation, Alice’s anger deepened into hopeless melancholy. The long, tortured ruminations in her letter were but a sampling of the thoughts that oppressed her. We will never know exactly how or when Alice and Freda fell in love, but the letter suggests it happened at Miss Higbee’s, when chumming turned into something much more. But now her beloved was fading away. Did Freda love Alice half as much as when she lived on George Street?

  “You didn’t fall in love with every boy that talked sweet to you then,” she wrote. Other suitors had never been a real concern, but Alice saw these new romantic rivals as more than just competition. Freda admitted to loving them, even as she claimed to love Alice best.

  Alice could not fathom entertaining other prospects; Freda was her one and only. It was getting harder to deny that her feelings for Freda were stronger than Freda’s feelings for her. In letters, Alice seemed to hope that drawing attention to this disparity might solicit comforting protestations, or perhaps she hoped it would inspire Freda to stop “loving” these other men before they married. But Freda consistently failed to rise to the occasion.

  When Alice visited 319 George Street that day, she went in search of a phantom—the old Freda Ward, resident of Memphis, student at Miss Higbee’s, sweetheart of Alice Mitchell.

  On August 1, 1891, Alice sent the lengthy letter to the new Freda Ward, resident of Golddust, a student of nowhere, a sweetheart to many. If their elopement succeeded, Freda would likely leave her sister’s home before it arrived—but for all Alice knew, Ashley Roselle or some other suitor in Golddust was, at that very moment, tempting Freda away.

  Unbeknownst to Alice, two letters were en route from Freda’s home to the Mitchell residence that very same day, by way of her older brother, Robert, and they confirmed her greatest fear.

  Someone had indeed come between them—but it wasn’t Ashley Roselle.

  I THOUGHT YOU WERE A LADY

  AFTER MONTHS OF REHEARSAL, Freda’s cue had finally come. On that summer night in 1891, she was, for once it seemed, fully committed to playing her role. She took supper with her family in Gold-dust as if it were any other meal, and then retired to bed, as she had so many nights before.

  But once inside her room, Freda did not shed her clothing from the day, nor satisfy more than perfunctory ablutions. She was waiting for the moment—between ten o’clock and two in the morning—when the steamer would announce itself, confident that her performance that night had fooled everyone.

  But as it turned out, Freda was not the only actress in the Ward family.

  Ada Volkmar had also acted her way through their nightly ritual. And now, as Freda waited inside her bedroom for the steamer, Ada did the exact same thing just outside of it.

  When their mother died in 1882, the eldest Ward sister was expected to assume her duties, and Ada had done her best for Jo and Freda.11 But she was married now, and with the move up to Golddust, her focus had shifted on to her own household, which included at least one boarder. Thomas Ward had followed, youngest daughters in tow. Since new business opportunities kept him busy, Jo and Freda once again fell under Ada’s purview, moving in with her and her husband, William Volkmar.

  Back in Memphis, Ada had noticed that Alice and Freda had grown very close. The Ward home had been but one backdrop for their relationship, interspersed with visits to the Mitchell and Johnson home, Miss Higbee’s, the many trips downtown, and the buggy rides.

  But the move to Golddust initiated bouts of forced physical separation followed by lengthy visits, and offered Ada a front row seat to Alice and Freda’s conspicuous affection. She had seen girls chumming around Memphis, and Jo and Lillie regarded each other with particular warmth, but those romantic friendships looked increasingly tepid when compared to Alice and Freda.

  Ada would later testify that she developed a strong aversion to their tender embraces, the constant kissing and fawning. But even so, the romantic charge that she witnessed was in no sense meaningful to her. Like most Americans in the nineteenth century, Ada had no explanation for what she was seeing. And thus it was dismissed as merely frivolous, if not irritating excess.

  In fact, with Freda occupied, Ada had one less thing to worry about. She had welcomed Alice into her home for days at a time, and happily sent Freda down to visit the Mitchells in Memphis. Besides, Ada had never seen Alice act in an improper fashion, flirt with men, or wear inappropriate clothing, and there were no rumors to suggest otherwise. Alice was a lady, and her family, headed by the beloved “Uncle George,” was respected in Memphis.

  She may have continued to unwittingly enable their plans had she not, by chance, caught a glimpse of Freda’s letters. The girls wrote often enough that the family limited them to two lett
ers a week, but Ada was not so naïve as to ignore the many more that came and went. Alice and Freda were fond of pseudonyms and pet names, but all of the letters originated in the same cities, and were addressed by the same hands. Ada had probably regarded the excessive correspondence as the silly preoccupation of two young women, out of school but not yet wed, with little to do, spending their free time filling letters with gossip about former classmates or ads in the matrimonial paper.

  But once Ada actually read the letters in their entirety, they revealed, in near chronological order, that Alice and Freda were doing something altogether different than chumming. They were corresponding as lovers would, using the kinds of words and sentiments Ada had likely exchanged with her own husband during their courtship. Why would two women be making such professions to each other? It made no sense to her—but that was not the most pressing issue.

  As Ada discovered, Freda intended to sneak out of her own home that very night, marry Alice in Memphis, and light out for St. Louis. Ada had never read a similar tale in the papers, but she had read plenty of harrowing, moralistic tales about sheltered young women who thrust themselves into the world, only to be overwhelmed by its treachery. In these published stories, mothers were almost always depicted as careless, blind to the shameful schemes unfolding in their domestic sphere, while the men, once informed, would sprint out into the world as saviors, unrelenting in their gallant effort to preserve familial honor.

  If the young woman was found, it was likely to be in a brothel, or under the influence of an unseemly man not dissimilar to George Wickham, the charming officer who convinces Lydia Bennett to run away with him in Jane Austen’s 1813 novel, Pride and Prejudice. Wickham had no intention of actually marrying Lydia, but Mr. Darcy used his powers of persuasion, or more specifically, his massive fortune, to tempt him into decency. But few had such means and power, and the Wards were definitely not among them. Besides, if these rescue attempts were at all successful, the young woman’s return was hardly triumphant. Her reputation was tarnished, and that tainted her entire family.

  For his part, William Volkmar was sure there was a “Wickham” laying in wait. No matter how many times Ada explained that Alice and Freda planned to marry each other, he insisted there was a man at the bottom of it. Surely Ada had misunderstood, and Alice was actually just an accessory in some unscrupulous man’s master plan. And so he spent that summer evening on the porch, Winchester rifle in hand, waiting for an unnamed miscreant who would dare pluck a chaste young lady from his respectable home.

  And that was the scene in Golddust, with all three waiting in different places in and around the house, with differing ideas of what was going on, when the moment finally came. The boat cued its arrival with a whistle, which meant Freda, still fully clothed, was surely picking up her valise. William had heard it, too, but kept watching for a man to materialize. It was dark, but there was no rustling underfoot, no nasally sound of horses breathing. Unwilling to risk his wife’s ire if her youngest sister slipped out undetected, William was forced to quit his post, and headed toward his sister-in-law’s bedroom.

  ADA WOULD HAVE NO MORE OF ALICE MITCHELL. After she recovered from the previous night’s theatrics—confronting Freda, and then interrogating her—Ada penned two letters to the Mitchells in Golddust, only one of which had Alice’s name on it.

  The other letter was sent to Isabella Mitchell, Alice’s mother. Even though the circumstances were dire and demanded urgent attention, there was a protocol in polite society, and such domestic dramas fell under the purview of maternal authority. It had been Ada’s choice to tell her husband, but it was not her place to speak directly with Alice’s father. She had not even sent it directly to the Mitchell residence, but rather to Alice’s older brother, Robert, who safely delivered them to the family home.

  If nothing else, Ada expected to be taken at her word. It was a bizarre tale for the turn-of-the-century, but the stakes were high enough that it surely warranted redress. Isabella read the letter, and made its contents known to her youngest daughter.

  Alice adopted a mostly passive stance, playing the obedient daughter averse to scandal. It was the obvious choice, given that Isabella spoke of things Alice had never dared to write. Ada’s letter was brimming with intimate details that could only have come from Freda. Her fiancé had cracked under pressure, making neither any effort to protect her confidences with Alice, nor any attempt to preserve the possibility of a future together.

  It now seemed prescient that Alice had, in the past, suggested to Isabella that Ada was not well. The letter she sent to Alice’s mother seemed so farfetched, so bold and out of touch with reality, that even Isabella concluded Ada must have “grossly exaggerated and misunderstood the matter.”12 Of course, Alice did nothing to disabuse her mother of this interpretation, nor did she argue against Isabella’s verdict, the same one imposed by Ada.

  Alice and Freda were never to speak again.

  YOU TOLD AND I DID TOO

  ALICE HAD NO INTENTION OF keeping away from Freda. Though interception was all but guaranteed, she posted a confused letter just a few days after the foiled elopement. Alice filled the page with blame, regret, and just a bit of hope, before requesting one final meeting.

  There would be no response from Freda. She would not grant Alice her final request to meet in person. And as Alice would learn in just a few months time, when much of America would clamor for it, Freda most certainly did not destroy their letters.

  WHEN A MONTH PASSED WITH NO WORD, Alice became convinced that Freda had not received her final plea, or that if she had, that her attempts to respond had been thwarted by others. The possibility that Freda herself had chosen not to reply to a letter full of accusations, or that Freda may have found relief in Ada’s intervention, never seemed to register with Alice.

  This time, Alice would be more careful. Her solution was to mask the next letter’s origin by sending it first to Chicago, where it would then be rerouted to Golddust. This circuitous route would be prominently stamped on the envelope, but just in case the subterfuge was detected by watchful eyes, Alice took the additional precaution of writing not as herself, but as her alter ego, “Freda Myra Ward.”

  At this point, the true meaning of this thinly veiled letter was easily discernible to anyone privy to their foiled elopement—and most certainly to Ada. July, the month the signer notes “they thought I was dying,” was the very month their plan died through discovery. It was also the season that, vis-à-vis maternal orders, their love was supposed to die, too. “I will be there before your letter will,” Alice concludes, as if to say, just come, my love, no need to send a letter ahead of time. At least on that point, Freda would acquiesce—there would be no letter posted in return.

  ALICE SPENT THE MONTH OF SEPTEMBER as she had August, her heartbreak on full display. She often withdrew from the Mitchell family during the day, and when she did appear, it was in an abject state, her eyes watering, her expression absent and forlorn. At night, while the rest of the family slept, she lay awake, indulging her sorrow. She often refused the food she was served, and completely avoided the dining table whenever possible. Her shapely figure began to waste away.

  When she left her bedroom, it was most often for the kitchen, to unearth the locked box. She spent hours perusing its contents, touching the photograph of Freda, fingering the returned engagement ring. She mostly reread letters, and for just a moment, however briefly, she would lose herself in a memory. A smile would spread across her face, perhaps a laugh even escaping her lips.

  Alice was rarely alone in the kitchen. But she liked the family’s cook, Lucy Franklin, who often brought along her own six-year-old child, a much needed diversion for Alice.

  Lucy would later testify that the Mitchells mistreated their youngest, though she could not specify how. She understood the kitchen, her workspace, to be a refuge for Alice, a place where she could receive the compassion so sorely lacking in the rest of the house. And Lucy listened to Alice’s tale o
f woe, even though it was filled with half-truths. She assumed that Alice’s ex-fiancé was a man, and Alice never corrected her. And for whatever reason, Alice blamed the broken engagement on her own sisters, not Ada. Though Lucy may have been in the dark on many of the details, she seemed to understand the most important part, the heartbreak and suffering.

  Alice was not right in her mind, Lucy would later testify. Her eyes shone with a strange luster, others would say. And some of what they would recall from that time was actually true, and very odd indeed.

  When coal was delivered to the house, Alice did not sign the receipt in her own name, or that of her mother or father. Instead, she wrote out the name Freda Ward in careful script. The receipts would later serve as evidence, and both the defense and prosecution questioned Alice about the aberration. She would admit to having signed Freda’s name not once, but on five separate occasions, only to claim that she had not realized what she was doing. How could she explain something she did not remember?

  “I was thinking of Freda,” she would later testify. It would be her answer to most questions.

  When it came to her father’s razor, however, Alice’s memory was perfectly intact. She confessed that she had stolen it on the first of November.

  The razor’s absence had not gone unnoticed. George Mitchell looked for it in his bedroom, and throughout the house. He asked his sons if they had taken it, and questioned the rest of the family.