Miss Lizzie (30 page)

“I understand, Mrs. Mortimer. It wasn't your fault.”

“Well, I wanted you to know how I felt. And I don't want you to be a stranger, all right? If you need anything, someone to talk to, anything at all, you just come and see us, all right?”

“Okay, I will. Thank you.”

“All right, dear. Good-bye now. Good-bye, Roger.”

Roger and I said good-bye, and she stalked off, tall and angular, her shoulders slightly stooped, her head bobbing atop her long thin neck as though she were searching for slim metallic fish down at her feet, down at the bottom of a shallow lake.

“You're getting to be pretty popular,” Roger said.

“Not everywhere,” I said. “What about this letter?”

“What letter?”

“The one you said Chief Da Silva was talking about.”

“Oh. Yeah. It was a letter from a banker. What it said was, he knew for a fact that on the day of the murder, Andrew Borden, Lizzie's father, was planning to transfer a piece of property. It was a house, and it had belonged to Lizzie, but he was going to give it to Lizzie's stepmother. I guess it had been set up for a couple of weeks, the transfer.”

“Who was the letter sent to?”

“The chief of police in Fall River. And it was sent after the trial, after Lizzie was acquitted. So he couldn't do anything about it. You can't try someone twice for the same crime.”

“Why not?”

“It's just the law. Anyway, according to the banker, Lizzie's stepmother was supposed to meet Andrew at the bank at ten-thirty. Well, naturally, she didn't show up, because right then she was lying upstairs in the guest room, all chopped up—”

“
Roger
.”

He grinned, then suddenly frowned—remembering, I think, my stepmother. “Oh. Yeah. Sorry. Anyway, Lizzie's father went home early. Usually he didn't go till lunchtime, around one o'clock. He was looking for his wife, obviously. At the trial, Lizzie said she told him that her stepmother went out, that she'd gotten a note saying someone was sick. But whoever wrote the note never turned up. Because there wasn't any note.”

“You don't know that.”

“Her story was in the newspapers, Amanda. The whole town knew the cops were looking for whoever wrote the note.”

“Maybe he didn't read the newspapers.”

“Hey. The murders were the biggest thing that ever happened in Fall River. You think that
everyone
wasn't reading the newspapers?”

“Okay,” I said. “Forget about the note. What was so important about this house?”

“What was important, see, was that Lizzie was really possessive about property. A real capitalist. Five years before all this happened, her father had done almost exactly the same thing. He'd taken another house that had belonged to Lizzie and given it to his wife.”

“Why?”

“How would I know? Anyway, just to make things right, her father bought Lizzie
another
house, so she could get the income from the rents. But even that didn't make her happy. She never spoke to her stepmother again. Never stayed in the same room with her, never ate meals with her.”

“And you think that because her father did the same thing again, Miss Lizzie would go and kill her stepmother?
And
her father?”

“Look,” he said. “Here's what I think happened—and Chief Da Silva agrees with me.” He sucked some cherry phosphate up through the straw. “To start off with,” he said, “Lizzie was always sort of weird. She was repressed, like I said, really repressed, and once in a while she had these fits. Fits where she didn't know what she was doing. That's in the record.

“Okay. It seems like her father was trying to keep the transfer a secret from Lizzie. Which stands to reason, if you remember the way she acted last time. But she
does
hear about it.”

I said, “How do you know?”

“Because it's the only thing that makes sense. Just hold on a minute, okay?”

“It doesn't make sense to me.”

“Just wait. So Lizzie gets more and more desperate. She
hates
her stepmother. She can't
stand
the idea that the woman's getting another piece of Lizzie's property. And so finally, on the day when she knows her stepmother is supposed to go downtown to sign the papers, Lizzie goes crazy. She has one of her fits and she grabs an axe, goes up into the guest room, and she kills her. Maybe she doesn't even know what she's doing. She probably doesn't. Not while she's doing it.

“But as soon it's over, she does. Her stepmother's dead, and Lizzie's got to do something. She washes up and she gets dressed to go outside. So she can say she wasn't there when it happened.

“But her father comes home
early
, see, before she gets a chance to go out, and he asks where Mrs. Borden is. Lizzie tells him about the note, but she knows it's not going to make any difference. Sooner or later, someone's going to find the body, and her father's going to know that Lizzie's been there all morning. He's going to know that she's the
only
one who could've killed her. So Lizzie gets out the axe again, and she kills him.”

“Someone else could've come into the house.”

“When? Either Lizzie or the maid, one or the other, was downstairs all morning. And the front door was locked. So how'd he get in? And
after
he got in and killed Mrs. Borden, where'd he hide until he killed Mr. Borden? And
why
did he kill either one of them?”

“Wait a minute. You said there was a maid?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Bridget Sullivan.” Smiling, he shook his head. “But that won't work, Amanda. She didn't have any reason to kill anyone.”

“How do you know? Maybe she was stealing or something, and Mrs. Borden caught her. And maybe Mrs. Borden was going to tell the police. And so the maid killed her.”

“Why would she kill Mr. Borden?”

“For the same reason you said about Miss Lizzie. Because he'd know that she did it.”

“Then why didn't she kill Lizzie? Lizzie would've known it too.”

“Maybe they were friends, and she knew Miss Lizzie would protect her.”

“Even if Lizzie was going to be executed?”

“Like I said, maybe they were friends.”

“You'd have to be pretty good friends with someone to let yourself get executed for something they did.”

“It could happen.”

“Look,” he said. “Bridget Sullivan had been working there for years. You're trying to say that she gets caught stealing, and she kills both of them, on the same day that
Lizzie
has a good reason to kill them?”

“That could happen too.”

He grinned. “So you
admit
that Lizzie had a good reason to kill them?”

“You're just trying to be clever now. I didn't admit anything. And besides, I have to go.” I stood up off the stool.

He laughed. “Yeah, sure,” he said.

“I do. I promised I'd be back by one-thirty. Thank you for the coffee. And for the newspaper.”

Smiling, he said, “She did it, you know.”

TWENTY-THREE

“FIRST THING IS,” said Boyle to Miss Lizzie as he exhaled a cone of blue cigarette smoke, “you were right about the bank: I talked to the manager this morning, and she
did
have another account.”

“What bank?” I asked Miss Lizzie.

It was two-thirty, and the three of us were back in Miss Lizzie's parlor. Over lunch, she had told me that Father had telephoned before leaving for Boston and had promised to telephone again when he arrived. He had not, she said, explained why he had left town in such a hurry. (“I barely had a chance to speak with him,” she told me, pursing her lips and seeming rather nettled by this unseemly haste.)

Now she turned to me and said, “Well, dear, it occurred to me that if your stepmother were actually blackmailing someone, she might need a place to keep the money. If it had been in your house somewhere, the police would have found it when they searched. And so this morning, when Mr. Boyle telephoned, I suggested he inquire at the bank, to determine whether she had an account there.”

“She
did
have an account,” I said. “Father opened one up when we first came here.”

“She had two accounts,” said Boyle. “Joint account with your father, another in her maiden name, Richards.” He slid his hand into his suit coat, pulled out a small notebook, flipped it open. “Joint account got opened at the end of May. Other one on the fifteenth of June.” He looked down at the notebook. “She deposited a hundred dollars in cash to open it. Then another hundred on the seventeenth of July.”

“Was that in cash as well?” asked Miss Lizzie.

“Yeah.”

“Is this a savings or a checking account?”

“Savings. The July deposit was the last one she made.”

Miss Lizzie turned to me. “You have no idea from where the money came?”

“No,” I said. “Like I said before, she was always complaining she didn't have enough.”

She nodded and looked at Mr. Boyle.

I asked her, “Does that mean she really was a blackmailer?” In a perverse way, I rather hoped she had been. It would have made her more wicked than I had believed; but also more interesting.

“We don't know yet, dear,” said Miss Lizzie. “But I
should
like to know the source of that money.” To Mr. Boyle: “You spoke with the women on the list Amanda provided?”

“Yeah.” He turned over a page in his notebook. “Mrs. Sheehy, Mrs. Maybrick, Mrs. Marlowe, Mrs. Mortimer. Just got finished with Mrs. Mortimer. None of them knows anything, not about blackmail anyway. So they tell me. Except Mrs. Marlowe, maybe, and she won't tell me what it is.”

“She informed you that she knew something?”

Boyle smiled. “She informed me that if Miss Borden desired to know anything about Mrs. Burton, Miss Borden could request the information herself. Quote unquote.” He closed the notebook. “Doesn't talk to lackeys, is what she means.”

“I see. Then I
shall
speak with her myself. Did the others seem surprised by the notion?”

“All of 'em. Mrs. Mortimer told me it was crazy.”

Miss Lizzie nodded. “Have you spoken with the Negro man, Charlie?”

“Stopped by his place, but he was out. I'll go by again later today.”

“Very well. Now, as to the matter of Amanda's brother. Did you know that he's confessed to the crime?”

Boyle sucked on the cigarette, glanced at me, nodded to Miss Lizzie, exhaled. “Heard that, yeah.”

“Amanda believes, and I'm inclined to agree with her, that the boy is lying. Your associate, the other Pinkerton man, what exactly is he doing at the moment?”

“Foley?” He shrugged. “Don't know. Kid's'confession probably took the wind out of his sails.”

“Well, it seems to me he ought to be proceeding on the assumption that William's first story is the true one, and attempt to identify the man who drove him to Boston.”

Boyle nodded. “Be a good idea, sure. But how's he gonna do it? Kid said the guy was just out motoring. Even if Foley went up to Boston, take him forever to locate one particular guy who owns a Ford.”

“In my experience,” said Miss Lizzie, “the sort of people who own Fords do not go motoring about on a weekday.”

Boyle cocked an eyebrow, interested. “Yeah?”

“It's at least a possibility that the man was a tradesman, a commercial traveler calling upon some business account here in town. Your Mr. Foley might do well to canvass the local retailers. He has a description of this man, no doubt?”

“No doubt,” said Boyle, and grinned. “You ever need a job, I can get you one with the Pinkertons.”

Miss Lizzie smiled. “Thank you. I'll bear that in mind. So you'll discuss this with Mr. Foley?”

Boyle nodded. “Maybe do a little poking around myself.”

“If you like. But I do think you should interview this Charlie person.”

“Right. Has Slocum turned up anything else? Any more action on that advertisement of yours?”

“I spoke with him earlier this afternoon. Apparently a few more people have come forward, but none, according to Mr. Slocum, seem to know anything of substance.”

“How's Mr. Slocum?” I asked.

She turned to me and smiled. “He's fine, dear. He sends his regards.”

Boyle stubbed out his Fatima and stood. “Well,” he said, “I'll go find Foley and wind him up.”