Miss Lizzie (31 page)

“I don't think so, dear,” said Miss Lizzie, sitting beside me on the sofa. “I don't think it's a good idea.”

“But I
know
Mrs. Marlowe,” I said. “I
like
her.” The latter statement was less true than the former, and the former was true only marginally.

“Yes, I know,” she said, “but you saw those men yesterday. You saw the way they behaved. I don't feel it's safe for you to go with me.”

“But they're not there anymore, Miss Lizzie. They're not going to bother you again. Everyone thinks William is the one who killed Audrey.”

“Amanda,” she said, and her voice was soft, her eyes kindly behind the pince-nez, “the way they acted yesterday has very little to do with your stepmother. It has to do with me, dear. With who I am, or who they think I am. Do you understand? If we go out together, you'll be associated in their minds with me. It's not fair to you. I won't let it happen.”

“Miss Lizzie,” I said, “they already know in their dumb old minds that I've been staying with you. And I don't care what any of them think. Really I don't. They're not my friends, none of them. I don't even live here, and I never will, and I'll probably never see any of them again as long as I live. But even if we were in Boston, even if we were right in my own neighborhood, I'd still want to go out with you. Because you
are
my friend.”

The wide gray eyes eyes blinked for a moment, and then she cleared her throat. Her hand reached out, covered mine, squeezed it. “Very well,” she said. She nodded once, then looked away.

We walked up Fremont Street in the shade of the elms and maples and the sycamores. The day was still beautiful, warm and clear, the cloudless sky stretched overhead like the taut skin of a huge blue balloon. The smell of fresh-cut grass and the purple scent of clover curled across the air, Here and there, despite last night's rain, sprinklers swished silver spray over bright-green lawns and discovered rainbows hanging there. The houses, all set back from the street, all large and substantial, were hushed and serene, a row of plump burghers dozing away their untroubled afternoon.

We saw no one until we reached Main Street. Here we turned right and walked for a while past the shops and stores. People bustled by. Heads turned, stares danced away; chatter became silence, silence became chatter. Miss Lizzie marched along beside me, her purse swinging rhythmically from her folded arms.

One of the largest in town, Mrs. Marlowe's house was a rambling white Victorian affair strung with ornate cornices and topped with a pair of slender cupolas. Sprawled as it was along a rise in the wide green sweep of lawn, it resembled a stately old paddlewheel riverboat, beached there by a floodtide.

We walked up the cement walkway, up the broad white wooden stairs to the front door, and Miss Lizzie tugged on the bellpull. A muffled chime sounded within. Lace curtains, limp and yellowed, hung behind the large rectangle of etched glass set in the door, and through them, after a moment, I saw a flutter of movement.

The door opened and an elderly man stood there, tall but stooped, his cheeks sunken, his sparse hair exactly the same sallow hue as the curtains and combed back from a high freckled forehead. He wore a black butler's livery as though he had worn it since birth.

“Good afternoon,” he intoned, his voice as mannered as a butler's in a play. “How may I help you?”

“Good afternoon,” said Miss Lizzie. “If Mrs. Marlowe is receiving visitors, we should like to speak with her.”

The butler nodded. “And who may I say is calling?”

“Miss Lizbeth Borden and Miss Amanda Burton.”

“Very good. Please step this way.”

He stood stiffly aside for us to pass, closed the door, led us stiffly into the parlor, and told us stiffly that he would inquire of madame whether she was receiving.

The parlor, dark after the sun-splashed outdoors, was at least twice the size of Miss Lizzie's, and packed with enough heavy antique furniture to stock a good-size house or a small municipal museum. All four walls were covered with framed paintings and engravings of clipper ships, schooners, cutters, sloops. And everywhere—atop every square inch of surface space, tables, cabinets, bookshelves—stood bric-a-brac and knickknacks of the sea: ships in bottles, ships' bells, bos'ns' whistles, conch shells, small fans of coral, whales and walruses and dolphins whittled from wood and ivory.

“Mrs. Marlowe's taste leans rather toward the nautical, it would seem,” said Miss Lizzie, glancing around at the jumble.

“Gosh,” I said. “I guess so.”

The air was threaded with a mixture of smells: musk, citrus, a faint fragrance of jasmine, a fainter one of pitch. (Many years later, I found precisely this combination of scents embroidered across the air of an empty Buddhist temple in northern Thailand, and instantly I was transported back to Mrs. Marlowe's cluttered parlor. Almost anything, alas, can serve as a
madeleine
.)

I was examining an ebony statuette of a harpooner, intricately carved, his tiny pointed teeth made from shell, when the butler returned. “Madame will see you,” he announced.

We followed his stooped spine through the hallway (more pictures of ships bedecked the walls, and a brace of harpoons crossed like swords), up a long flight of carpeted stairs, down another hallway (more ships) at the end of which was an open door. He stepped through it, turned to his right, and said, “Your guests, madame.” He turned to us and nodded us in.

The room was large and airy, lit by the buttery sunshine slanting through the windows. Only one wall displayed a painting, a large four-master running before the wind, clouds scudding overhead, swells feathering into foam; and directly opposite it, propped up by pillows in a large four-poster bed, sat Mrs. Marlowe.

“Amanda,” she said, and nodded. Her voice, as always, was raspy and parched, as though it had been dusted with talc. She nodded to Miss Lizzie. “Miss Borden.”

The bed's golden silk comforter was drawn up to her chest, and on her lap lay a leatherbound book, opened facedown. She was tiny, almost elfin, and quite old, her round face creased and gullied. Her thin white hair was pulled back against her scalp so tightly it had lost the texture of hair and become seamless. She wore gold wire-rim glasses and a long-sleeved white flannel nightdress, its lace-trimmed front buttoned up to the wiry cords of her neck.

“Tea?” she said, and beneath her lips her tongue slid across her teeth. “Or sherry?”

“Thank you,” said Miss Lizzie. “Some tea, please.”

“See to it, Clabber,” she told the butler, who turned stiffly and departed. She looked back at us, waved a bony freckled hand. “Sit, sit.”

Two slender Hepplewhite chairs flanked a matching table. Miss Lizzie and I sat down, Miss Lizzie placing her purse on the table.

Mrs. Marlowe adjusted her glasses and her bright tiny brown eyes peered at Miss Lizzie. “Knew some people from Fall River. Friends of my late husband's.” She folded her hands over the book.

Miss Lizzie politely cocked her head. “Indeed?”

“The Stockwells,” said Mrs. Marlowe, watching her.

“Yes,” said Miss Lizzie with a marked lack of enthusiasm.

Mrs. Marlowe smiled. I had never liked Mrs. Marlowe's smile. It seemed always to have something of malice in it, a hint of wickedness; and her pale-yellow dentures, large and impossibly regular, reminded me of a mouthful of old dice. “Not best friends, eh?” she said. “Can't blame you. Pair of twits. He died, I heard,” she added complacently. “Stomach.”

“Mrs. Marlowe,” Miss Lizzie said, “we came here to ask you a few questions about Mrs. Burton. I understand—”

“I followed the trial, you know. Yours. In the newspapers. Biggest thing to happen round here till the War. Funny thing, memory.” She closed her mouth, slipped her tongue again across her teeth. “Remember exactly what I was doing, where I was, when I heard about the murders. See it now, plain as day. New Bedford. Always stank of fish, New Bedford. Went up there, Carl and I, to look at another old tug he wanted to buy. Riddled with dry rot but he wanted it. An idiot. Always was. Dead now. Heart.” She narrowed her eyes at Miss Lizzie. “So why'd you do it, exactly? Why'd you hack 'em up?”

“Mrs. Marlowe—”

The old woman laughed, almost a cackle, and then shook her head. “All you had to do was
wait
, woman. Wait long enough, they die on you. All of 'em. Look at me. Parents, two brothers, a sister, two husbands, three worthless brats. All gone. Hear that noise in the background? Know what it is? Silence.
Silence
. Peace and quiet. Took me seventy years to get it, but it's all mine now.” She narrowed her eyes again and seemed genuinely puzzled. “So why on earth didn't you wait?”

Miss Lizzie lifted her purse from the table and said, “Perhaps we should come again, Mrs. Marlowe. Some other time.”

Mrs. Marlowe raised her hand and pointed a thin unwavering finger. “You don't want to hear about Audrey Burton and her blackmail? Isn't that why you sent that grubby little man this morning?”

Miss Lizzie said, “Are you saying you do know something about Mrs. Burton and blackmail?”

“Course I do. I know everything. Ah, the tea. What took you so long, Clabber?”

“I heated the pot first, madame,” the butler said, and set his silver tray on the table between Miss Lizzie and me.

“Well, pour it, for God's sake,” said Mrs. Marlowe. “Three spoons for me.”

“Yes, madame.” Her poured our tea, carried a cup and saucer over to Mrs. Marlowe.

She took it, saying to us, “Twenty years now Clabber's been with me. First mate. Eh, Clabber?”

“Twenty-two, madame.”

“Wife used to be the cook here. Galley, eh? Died a few years back. Liver.”

“Heart, madame.”

She frowned up at him, querulous. “Dead, though, isn't she?”

“Quite.”

She nodded, mollified. “Couldn't cook worth a damn. Slop she put together probably did Carl in.” She cackled again. “Suppose I owe her one, come to think.” She looked up at the butler, frowned. “Clabber, don't hover.”

“Sorry, madame.”

She waved a hand. “Out, out, out.”

As soon as he left the room, she showed us her teeth again. “Thinks he's in the will. Thinks he'll be rolling in cash when I go. New car, trips to Boston and New York. Wine-women-and-song. Not a chance. It all goes to the D.A.R. Every penny. Besides, he's sick. Always has been. Heart. Etta's food again, I expect.” She cackled. “I'll outlast him too.”

“Mrs. Marlowe,” said Miss Lizzie, “about—”

“They never found it, did they? The axe you used.”

Miss Lizzie sighed and set her cup and saucer on the table. “Mrs. Marlowe, thank you for the tea. I'm afraid we really must be going.”

Mrs. Marlowe sipped at her tea. “Sidney Chatsworth,” she said, and smiled her wicked smile.

“I beg your pardon?” said Miss Lizzie.

“The man Audrey was blackmailing.” Behind the round lenses, her brown eyes glittered. “Isn't that what you wanted to know?”

TWENTY-FOUR

“AND WHO,” SAID Miss Lizzie, “is Sidney Chats-worth?”

Mrs. Marlowe sipped at her tea. “Don't know Sidney, eh? Family's famous in these parts. Been here for ages. Not as long as the Lorings, of course. My people. Old man Chatsworth and my father never got along. First-class swine, old Chatsworth was. Womanizer. Got our housemaid in the family way. Rosa. Not much upstairs but tolerable looking, in a vulgar way. She told Mr. Loring, my father, and he went out and found the pig. Took a horsewhip to him.” She cackled. “On Main Street. Broad daylight, no less. Hah!” She shook her head, smiling happily. “Little Sidney never did forget that.”

Miss Lizzie said, “You say that Mrs. Burton was blackmailing Mr. Chatsworth?”

“His wife's a cripple. Keeled over one day, ten years ago,
bang
, and that was that. Stroke, they said. Legs gone, been in bed ever since. She's a Cooper, of course. Bad stock. The grandmother was loony, the aunt ran off with a blacksmith. Can you imagine?” She cackled. “A
blacksmith
? No wonder Bessie turned out the way she did. In bed all day with her morphine and her ghosts.”