The Daring Ladies of Lowell (20 page)

A spurt of applause erupted, stopped by the judge banging his gavel. “There will be no disruptions, and if there are any more, I will clear the court.”

The crowd collectively held its breath as Greene turned to the bench. “Your Honor, I would like to call Mr. John Durfee as our first witness.”

The farmer who had first found Lovey’s body stood up and walked toward the witness chair, his eyes flitting back and forth between the judges’ bench and Greene. He took his seat, clutching a well-worn cap darkened with perspiration. He looked lost, somewhat frightened. He raised his hand and was sworn in.

“Mr. Durfee, tell us how you found the body of Sarah Lovey Cornell.”

“Well, sir, I was looking for my calf when I saw her hanging there, poor dead young girl. Awful shame, a murder like that.”

“Objection,” snapped Jeremiah Mason from the defense table. “Witness is drawing a conclusion.”

“Sustained.”

Durfee looked bewildered.

“It’s all right, Mr. Durfee,” Greene said gently. “Just tell us what you saw and did.”

Haltingly, Durfee told the story of carrying the girl back to the sheriff’s house and finding out from the Lowell doctor that she was pregnant. How the sheriff and the coroner immediately thought, in her despair, that she had committed suicide. How he thought that couldn’t possibly be true, but he wasn’t the law like they were.

“And why couldn’t that be true?”

“Sir, the rope around her neck was tied with a clove hitch.” Durfee stopped, as if that explained it all.

“Will you explain what that means for those of us who don’t know what a clove hitch is?”

“See, a clove hitch is used on sailing ships, and it can’t be pulled tight with the ends of the rope parallel.”

“And what does that mean?”

“It means that the weight of that poor woman’s body couldn’t have tightened the knot around her neck,” Durfee said.

“And how do you know that?”

“Sir, I’m a retired sailor. I know a clove hitch. I’ll demonstrate if you like.”

“That won’t be necessary,” said the chief justice. “I do some sailing myself, and you’re right.”

Jeremiah Mason rose for his cross-examination, understandably flustered after the judge’s words. “No questions,” he said curtly.

B
y noon, Alice was holding herself so still and tight, her shoulders were aching. The defense could no longer claim Lovey committed suicide, that was clear to her—but she was bewildered. The defense obviously was conceding nothing. When Mr. Hicks, the elderly coroner, tried to explain why his verdict was changed from suicide to murder, he stayed stubborn under Mason’s scornful questions as to what “new” evidence produced such an abrupt about-face.

“We just changed our minds, me and the jurors,” he said.

“No prejudices?” sneered Mason.

“Don’t know, Mr. Mason, we just changed our minds.”

Before Mason could explode, Greene moved swiftly to the jury box, arms spread wide, as if to embrace them all. “Gentlemen of the jury,” he said, “Mr. Hicks was brave enough to reassess the evidence and establish the truth.
This was murder.
From here, we will show you how that truth leads directly to the Reverend Avery.”

“What a travesty this is,” spat out Mason. “Total lies!”

The chief justice banged the gavel again. “Enough, gentlemen. We will reconvene at two o’clock for afternoon testimony.”

A
lice stepped outside the courthouse doors, looking for a quiet corner away from the chattering crowds. She hoped not to be noticed. But she saw disapproving glances with just a hint of wary curiosity, as if some invisible brand were etched into her forehead. For all the initial indignation in town over Lovey’s fate, she and the other mill girls were still outsiders. She mustn’t embrace too totally the idea of Lowell as her town. In truth, her identity drifted somewhere in the shadows.

She saw Samuel making his way through the crowd toward her. His face lit up when their eyes met, and her heartbeat quickened. He was moving sideways, shoulder first, working without effort, exchanging nods. It was as if a respectful sea was parting. He had held her close, had kissed her. She mustered a tentative smile.

“Hello,” he said quietly. “I’m glad to see you.”

“And I, you,” she managed. Where to go from there, she had no idea.

“The trial is going fine,” he said. “Mason is posturing. Greene has his strategy worked out.”

“I didn’t expect it to be so—so cadenced.” She tried to say it better. “It seems deliberately theatrical.”

“A trial can be like that,” he said. “All that matters in the end is what the jury believes. And they will believe us.”

He was standing almost as close now as when he had embraced her, and she felt a gravitational pull forward. But the entire town of Lowell crowded around them, what was she thinking? There was some anonymity in Boston, but none here. She took a quick step back.

He looked puzzled for an instant; then his face relaxed. Almost playfully, he reached up and tipped his hat. “Good to see you here, Miss Barrow,” he said formally. “We’ll talk again?”

“Yes,” she said.

He turned and blended back into the crowd. Eager hands reached out to shake his. He was disappearing back into his true life, and no amount of her pretending could change that.

At a quarter of two, the crowd began making its way back into the courthouse. Many of them were too full of their heavy midday meal to move other than sluggishly, but the chief justice’s impatient gavel warned them to hurry. Alice looked to the front of the courtroom and saw that she was none too soon. Greene’s afternoon witness was just now easing himself into the chair, looking out with evident misery at the crowded room.

She inhaled sharply. It was Benjamin Stanhope.

A
lice could endure the next round of questioning only by holding her hands clasped tightly and staring at the floor. Tell yourself it isn’t about Lovey, she thought. Just tell yourself that.

And yet it was. Question after question about the state of Lovey’s body, spelled out so graphically she wanted to weep. The rope around her neck, pulled so tight it had cut as much as two inches deep into the flesh. The bruises on her face. Her poor body, laid out on a stranger’s kitchen table, naked, for examination.

Benjamin Stanhope’s voice was reedier than usual, the cords of his neck bulging prominently as he talked, and his eyes seemed somehow those of a man held behind prison bars. But even though he sat uneasily in the witness chair, he held himself with dignity. He told of his initial examination, then of a hasty autopsy he was delegated to perform. Of finding the fetus, a fetus deprived of all chance of life. He tried to tell the court about the lethal vial of medicine Avery had given Lovey, but was shouted down by Mason. Hearsay, hearsay. Through it all he held himself straight, hands clutching his knees. Alice could see he was suffering. How strange he was. She was fueled by her anger, not defeated; clearly, for him, anger was an enemy.

A
lice trudged home slowly that afternoon, aching, not from hard work, but from the tension of holding herself still for this entire long day. Samuel had made no further attempt at conversation, which was obviously sensible, given where they were. But it was with a sudden longing for comfort that she once again climbed the steps of Boott Boardinghouse, number 52, opened the door, and was greeted with the rattle of pots and pans and shouts and general noise of the dinner hour from the adjoining dining room. She stretched out her arms, sweeping Mrs. Holloway—who looked a bit surprised—into a fervent hug. It was good to be here.

“I
think you should be the one going every day,” Jane said at dinner. She spoke into the confused silence that fell after Alice had recounted the day’s events. “I cannot imagine sitting there in such a crowd listening to lawyers shout about things I don’t understand.”

“No, we all need to bear witness,” Alice objected.

“Do they care?” demanded Jane. “It sounds as if they’re more interested in playing games than convicting Lovey’s murderer.”

“I don’t think I’ve explained it right,” Alice began.

“Yes, you have,” interrupted Mrs. Holloway. “Girls, do any of you want to spend time at the courthouse?”

“I wouldn’t mind getting away from the bloody looms,” Hattie said. There was something about the harshness of her voice that made her words sound mocking.

“You didn’t know her, Hattie. I’m sorry, but I think it should be one of her friends.” Mrs. Holloway said it gently, but there was no doubt of the firmness of her words.

“Well, I can’t,” said Mary-o. “I think I’m going to have to testify, since I was with her at the camp meetings.” She poked at her meat listlessly with her fork.

“I don’t want to be away from Ellie for that long of a stretch at a time,” confessed Delia.

Tilda cleared her throat to say something, but stopped when she began to cough. “Not me,” she finally said with weariness. “We all know that.”

Again, a silence.

“All right,” Alice said. “I’ll do it.”

“Nobody will look out better for Lovey’s interests than you,” Tilda said quietly.

And what did that mean? To somehow be an advocate for Lovey in that strange world of legal posturing at the Lowell courthouse? A fury was building inside her. Lovey, Lovey, what were you doing? Why did you have relations with that preacher? Why, why, why jeopardize everything? She waited for some vestige of inner calm to return before speaking. “I’ll bring paper and pencil tomorrow,” she said to the others. “And I’ll go earlier, so no one can deny me a seat.”

I
t was ten o’clock, and Alice sat alone on the porch steps, still shaken. She wanted to be laughing; reading stories; picking flowers instead of staring at them. Strolling to town on Saturday, admiring shiny leather boots in the window of Lowell’s general store. What would Lovey have said if she were sitting here right now? And the answer was there: Fight for me, but don’t drown; don’t let all this engulf you.

Behind her, the front door banged open. She did not turn around.

“You’re quite the loner, aren’t you?” a voice said.

“I like a bit of privacy every now and then.”

“So your gentleman friend is back in town. But he isn’t showing up tonight.”

Alice turned and stared at Hattie. “I’ll ask you to stay out of my business,” she said.

“Don’t you want to know why he isn’t coming?”

“I don’t want to hear anything from you.”

A quiet, self-satisfied chuckle. “Well, Miss Nose-in-the-Air, you will.”

“What are you saying?”

“Maybe there are things you don’t know about that he does. You so sure you know everything?”

Alice looked full at her, puzzled. “What are you trying to say?”

A snort from Hattie. “You people make me tired,” she said. She turned and went back into the house, letting the door bang again behind her.

S
amuel turned the knob of the door to the Fiske rooms in the Lowell Inn and saw, to his surprise, Daisy sitting in a chair, hands clasped together, a troubled frown on her face.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“I need to talk to you about something,” she said.

He looked at her questioningly.

“I’ve been hearing rumors.…” She paused. “It seems ridiculous, of course.”

He felt a stir of irritation. This was Daisy, all uncertainty, hints, innuendos—what was it this time?

“Just say it, my dear sister,” he said.

“I’m bringing this up because it is so preposterous, but on the other hand, he was out all that night—”

“Who are you talking about?”

Daisy, uncharacte
ristically, took time to choose her words. “You probably don’t remember, but when I hear these rumors, I—I feel worried. I’m talking about Jonathan.”

Samuel went still.

“He was gone all night when that girl from Lowell died.”

Samuel nodded slowly.

“He knew her. He’d been flirting with her the week before, he told me so.”

“I know. He flirts with all the girls. What are you saying?”

“I don’t know. He’s been so tense. He didn’t want to go to the funeral; Father insisted.” She looked at him with a flicker of uncertainty in her eyes. “I love him and I know you do, too. But I feel something’s not quite right, and I don’t know what it is.”

“Why would his not wanting to go the funeral be something”—Samuel groped for the right word—“disturbing?”

“People here at the inn keep whispering and then stopping when I come close. There’s talk going around, and I think it’s about Jonathan, and I’m afraid.”

“Daisy, what
are
the rumors?”

“I’ve just been hearing snatches of conversations, but some people are saying he was with the mill girl on the day she was murdered.” Daisy was visibly trembling.

“Why did you wait so long to tell me this?” Samuel tried to control the harsh astonishment in his voice, but he saw his sister cringe.

“I didn’t quite put it together myself, but I’m telling you now. Please don’t get angry.”

He saw her distress and squeezed her shoulder. “I’m sure there’s nothing wrong,” he said. There was no way his brother could be involved. These were just the types of vicious rumors that accompanied any high-profile trial. Yet he felt his heart hammering.