Alice + Freda Forever: A Murder in Memphis (7 page)

A
LICE 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.

W
HEN 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.

A
LICE SPENT THE MONTH OF
S
EPTEMBER
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 of 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.

It was becoming clear to Alice that each passing day brought her closer to the inevitable. Freda would leave for good, and they would never meet again. The Wards were determined to keep the young women apart, to encourage Freda to live a different life, to love another person. Alice had always known that this might happen, and that she would not be able to stand it. She would not stand for it, and had promised Freda as much.

And so, she carried the razor around every day in her dress pocket, just in case Freda came to town. It was only later that Alice’s father realized, yes, of course, Alice had left the room whenever he asked if anyone had seen it.