Maplecroft (3 page)

It
was no great secret that the Bordens had difficulties. Andrew’s spinster daughters never developed any affection for
Abigail; and with the lot of them living under one roof, tensions could—and often did—overflow into arguments . . . the kind of arguments which nearby neighbors might hear, and pretend they hadn’t.

Not long before Abigail Borden sought me out for this first of many complaints, things at home had escalated in an unexpected and unfortunate fashion.

As I said, Andrew was older than his wife. He’d lived a full lifetime before ever meeting her. Whether or not she loved him I cannot speculate; but she was content with him, and by all appearances their union was a “good match,” as they say, even though he was widely regarded as a tight-fisted curmudgeon. Regardless, she was at ease with the decisions that had brought her to Andrew, an aged but still vital man—who had a fortune and a family, if few friends.

That said, I do not think she knew about his son. I’m not sure anyone did, until he appeared.

When William strolled into town claiming Andrew as his father, efforts were made to keep his existence quiet. I believe he stayed at the Borden home for a few days, though surely a hotel would have been a better choice. At any rate, I saw him coming and going repeatedly over a weekend once, and the timing was
deeply
suspicious: The elder patriarch was in the process of revising his will—a tense time in any moneyed family. But to a family so fractured already, and burdened with middle-aged daughters unlikely to marry? What added pressure would come with a shiftless bastard in search of an inheritance?

Little wonder Mrs. Borden was experiencing gastrointestinal distress. She’d hardly be human if she didn’t.

That’s why I gave her the harmless medicines to soothe her.
And that’s why I looked no closer, not at that time. The situation was so clear to me! So obvious!

Yet the matters were so personal, I doubted she would speak of them; and I didn’t think she’d tolerate my talking about them with any frankness. After all, this was a woman unwilling to converse aloud about her husband’s flatulence. Dragging his past indiscretions into the conversation could only make things worse.

Or that’s what I told myself when I sent her away, bottles in hand, her pendant clinking against one of them as she walked.

The next week she came to see me again, twice in quick succession. Still she complained of the troublesome stomach, though the pains were worse, she said. I suspected the beginnings of a peptic ulcer, but I didn’t go so far as to suggest it. The treatments were similar anyway, with the added admonition to rest, avoid stressful engagements, and alter her diet.

Abigail was already resting more than might have been considered strictly healthful, and she was scarcely eating as it stood. I was afraid that any attempt to more closely restrict her intake would lead to emaciation.

There wasn’t much I could do about her stressful engagements. They all lived in her house, or insisted they had a right to.

Before long, Andrew sought me out as well. His complaints were similar, though never quite as advanced as his wife’s—for Abigail’s digestive issues continued and she grew paler before my eyes. Had the circumstances surrounding her decline been any different, I might have noticed sooner that I’d made some egregious mistake in the diagnosis.

But in my slim defense, William’s interference had crossed a threshold from nuisance to criminal mischief. The authorities were called on two separate occasions; and on one of these, to
my serious concern, both Andrew and Abigail accused the wayward young man of trying to poison them.

Back then, I considered the accusation, turning it over in my mind. Given even what little I knew of William’s character, I couldn’t dismiss the possibility outright; and the Bordens
did
appear collectively weakened—even Emma and Lizzie were unusually wan. They too admitted feeling as if they’d eaten something tainted, though neither went so far as to accuse their half brother of any misdeed.

I offered my assistance, providing more bismuth, diluted nitrous acid, canella bark powders, and even charcoal in case they suspected poison in the future.

Over
the summer, the situation deteriorated.

I was busy—I was distracted by other patients, and by the gossip of William’s presence and behavior lingering over the place like a fog. The murky context of the Borden home life obscured the truth from me. It was not my place to cut through the word of mouth. I was a friend to them, yes, absolutely. Or I tried to be. But I was not family, and whatever was happening across the street was a family matter.

By the end of July the shouting had stopped. I know, because the weather was overly warm, even given the season. All of us left our windows open, but I barely heard a sound from my neighbors, though my wife said she’d heard strange noises—the kind that made her worry for their health. She had seen their shapes at the window, moving slowly past the wind-stirred curtains.

I told her she shouldn’t watch or listen for such things, that it wasn’t polite. She pointed out that it was difficult not to watch or listen, given that the house was scarcely twenty yards away
from our own, and if they wished to keep their problems private, they could close the windows or leave the city for their negotiations.

Then she said that in fact, Emma Borden had done just that. She’d packed up her things and called a carriage, and that was the last anyone had seen of her. (Somehow, this had escaped my notice, too.)

For that matter, William had left town as well a week previously—not entirely of his own accord. Andrew’s influence had persuaded the authorities to become more aggressively involved, and the young man had vanished without returning.

Assuming this was the case, only Andrew, Abigail, and the younger daughter were left in the house. No wonder things had quieted. I hoped this meant the end, and that their lives could return to normal.

Surely if left in peace, the remaining Bordens would sort out their differences and their health would be restored.

I’ll
never forget the night of August 3. I wish I could—but I’ve played it over in my head a thousand times, and it’s burned there like a book of photographs, flipped together to make a moving scene.

It was late, but my wife and I were still up. We were turning down the wicks and extinguishing the gas lamps, settling in for the night when we heard a loud thump downstairs against our front door, followed by a gruesome wail that sounded part human, part drowning animal.

My wife was alarmed, but I told her not to panic and I lit another lantern to carry downstairs. “Stay here!” I commanded over my shoulder. It wasn’t necessary. She’d already thrown herself into the water closet and locked the door.

Down the stairs I rushed, stumbling over my slippers and wincing with every pound upon the door. They weren’t the ordinary knockings of a late-night visitor, or the frantic beating of a desperate patient—a noise I knew quite well, after a career of delivering babies and attending the dying.

Instead it was a low, dull thud repeated without rhythm, and the cry came with it again. I wanted to shut my ears against the bellowing yowl, but I forced myself down the corridor. And there, shadowed in the colored glass of the small-framed window, I saw a shape flinging itself heavily, repeatedly, against the front door.

I froze, reconsidering my decision to answer. Whatever struggled on the other side couldn’t be human, could it? But then I heard one word and my resolve quickened.

“Help.”

A woman’s voice. Garbled, even in that single syllable. But recognizable.

“Help us,” she tried again, and I rushed toward the door.

I flung it open and held up my lantern. There she was, Abigail Borden—for all that I scarcely recognized her. How long had it been since I’d seen her? This change could not have dropped upon her overnight. What kind of failure was I as a physician and neighbor that this ghastly transformation had eluded me?

Her skin looked like that of a waterlogged corpse, doughy and far too white. She seemed swollen, and her hair was wild around her shoulders, falling down her back in seaweed tangles.

I croaked at her, “Mrs. Borden!” though there was no good reason I shouldn’t have used her first name. I’d known her as “Abigail” for years, but this did not seem like her, for all that I knew it must be. I wanted to impose some distance between
myself and this woman. Something was wrong. Any fool could see it. Even me.

I stammered again, “Mrs. Borden—what on earth is the matter?”

Her eyes met mine and they were rheumy and too large for their sockets, with surprise or stress or horror. She said, “It’s poison, I think.” Every word was thick in her mouth, and I wondered if she hadn’t been drinking. I struggled to convince myself of any new cause—alcohol? laudanum? Dependency could change a person terribly; this much I knew. I clung to this explanation of what stood swaying before me.

“Poison?”

She was unstable on her feet. I should’ve reached for her, taken her arm and steadied her.

In my career I’ve had my hands upon more revolting bodies than a layman is likely to encounter in a lifetime of trying. I’ve squeezed boils, soaked my hands in blood and pus, slipped in entrails, swaddled slippery stillborns, and pulled excrement from unwilling bowels by hand.

But I did not want to touch that woman. I couldn’t stand the thought of it.

All
my oaths were failed in that night.

I
opened my mouth to tell her something. Anything. A consolation, a suggestion. I have no idea what might’ve spewed forth if I’d had the opportunity to speak, but I was interrupted by a voice from across the road.

A low voice, another woman. Steady and authoritative. Firm and reassuring.

It was the younger Borden daughter, Lizzie. She stood on the
front porch watching her stepmother shudder and beg before me. With just enough subtle volume to carry the short distance between us, she commanded, “Mrs. Borden, come back inside.”

Abigail’s eyes widened yet further, until a seam of white showed all around her night-blackened pupils. Slowly she swiveled her head to look back at her house, at her stepdaughter.

The moon and the corner gaslight showed Lizzie in shades of gray, tinted yellow. She was motionless. She might have been an apparition, or a daguerreotype. I could not say that her face was blank, for that would be untrue; I should say instead that she did not appear conflicted. Even given the distance and darkness between us, I could see that she had come to some resolution.

(Though it’s easy for me to speak that way in retrospect, and it’s possible I did not perceive any of this. I may only be coloring the past with my knowledge of what was to come.)

I said, “Mrs. Borden?” and she pivoted to regard me once more, unblinking.

For a very short flash—only an instant—her features shifted, as if her old self had seized control in order to speak.

She told me then, in that narrow window between fright and madness, “We’re done for, you know. Whatever happens now, we won’t be saved.”

Then she backed away, nearly tripping over the top porch stair but catching herself at the last moment. She retreated without unlocking her gaze from my face until she reached the street, at which point she trudged back up to her own home and let Lizzie usher her inside.

As Lizzie closed the door, she too met my eyes. I saw only her certainty, and the moon’s cold reflection. And then nothing at all, as they both disappeared inside.

Confused and unaccountably afraid, I lingered, with the wind
gusting into my own house, flapping the curtains and rattling the leaves on the young rubber plant that shivered in the hallway.

My wife called out, “Dearest?”

I didn’t answer. I didn’t know how.

I shut the door and locked it, then in a fit of lunatic whimsy, I pushed the potted plant in front of the door. It slid against it with the dragging, grating scrape of unfinished ceramics. And it did nothing to make me feel less afraid.

The
next morning, Abigail and Andrew Jackson Borden were found hacked to death. It’s a well-known story by now.

Lizzie was the closest thing to a witness, and she said almost nothing. She’d found them, yes. Her father downstairs on the couch, reclined as if he’d been napping and caught unawares. Her stepmother upstairs in the spare bedroom, sprawled facedown on the floor.

Before the house swarmed with police and investigators, reporters and curiosity seekers, I was summoned by the maid, who arrived in a firestorm of tears, wails, and blubbered protestations. She was an Irish girl; Maggie was her name—or that’s all I ever heard them call her. She tugged on my arm when I opened the door, and she drew me across the street, telling me everything between gasps and gulps.

And I went, with all the dread of the previous evening foremost in my mind, weighing down my feet as I plodded the few scant yards over to my neighbors’ bloody abode.

The day was bright and hot. The sun bleached out all the colors, and some of the details, almost as badly as the night had just a few hours previously. And there was Lizzie, standing on the front porch waiting for me. Her mouth was fixed in a grim line, and her eyes squinted against the brilliant light of morning.

Just above her feet I saw dark stains spreading in a violent red against the light brown shade of her dress. She would later say, before a judge and jury, that her hem had become bloody when she stood beside the corpses, attempting to examine or rouse them.

(And at that same trial, I would testify on her behalf. I would recall the brown dress, and I would swear that the blood on her clothes was consistent with a concerned, frightened woman who’d approached the Bordens with intent to assist them.)

As I approached she said, “Doctor Seabury, my father and Mrs. Borden are dead. Something has killed them.”