Miss Lizzie (24 page)

Barks of laughter shot from the crowd, and Miss Lizzie stopped moving forward. Another tomato flew through the air, and then another, and someone whooped with wild hysterical glee. As the first smacked against her, and then the second, Miss Lizzie stood immobile. Another flashed by her head, a miss, and still she did not move. I believe to this day that if I had been in front of her, facing her, I would have seen that throughout all this she did not once blink.

Then Officer O'Hara was slamming down the steps and across the walk, waving his nightstick and shouting, “Here now, stop,
stop
!” With a speed and agility I would not have thought possible, he sprang over the fence and stormed into the crowd. “
Idyots! Ya bloody idyots! Get the hell outta here, ya hear me!
”

This time the crowd, alarmed, did fall back. It splintered into clusters, pairs, individuals; it fractured, dissipated, before the fury of Officer O'Hara. He blustered and screamed, he wailed, he bellowed. He nabbed one straggler by the shoulder, swung him round, sent him reeling off down the street. He snatched another by the collar and roared into his astonished face, “
Git the hell outta here, O'Hanlon, before I break yer thick Irish skull!
” then hurled the backpedaling man away.

And they left: some running off, giggling like adolescent pranksters; some strutting, sneering back over their shoulders to demonstrate the tenacity of their valor; some skulking like beaten dogs. But they left, all of them, and Officer O'Hara stood there alone in the hot empty street, his back to me, panting with anger and struggle, slapping his nightstick against his palm—as though hoping for,
daring
, them to return.

I looked at Miss Lizzie. She turned and, her head lowered, she walked up the porch steps.

I raced to the entryway, twisted the knob at the lock, jerked the door open, and stood back.

She entered the house, pushed the door shut with her back, and remained there, leaning against it, holding her purse with both hands below her stomach. The front of her dress was splotched and splattered with tomato, bright yellow seeds and an ooze of shiny red liquid pulp. It was in her hair and on her face and it was dripping from both her arms. As she stood there against the door, her breast rising and falling with short quick sibilant breaths, a wet chunk of it fell from her hip and plopped against the carpet.

I had heard Miss Lizzie when she was angry, when Officer O'Hara had burst into her parlor and babbled about my stepmother; but my head was hidden in her afghan, and I had not seen it. Now I did.

Her eyes were narrowed, her lips white and so thin they had almost vanished. Blotches of reddish purple blossomed like evil bruises along her pale forehead and cheeks.

She closed her eyes. “
Poltroons!
” she hissed, her nostrils flaring. “
Bumwipes!
”

She opened her eyes and those gray eyes, darker now, stared at me. Or, rather, toward me; or through me; for I do not think she recognized me at all.

She blinked once, and then, without another word, she pulled herself off the door and stormed past me down the hall. She disappeared round the corner and I could hear her feet
thump thump thump
against the stairway as she pounded up the stairs.

Someone's knuckles were rapping at the front door. I turned, called out, “Who is it?”

“O'Hara!”

I opened the door.

“Bloody woman!” he cried, his eyes wide, his face dark red. “Had to have her own bloody way!” He twisted his nightstick like a washerwoman wringing a wet towel. “I
told
her. But did
she
listen? Oh no, not Miss bloody-minded Lizzie
Borden
. I
tried
to stop her, I
did
, ya know, before any o' this
happened
.”

“I know,” I said. “I saw you.”

“But
no
. Not
her
. She had to go to McGee's and get her
bloody fish
.” He looked down, shook his head. “
Fish!
” He looked up. “And just how is she now?”

“She went upstairs. She was … awfully upset.”

“And can ya blame her? Ignorant fools peltin' her with tomatoes? Bloody
idyots
.” He turned to scowl at the empty street, then turned back to me. “What sorta fish was it she was after, exactly? What I could do, I was thinkin', is send young Timothy down to fetch it.”

“Crab,” I said. “She wanted some crab.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Crab, is it? Now ain't that a bit—” He shook his head, as though suddenly remembering he was in the middle of a kindness. “Never mind. We'll fetch her the crabs.”

“I've got some money—”

“You just keep it, young Miss Burton, and you buy yourself some candy or some nice chocolate cake. I'm no pauper to be takin' money off a young girl.” He “hesitated, looked off down the hallway, then looked back at me and said softly, “I'll tell ya one thing, though, between you and me and the lamppost. She may be a horrible murderer, that Lizzie Borden of yours, but God knows she's as brave as a bull.”

With that, he nodded his good-bye and turned away.

I shut the door. I looked down at the carpet at the spatters of tomato, then looked up toward the upper rear of the house, where Miss Lizzie was.

My mind had been skittering away from one particular thought since the moment I saw her face. Now the thought came back to me. As she stood there, her face mottled, her body tight with rage, Miss Lizzie had quite literally looked angry enough to kill.

EIGHTEEN

MISS LIZZIE CAME back downstairs an hour later. I was sitting on the sofa, hunched over the coffee table, where I had arranged a deck of cards in the pattern of the Nikola system.

She had bathed and changed her dress, washed and dried her hair and wrapped it again into a chignon. She smiled at me. “I see that someone has cleaned all the vegetable puree off the floor. Could that've been you?”

I shrugged.

“I thank you,” she said. “And I apologize to you for letting my temper get the better of me.”

I felt that awful lumpishness which overtook me whenever I became embarrassed. “You don't need to apologize, Miss Lizzie.”

“Of course I do. That was a disgraceful exhibition, and I'm thoroughly ashamed of myself.”

I would have much preferred that she pretended (as I wanted to) that the incident had never happened, so we could return as soon as possible to being the people we had been before. Brightly I said, “Do you still want some crab? Officer O'Hara brought us some. I put it in the icebox.”

“O'Hara?” she said, bemused. “Did he? Well, that was really very kind of him, wasn't it? I'll have to repay him. Is he still outside?”

“I think,” I said, “well, I think that he'd be happier if you didn't, Miss Lizzie. I think it would just make him, you know … sort of upset.”

She looked at me for a moment, and then she said, “The diplomatic corps will be the loser when you become an aviatrix, Amanda.” She smiled. “You're right, of course. But do you suppose that it would be terribly improper for me to go outside and thank him for his kindness?”

She said this with such a gentle irony, affectionate and teasing, that I had to smile myself. “I think that would be nice.”

“Good. I'll just do that. And then you and I shall have a crab soufflé. How does that sound?”

“It sounds really good.”

She nodded. “Then that's settled.”

Miss Lizzie had been right about the rain. As we ate our lunch on the back porch, the storm lumbered in across the water, growling and flickering. The sea was black out there, below the bloated clouds and the dark draperies of rain; closer in, it was a drab slate gray, feathered with froth, ragged where the wind rattled over it. Along the shore the waves were growing larger: They smacked and hissed and sucked against the sand and left dull white streaks of foam slithering behind.

After the flat stagnant heat of the past few days, the gusts that swept through the screens were at first deliciously cool. When we finished the meal, Miss Lizzie lit a cigar and we sat there in silence and watched the squall roll toward us; both of us, I believe, savoring that heady mixture of humility and exaltation that only a top-notch thunderstorm can produce.

But such feelings require the detachment of distance. Not long after Miss Lizzie lit her cigar, perhaps ten minutes later, the wind was whipping bits of ash from its tip and snapping at her dress, and at mine. We gathered up the plates and scuttled with them into the house. Far off, thunder boomed and rumbled.

The rain began as we stood at the kitchen sink—Miss Lizzie washing dishes, me drying them—and it continued to drum against the rooftop all through the evening and long into the night. Father came by after dinner, water streaming off his topcoat. He hooked the coat and his hat on the hallway clothesrack, then sat down in the parlor and drank tea with us while he related what he and Boyle had learned.

The crime lab of the Boston police had completed its examination of William's clothing and determined that the stains were of Type A blood, the same sort as William's. They were also, unfortunately—according to the medical examiner, Dr. Malone—the same sort as Audrey's.

The local police had interviewed the employees at the Hotel Fairview and the attendants at both of the town's automobile service stations; but no one remembered the man William had described. Boyle had arranged with his agency for another operative to arrive in town tomorrow; the new Pinkerton would try to locate someone who might know the man or who might have seen him.

Father had spoken with Mr. Slocum, and the lawyer had recommended another local attorney, a Mr. Spencer, with whom Father had consulted. Mr. Spencer felt that, despite the apparent evidence, the state's case was weak. Tomorrow, he thought, it should be possible for William to be released on bail.

Seeing Mr. Spencer had obviously cheered Father. For the first time since Audrey's death, he was his old self, loose and relaxed. (We did not discuss the possibility of Audrey's being a blackmailer, and neither of us mentioned Susan St. Clair.)

He asked me, after some fairly broad hinting on my part, to show him a magic trick; and, when I (flawlessly) performed my Knock Out Speller, he was suitably knocked out.

So knocked out, in fact, that he seemed a bit uneasy, as though a part of him wondered why on earth a daughter of his might be bothering with something so outré as sleights of hand. But he put the best face he could upon things, which in this case was an uncertain smile; and to himself, I think, he merely hoped for the best. It was a reaction with which I would become familiar over the years, and not only from Father.

But he was too pleased about the prospect of William's release to be unsettled for long. Soon he was smiling happily again, and even joking, something he had not done, it seemed, for weeks.

He left around nine o'clock, promising that he would come pick me up at the same time tomorrow morning, to go see William. Shortly afterward, Miss Lizzie and I cleared up the parlor and went upstairs. The wind had died, but rain still pattered against the roof and the air was cool, so she tugged a quilt from the hallway closet and forced it on me before she smiled good night.

I undressed, flipped the quilt over the mattress, scooted into bed. How luxuriously comfortable it was, after those long sweltering nights, to snuggle up in a warm dry bed while the rain rustled overhead and the sea rustled against the shore. The day had been a long one, but it had ended well, and I felt cozy and secure. Miss Lizzie had apparently forgotten about those nincompoops with their tomatoes; Father was rested and happy; and William would be released tomorrow.

I remember thinking that the police would soon find out who had actually committed the murder, and I remember anticipating how pleased I should be to learn that it was someone about whom I knew nothing and cared less. Someone, for example (just picking a name at random), like Susan St. Clair, she of the flounced skirts and black net hose.