Miss Lizzie (7 page)

… a blue uniform, the slacks neatly pressed, the black shoes carefully polished. I saw that the sole of the shoe on the right had a notch in it, as though a small wedge of leather had been nicked away by a knife. The man squatted onto his heels before me, his cap held in both hands, his elbows braced against his knees. “Hello, sweetheart,” he said softly.

In his early thirties, he had a tanned face and closely cropped blond hair parted on the left. His eyebrows were also blond, and so was his mustache, which ended exactly at the well-defined creases—smile lines, Father always called them—that curled down from a slightly aquiline nose and bracketed a finely shaped mouth. What saved the face from being entirely
too
handsome was a tiny raised round mole, chocolate brown, lying at the curve of one chiseled cheekbone. Still, it was an extremely good-looking face, a face that one would be most gratified to see smiling stalwartly down as its owner, with a single deft sweep of his pocket blade, sheered the coils that bound one to the cold train tracks, already humming now to the vibration of the fast-approaching and relentless 9:05.

The owner of the face said to me, “My name is Officer Medley.” Then, as though embarrassed by the formality, he grinned. Sheepishly, engagingly, charmingly. “But you can call me Tom. Most folk do, hereabouts. What's
your
name, sweetheart?”

I looked at Miss Lizzie, who stood off to one side, her hands folded Mandarin style into the loose sleeves of her black dress. Her lips were set in a thin suspicious line. Older and wiser, she was no doubt less susceptible to the allure of looks and charm; and perhaps especially, given her background, when they were being demonstrated by a representative of the Law. But, fractionally, she nodded.

I looked back at Officer Medley. “Amanda,” I said. My voice still sounded distant, alien; but, warming to the man, I could feel myself begin, slowly, to rise up from the depths into which I had tumbled.

He nodded, smiling. “And your last name is Burton,” he said, “and you're from Boston. Isn't that right?”

I nodded. “But how did you know?”

He smiled his stalwart smile. “We're supposed to know stuff like that, it's all part of our job. Boston, eh? It's a lovely city, even for such a great big place. I've been there many times myself. Sometimes I'll sit at one of the benches along the grass and watch the boats go sculling up the Charles. Did you ever do that, Amanda?”

I nodded. “With Father.”

“That would be Mr. Burton, the stockbroker.”

I nodded.

“And I suppose he'd be back in Boston now? For the week, that is?”

I nodded.

“Well,” he said, and tapped me gently on the knee, “we'll be in touch with him directly, sweetheart, and I know he'll be here as soon as he can.”

Miss Lizzie said stiffly, “I have already made arrangements to apprise Mr. Burton of the situation.”

Officer Medley looked at her and smiled his charming smile. “Very good, ma'am. Thank you. That was considerate of you.”

Miss Lizzie gave him a curt nod.

He turned back to me and thoughtfully pursed his lips. “Now, Amanda,” he said, “I know you're upset right now, and believe me, I feel very bad for you. But I understand there's been a terrible accident next door, at your house, and it's also part of my job to ask you some questions about it. Do you think that'd be all right?”

I said, “No accident.”

He nodded, his handsome face serious. “Of course not, sweetheart. Your mother?”

I shook my head. “Stepmother.”

“Do you have any idea, Amanda, who might've done this thing?”

I shook my head.

He nodded. “I wonder if you saw anyone about the house today, on the lawn or in the street, who was acting strangely-like?”

Again, I shook my head.

“And you were where, yourself, this morning, Amanda?”

“Upstairs. Sleeping. The heat.”

He nodded. “Didn't you have breakfast, then?”

“Earlier.”

“And your stepmother ate with you?”

“Yes.”

“And when might this've been?”

I was about to answer when suddenly more footsteps, heavy and hurried, came pounding on the carpet, and then another policeman, cap still perched atop his head, exploded into the parlor. Shorter than Officer Medley, he was a heavyset man in his late forties with a round shining face and a bulbous nose. His skin would normally (I later learned) be florid with the ruptured veins and shattered capillaries of the valiant drinker, but now only two spots of color were visible, bright red splotches, clownlike, against the pallor of his face. His clothes were considerably less dapper than Officer Medley's, and considerably less well fitting: the circumference of his shirt, in particular, lagged several inches behind his girth, and a button had popped undone at his belly to reveal a diamond-shaped expanse of taut white undershirt.

“Jesus-Mary-and-Joseph, Tommy!” he cried in a horrified brogue, his eyes wild. “You should see what the evil bastards
done
to her! Blood all over,
buckets
of the stuff!”

“Frank,” said Officer Medley, slowly, patiently, but with a rising note of warning in his voice that even I could hear.

The other policeman, however, was too appalled, and too excited, to listen. “Like a slaughterhouse it was! My God, Tommy, I've never seen the like, never in me life! They hacked her up like an old
heifer
, bones pokin' through and brains spillin' out across the
bedsheets
!”

In a rush, everything came hurtling back to me—the walls, the bed, the gore, the mutilated human wreckage that had been my stepmother—and, with a gasp, I drew up my knees, wrapped my arms around them, and dug my face into the, afghan, my entire body clenched as tightly as a fist.

I sensed, more than heard, Officer Medley spring from his crouch. “God
damn
it, Frank!”

Almost simultaneously from Miss Lizzie: “You clod, you
oaf
! You insensitive
cretin
! How
dare
you?”

“Now hold on there just a minute, lady,” said the second officer. Nothing brings a policeman to his senses, reminds him of his significant position within an ordered society, more swiftly than a reproach of any sort from a civilian.

But Miss Lizzie overrode him: “Don't you
dare
tell me what to do, you insufferable lout. This girl has had a dreadful shock, and you come blundering in here like some comic opera
buffoon
. It will not do, it will not do at all. I'll thank you to leave my house at once.”

“Listen, lady, you don't seem to understand who it is, exactly, you're talkin' to.” And then, growing heated as he fully appreciated the intolerable indecency of it: “I'm the
police
, lady, the
police
, and there's been a horrible murder committed here, and if anyone's to be doin' any orderin' around, it'll be
me
that does it!”

“
Frank
,” said Officer Medley. “Let it go.”

“Did ya
hear
her, Tommy? Orderin' me about like a bloody drill sergeant? I'll have none of that from her, by God, not when likely she's the one herself that did the old lady in.”

“Frank—” said Officer Medley.

“Bloody, Miss Lizzie
Borden
, and
bloody's
the name of the game all right, where Miss Lizzie
Borden
is involved.”

“I think,” said Miss Lizzie, and her voice was chill, “that we have had quite enough of this. I am entirely aware of my rights, and of the child's. A lawyer will be here presently, and I feel constrained to warn you that I shall be—”

“A bloody
lawyer
, is it now!”

“Damn it, Frank!”

“—shall be discussing with him not only the legal means requisite to protecting the interests of the child, but also such matters as harassment and, of course, slander.”

“Slander!
Slander
, is it? Tommy, the whole
world
knows she whacked her ma and pa!”

“
Jesus
, Frank.”

“Unless you propose to make an arrest,” said Miss Lizzie, “I must ask you—” She broke off for a moment abruptly, and then said in a tone that was, if possible, even more chilled, “And
who
, might I ask, are
you
?”

“Da Silva,” said a voice, an altogether new voice. “The chief of police.” And the voice was so commanding, it seemed to resonate with such absolute authority, that even Miss Lizzie was for the moment speechless.

I looked up from the afghan. Miss Lizzie, Officer Medley, and the officer called Frank were all staring toward the parlor door. I turned.

The man who stood there was not exceedingly tall, perhaps a shade below six feet in height, but he seemed much taller because he held his body in a posture so stiffly upright that he might have been a Doric column. Beneath short curly black hair threaded with gray were two thick black eyebrows; and, beneath these, eyes of a color so dark that they too seemed black. A hawklike nose thrust out above broad sensual mouth. The dark face was square and hard, as though it had been sculpted from a single block of granite, a visage of flat planes and sharp angles. He had no mustache; the sculptor had not, perhaps, dared attempt one.

He was, I would have said, in his mid-fifties; but he seemed immensely fit: broad shoulders, broad and muscular chest, a stomach as flat as a slab of marble. He wore civilian clothes—black shoes, black trousers, white shirt, black tie—but he wore them as a military officer might, starched and pressed, all the creases razor sharp. One expected, almost, to see a swagger stick wedged beneath his arm.

It would have been wedged, of necessity, beneath his right arm—for he had no left. The left sleeve was neatly folded back and pinned to itself just above the spot where his elbow should have been.

If you browse through any popular magazine of those years following World War I, you will discover countless advertisements for ingenious and “undetectable” prosthetic devices: hands, arms, feet, legs. Before antibiotics and microsurgery, infection was almost invariably lethal, amputation a commonplace. And as a nation we had left more than the dead behind us at the Somme, the Marne, the Argonne.

But in the case of the man before us, one felt that for him a missing arm, particularly his own, was a thing to be noted and then totally ignored. One felt that he knew he could accomplish more with one arm than any other man might attempt with two.

He made a small formal nod toward Miss Lizzie and then turned to Officer Medley. “Medley,” he said. “Report.”

Unconsciously or not, Officer Medley had drawn himself up into something like a position of military attention. “The station received a notification from Miss Borden”—he indicated her with a nod—“that a murder had been committed at One Hundred Water Street and that a relation of the deceased was present at this cottage. Patrolman O'Hara and I were dispatched. I sent Officer O'Hara to investigate the murder scene while I attempted to interview young Miss Burton here, the stepdaughter of the deceased.”

“Alleged deceased,” said Da Silva. “Have you viewed the murder scene?”

“No, sir. Officer O'Hara has.”

Da Silva turned to the other policeman and frowned. It was a flicker of movement only, cold and hard but quickly gone. “O'Hara,” he said. “Your uniform is unkempt.”

“Sir?” said Officer O'Hara, who also stood at attention. Looking down, he spied the loose button. Sucking in his paunch, he promptly fumbled it back into place. He looked up again. “
Sir
.”

Da Silva said, “You visited the murder scene?”

“Yes,
sir
.”

“Report.”

O'Hara's military bearing deserted him. His stomach collapsed against his shirt and he shook his head heavily. “Oh, sir, it was horrible, sir,
horrible
. Blood all over and bits of her scattered about,
horrible
, sir. Like someone had gone at her with a cleaver or”—he glanced quickly at Miss Lizzie, glanced away—“or with an axe, like. Sir.”

Da Silva nodded. He turned to Miss Lizzie and for a moment stood appraising her. Then he smiled. His smile was as restricted and as cold as his frown. “So,” he said. “Been up to our old tricks again, have we, Lizzie?”

Miss Lizzie was, in her turn, appraising him, peering at him intently. Now, puzzlement in her voice, she ignored the familiarity of his tone and said, “Do I know you?”

Still smiling his small cold smile, Da Silva nodded. “You did once. A long time ago. I was a patrolman then. The one who examined the loft in your barn.”

“Da Silva,” said Miss Lizzie, and her voice went flat. “The Portuguese.”

FIVE

SUDDENLY WE HAD become transformed, all of us, no one actually willing it, into antagonists and audience. The two of them stood watching each other, neither speaking, Da Silva smiling that faint smile which had no warmth to it, Miss Lizzie expressionless. Silent, the rest of us watched them. Someone, probably, sooner or later would have said something; although I cannot imagine who, or what. But then, all at once (and it came as a kind of deliverance) we heard voices at the entryway and a rapping at the front door, still open, presumably, after Officer O'Hara's appearance.