The Daring Ladies of Lowell (21 page)

“There was this funny, sharp-looking girl in the lobby tonight talking in a corner with some man who looked like a lawyer, and when she saw me, she turned away.”

“Maybe she is a witness.”

Daisy looked unconvinced. “Are you going to tell Father?” she asked.

He hesitated. There was nothing here, just wisps of gossip; nothing tangible. “No. At least, not unless I find out there is anything to be concerned about. I’ll talk to Jonathan first.”

T
he next morning was cold and gray, dulling the colors of the vibrant bed of flowers outside the courthouse. The crowd of men in heavy coats and women in billowing capes was as big as yesterday’s, but there was a different mood, a buoyancy to their shouts and chatter. While yesterday there had been frowns and shaking heads—a murder trial was of great rarity, after all—today there seemed to be an expectation of entertainment.

Alice looked around slowly; yes, it was in the air. Lovey as a flesh-and-blood person was already fading from thought. Transferred to the courtroom, she was tinder for the lawyers; transferred to the pages of the newspapers, she was a creation of paper and ink. The reporters were part of the general cheerfulness, leaning against the stone walls of the courthouse, hats tipped forward, trading jokes and banter.

“It always happens, Alice. Don’t let it discourage you.”

She jumped. Samuel was standing next to her.

“How do they forget so fast?” she said. Just having him standing so close made her voice quiver.

“It’s human nature, I suppose.”

But it bothered him, too; she could see that.

“This will be a difficult day,” he said. “The women who prepared Lovey’s body are testifying. It will be more”—he seemed to be searching for the right word—“more graphic than yesterday.”

“I’m prepared for that,” she said promptly. He lived in a world of propriety, where women were shielded from the rawness of life and death. He quite surely knew no other woman who had birthed calves, slaughtered chickens, and cleaned out a pigsty.

In some strange way, that knowledge seemed there in his smile. “I suspect you are,” he said.

Alice noted nervously that people were again glancing sideways at them.

“Is there anything happening I don’t know about?” she asked quickly. Hattie’s gibe from last night was still digging into her mind.

“Why do you ask?” he parried.

“There’s a new girl in our boardinghouse, and she’s hinting that there’s more to this case than I know.”

“Damn rumormongers.” It burst out of him. “Alice—”

The doors of the courthouse had opened, and the crowd was surging forward. She was about to be swept inside with the others. Heedless of glances, she grabbed his wrist. “You would tell me if something else were happening, wouldn’t you?” she said.

“Yes,” he said.

She released him, an uncertain expression on her face, and hurried inside.

Samuel watched Alice go, uneasy in his mind. She was vanishing into the courthouse—he could call her back, say something. But what it could be, he wasn’t sure.

Damn, he had to talk to Jonathan first. Immediately. He owed it to his brother.

A
lice had to scramble again for a seat, but she no longer held back from pushing herself forward. She would not be ignored and shoved aside—not now, not ever again.

The crowd hushed as proceedings began. Avery slouched deep into his chair, looking sullen, picking at his teeth with a toothpick. A quick whisper from Mason; Avery straightened, assuming a posture of prayer—hands folded, bowing his head slightly—a trick for the jury. Could anyone not see through this man, Alice wondered. There was an arrogance to him, an aura of scornfulness, as if he was here only to endure the fools who had so stupidly insisted on his presence.

First on the stand, called one by one, were the men who had helped load the body into Durfee’s cart, all solemnly swearing they did their best to observe as many details as possible at the scene of the murder.

A laborer named Benjamin Manchester started off, corroborating John Durfee’s testimony about the knotted rope that had been wound around Lovey’s neck. It was indeed a clove hitch, he said. “We use it for killing calves, passing the cord twice round the neck, pulling it horizontally. It couldn’t be tightened by someone hanging themself.”

“What else did you notice, Mr. Manchester?” asked Attorney General Greene.

“I found a piece of a woman’s hair comb about twenty yards away from her body,” he said. “It was lying in the weeds.”

Greene held a piece of a tortoiseshell comb aloft. “Is this the fragment you discovered?”

Manchester peered at it closely and nodded his head. “That’s it,” he said.

Greene then held another piece of a comb up, facing the jury. “Gentlemen, this piece of comb found in Miss Cornell’s tangled hair fits perfectly with the piece discovered by our witness here. I would ask that the two pieces of this comb be introduced as our next piece of evidence. As you can see, it is one entity. Something happened that snapped the comb.” He slowly brought the pieces together, and they were indeed a perfect match. “They would not be found so far removed from each other if there wasn’t a struggle.”

“Is there anything else?”

“Yes, sir.” Manchester paused and rubbed his hands together nervously. “It seemed strange that her bonnet was tied nice and tidy, because her hair underneath was a mess, with bits of leaves and twigs in it.”

“Yes, strange indeed.” Greene looked toward the jury. “Can anyone believe she tied that bonnet back on herself?” He cleared his throat. “And what do these facts mean, you might ask? I will repeat, they provide evidence that there was a struggle, that someone was there with Sarah Cornell, someone who set out to kill her. This young woman fought for her life—and lost.”

Mason rose. “All of this assumes a murder, which has not been proved,” he said. “This young woman, probably in despair at her own reckless behavior, killed herself. We will have our say in good time.” This last, with a cheerful nod, to the jury.

The sun had broken through the gloom outside, and it was obviously close to noon. After a few more exchanges with the lawyers, the judge declared court dismissed, to be continued that afternoon.

S
amuel was nowhere to be seen in the crowd outside the courthouse. Alice strolled around the building as slowly as she could, hoping to catch a glimpse of him. It gave her at least an aura of purpose, when in truth she had none at the moment. Sitting through this trial was akin to being trapped in a cage. There was nowhere to go; no room to show rage or even tears.

The courthouse sat on a slight rise, and Alice, from the steps, could see down the main street as far as the Lowell Bank. It seemed a long time ago, that day when Lovey grabbed her hand and pulled her up the stairs to meet the Fiske brothers. A long time since she had exchanged her first stiff, embarrassed words with Samuel.

Alice turned away from the view of Lowell and continued walking around the courthouse. People were already pushing their way back inside. Enough of this, he wasn’t here. Why did she search? She mounted the steps, holding up her skirt, forcing herself to be oblivious to all.

T
hree women sat wedged together at the prosecution’s table. Each sat perfectly still, staring straight ahead. They were the women who had stood around Lovey’s dead body, laid out on a kitchen table. The last people to see her as a human being. Did they cry, Alice wondered. She hoped that one of the women, at least, might have felt so inclined.

The first woman called settled her ample figure into the witness chair and faced Albert Greene as if he were an executioner.

“Mrs. Borden, we regret deeply having to call on you and these other honorable ladies to give what we know will be distasteful testimony,” he began. “It is not standard procedure to question women on such personal issues as these, but we are forced to do it today.”

Clara nodded and tightened her clutched hands.

“You are the wife of the sheriff of the county?”

“Yes,” she said. “And they laid her out on my kitchen table.”

“Will you describe, in as much detail as you can remember, the state of this girl’s body?”

“There were green marks on her knees,” she began. “Like she was forced to kneel in the grass.”

“What else?”

“Her poor body was beaten up in the belly area, and there were bruises all around her neck. Like thumb marks.”

“What else, Mrs. Borden?”

Mrs. Borden began to respond when a man in the front of the courtroom let out a raspy yawn. She stiffened. “We saw she had been dreadfully abused, and she was young and pretty and didn’t deserve this, and we did our best to clean her up,” she said. “This was on my own kitchen table, and I see that girl’s body there every day. There’s nothing to yawn about.” She lifted her chin and glared at the offender. A slight titter shook its way through the crowded courtroom.

“Fine, thank you.” Greene said, looking toward Mason, who shook his head firmly. No cross-examination here.

H
our after hour was filled with testimony from a string of witnesses reaffirming the prosecution’s claim that this death was murder, not suicide. Proving that Ephraim Avery had intimate relations with Sarah Cornell and had reason to want her silenced was taking longer.

Hardest to bear for Alice was listening to people who might have possibly saved her—but for a reluctance to intervene.

“The factory bell was ringing when I heard screeches, and we had two cords of wood to split up,” said a shop owner named Eleanor Owen, who appeared in a hurry to say her piece and leave. “I told the boy to open the door to hear more distinctly, but I did not hear the screams again.”

“So you did nothing?”

“There was nothing to do,” the shop owner said with a thread of indignation in her voice. “I had enough work on my plate.”

“I heard screeches and then stifled groans,” testified her husband. “I thought it was a woman and someone was beating her.”

“Could you locate the source of these cries?” asked Greene.

“They were in the direction of the stack where she was found. I heard the sounds for three or four minutes and started to go up there.”

“Why did you change your mind?”

The witness shrugged his shoulders, appearing a bit abashed. “Well, the screeches stopped.”

The entire courtroom went silent. The jurors, to a man, looked stricken. Greene said nothing, nor did the defense. It was a good thirty seconds before Greene spoke, and then it was with great weariness. “You may step down,” he said.