Lizzie

17: Fall River — August 4, 1892

For the tick of an instant, she thought the laughter from below was part of her dream, Moira and the cook clattering across the villa courtyard, George calling to them, the women laughing. The laughter came again, Uncle John’s, deep and gruff, splintering the dream sunlight, replacing it with wakefulness and the reality of true sunlight slanting through the windows across the room. She lay in her bed listening to the voices downstairs, the room slowly coming into focus.

The clock on the dresser read a quarter past eight.

It was far too early; she had not slept well. Last night — the sound of Uncle John’s footfalls on the stairs, awakening her when she had just barely dozed off, the further small sounds of his preparations for bed. And later, the pounding outside, someone pounding on wood. She had known who it was the moment she’d heard the noise. She awakened now with the gnawing knowledge of who it had been.

She lay quite still in her nightdress.

The bedclothes felt damp beneath her and for a moment she feared she might be lying in a pool of her own blood. She sat up and searched the sheets. Nothing. She lay back against the pillows again. She had slept last night with the door closed; the room was hot and sticky now. She watched dust motes climbing the shafts of sunlight that streamed through the windows, and felt the slow ooze of blood between her legs, Eve’s curse. She could still hear voices below. She closed her eyes against the morning sun, listening to the droning voices, hoping they would lull her back to sleep again, willing sleep to come again and with it the images, scents and sounds of that summer lost in time.

“... spend the morning with my nephew and niece,” Uncle John was saying.

“Will you be leaving now?” her father asked.

“Not for a bit yet. Give them time to finish their breakfast.”

It was no use.

The sounds in this house. Traveling from one room to the next like restless spirits. She opened her eyes and looked up at the ceiling. She did not want to remember what she had done yesterday — tried to do, would have done — but the memory was full-blown upon her, as though it had been lurking at the edges of her restless sleep all night long, waiting to pounce upon her the moment she was fully awake.

“Never make an important decision when you’re flowering,” Alison once told her. “Never even try to think during your period.”

But, oh, this depression had been with her for the better part of two weeks now, long before her courses had begun, the monthly rage of God bubbling in the rank cauldron between her legs, mingling blood and pain with the contradictory passion that overwhelmed her each and every time; never did she so yearn for fulfillment and relief as she did during her term, when it was severely denied her. And yet, she had suffered similar depression before, those months of waiting for word from Alison — but that had been different, the anxiety then had been tinged with hope.

In the beginning, during all of that long, cold winter after her return to Fall River, the letters had been incessant, crossing in the mail more frequently than not, full of passion and ardor, Alison’s meticulous hand declaring undying love, promising liaisons in New York or Boston, Lizzie begging her to hurry soon to America, urging her dearest love to join her in that time of budding...

Alison’s familiar stationery arriving at the house some two or three times a week, Lizzie’s trembling hand accepting the envelopes from her father—

“I see you’re enjoying a nice correspondence with this English lady,” he said one day, inadvertently provoking a stab of panic — had he discovered Alison’s letters? Had he read them? That very afternoon, the house empty save for Maggie puttering about in the sitting room, she’d taken the letters from their hiding place beneath her undergarments in the bedroom dresser drawer, and burned them all in the kitchen stove, an act she regretted later when the flow of mail became a trickle and she longed for the reassuring words and passionate outbursts of the preceding winter.

It had seemed virtually certain that Alison would be coming to New York in May—

— but the trip was postponed until June (this after Lizzie had already booked a hotel for them in New York) and then again till July (“When the heat shall be intolerable, I know,” Alison wrote) and then till the fall (“I am aiming for no later than a September 15 departure, and have already made inquiries of the various steamship lines”), the letters less frequent now, once a week, and then twice monthly — and still no definite word that she had booked passage and would soon be on her way.

In October, Alison wrote:

There was a card from her at Christmas.

Nothing else.

And then... silence.

All through January Lizzie wrote to her daily at the Kensington address, suspecting at first that the Newburys had extended their stay in India (but would they not have come home for Christmas, as she’d said they would?), fearing next that Alison had contracted some dread disease in Delhi or Calcutta or wherever they had gone (she had mentioned lepers, hadn’t she?), believing then that Albert was intercepting her letters, and then that they had moved and were not receiving forwarded mail, and then that they had gone to Cannes during the winter season Alison so despised (but a letter to the villa was never answered), refusing to accept what was becoming more and more apparent, the unbearably painful realization that Alison no longer cared to answer her desperate pleadings.

In the silence of her bedroom, she reread by lamplight the last paragraph of the letter Alison had written before leaving for India:

Then what had happened? What was causing the silence now? Should she write to Albert? Had something truly dire befallen Alison?

She remembered a rainy afternoon in Cannes, the conversation with Alison that day, the distant sea surging.

“I should never want another woman but you. I should never dream of allowing anyone else to do to me...”

“Never say never.”

“Though I’m certain that the moment I’m gone, you shall tumble into bed with the nearest...”

“More than likely.”

She refused to believe this. She read and reread the last paragraph of Alison’s letter. What was it promising, then, if not a love as eternal as her own? In a blinding snowstorm at the beginning of February, Lizzie walked to the telegraph office in town and sent a cable she hoped would be clear to Alison while remaining cryptic to the clerk who took her hand-lettered message. It read:

“Miss what?” the clerk asked.

“Send it that way,” Lizzie said, and the clerk shrugged.

Alison’s answer did not arrive until St. Valentine’s Day. The same familiar hand on the same familiar stationery. The same Kensington address. And inside the envelope, appropriate enough on this day for lovers, a poem. No date, no salutation, no closing sentiment, no signature, only the poem in blue ink on the paler blue stationery:

The meaning was immediately clear to her. She read the letter, if such it was, yet another time, and then burned it in the stove together with the letter she’d received in October. The snow lashed fiercely at the windows as the flames licked at the blue sheets of paper. She replaced the lid on the stove and went upstairs to her room, and only then did she begin sobbing with the knowledge that what had happened almost two summers ago had been — for Alison, at least — a passing fancy, something best and soon forgotten, pressed into a memory book like the faded, dry and crumbling orchid she’d received as a farewell gift in London. Thine Forever, she thought, and sobbed uncontrollably. Days later, when her father asked if she had stopped writing to her friend in London, she replied simply, “Yes.”

Spiritlessly, listlessly, she got out of bed.

There was fresh water in the pitcher on the dresser; she had filled it last night from the tap over the pantry sink before going up to bed — voices in the sitting room, muted, the sitting room dark, she’d had no desire to talk to anyone then, she’d talked long enough to Alice Russell. The fears she’d relayed to her, still with her this morning, vague and nameless, filling her with uncertain dread. The house burning down around them. Perishing in flames. The fires of Hell. Damnation forever.

She poured water from the pitcher into the washbowl.

She dipped her hands into the water.

There’s no one! Come in, come in, we’re quite alone!

No one then to spy on them from the clifftops as they splashed naked in the gelid sea, no one here in Fall River either to offer her comfort or solace while she waited in vain for a further letter from Alison at home in her own country, her father returning from the post office empty-handed each day, we’re quite alone, Ah, yes, she thought, I was quite alone, and splashed water onto her face, and reached for the bar of soap in the scalloped white dish. Washing her face and her hands, she felt again the steady seep of her own blood, and thought, Alison was right, of course, so right about so many things. This was not the time for making decisions, she would be less confused when her monthly sickness had passed.

And yet, yesterday morning, the decision had not seemed at all preposterous to her, lost in hopelessness as she’d been, anonymous terrors consuming her — lost in guilt, lost in shame, lost in anxiety, lost in knowledge, lost in all save love — her menses full upon her and adding to her depression and her contrary passion. Alone in the privacy of the water closet down-cellar, she had syringed into herself a mixture of tepid water and carbolic acid, as she did each month to remove particles of dried blood and mucus and to dispel any disagreeable odor. Drying herself, fastening a fresh towel into place between her legs, pinning it before and behind to the band about her waist, her eye had lingered on the word acid handwritten on the brown bottle’s label in the druggist’s careless scrawl, and she had remembered all the talk the day before of poison, her stepmother certain that someone had poisoned the milk, the sounds later of her vomiting behind the closed and barricaded door between their rooms in this prison of a house.

And she had thought, Yes, poison, why not? An appropriate end to Eve’s sin, the apple poisoned with knowledge, the wrath of God satisfied at last in the completion of the cycle, poison unto poison, carnality purged. “To disbelieve truth is to invite deception,” Alison had said, and the truth in this house, beneath this secretive, deceitful roof, was that whatever transpired here was carnal and lustful, a sinful satisfaction of the tyrannous blood, loveless and doomed. Yes, poison, she had thought, and had adjusted her clothing and gone upstairs to tell her stepmother she was going out to do some shopping.

The thought frustrated, the purpose thwarted, the action aborted.

“Well, my good lady, it’s something we don’t sell unless by prescription from the doctor, as it’s a very dangerous thing to handle.”

“But I’ve used it before, you see. Prussic acid, that is. To clean furs. I want it to put on the edge of a sealskin cape. A soiled cape.”

The man’s obstinance. Her failure at yet another drugstore. The intolerable heat of Fall River yesterday, a century ago. The same interminable heat today, and the same persistent feeling of helplessness and dread. He’d been here again last night, pounding on the lumber pile out back. The same pale young man she’d seen at least a dozen times before, outside the house, in hurried conversation with Maggie. Just after her sister left for Fairhaven, he’d been here again, a shadow on the side steps. She’d seen no skirts; it had to have been a man.

She was suddenly confused again.

Her hands hovered over the bowl of water.

She splashed soap from her face, getting some in her eyes, reaching for a towel, her eyes stinging and beginning to tear. And suddenly there were real tears, mingling with the harsher caustic flow, and she buried her face in the towel and murmured aloud, “Oh, dear God, help me,” and knew He would not hear, knew He would not answer, for whatever codicil she had made with Him long ago had been destroyed forever on that Sunday morning in Cannes. “But I loved her,” she moaned into the towel, and silently begged God to understand that the secret she shared in this house was not the same at all, was instead carnal and base, lustful and degrading, and prayed for His forgiveness and His guidance, prayed He would deliver her from the flames into which she had thrust a tentative hand last March, when in her loneliness, longing and grief she had reached out to — Oh, help me, dear Cod, she thought, oh, please, dear God, I beg of you, and stood quite still by the dresser, the towel covering her face.

“Well, I’ll be on my way then.”

Uncle John’s voice, downstairs.

“What time is it?” her stepmother asked.

“Twenty of,” Uncle John said.

“Will you be back for dinner?”

“Oh, yes,” he said, “count on me.”

“Bridget, have you finished the dishes?”

“Almost, ma’am.”

Her voice.

“Have you anything to do this morning?”

“No, not particular, ma’am, if you have anything to do for me.”

The Irish lilt of it.

“When you’ve finished setting the table, I want the windows washed.”

“Yes, ma’am. How, ma’am?”

“Inside and out both. They’re very dirty.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She lowered the towel and looked at her tear-stained face in the mirror over the dresser.

Are there no looking glasses in all of Fall River then?

She had gained far too much weight this past year; her face looked bloated, her eyes puffed and swollen from the tears.

Plump? No, no. You’re what my mother might have called wöllustig.

She looked at her skin, far too pale, the fiery coloration of her hair contrasting violently with its ghostly pallor and the lifelessness of her eyes, red from her tears but drained of all other color.

How shall I face each morning without my dearest child to greet me with those pale gray eyes in her round pale face?

She dried her face and her hands, and then sighed deeply and forlornly, and put the towel back onto its rack, and stood uncertainly in the center of the room, as though not knowing what she wished to do next, or where she chose to go. She sighed again, and went at last to the door, opening it and looking out onto the landing to make certain no one was about.

In her nightdress she stepped outside and went to the large clothespress at the top of the stairs. There were nearly a score of dresses in the closet, winter- and summer-weight both. A single, green, summer-weight dress belonging to her stepmother hung at the very front of the closet, but the rest of the garments were hers and Emma’s, most of them hers and most of them blue; she favored the color; Alison said it complemented her hair and her eyes. This morning she didn’t care what she put on. The dress she took down from one of the hangers was a simple ready-made wrapper, fashioned of chintz and printed with a tiny gold floral figure on a black ground, lightweight enough for the sweltering day. She carried it back into her room, and closed the door behind her again. Moving slowly, as though pushing her way through the miasma of clinging heat, she took off her nightdress, examined it for bloodstains, and then dropped it in the hamper alongside the dresser.

From the bottom drawer of the dresser, she removed a fresh menstrual towel, unfastened the safety pins on her bellyband, front and behind, and then dropped the soiled, blood-soaked cloth into the slop pail she’d had no need to use during the night. She secured the fresh towel, hoisted the bellyband higher on her waist, and then removed from her dresser the fresh underclothing she would wear. A pair of muslin underdrawers. A white petticoat. A white chemise. It was too hot for stockings, and she did not in any event plan to go out today. She dressed hastily, slipping on the chintz wrapper, buttoning it behind and then putting on her combing cape — Alison’s fingers untying the ribbons, the cape falling soundlessly to the grass buzzing with hidden bees.

She brushed her hair without interest, tucked back a stray wisp, put down the brush and then stood uncertainly again, fearful of going downstairs, knowing she should talk to Maggie, ask her for answers to the questions that were hounding her, and yet fearful of a confrontation, delaying, making up her bed, folding her nightdress and putting it under her pillow, gathering up the undergarments she’d worn yesterday, placing them in the hamper, closing the shutters. There were some handkerchiefs she planned to iron today. She took them from the dresser top, surveyed the room and finally picked up the slop pail containing her soiled menstrual towel. She was almost to the door when she remembered that she was barefooted. She was tempted to go downstairs just this way, but she could visualize her father’s raised eyebrows, her stepmother’s silent look of disapproval. She found a pair of scuffed felt slippers — the last time she’d worn them had been at the farm — put them on, picked up the slop pail and handkerchiefs again and went out onto the landing.

The door to the spare room across the hall was open. The room empty and tidy, the bed made, the shutters closed. She was passing the open door when she glimpsed the candlestick on the dresser near the bed. She went into the room. It seemed cooler in here, the shutters closed, this side of the house facing north, away from the sun. She stood looking at the candlestick, remembering. And some of them rather old. One particularly handsome one used to belong to my mother’s mother. We keep it in the spare room across the hall. Emma says it’s eighteenth century. I would suppose it came from England.

She had never known her grandmother.

She did not remember her mother at all.

She picked up the candlestick.

There was a fresh white taper in it, and it almost toppled from its socket. She pressed it down firmly, impaling it more securely on the pricket. The antique brass felt silky to her touch, somehow soothing. There was solidity and weight to the long stem and the square beveled base; in a poignant rush, she recalled London again — and Alison. Fresh tears welled into her eyes.

She stood staring at the candlestick for what seemed a long while and then, sighing, put it back on the dresser. Turning toward the door, she stood uncertainly for a moment, forgetting where she’d put down the slop pail and the handkerchiefs, coming dangerously close to tears again. She found the handkerchiefs on the bed, and the slop pail where she’d left it, just inside the door. Sighing again, she went out of the room.

Her father was in the sitting room downstairs, slouched in the large chair near the mantelpiece, reading the morning newspaper. He looked up when she came into the room.

“Good morning, father,” she said.

“Good morning, Lizzie,” he said, and went back to his paper. He finished the paragraph he was reading and put the paper down. The Providence Journal. He rose, turned to the mantelpiece, took down the key to his room and, without saying another word, went out into the kitchen. She could hear him at the pantry sink, the water running there. Through the open dining-room door, her stepmother came into view, a feather duster in her hand.

“Oh,” she said, startled. “Good morning, Lizzie.”

“Good morning.”

“How do you feel?”

“Hot.”

“I meant otherwise.”

“A little better.”

“Will you have some breakfast then?”

“I don’t think so.”

“There’s still coffee on the stove, should you want any.”

“Thank you.”

“It docs seem hotter today, don’t you think? Than yesterday?”

“Yes.”

“Yes,” her stepmother said, and nodded. “Lizzie, I’m having company on Monday, and I want everything in order. Please leave the door to the spare room shut, will you? When I’ve finished up there?”

“Why would I go into the spare room in any case?”

“Well, if you should. Remember to close the door again, will you?”

“I’ll remember,” she said.

“Do you know what you’d like for dinner?”

“Will you be going out?”

“When the room’s done. I’ll be ordering meat, so if you can tell me what you’d like...”

“I don’t want any meat.”

“What would you like?”

“Nothing. I’m still not feeling well.”

“I thought you said...”

“Yes, but not quite myself yet.”

“There must be something going around. A great many people in town seem to be sick. I suppose Dr. Bowen was right. I suppose it wasn’t poison, after all.”

“I should hardly think so.”

“I can’t imagine anyone wanting to poison us, can you?”

“No one I can think of.”

“Still, it might have been the milk. With so many people sick, it could be the milk, you know.” She shook her head, clucked her tongue. “Well, I’ll be going as soon as I’ve done the pillows,” she said. “Are you sure you don’t want...?”

“Won’t you change your dress before you go out?”

“Whatever for? What’s wrong with this one?”

“It’s so hot today. I only thought it might be too heavy.”

“No, it’s good enough. I’ve left some wrappers in the parlor... would you direct them for me, please? While I’m gone?”

“I will.”

“Well, I’ll see to the guest room then,” she said, and went out.

Lizzie waited. She could hear her father passing through the kitchen again, and then his footfalls on the steps leading up to his bedroom. She took a deep breath and went into the kitchen. Maggie was at the pantry sink, rinsing dishes. She looked somewhat pallid this morning, her pretty face sheened with perspiration, her dark hair braided close to her head, a tall, well-formed woman with a narrow waist, flaring hips and a firm, high bosom. The two top buttons of her dress were unbuttoned. The clock read ten minutes to nine. Above, Lizzie heard her father rummaging about in his bedroom. She set down the slop pail, and put the handkerchiefs on the kitchen table. They had not yet exchanged greetings. She knows, Lizzie thought. She’s avoiding me.

“What will you want for breakfast?” Maggie asked, coming back into the kitchen.

“I don’t know as I want any breakfast,” Lizzie said. “I may just have some coffee and cookies.”

“There’s coffee on the stove. Shall I pour some for you?”

“I’ll get it myself.”

She went to the cupboard and took down a cup and saucer. At the stove she poured the cup full, and then took a molasses cookie from the jar on the counter.

“Did you sleep well last night? ” she asked.

“Not very,” Maggie said.

“A bit noisy, wasn’t it?” Lizzie said, and looked at her.

Maggie turned suddenly, one hand coming up to her mouth, and lurched toward the kitchen entry and the back porch. The screen door slammed shut behind her. Lizzie rose from the table and went to the back door. Peering through the screen, she saw Maggie near the grape arbor, doubled over, vomiting. Alarmed, she was about to go to her when she heard her father coming down the back stairs. She returned to the kitchen, took the handkerchiefs from the table and carried them and her coffee cup into the pantry. Standing at the sink, she alternately sprinkled the handkerchiefs and sipped at her coffee. She could hear her father in the kitchen now. She gathered up the damp handkerchiefs, left the coffee cup on the edge of the sink and went out to him. He was standing near the stove, looking down in distaste at the slop pail Lizzie had left beside it. The key to his bedroom was still in his hand. He was dressed for town, wearing a black vest and trousers, black Congress shoes, his black Prince Albert coat.

“Will you be going to the post office?” she asked.

“I’m not sure,” he said.

“I have a letter to Emma. I wish you’d mail it for me.”

“Where is it?”

“I have it here,” she said, and took the letter from the pocket of her dress.

“I may go, I’m not sure,” he said, but he accepted the letter.

“When will you be leaving?” she asked.

“In a few minutes,” he said. He looked again at the slop pail. “Get rid of this, would you?” he said, and walked out into the sitting room. Lizzie lifted the lid on the cookstove to check the fire. There were coals glowing within. She set her flatirons on the stove top to heat them. In the sitting room she heard the click of the key as her father replaced it on the mantelpiece shelf. She took another cookie from the jar and went out into the dining room, nibbling on it as she stood by the windows. Her father came in again.

“Don’t go getting crumbs all over the floor,” he said. “And see to that slop pail, will you?” He went out into the kitchen. She heard the screen door slamming shut. She watched him as he came into view on the walk. Across the yard she could see Adelaide Churchill in her kitchen, looking up, glancing at her father where he stood. He walked past the dining-room windows then, on his way toward the street. Sighing, she went into the kitchen, picked up the slop pail, and carried it through the kitchen entry to the back stairs. The stairwell was dark; she went down to the cellar slowly and cautiously.

It was somewhat less gloomy downstairs, where light filtered through the ground-level windows. She found her way to the washroom. There was a pail under the sink there. It contained the soiled menstrual towels she had used these past several days. She shook out the slop pail. The towel she’d replaced earlier this morning fell onto the other blood-stained towels in the pail under the sink. She opened the water tap and rinsed out the slop pail. Water tinted faintly red ran down the drain.

The house was utterly still when she came upstairs again.

“Mrs. Borden?” she called.

There was no answer; her stepmother had gone as well. She put the clean slop pail down near the stove, tested her irons, heard a sound outside the screen door and went to it. Maggie was standing there, just outside, holding a brush, setting down a wooden pail of water.

“Maggie,” she said, “can you come inside for a moment? I’d like to talk to you.”

“I have to wash my windows,” Maggie said.

“They can wait. Please come in, won’t you?”

“I have to get started.”

“He was here again last night, wasn’t he?” Lizzie whispered.

“I don’t know who you mean.”

“You know who I mean. He was here pounding on the lumber pile out back...”

“I heard nothing.”

“... trying to attract your attention.”

“I have to do my windows,” Maggie said.

“Come in here,” Lizzie whispered sharply. “I won’t talk to you through the door this way!”

“I have to do my windows,” Maggie said again, and turned away from the door. Lizzie stood watching her through the screen as she walked toward the barn, took the pin from the hasp and opened the door. She was inside the barn for just a moment; when she came out again, she was carrying the long handle for her brush. She closed the door again, put the pin back into the hasp and then came back to where she’d set down her pail and brush. Lizzie stood watching her until she disappeared from her angle of vision, moving past the corner of the house to the other side of the yard.

She stood motionless inside the screen door.

She was suddenly trembling.

And confused again.

She felt an overwhelming need to tell Maggie about what she’d tried to do yesterday, what she would have done if only she’d been successful in her attempt to buy the poison. But at the same time, given her very real decision, acknowledging that she would have made a covenant with death, might still do so if she could not shake free of this persistent depression, why then was she so eager to divulge this to Maggie? Did she expect sympathy? Penitence? What? And why, simultaneously, was she so troubled by the young man’s reappearance last night, for certainly it was he, there was no doubt about that in her mind. If indeed she wished to die, had in fact made every effort to purchase the poison that would have accomplished the deed in a convulsive instant — or so she believed — then why should it matter what Maggie thought, what Maggie did or felt, how Maggie responded to the terrible knowledge that her mistress wanted to kill herself?

We cannot afford the luxury of allowing any female employee to believe mistakenly that she — because of some indiscretion — is the true mistress of the house.

Alison’s words, the oracle of Cannes dispensing wisdom in the privacy of an indiscreet bedroom, the sheets damp with their spent passion, the sunlight streaming through the arched window to touch their naked bodies. But where was Mistress Puss on that cold and rainy day last March — It’s always raining when children make their most important discoveries, isn’t it? — her sister away, her stepmother and father away, the house as empty and as still as it was now, where was she then when in her loneliness and need Lizzie had ventured like a child to touch a hand slippery with suds, her heart leaping when Maggie at the sink did not recoil, and discovered in her a longing as deep as her own? Never, but never, let a female employee tempt your fingers or your lips. You shall be eternally sorry if you do, I promise you.

Ah, yes, Alison’s promises, swiftly forgotten. And her own as well, equally fragile, the pillbox she’d bought for her in the Burlington Arcade, Thine Forever, though eternity had lasted far too short a while, the summer contract broken on that dank and dismal day when she’d unbuttoned Maggie’s chemise to reveal her breasts (You have no idea how I’ve been tempted by the sight of voluptuous young Moira in her bath, those frisky Irish breasts spattered with freckles) the nipples stiffening to her touch, her mouth hungrily receptive.

An indiscretion, to be sure. Even now, she wondered whether she had been propelled less by passion than by a need to strike back at Alison, to prove to the woman who had abandoned her that she herself — now that the green leaf of loyalty had fallen and the white rose withered — was entirely capable of watering their love with the blood of usurping tyranny and allowing her insistent need to grow green again in her own country.

All this, you taught me, she remembered thinking on that day while lovelessly they embraced in the room upstairs, the rain lashing the windows. All that I am, you made me, she thought, and knew this to be untrue even as the words found slippery purchase in her mind: she could not blame Alison for what she was; perhaps she could not even blame her for the discovery of herself. The woman shivering beneath her on that stormy day, unskilled, virginal, a servant in every sense, could have been any woman, might indeed have been had Lizzie found the courage to satisfy her need beyond the four walls of this confining house. In helpless rage, lovelessly, she had ravaged her, suffocating on her peasant aroma, clinging to her when her release — less tumultuous than what she had known with Alison — shuddered through her body to reaffirm her female essence.

Her heart was pounding.

On the south side of the house, she heard the Kelly girl calling, “Bridget! Yoo-hoo!” and she went swiftly through the dining room and into the sitting room where she looked through the window, standing back a bit, not wanting to be seen, not wanting Maggie to think she was spying on her. Maggie put down the brush and pail and walked to the fence where the Kelly girl was waiting for her. She watched as they talked, servant to servant. The Kelly girl giggled. Lizzie watched. She could not go out to her; she could only wait.

She went into the front parlor, found the envelopes her stepmother had left, found as well the handwritten list of addresses, and directed them for her, leaving them in a neat little pile on the table. She went back into the sitting room. She sat in her father’s chair, picked up an old magazine, and leafed through it. She looked through the newspaper. The clock ticked loudly. The sitting-room windows were closed, Maggie had undoubtedly let them down before going outside for her water; the house was suffocatingly hot with all the windows closed. Maggie was tossing water up onto the closed windows now. She did not want her to think she was watching her every move. She rose abruptly and went out into the kitchen to test her flats again. They were still not ready; on a day like today, she would do better to set them out on the sidewalk.

On the counter under the windows, she noticed a scrap of paper with an upturned water glass holding it down like a paperweight. She lifted the glass, looked at the paper. It was a note from Dr. Bowen’s daughter, directed to Emma, expressing sorrow at having missed her before she’d left for Fairhaven, but promising to call again when next she passed through. She put the note under the glass again, trying to recall when Emma would be home? She could not remember. Maggie was outside the dining room now, splashing water onto the windows. She went into the dining room and rapped on one of the closed windows. Maggie looked in at her. She raised the window.

“Come in here!” she whispered.

Maggie said nothing.

“Do as I say!”

Maggie glanced over her shoulder toward the back yard. She nodded, almost to herself, and put down the water pail. In a moment the screen door opened and clattered shut again. She did not come completely into the dining room. She stood in the open door connecting with the kitchen.

“Did you hook the screen door?” Lizzie said.

“Yes.”

“Who is he?” she said.

“I don’t know who you mean.”

“Your beau.”

“I have no beau.”

“Don’t lie to me!”

“He’s... no one.”

“He’s someone.”

“I scarcely know him.” Maggie shrugged. “He comes by sometimes. He talks to me.”

“About what?”

“Things.”

“What things?”

“Idle chatter,” Maggie said, and shrugged again.

“Tell me what he says.”

“He... he’s asked to call on me.”

“And what have you said to him?”

“I told him he couldn’t.”

“You’re lying again!

“I swear it’s what I said!”

“Then why does he keep coming here?”

“I cannot say.”

“Cannot? Or will not?”

“I told him not to, I swear I did.”

“Then why was he here again last night? He was here, wasn’t he? You heard him, didn’t you?”

“I heard him, yes.”

“Then why did you lie to me earlier?”

“I didn’t want to upset you. I didn’t want you to think...”

“Think what?”

“That I was listening for him.”

“You were, weren’t you?”

“No, I swear it! But he made such a frightful racket...”

“Yes, and what was he clamoring for, Maggie? A bit of Irish pussy?”

“Miss Lizzie, please, I must wash the windows, please, oh, please,” she said, and turned away suddenly and walked swiftly through the kitchen. Lizzie followed her at once, running after her, catching her at the screen door as Maggie was unfastening the hook. She caught her by the wrist. The hook fell loose from her hand.

“Come with me,” she whispered.

“Mrs. Borden will...”

“Never mind Mrs. Borden!”

Still holding her by the wrist, she pulled her back into the kitchen, and then into the sitting room, words spilling from her mouth as she dragged her through the rooms, “Mrs. Borden, is it? Afraid of Mrs. Borden then? And what will Mrs. Borden say when I tell her our sweet Irish virgin, pure as the driven snow, oh yes, oh my, has been hanging on the fencepost like a cat in heat,” aware of the uncurtained windows, aware of the neighbors, but refusing to let go of her wrist, “idling with strange men when she should be doing the work she’s paid for, what will Mrs. Borden say to that?”

Her heart was beating fiercely. In the front entry, as they approached the stairwell, Maggie tried to pull away. She gripped her wrist more tightly (“You’re hurting me,” Maggie whispered) and pulled her toward the stairs, the words still pouring forth in a torrent, helpless to stop the words, wanting to tell her of what she’d almost done yesterday, but instead spewing threats she knew she could not possibly enforce, “Would you like to lose this job, Miss, join the town’s Chinamen perhaps, wash the laundry of the millworkers, have the toughs and brawlers pawing you like the slut you are,” bitter accusation, “or have they already done so, have you peddled pussy on a stick like a common tart,” solemn reprimand, “for shame, for shame, Miss, confess yourself to God for the harlot you’ve become,” the door to the spare room closed, just as her stepmother had left it, “Mrs. Borden indeed, we shall fill her ears with more than dirty windows, shan’t we? Young men loitering about for a glimpse of our fair Maggie’s limbs, or have you already shown him more? Has he lingered there at your maiden well, Miss Puss, get in there!” she said, and hurled her through the open door into her bedroom, snapping her out like a whip so that she staggered into the room, almost falling. Lizzie closed the door behind them.

“If you run, I shall come after you,” she said.

“I shan’t run,” Maggie said.

“Undress,” she said.

“Miss Lizzie...”

“Take off your clothes, do as I say!”

“Miss Lizzie, please. Your mother will be back.”

“She’s only just left.”

“I saw her go at a little past nine.”

“Then look at the clock, Miss Puss. What time do you read on it?”

“Twenty after.”

“Has she had time to do her marketing and return?”

“What if your father...?”

“He’s never back till ten, ten-thirty.”

Maggie sat on the edge of the bed. Her eyes darted. To the closed door. To the shuttered windows. There was fear on her face. And something else. Something Lizzie knew well.

“We have time,” Lizzie said, and smiled.

They undressed swiftly, aware that this suspended moment was a stolen one, a theft repetitive of all the others over the past five months and more, burglars both, their bodies glistening with sweat, virtually naked to each other now, though Maggie still wore her underdrawers open at the crotch and Lizzie wore like a chastity belt the paraphernalia of her monthly visitation. “I have fleas,” she whispered, and Maggie murmured, “Aye,” the Irish lilt of it, “You must not touch me there,” and Maggie murmured “Aye” again and spread her legs to her, and pulled her down to her and over her, and their lips met.

It was always, and oddly, Alison who moaned beneath her whenever she was with Maggie, Alison whose hands touched her breasts (though the insistent fingers now were surely Maggie’s), Alison for whom her nipples stiffened, Alison for whom she throbbed below. She could not distinguish now between the flow of her passion and the interminable seeping of her menstrual blood; they were liquidly mingled, as essentially female as she knew herself to be. And, as when she’d lain with Alison in a past so long ago it seemed never to have happened, her passion now was edged with tenderness. Kissing and fondling this woman she did not love, her voice became gentle, and she apologized for the cruel words she’d hurled at her not moments before, explaining needlessly that this was her time of the month, and that she was always impatient during her flowers, inclined to lose her temper, easily irritated, though passionate as well, she added slyly, and perhaps too ferocious in her ardor (her hand tightening on Maggie’s breast to demonstrate, Maggie catching her breath on a small gasp) and so was to be forgiven any outburst, for surely Maggie knew she loved her (the lie sticking in her throat) and would never in her life do anything to harm her.

And then, as if she truly loved her — and here she became confused again — she found herself telling her of what she’d almost done yesterday, wanting to share it with her, wanting in this timeless moment to be able to tell someone else about the fears that besieged her day and night, wishing simultaneously that Alison might be here instead, their heads side by side on the pillow, their limbs entangled, their hands searching, Alison with her knowledge and her wisdom, Alison who would offer her the love and guidance she needed.

“I went to buy poison,” she said, and watched Maggie’s face. “Prussic acid.”

Maggie caught her breath. “Was it you, then, who poisoned the milk?”

“The milk wasn’t poisoned,” Lizzie said.

“Mrs. Borden...”

“No, it wasn’t poisoned. Dr. Bowen said it wasn’t.”

“Then what...?”

“I wanted it for myself,” Lizzie said. “To kill myself.”

Maggie stared at her.

“Because of you and your beau,” she said, lying again, or at least thinking she was lying, no longer certain where the truth actually lay.

“I have no beau,” Maggie said.

“For the heartache you and your beau have caused me,” Lizzie said, and again wondered if this were the truth. Where was the truth in this house? “Do you want me to kill myself?” she whispered.

“No, Miss Lizzie.”

“Then you must promise you shall never see him again.”

“I promise,” Maggie said.

“On your mother’s eyes.”

“Yes,” Maggie said.

“Swear,” Lizzie said.

“Yes,” Maggie said, in a rush, “on my mother’s eyes, I swear I shall never see him again.”

Lizzie smiled. “Why are you trembling?” she asked.

“I’m not trembling.”

“To your toes,” Lizzie said. “Tell me why.”

“You know why.”

“Tell me. Say it.”

“I want you,” Maggie whispered.

“It’s been far too long, hasn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Say it.”

“It’s been far too long, yes.”

“But what is it you want?”

“Everything. You.”

“Now? This instant?”

“Yes, now,” Maggie said.

“But what of Mrs. Borden?” Lizzie said, smiling, teasing her now. “Surely her marketing is done by now, isn’t it?”

Maggie turned swiftly to look at the clock.

“There’s time,” she whispered.

“But it’s almost nine-thirty.”

“There’s yet time!” Maggie said urgently.

“And Mr. Borden? Are you not fearful of his return?”

“He’ll be at his bank, his banks. We’ve time yet.”

“Then it shall be now, of course,” Lizzie said, and again smiled.

“Yes, now,” Maggie said.

“Will you not ask for it then?”

“Yes, now, I want it.”

“Then ask your Mistress Puss politely,” Lizzie said.

“Yes, please.”

“Am I not your mistress then?”

“You are, yes, you know you are.”

“Then can you not address me as...?”

“Mistress Puss, yes. Please, Mistress Puss,” she said, and reached out to pull Lizzie to her.

“Lizzie? Is that you?”

Mrs. Borden’s voice.

On the landing outside.

“Lizzie?”

Both women sat immediately upright.

Footsteps approached the door.

The door opened.

Mrs. Borden stood in the hallway, looking into the room, aghast at what she saw. She was still wearing the heavy dress she’d had on when she left the house, but another dress was folded over her arm, the green dress that had earlier been in the clothespress at the top of the stairs. She’s come back to change her clothing, Lizzie thought in an instant. The heat outdoors has driven her home! How long had she been standing outside there on the landing? How much had she heard? And what difference did it make; her eyes now recorded all there was to see, the two naked women, Maggie reaching for her chemise and clutching it to her breasts, Lizzie’s mouth open in surprise.

“Oh,” her stepmother said.

Only that.

She continued staring into the room, knowledge narrowing her eyes. She shook her head as though trying to clear it. Maggie was scrambling off the bed now, hurrying to where she’d earlier hurled her dress to the floor, her stockings lying like twisted black snakes beside it.

“Dress yourselves!” Mrs. Borden said sharply. “The shame! Your father shall know of this!”

Lizzie leaped off the bed.

“No!” she said. “Wait!”

But for what? What was there to say to this dumpy little woman who stood in the hallway like a messenger of God come to strike her dead as surely as the prussic acid would have yesterday? How to explain, what to explain, to this woman who stood there motionless, her mouth set, her eyes blazing with the discovery she had made? The words delayed her stepmother for a moment, but only that, as though their urgency compelled her to reexamine the evidence of her own eyes, her hesitation allowing Lizzie time enough to rush to the door and out into the hallway where Mrs. Borden, shaking her head again, now turned toward the stairway leading below. Lizzie moved swiftly, blocking her path as if trying to keep her from a father already in the house.

“Get out of my way,” Mrs. Borden said.

The women stood there in ludicrous confrontation, Lizzie naked save for her bellyband and the menstrual towel pinned to it, Mrs. Borden sweltering in her heavy dress, the lighter-weight dress still folded over her arm.

“Do you hear me?” she said.

“You mustn’t tell him,” Lizzie said.

“I shall tell him all!” her stepmother said fiercely. “Get out of my way!”

“No,” Lizzie said, and shoved out at her, wanting only to keep her from the steps that led downstairs, fearful she might at once go running into the street to search for her father, babble to him what she had witnessed in the bedroom. Mrs. Borden stumbled back from the force of the push and almost lost her balance, arms coming up, the green dress falling to the floor, her eyes opening wide in astonishment. Lizzie took a step toward her, immediately penitent, her hand outstretched.

“I’m sorry,” she said at once. “I didn’t...”

“Don’t touch me!” her stepmother said.

“Mother, I...”

“Mother?” Mrs. Borden said. “Don’t you dare!”

“Please, I meant no...”

“Stay away from me!”

“I beg of you...”

“Monster!” Mrs. Borden said. “Unnatural thing!”

The words were like a physical blow, staggering her.

In blind retaliation against the words, she bunched her fist as a schoolgirl might and struck out ineffectually at her stepmother, the punch only glancing off her shoulder, her eyes nonetheless widening in fear. Lizzie’s own fear was suddenly replaced by unreasoning anger. Her stepmother’s look of terror, her instantly defensive posture, served only to confirm the hurtful surmise that she was indeed monstrous and unnatural, a creature capable of inflicting serious harm. She immediately rejected this deformed image of herself, blind anger rising to dispel it, suffocating rage surfacing to encompass and engulf the hopelessness of her secret passion, the chance discovery by this woman who stood quaking now against the closed door to the guest room, the fearsome threat of revelation to her father, the unfairness and stupidity of not being allowed to live her own life as she chose to live it!

Her stepmother turned away suddenly, fumbled with the knob on the door and threw the door open. She slammed the door shut behind her, tried to hold it closed as Lizzie shoved against it, and then stumbled back into the room, almost falling, when Lizzie shoved against it with all her might, the door banging back against the wall from the force of her fury. Her stepmother regained her footing, backed away from Lizzie as she advanced, darted as though to run toward the windows, rushed instead into the narrow space between the dressing case and the bed, discovered the wall, made a small, squealing sound, turned yet again — and found Lizzie standing there in silent, savage rage, blocking all escape. Unseeingly Lizzie reached for the candlestick on the dresser’s marble top, her hand closing familiarly and fiercely around the stem, the base turning up, the taper toppling from its pricket.

“No, don’t,” her stepmother murmured, and Lizzie struck her.

She swung the candlestick downward from the right, catching her above the left ear and opening a bloody gash some two inches long. Stunned, her stepmother backed away from her, twisting her head to avoid any further blows, and Lizzie struck her again, on top of the head this time, a little back of the crown line, the edge of the candlestick penetrating the scalp and the skull, and yet again immediately, the next blow nearly parallel to the other, blood splashing onto the dressing case’s marble slab and upper drawer, her stepmother twisting away, stunned, turning, falling to her knees, blindly grasping the air for support as Lizzie struck her again from behind.

The blow caught her stepmother on the back, to the right of her neck where it joined the shoulders, splashing blood onto the lower drawer and faceboard of the dresser case, and she fell flat to the floor and tried to clasp her hands behind her twisted head, her face close to the wall as Lizzie straddled her and struck her again, and again, and again, blood splashing up onto the northern wall and the faceboard of the bed, Mrs. Borden’s fluttering fingers stopping, her body quite still now. And now the candlestick fell with frenzied regularity, a dozen blows raining upon her stepmother’s head, opening a large crater in her skull, the cuts radiating out from it like the ribs of a fan or the fingers of a hand, smashing the bones and laying open the brain, drops of blood spattering up onto Lizzie’s face and naked arms, her shoulders, her breasts.

Behind her, she heard Maggie’s muffled scream.

Breathlessly she sucked in great gulps of air, sitting astride her stepmother, the candlestick still clutched tightly in her fist, droplets of blood on her hand and her wrist. She was drenched with sweat, her hair matted against her blood-spattered forehead. She kept trying to breathe — if only she could catch her breath — her chest and her shoulders heaving, her mouth open. In the doorway Maggie was whimpering now, small snuffling sounds like those a frightened animal might make. Lizzie’s breathing became more normal. She looked down at her stepmother’s shattered skull. She looked over her shoulder to where Maggie, fully dressed, stood in the doorway. She got to her feet. The white candle lay near the dressing case, broken in half, its separate segments held loosely together by the connecting spinal cord of the wick.

“Am I covered with blood?” she asked numbly.

“Some, ” Maggie said. Her knuckles were pressed to her mouth; she seemed unable to stop whimpering.

“Fetch me some towels,” she said. “The bottom drawer of my dresser.”

Maggie hesitated, and then turned from the doorway.

She stood exactly where she was, looking down at her stepmother, feeling nothing, knowing only that she must clean herself now, thinking ahead only to that and no further, holding the blood-smeared candlestick in her hand, loosely at her side. When. Maggie returned with the towels, she wiped the blood first from the candlestick and then from her hands and her breasts, and then looked at the towels and wondered what she should do with them now. She kept staring at the towels. “The slop pail,” she said at last. “In the kitchen. Would you fetch it, please?”

Maggie ran out onto the landing. She heard her footfalls as she scurried down the stairs. She stood where she was only another moment, and then went into her bedroom and wiped the blood from her face and her shoulders and her hair where it was matted to her forehead, looking at herself in the glass, studying her own pale eyes until Maggie returned. She looked at her blankly, and then dropped the soiled towels into the slop pail.

“I shall need to wash,” she said.

“Your father...” Maggie said.

Lizzie glanced at the clock.

“Yes,” she said, “but I shall need to wash.”

She put the candlestick into the slop pail, cushioning its base on the towels, and went down the steps into the sitting room, Maggie following her, and through the kitchen and into the pantry. At the pantry sink she washed her face and her hands and her shoulders and her breasts, studying herself for any vagrant blood spots, ascertaining from Maggie that there were none, and then drying herself with yet another menstrual towel which she dropped into the pail. She washed the candlestick as well, the silky feel of it, cleansing it of any blood, leaving it on the pantry counter, and then carrying the slop pail with its towels down to the cellar and over to the wash sink, where she emptied it into the pail containing the towel she had left there earlier this morning.

When she came upstairs again, the pantry and the kitchen were empty. The clock on the kitchen wall read a quarter of ten. She found Maggie in the parlor at the front of the house, nervously peering through the window at the street outside.

“What is it?” Lizzie asked at once. “My father? Is he home?”

Maggie shook her head.

She went to the window, stood a trifle behind her so that she could not be seen from outside, and saw first the carriage standing by the north gate between here and the Churchill house next door, the team of horses motionless in the bright sunlight, and then the pond lilies at the back of the carriage, and then Mrs. Manley who lived up the street, and Mrs. Hart who lived in Tiverton but whose sister lived nearby. And then she saw, standing in the gateway, his left arm leaning on the gatepost—

“Why is he here again?” she whispered sharply.

Maggie said nothing.

Outside, the women were negotiating for the purchase of the pond lilies now, selecting them from the tub at the back of the wagon. The pale young man kept watching them boldly, his elbow on the south post of the gateway, his head idly tilted onto his supporting hand.

“Get outside,” she said. “Tell him to go away. Tell him never to come back.”

“Outside?” Maggie said numbly.

“And then finish your windows.”

“My windows?”

“Am I speaking English?”

Maggie went out the front door. Lizzie watched from the window while she engaged the man in brief conversation. Mrs. Manley and Mrs. Hart were gone now. The carriage with its water lilies was plodding its way up the sunlit street. The man smiled, touched his hand to his forehead in a reluctant farewell salute and then began walking away. Maggie stood at the gatepost another moment, glanced nervously up and down the street, and then disappeared around the corner of the house. Lizzie went into the front entry, locked the door again and went upstairs to her bedroom. She put on the same clothing she’d worn earlier, thrown in haste on the bedroom floor: the white underdrawers and chemise, the white petticoat, the black chintz dress with its tiny floral pattern, the felt slippers. She looked at herself in the mirror. When she went out onto the landing again, she saw Mrs. Borden’s green dress lying on the floor where she’d dropped it. She picked it up without so much as glancing into the guest room, carried it to the closet at the top of the stairs and hung it carefully on a padded hanger.

She went downstairs swiftly, walking directly into the parlor and looking out at the street. Maggie was washing the windows at the front of the house, the pail and dipper at her feet, the long brush in her hands. Mr. Pettee, who years ago used to live as a tenant in the upper part of the house, was strolling past. He glanced at Maggie and then turned his head away. Downtown she could hear the City Hall clock striking the hour. She counted the strokes: it was ten o’clock sharp. Depending on what business her father had in town, he could be home at any moment. Was he stopping at the post office, as he’d suggested he might? What would she say to him when he returned? What could she possibly say?

And suddenly the enormity of what she had done overwhelmed her. Until this moment she had reacted calmly and dispassionately, discounting as a reality the body of the woman who lay upstairs in a widening pool of her own blood, removing herself from the act of violence that had caused her stepmother’s death. But now the body upstairs assumed dimension and shape in her mind, the crushed skull, the matted hair in the blood on the floor, and she willed the body to be gone, prayed desperately that it would not be there when next she looked into that room, would somehow miraculously have disappeared so that she would not have to explain it to her father. But how explain? How describe the necessity of the act without revealing the very thing that had provoked it, the discovery of herself and Maggie naked in her room, the fear that her father would be told she was—

A monster.

An unnatural thing.

Remembering the candlestick, she went swiftly into the pantry, picked it up, examined it again for blood, and then carried it with her into the dining room, wondering where she might put it, knowing she could not possibly take it upstairs to the guest room again where it would be discovered and suspected. She wandered into the sitting room, trying the candlestick on the mantelpiece where already there stood a lamp, carrying it at last into the dining room and setting it on the buffet against the wall. It looked quite natural there. Innocuous. Safe.

She went into the kitchen and looked at the clock.

What would she tell her father when he returned?

Nothing, she decided.

We know nothing of upstairs. We heard nothing, we saw nothing. We were going about our normal business, we know nothing. Maggie was outside washing the windows, I was in the dining room, ironing; neither of us—

She tested her flats again, spitting on the bottom of one of them and causing not so much as a sizzle. She wanted to be ironing when he came home, innocently occupied with a mundane household chore. She thought of adding more coal to the stove, decided that wood would provide a faster, hotter fire, and discovered there was no kindling in the scuttle. She went immediately into the cellar and found several old pieces of board near the woodpile, dry and covered with flaking paint, perfect for the instant fire she wanted. She found the hatchet in its usual place, stuck in the chopping block near the furnace. There were other axes and hatchets in the cellar, but this was the only one with a decent chopping edge. The claw-hammer hatchet was as dull as butter, and a third hatchet lay discarded in a box someplace, covered with the crude ashes her father had rubbed on it in an attempt to free it of rust, testing it at last on the chopping block, its handle breaking from the force of his blows.

She started to chop one of the boards into narrow strips, almost nicked her finger in the uncertain light, thought again of her father’s surely imminent return and hurried upstairs again carrying the boards and the hatchet. Standing first one board and then the next on the stovetop, she chopped them lengthwise into kindling, put the hatchet into the coal scuttle, and then knelt to feed the wood into the firebox. The coals there had dwindled almost to ashes; small wonder that her flats had never properly heated. Wondering if there was heat enough left to ignite the wood, she closed the door to the firebox, stood watching the stove for a moment and then looked up at the clock again.

From the kitchen closet, she took the small ironing board and carried it into the dining room. She was setting it on the dining-room table when she heard the sound of a carriage outside — had he hired a hack to take him home? She rushed to the window to look out at the street. She saw only Dr. Handy riding by, his head craned over his shoulder for a look up the street toward the Kelly house and Mr. Wade’s store. In almost that same instant she heard the screen door opening and then clattering shut again, and she turned toward the kitchen with a start, expecting it to be her father, totally uprepared for him, relieved when she saw that it was only Maggie. Her heart leaped again when she saw the look on Maggie’s face.

“He’s here,” Maggie said breathlessly.

“My father!”

“The one you had me send away,” Maggie said, shaking her head. “He’s up the street, across the street. My God, could he have seen?”

“Seen? Seen what?”

“What you done upstairs,” Maggie said. “He was about the house outside...”

“The shutters were closed.”

“Then why’s he come back?”

“Are you sure it’s...”

“The same light suit of clothes, yes, the same necktie. Oh my God, if he spied what you done...”

“He couldn’t have!”

“But if he did!”

“No one did!”

“He’s acting funny. Swaying...”

“Then he’s drunk,” Lizzie said flatly. “He’s been drinking because you sent him away. Don’t go outside again. Stay in here, do the windows inside. I want you in here when...”

“I don’t want to be in here,” Maggie said, shaking her head again. “I don’t want to see your father. Not with her lying up there dead.”

“We know of no one upstairs. Dead or otherwise.”

“She’s dead up there, you killed her!”

“Fetch your handbasin. Wash the sitting-room windows. Nothing has happened, nothing that we know of. They’ll ask us where we were and what we were doing. We were going about our normal business, do you understand? We heard nothing...”

Maggie was shaking her head again.

“I tell you we heard nothing and saw nothing; we were going about our...”

“You can hear all in this house,” Maggie said. “I can even hear themselves when they roll over in bed.”

“But we heard nothing. And saw nothing. We know nothing but what we ourselves were doing. Whatever else transpired, we did not hear or see.”

“Will you tell that to your father?”

“Yes. Now fetch your basin,” she said, and Maggie hurried out of the room.

I’ll tell him nothing, she thought. I’ll inquire about the mail, I’ll mention that Mrs. Borden is not yet back, I’ll — well, wait. I’ll say... he’ll wonder where she’s gone and what’s keeping her... I’ll say... well, yes, she told me there are people sick in town, I’ll say she had a note from someone who’s sick and went to visit... yes... that will explain her lengthy absence. And when later... when later she’s not yet returned, we’ll notify the police in concern for her, and they shall be the ones to find her upstairs, the police, and we shall all be astonished and amazed and explain to them that we were going about our normal business with no idea whatever of what horror rested just above our heads, yes, that’s how I’ll do it, if only he would hurry home before my resolve—

She heard a clicking at the front door.

Someone trying to insert a key into the lock.

Her father!

All she planned to tell him evaporated at once, all the facade she hoped to present to him crumbled in that instant of his imminent entrance, and she fled for the stairs, planning to lock herself in her room, hide from him, and was halfway up the stairs when she heard the doorbell ringing insistently, and then Maggie’s voice shouting, “Coming!” and then more softly as she crossed the sitting room and moved toward the front door, “Miss Lizzie?” and the doorbell rang again. She heard Maggie setting something down, the basin she had gone to fetch, heard the doorbell again, the impatient clamor of it, and she stood quite still on the staircase, listening as Maggie fumbled with first the spring lock and then the key.

“Oh, shit!” Maggie said, and on the staircase Lizzie laughed, and then suppressed the laugh as she heard the door opening wide and her father saying, “I’ve forgotten my key. I’ve been trying the wrong key. Took you long enough to open this door.”

“I’m sorry, sir,” Maggie said, “I was washing the windows.” Her voice was steady and calm. She would be all right. She would behave as she’d been instructed.

“Still at them, eh?” her father said. “Well, then, where’s Mrs. Borden?”

They had moved into the sitting room now. Lizzie stood silent and motionless on the staircase, her eyes level with the second-floor landing, her stepmother’s body clearly visible through the open door to the guest room.

“I don’t know where she might be, sir,” Maggie said. “I saw her leaving at nine, somewhat at nine.”

“Not back yet, eh?”

“I haven’t seen her, sir.”

“Well, go about your business,” he said. “Will you be long in here?”

“Only a bit, sir.”

“I’ll use the dining room then.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Where’s Lizzie?” he asked.

“I... don’t know, sir.”

A slight wavering of the voice.

“Well, is she in the house, or has she gone out?”

“I think she’s in the house, sir.” A pause. “I haven’t seen her.”

“Well, do your windows; I’ll get out of your way.”

“Yes, sir, thank you.”

Lizzie looked once again at the open door to the guest room. She took a deep breath and went down the stairs. Her father was sitting in the dining room. There was a parcel wrapped in white paper on the dining-room table, and alongside that the mail: several legal-sized envelopes, a larger yellow envelope, a long brown pasteboard cylinder. Maggie was coming from the kitchen now, carrying a stepladder. Her eyes met Lizzie’s. Neither of them said a word.

“You got to the post office then,” Lizzie said.

“Yes.”

“Anything for me?”

“Nothing. What’s this ironing board doing in here?”

“I’m waiting for my flats.”

“Will you be ironing then?”

“As soon as they’re hot.”

“Looks messy, things lying about this way.”

“I’ll put it away as soon as I’ve finished. What’s in the parcel?”

“Eh? Oh, an old lock I picked up at the store they’re fixing for Clegg.” He shrugged. “Might come in handy.” He was sorting through the mail now. He picked up the pasteboard cylinder. “I hope this is the survey,” he said, and poked his finger into the brown-paper wrapping at one end of the cylinder, tearing it. He eased from the cylinder a rolled document, partially unrolled the stiff paper, said, “Yes, good,” and in explanation, “Some land that interests me. Out Steep Brook Way. Where’s your mother, do you know?”

“Visiting someone who’s sick,” Lizzie said.

“Oh? Who?”

“She didn’t say. She had a note...”

“Oh?”

“Yes. And went out directly afterwards.”

“I didn’t see anyone with a note,” her father said. “This morning, do you mean?”

“Yes.”

“I didn’t see anyone,” he said again, and shrugged. “I’ll take this upstairs, all this work going on down here,” indicating with a hand gesture the ironing board on the dining-room table, and with a movement of his head Maggie on the stepladder. He went into the sitting room, took his key off the mantelpiece shelf and then came back to gather up the mail. In the kitchen he put the mail down on the table, lifted the stove lid over the firebox and dropped the empty document-cylinder into the hole. “Not much of a fire here, you plan on heating these flats,” he said to Lizzie. “Your wood’s only smoking.” He put the lid back on the stove, and looked at the floor. “Splinters all over the floor here,” he said.

“I’m sorry,” Lizzie said, “I’ll sweep them up.”

“Chop your kindling on the block below,” he said, “where you should. And take that hatchet downcellar, where it belongs.”

“Yes, father,” she said.

“See to it,” he said, and picked up his mail and started up the stairs to his room. Maggie turned to her at once.

“Did he...?”

“Shhhh!”

They waited.

They could hear his footfalls on the back stairs. They heard the door to his room open and then close. The house was still again.

“Did he believe you, do you think?” Maggie whispered. “About the note?”

“I think so.”

“I don’t think so,” Maggie said. “I’m scared to death, I’m not sure I can...”

“You’ll be fine.”

“He’ll want to know what’s keeping her. When she hasn’t come back...”

“Shhh!”

They heard his footfalls on the back stairs again. He went into the kitchen and then the pantry. They heard the water tap running over the pantry sink. When he came through into the dining room again, he said only, “Hot as the devil upstairs; are you about through in here, Bridget?”

“Just finishing, sir.”

“Well, hurry about it, would you?”

He went into the sitting room, took off the Prince Albert coat, moved the sofa cushion and tidy to one side and draped the coat loosely over the sofa arm. He seemed about to lie down. Surveying Maggie at the windows, he changed his mind, went out into the front entry where his wool cardigan reefer hung in the small closet and came back into the sitting room. He put on the reefer, pulled a rocking chair over to the light streaming through the windows, and sat in it. Maggie raised the window near his chair. He turned to look at her, annoyed, and then picked up the morning paper again as she carried her stepladder into the dining room. She went back into the sitting room once, to pick up her water pail and her basin, and then began washing the windows in the dining room. Lizzie came through from the kitchen, one of the flatirons in her hand. Their eyes met again. They said nothing.

In the sitting room the clock ticked.

She did not know how long the silence persisted. She was aware of the ticking of the clock, the minutes falling soddenly on the still summer air. At last she said — loud enough for her father to hear, hoping her voice sounded as it always did, everything normal, everyone in this house going about the normal business of the day, washing windows, ironing, chatting — “Are you going out this afternoon?”

“I don’t know,” Maggie said, her eyes meeting Lizzie’s again, a question in them. “I might. I don’t feel very well.”

“If you go, be sure and lock the door,” Lizzie said pointedly. “Mrs. Borden’s gone out on a sick call, and I might go out, too.”

“Who’s sick?” Maggie asked, idiotically.

“I don’t know,” Lizzie said, a warning in her eyes. “She had a note this morning. It must be in town.”

She glanced toward the sitting room again, hoping her father was listening to every word. Maggie went out into the kitchen with her stepladder, washed out the cloths she had used on the windows, and hung them behind the stove. Lizzie came in a moment later, placing the flatiron she’d been using back on the stove, picking up the flat that was still heating there. In a voice loud enough for her father to hear, she said, “There’s a cheap sale of dress goods at Sargent’s this afternoon, eight cents a yard,” and then, in a whisper, “Are you all right?”

“I feel faint,” Maggie whispered, and in her normal voice said, “I’m going to have one. Sargent’s, did you say?”

“Then go to your room,” Lizzie whispered. “There’s nothing more to be...”

From the sitting room, her father said, “Eh? What’s that?”

“Father?” she said, alarmed.

“Were you talking to me?”

“No, sir.”

“I thought I heard...” His voice trailed.

Maggie gave her a look she could not read, and then went up the back stairs. The stairs creaked beneath her footfalls. She listened to the footfalls, all the way up to the attic, heard the attic door opening and closing. She was carrying the flatiron back into the dining room when she heard her father’s voice again.

“What’s this doing here?”

What? she thought. Where?

“This candlestick,” he said, and she froze in her tracks. “Doesn’t it belong upstairs? In the guest room?”

He turned to her. She stood in the doorway between the rooms, the flatiron in her right hand, staring at him.

“It...” Her mind worked frantically. “I brought it down for Maggie to polish. She must have polished it. Must have been polishing it.”

“Shouldn’t be down here,” her father said.

She kept staring at him.

“I’ll take it up,” he said.

“No...” she said, and took a step toward him.

“Eh?”

“I’ll take it when I go up again. I have some basting to do...”

“Finish your ironing,” he said, and turned away from her.

She watched helplessly as he walked from the dining room and into the sitting room again, and then passed from sight into the front entry. She was not prepared for the discovery just yet, had hoped it would be made later in the day when concern for her mother’s absence would have necessitated notifying the police. She wanted the police to make the discovery and not any member of the household. Nor did she want that candlestick to be found in the room where her stepmother—

The candle!

The broken candle!

It still lay on the floor of the room upstairs, an unmistakable link to the candlestick, identifying the weapon, eliminating the possibility that what had been done was anything but a spur-of-the moment act, no assassin lurking about the house with a weapon brought here for the purpose of murder, no, an object at hand instead, an object familiar to the members of this household of which there were but two present at the time of the bloody deed. Herself and Maggie. Only those two. He would make the connection. He could not fail to make the connection.

She did not want to be in this house when he came downstairs again, could not face the accusing look in his eyes, could not hope to answer the questions he would most certainly put. Her eyes darted. Like a bird poised for precarious flight, she raised her arms, her hands fluttering, and turned from where she stood in the kitchen doorway, and then rushed into the entry and threw open the screen door, knowing only that she had to get away from here, run, hide, run!

Unmindful of whichever neighbors might be watching, she hurtled in terrified flight into the backyard, and then stopped dead when she saw the carriage outside the fence, standing near a tree. An open buggy, a box buggy with a high top seat and a high back. A man was sitting in the carriage. For a shocking instant she thought it was he again, the pale young man returning; had he witnessed what she’d done in that upstairs room? But no, the shutters had been closed. And then she saw that this man was dressed differently, wearing a brown hat and a black coat, and she dismissed him from her mind as but a passing stranger, her eyes darting again, wondering where, where, seeing the barn and running toward it, thinking she would hide in the hayloft, cover herself with hay, hide there forever from the wrath of her father, a witness in effect though he had not been present, a witness the moment he put together candlestick and candle.

She stopped again just outside the barn door, reaching for the pin in the hasp, and then hesitated, pulling back her trembling hand, realizing in a crystal instant that she could never hope to protest innocence if he found her cowering under the hay. She reversed her course at once, turning and starting slowly back for the house, knowing she had to confront him after all, face the wrath of a God sterner than the one who’d banished Eve from the garden, express surprise and shock, grief and concern, claim ignorance and innocence, I know nothing, I saw nothing, I heard—

She heard the sound of horses on the street outside as she crossed the yard from the barn to the house, turned her head to see a team and wagon — the ice-cream peddler, Mr. Lubinsky, his head craned for a look at her as she walked toward the back steps. The team went by, the wagon moved out of sight. She opened the screen door, and went into the house again.

The house was silent.

She did not move out of the kitchen. She stood near the cookstove, waiting, listening for the tiniest sound.

She heard his footfalls on the front stairs.

Unhurried, slow, ponderous.

She heard him entering the sitting room.

She did not move from where she stood near the coal scuttle.

He loomed suddenly in the doorframe between the kitchen and the sitting room. There was nothing in his hands, neither candlestick nor broken candle. Had he failed to make a connection? She looked into his eyes and saw there only stricken confusion. Her heart quickened. There was yet hope; he had not yet put it together.

“Someone has killed your mother,” he said. His voice was dull, lifeless, his eyes wide and staring.

“What?”

“Your mother...”

“What?”

“Your mother lies dead upstairs.”

“No,” she said at once, “that can’t be,” her eyes opening as wide as his were, hoping that her voice conveyed shock and disbelief. “She’s not yet back from town.”

“She’s slain upstairs,” her father said. “Oh, my God, Lizzie!”

“Father!” she said, and went to him, and he took her in his arms, and she stood close in his embrace, her heart fluttering; there was yet hope!

“We must... we shall have to notify the police,” he said.

“I’ll go at once.”

“And Dr. Bowen.”

“I’ll use his telephone.”

“She’s slain, Lizzie, oh, dear God...”

“Come lie down. I’ll run to Dr. Bowen’s. Come in the sitting room...”

“I shall fall if I move. Hold me, Lizzie.”

She held him close. He was weeping now. She patted him as she would a child, listening to the sounds of his grief and his shocked mutterings (“Oh, my God, the blood, the blood...”), consoling him, “Yes, Father, yes,” thinking it would be she herself who sounded the alarm (“Blood on the floor,” he said, “the walls, the bed, a broken candle on the...”), she who would run across the street to Dr. Bowen’s house, telephone the police, alert the neighbors — and suddenly she realized that his words had stopped, and his weeping as well. He moved his cheek from hers and held her slightly apart and looked into her eyes, puzzled.

“The candlestick,” he said.

Her heart leaped.

“Whoever did this... but you heard no one?”

“No one.”

“Saw no one?”

“No one.”

“But you were here, weren’t you?”

“I was here, certainly, but I heard...”

“Didn’t she scream? When he was bludgeoning her with... oh my God, my God!”

“Father, please lie down. I must fetch the police, we must have them here!”

“But how could...?” he said, and hesitated, and she saw in his eyes the same puzzlement again. And then he blinked and said, “No, it couldn’t have been, you brought it down for Maggie to polish.”

“Yes,” she said quickly. “Father...”

“When did you do that, Lizzie?” he asked gently and in the same puzzled voice.

“Do what, Father?”

“Bring the candlestick down.”

“Why... this morning,” she said. “When I came down this morning. Father, I must...”

“I saw no candlestick when you came down,” he said, still puzzled.

“Later,” she said.

“Brought it down later?”

“Yes.”

“Went upstairs to fetch it?”

“Yes.”

“And brought it down for Bridget to polish.”

“Yes.”

“Fetched it from the guest room.”

“Yes.”

“Did the candle fall from it then?” he asked.

He was working it out, oh God, he was putting it together!

“I... I really don’t...”

“When you went to fetch it?” he asked.

“Perhaps... well, yes, it must have.”

“And you didn’t stop to pick it up?”

“Well, I thought of picking it up, yes, I must have, but...”

“When you knew your mother would be having company? And had tidied the room?”

“I planned to do it later,” she said.

He looked directly into her eyes. They stood not two feet apart in the doorway to the sitting room, he in one room, she in the other. His voice when he spoke was stronger now.

“Was your mother up there when you went to fetch it?” he said. “The candlestick?”

“She’d already left,” Lizzie said.

“If the candlestick was the weapon...”

“It couldn’t have been,” she said quickly.

“If,” he shouted, and she fell silent.

He kept staring at her.

“How came it to be in the dining room?” he said.

“I told you. I...”

She hesitated.

“I...”

“Did you do this thing?” he asked.

She said nothing.

“Did you do this terrible thing?”

Still she said nothing.

“Why?” he asked. “Dear God, why? ”

Looking into his eyes, she said gently, “Father, she...” and could say no more, for continuing would have meant revealing to him the precipitating act, herself and Maggie in naked embrace, the act her stepmother had called monstrous and unnatural. When he saw that she would offer neither explanation nor excuse, he said, “Go from my sight, go!” and turned away from her and went into the sitting room. Like a child accepting punishment, she did as she’d been instructed, dutifully, obediently, going into the kitchen and standing silently by the cookstove, facing the wall, listening to the ticking of the clock. In the sitting room, the sofa springs protested under his weight as he fell back upon it. She heard him say, “Oh, God, oh, dear God,” and then all was silent save for the ticking of the clock.

Not five minutes had passed since she’d come back from the barn. Within the next five minutes, he would regain his strength and composure and go to telephone the police. And when they arrived, they would listen to the logic of candlestick and broken candle, and then go silently and gravely upstairs to look upon her stepmother’s shattered, open skull. And they would wonder why. And they would ask her why.

Herself and Maggie in embrace.

The discovery.

The shame.

Is it your passion that shames you so? Then are we, as women, not entitled to the same passion men consider their Cod-given right?

She looked at the hatchet where she had left it in the coal scuttle.

Chop your kindling on the block below, where you should. And take that hatchet downcellar, where it belongs.

She picked up the hatchet.

She picked it up deliberately, not as she had earlier lifted the candlestick, fully aware of her hand closing around the wooden handle. She went into the sitting room. Her father was lying full length on the sofa, his left leg extended, his right leg bent and dangling over the side, the foot touching the carpeted floor. His hands were folded over his chest as if in prayer. His eyes were closed. Tears were running down his face.

“Father?” she said softly.

He said nothing.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

His eyes opened.

She did not mean to say what she said next, was in fact surprised when it found voice.

“I shall take this downcellar.”

Her father looked at the hatchet in her hand.

“Don’t tell them,” she said. “The police. Please don’t.”

He looked at her uncomprehendingly.

“The candlestick,” she said.

And still he looked at her.

“Please,” she said, “help me, Father! If you love me...”

“Love?” he said, spitting out the word as if it were poison on his tongue. “I hate you for what you’ve done! I’ll hate you always for it! I’ll regret forever the day I spawned such a foul and murderous creature!” And then, more bitterly, as if he were echoing her stepmother’s words in yet another form, he said, “I shall tell them all, everything, all! Go from me! You disgust me! You offend my sight!” and closed his eyes against her, and turned his head into the cushion, concealing his right cheek again.

She raised the hatchet.

He sensed the motion, seemed to sense the motion, and started to lift his head from the cushion, his left eye opening wide, his legs swinging over the side of the sofa as if he would rise. The last thing she saw in that instant before she struck him was that single glaring eye and the silent accusation in it.

She intended the first angry blow to strike that fiercely accusing eye, but she missed the mark and the chopping edge of the hatchet caught her father immediately in front of his left ear, a crushing wound some three inches and more in length, releasing an immediate gush of blood that took her quite by surprise, splashing up onto her face and the front of the black chintz dress. She raised her left hand to ward off the gush of blood, closing her eyes against it, and then opened them at once, and struck him again, slightly higher up this time, above the left ear, a two-inch-long slash sending up another spurt of blood that spattered the wall behind the head of the sofa. And still she struck for the eye though it was closed now, hitting again, and again, and again, at the area in front of and above his left ear, her blows breaking away the skull bone and crushing through into the brain itself.

The eye, she thought, the eye, and the hatchet slashed downward to open a wound lost in the left eyebrow near its outer end, the eye! striking again to open a wound above the left eyebrow, blood spattering onto the framed picture above the sofa, and now, yes, now the flashing edge of the hatchet passed downward through the eyebrow, cutting deeply through the eye at its outer edge, crushing into the cheek bone on the left side and penetrating the cavity of the skull where the eye rested in the head.

As though blinding that accusing eye had failed to fulfill her purpose or satisfy her rage, she struck out at the other features on that once familiar face, slashing through the nose and the upper lip, hitting him again a fiercer blow that opened a four-inch gash through the left nostril and the upper and lower lips, extending nearly to the tip of the chin. The hatchet felt suddenly heavy in her hand. She struck out less forcefully now, opening a flesh wound above his left eyebrow, and then a short cut in his scalp, and another cut parallel to those, some two inches in length — and all at once she stopped.

She was drenched in blood; she had not expected so much blood. There had not been this much blood upstairs. Her hand where she held the bloodstained weapon dripped blood into her father’s own blood flowing from his head onto the carpet. The bodice of the black chintz dress was covered with blood, and she could feel it soaking through to her chemise and her breasts. She realized all at once that killing him had taken no longer than thirty seconds.

The house was utterly still.

“Maggie!” she shouted, “come down!”

Silence.

And then from above in the attic room on the other side of the house, “What’s the matter?”

“Come down quick!” Lizzie said. She stood motionless by the sofa, unable to move, fearful of trailing blood through the house, yet knowing that she must wash herself, change her clothes, dispose of them and the gory instrument in her hand before someone else arrived at the door, her Uncle John home for the noonday meal, someone, and she shouted again, “Maggie, hurry!” and leaped in surprise when Maggie appeared suddenly in the doorway.

“Fetch me some newspapers,” Lizzie said. “Quick! The old ones. Across the room. In the bucket.”

Maggie stood in the door to the dining room, both hands to her mouth, looking in over the arm of the sofa to where Lizzie’s father lay crushed and bleeding. “Oh, God,” she whimpered, “oh, sweet merciful...”

“Hurry!”

And now all was frenzied haste, though for Lizzie the seconds seemed to drag eternally, the fear mounting that her uncle would barge into the house with a gruff greeting to find her drenched in blood — “Close the shutters!” — Maggie rushing to bring the newspapers and then flying across the room to hurl the shutters closed while Lizzie stripped herself naked save for the bellyband and menstrual towel stained with her own seeping blood. Thirty seconds passed, perhaps a minute — “Burn these in the stove!” — Lizzie running into the pantry, a glance toward the unshuttered kitchen windows, washing and drying herself and the hatchet, Maggie stuffing the newspaper-wrapped garments into the stove, the flames licking up through the open hole.

Lizzie came out of the pantry, put the hatchet on the kitchen table and, without a word, ran through the house and up the stairs to the closet on the landing. She took from its hanger a blue, bengaline silk dress, carried it swiftly into her bedroom, put on fresh underclothing, black stockings, the white underskirt, the dress skirt and dress waist. She studied the felt slippers for bloodstains, found none, and hurled them into her closet. Quickly she put on a pair of low, black tie-shoes, her fingers fumbling with the laces, the clock ticking.

She did not want to go into that spare room again, did not want to see again the evidence of what she’d earlier done. But the broken candle was still on the floor of that room, and so she crossed the landing swiftly and was about to go into the room when she saw the candlestick where her father had dropped it just outside the door, undoubtedly in shock at what he’d seen within. She picked up the candlestick, aware of time, racing against time, not knowing where to put it, not the dining room again, certainly not there, but where? Where would they not suspect it? She carried it quickly into her own room, put it down on the dresser, and searched in the bottom drawer on the right for a fresh taper. She placed the candle in the socket, pressed it down firmly onto the pricket. She looked at the candlestick once again and then went hurriedly out into the hallway.

The first thing she saw when she entered the spare room was a hank of black hair on the bedspread.

She almost backed out of the room.

The hair, flung up onto the bed by the ferocity of her attack, summarized for her the full horror of what she’d done, and she stood staring at it, unable to move, mesmerized by it, realizing at last that it was only a piece of false braid, a switch her stepmother often wore, the knowledge in no way diminishing the fact that the severity of her blows had sent it flying up onto the bed. She forced her eyes away from it.

The candle lay on the floor where it had fallen, its back broken like a serpent’s trod upon. There was no blood on it or near it. She picked it up quickly, studied the carpet for stray scraps of wax, found a rather large piece that had broken off from the base, studied the floor again and then hurried out of the room without looking back at the hank of false hair on the bed or the body on the floor.

In the kitchen downstairs Maggie was still at the stove. She had replaced the lid; Lizzie assumed that the fire had already done its work.

“Burned?” she asked at once.

“All,” Maggie said. “But there’ll be buttons. From the dress. They’ll find buttons in the ashes.”

“Then I’ll burn another dress in plain sight,” Lizzie said.

“The buttons will be different,” Maggie said.

“The buttons will be charred,” Lizzie said. “Do I look...?”

“Fine,” Maggie said.

Her voice was low, scarcely more than a whisper. The kitchen, now that a proper fire was going in the stove, was hotter than it had been earlier. Lizzie lifted the stove lid and dropped the candle and the stray scrap into the fire.

“We saw nothing and heard nothing,” she said. “We tell them all that we did...”

“All that we did,” Maggie repeated dully.

“All but what relates. All but what actually...”

“What you did,” Maggie said.

“What we did,” Lizzie said, and slammed down the stove lid. “You were here in the house. Should either of us stumble, they’ll think us both murderers.”

“I harmed no one,” Maggie said.

The same dull voice, a whisper.

“And will not harm me,” Lizzie said.

Maggie said nothing.

“Promise me.”

“Aye,” Maggie said.

“On your mother’s eyes.”

Maggie sighed deeply. “On my mother’s eyes,” she said.

“Now run for Dr. Bowen as fast as you can. Tell him what happened here. Tell him we need him at once. Tell him my father is dead.”

“And your mother both,” Maggie said.

“We know nothing of upstairs. Only my father. It’s only my father we’ve found. You were in your room, resting. I was out in the backyard, near the barn. I heard a groan, and came in, and the screen door was wide open. Do you have that?”

“I have it,” Maggie said, and started for the entry. The screen door clattered shut behind her.

Lizzie went into the dining room. From the window she watched Maggie as she ran hurriedly up the path toward the street. I was in the backyard, she thought. I heard a groan; the screen door was wide open. She turned from the window, began pacing the dining-room floor, going over the falsehood yet another time, refining it, I was in the backyard, the barn, I was in the barn, her steps taking her closer and closer to the sitting-room door until she remembered what lay beyond that door, and backed away with a start, almost colliding with the diningroom table.

She hurried into the kitchen, lifted the stove lid again, nervously checked to see that the garments had indeed burned and, satisfied that they had, replaced the lid. She lifted the smaller lid near the firebox, hoping no charred scraps of bloodstained newspaper had drifted that way. She saw only the pasteboard cylinder in which her father’s survey had arrived, completely carbonized but still holding its original shape. She replaced the lid — and saw the hatchet still on the kitchen table.

In plain sight where she’d left it!

In a moment Maggie would be back with Dr. Bowen, and the first thing he would see—

She heard hurried footsteps on the walk outside. She picked up the hatchet and turned in panic toward the coal scuttle. The screen door banged open. Maggie came clattering into the house, her face white. She saw the hatchet and stopped dead in her tracks.

“He isn’t home,” she said breathlessly. “I left word with Mrs. Bowen. She expects him any time; she’ll send him over. Are we to stay alone in this house till...?”

“Do you know where Alice Russell lives?”

“Yes, I think so. Yes.”

“Then go and get her.” She held out the hatchet to Maggie. “And take this with you.”

“No!” Maggie said.

“Take it!”

“I want no part of it! No!”

“Dispose of it,” Lizzie said.

“Where? She lives hard by, where would I...?”

“Drop it in the nearest sewer.”

“I shall be seen!”

“Then take it to the river. Go by way of Rodman Street...”

“The long way round? She lives on Borden!”

“They won’t ask you how you went! Take Rodman to Hartwell...”

“There are houses bordering the river there!”

“You can find a way to it. Near Eight-Rod Way, the river’s...”

“They’ll see me; I’ll be seen!”

“Would you have them find it here?” She thrust the hatchet into Maggie’s hands. “A sewer, the river, I don’t care which! Dispose of it! Take it out of here!”

Maggie said nothing. Silently she wrapped the hatchet in a dishrag, and then went out to the entry. She took her hat and shawl from where they were hanging, carefully lowered the hatchet into her fabric marketing bag and went to the screen door. She hesitated there, turned to Lizzie as if to say something, shook her head instead and rushed outside, the screen door slamming shut again behind her.

Lizzie went to the door. She stood just inside the screen, listening to Maggie’s hurried footfalls fading on the street outside, knowing for certain that the moment anyone walked into this house — Dr. Bowen, Alice Russell, anyone — she would immediately crumble and confess all that she had done. And then, suddenly, she remembered something Alison had said a long time ago, and she closed her eyes, almost seeing her lips shaping the words, almost hearing her lovely liquid voice again:

Our greatest secret, our supreme strength, is that no man on earth, no father, no son, could dare admit that a proper lady — his daughter, his sister, his wife — would ever commit a breach that seriously threatened his superior position in the society he has constructed and which he will support with his very life. For should he once believe of any one of us that we might so rebel against the absurd rules and regulations proscribing the periphery of our lives, then he must perforce believe that we are all capable of bringing down bis elaborate house of cards and thereby destroying his faith in the cherished myth of ideal womanhood.

Across the yard she heard a window go up at the Churchill house. She opened her eyes.

“Lizzie?” Mrs. Churchill called. “What’s the matter?”

She took a deep breath.

“Oh, Mrs. Churchill,” she shouted in alarm, “do come over! Someone has killed father!”