Fall River drew lines—guilty, not guilty. While Lizzie was locked in a cell, urinating humiliation in a slops pail, Emma hired her father’s lawyer, Jennings, and they prepared for trial. You read the usual things when friends are called as witnesses: ‘I’ve known Lizzie for years. She’d not ever do a thing like that’; ‘Nothing but love for her father.’ Horse-shit. The good bits came when, one after the other, friends and acquaintances told reporters, ‘Well, Mrs Borden and Lizzie never did get on well.’
For ten months she was held in jail. I liked to think it’s because they didn’t trust her to stay put. But she got special treatment, was allowed to eat home-cooked meals, was allowed to grow strawberries in her cell. Spoiled and rotten. Then, finally, on 5 June 1893 the trial began. For thirteen days newspapers sent their reporters to the New Bedford superior court to take stock.
Day one. The trial began. Day two, the jury was taken to the scene of the crime. I could’ve shown them around: Here’s where Abby tried to save her own life by crawling under the bed. As you can see, she was just too big. Here’s where I found blood. Here’s where Bridget vomited. Here’s where Lizzie filled with anger. These are the doors that were locked. Over there is where Bridget washed windows and Abby yelled at her. This is the table where the bodies were laid out. Here’s where, here’s where, here’s where. The jurors would poke their old fingers in everything, pretend they were investigating the facts when really they wanted to touch the spaces dead people had been.
While in the house the jurors were told that Emma still lived there, despite it all. One of the men said they noticed Borden family photos spread throughout the house, on the mantels and side tables, on walls and dressers, on bookshelves and in cupboards. Emma always had company that way. Another juror said it was very sad, ‘The way she was alone like that. I’d imagine she wouldn’t take well to having her own thoughts day in and out.’ Another, ‘Miss Borden made us tea while we were there. Seemed to have made her happy to be useful.’ These different truths.
As the trial days continued articles always mentioned Lizzie’s clothes, her black-black drab, a missing button, her provincial face, sour-white cheeks, her New England stride as she walked into and out of the courtroom. The way jail was making her plumper. Lizzie sat, stared at her hands, stared at witnesses as one after the other testified about her relationship with Abby. What would people say about my relationship with my papa if I was ever caught and put on trial?
On the third day, John told stories of his whereabouts on the day of the murders, told stories like he believed them. ‘I was in the sitting room and Mr Borden and his wife came in and out of the room all morning. At some stage Mrs Borden came in with a feather duster and cleaned.’
‘And then what did you do?’
‘I left the house, went to the post office.’
‘And then?’
‘I returned to the Bordens’ in a horse-car.’
‘When you got to the Borden house, did anything attract your attention at first?’
‘No, sir. In fact, I ate a pear.’
‘But you were informed of what had happened?’
‘Yes.’ John would’ve been smug.
‘Did you see Mr or Mrs Borden first?’
‘I saw Lizzie.’
‘No, Mr Morse—which victim did you first see?’
‘Oh, I saw Mr Borden.’
John went on and on. I thought of that day, how police were there in ones and twos after Andrew was found, how fistfuls of people gathered out front of the house. It was hard not to notice something amiss, but John had simply wanted pears first, would investigate why the police were there second.
It was on the fourth day that Bridget, that fire bubble of secrets who everyone dismissed as stupid, told the court that after she found out Andrew and Abby were killed, she took three officers down to the basement where the Bordens kept a box of hatchets by the furnace.
‘I didn’t touch the hatchets but the police took three of ’em,’ she said.
She wasn’t believed. ‘Why did the police take three?’
‘I’m not sure.’ Bridget would’ve shrugged.
‘Did you touch them?’
‘I left ’em alone.’
‘Now, tell me, when Miss Borden got you down from the attic and told you her father had been killed, what was she doing?’
‘Standin’ at the door. She was excited.’ Indeed. Lizzie had been excited that day, all her movements. I could still see her in the house, could still see all of them in there, moving around like strangers to each other, not noticing the blood that was boiling up from inside. Andrew and Abby on the dining table. The smell of rotted pears, rotted meat. John standing in night shadows watching me.
‘Excited?’
‘More excited than I’d ever seen her before.’ Bridget’s eyes would’ve widened.
‘Was she crying?’
‘No, sir.’ Big shake of the head.
‘That’s not what you said at the inquest. You said, “The girl was crying.”’
‘I didn’t say she was cryin’. I couldn’t’ve said it. I know what she was doing.’
The more people spoke the more Lizzie found herself in trouble.
‘She didn’t get along with her mother.’
‘There was tension.’
‘Sometimes Mr Borden would be yelling at her.’
‘Miss Lizzie can be temperamental. Or so I’ve heard.’
‘When I questioned Miss Borden on the day of the murders, her story kept changing. I got to thinking something was a lie.’
On day seven, a grand miracle happened, the kind that only people with the money to talk their way out of danger can do. Lawyer Jennings successfully argued that Lizzie’s inquest testimony should be inadmissible. ‘She was never counselled about her rights. She didn’t know that what she said could be incriminating. She was in great shock. She wasn’t under arrest at the time.’
The judge accepted. Her father’s money had been put to good use. Lizzie had a second chance, had her words cleansed. Reading that always made me heat and rage, made me shout at the paper, ‘Some of that money belongs to me.’ What I would’ve given to have that kind of money, make rights in my life.
It was talk of riches that brought Emma to the stand on day eleven. She was forced to publicly acknowledge the problems of the family, to talk about property, the bloodlines that owned it. Emma, laying out Borden puzzle pieces for me to fit together. It was the closest I ever got to hearing her voice, this mysterious sister who perfectly timed her vacation. I imagined how her voice sweated tension, dripped onto the courtroom floor whenever the subject of Abby came up.
‘Why did your sister stop calling Mrs Borden “Mother”?’
‘I don’t know.’ Eyebrows would’ve come together.
‘How did your sister address her then?’
‘As Mrs Borden.’ That cold-hearted way of relating.
‘When did your sister start calling her Mother?’
‘Early on, when she was very young. Before I even called her Mother.’
I could’ve told them for certain that’s not what Lizzie was calling Abby on the final day together.