Lizzie Read online

  Evan Hunter

  Lizzie

  This is for Roger Machell

  and

  Christopher Sinclair-Stevenson

  Lizzie Borden took an ax

  And gave her mother forty whacks.

  When she saw what she had done

  She gave her father forty-one.

  1: Liverpool and London — 1890

  There was, for Lizzie, a sense of discovery — no, of homecoming. Standing at the ship’s railing, listening to the groaning and hissing of the steam machinery as it hoisted the trunks and valises from belowdecks, she felt less a foreigner than she did a returning native. This England, this sceptered isle — today wreathed in ominously shifting gray clouds that promised rain — called to her from more than two centuries past, when a man named John Borden left his home in Kent to seek his fortune in the colonies.

  Had he felt, upon his arrival in Boston, the same keen anticipation she felt today in this vast and sprawling harbor? Had the skies over that alien port seemed as utterly appropriate to him as did these leaden skies above Liverpool now? Appropriate, yes; sunshine would have been a disappointment, a contradiction of expectations.

  The heat in Fall River a week ago had been intolerable. New York City had been even less hospitable, its temperatures hovering in the mid-nineties, the noise and confusion of the docks miraculously disappearing the moment the women boarded the Teutonic and found their cabins. But for all its splendor and speed, the great Ocean Greyhound, as it had been advertised, had seemed only another necessary delay, five days — almost six — before this moment, this already cherished instant, when she could stand here, the wind wet and raw on her face, the harbor crowded with hundreds of ships and boats defying the waves, and glimpse there in the distance the rooftops of an England recalled as though she had been here countless times before.

  The transatlantic journey had not been shortened by the fact that Anna had been seasick almost every moment. They had invited her along, after months of preparation and consultation, only because first-cabin accommodations were so dreadfully expensive ($60 to $140, depending upon the location!) and none of them could afford the luxury of travel in an unshared room. It had been Lizzie’s misfortune — and she hoped to correct this as concerned future hotel arrangements — to have drawn a short straw similar to Anna’s from a hat belonging to Rebecca Welles, the chance draw determining exactly how the ladies would be traveling au paire, as Rebecca had put it in her somewhat strained French.

  Even under the best of circumstances, Anna Borden was a dour, pale-faced woman, entirely humorless, and given to wearing a veil day and night, perhaps to hide her plainness, perhaps to ward off unwanted glances from foreign men, of which there had been many on the voyage out. The fact that they were both named Borden had encouraged far too many people to ask, “Oh, are you related?” which they weren’t — except perhaps for some common ancestor in the dim, distant past: there were now something more than four hundred Bordens in Fall River, most of whom Lizzie didn’t even know. She claimed to the other two women in their party that she had never seen Anna without a veil covering her face except when she was vomiting in the ship’s toilet, but this was an exaggeration. Anna slept with her face naked to the night airs. And snored loudly, as though to dispel whatever evil spirits might be tempted to invade her nostrils when the veil was tucked away in her dressing case. She stood veiled and shivering beside Lizzie now, clutching the rail for dear life although the ship was virtually motionless, breathing deeply as though in imminent danger of vomiting again.

  Of the three women traveling with her, Lizzie liked Rebecca Welles best. Somewhat younger than Lizzie — she was twenty-seven or — eight, Lizzie wasn’t quite sure — she was a well read and quite attractive young woman with a passable knowledge of French and a smattering of German as well, which Lizzie hoped would stand the party in good stead on the final leg of their journey. They had met the way so many unmarried women in Fall River did, at a church function, and it was Lizzie who had convinced her to join the church’s Chinese department, where they struggled side by side teaching English to the sons and daughters of the town’s laundrymen. In many respects Rebecca — though her forebears were mixed Welsh and English — looked Chinese herself, with masses of straight black hair and eyes the color of loam, somewhat slanted over prominent cheekbones.

  The Liverpool harbor resembled nothing so much as a giant canal — miles long and a thousand feet wide, Lizzie guessed — lined with great walls of heavy cut stone divided into berths large enough to accommodate any seagoing vessel. Everywhere she looked, she could see ships and smaller boats disgorging cargo, the markings and flags on the vessels indicating they had come from ports everywhere on the face of — there now! The tenders that would carry them to the customhouse were approaching the ship. Further along the railing, Felicity Chambers, her blond locks blowing in the wind, waved at one of the approaching boats, or rather at the pilot guiding it alongside; she could not imagine how Felicity could even see the man through the grimy window of the pilothouse, but waving she was, and in a thoroughly unladylike manner that caused Rebecca, by her side, to give her an equally unladylike poke with her elbow. Felicity was twenty-four years old, destined one day to become the wife of one of Fall River’s businessmen, Lizzie guessed, a dimpled, curly-headed little thing quite remarkably endowed by nature and possessed of all the cute mannerisms Europeans expected of small-town American girls traveling abroad.

  One day, strolling the deck in bright sunshine on the voyage out, Lizzie had chanced to overhear a remark made by an Englishwoman returning to her native land. As Felicity flitted past, the woman said, “So American. Beautiful, rich — and vulgar.” Lizzie had taken this as a comment less directed at Felicity’s blond, blue-eyed good looks and extravagant figure than at the particularly lavish way she was dressed for a daytime, topside constitutional. And whereas she quite agreed that her traveling companion had looked overdressed and inappropriately bejeweled in contrast to the Europeans making the homeward voyage, she nonetheless felt a fierce, protective loyalty. Staring the Englishwoman down, letting her know with her penetrating gaze that she’d been overheard, she had deliberately gone to Felicity, embraced her, kissed her on the cheek, and walked arm in arm with her into the grand saloon.

  “Oh, it’s England, it’s England!” Felicity said now, and waved this time at the distant anonymous shore.

  At the booking office in the Birkenhead Station, Lizzie was informed (and she was already beginning to regret her role as elected treasurer) that the distance from Liverpool to London was two hundred miles, and that a first-class ticket would cost one pound, eight shillings, which she clumsily calculated as seven U.S. dollars, or approximately three and a half cents a mile, which she supposed was something of a bargain. They followed a porter in blue livery to the luggage van (they called it luggage here, she noticed, and not baggage) and watched as he labeled each piece Paddington and then hefted the lot of them inside; he was a giant of a man, who tossed their trunks into the van with little effort and even less care. Lizzie waited in vain for a receipt of some sort, but apparently the British confidence in human nature was sublime, and when she saw that none was forthcoming, she began rummaging in her purse for the expected tip.

  An Englishman was standing nearby, tipping a porter who had performed a similar service for him only moments before. Lizzie detected at once that only a single bronze coin changed hands — twopence, as she reckoned in the swift exchange. Had she grossly overtipped the custom-shed porter? She fished in her purse, found what she hoped was a half shilling, and handed the silver coin to the porter. He gave her a baleful look until she added several bronze coins to the one in his palm, and then his craggy face broke into a wide gap-toothed grin, and he murmured, “God bless, madam,
” and led them immediately to the first-class compartment of the nearest passenger car, where he stood by the steps and bowed them aboard, his cap in his hand.

  No sooner were they seated than a freckle-faced, towheaded newsboy wearing a cap tilted over half his face, a loose baggy sweater that came almost to his thighs, and kneebreeches falling loose over equally fallen stockings, came along the platform crying, “Papers, papers!” and stopped at the open door to the compartment. “Papers, ladies?” he asked, and Felicity, making herself comfortable in the seat next to the window, looked at the array of newspapers he proffered, rolled her blue eyes, and said, “Oh, my, whichever one shall we read?”

  “Depends on your politics, miss,” the newsboy said. “If you’re Gladstonian, I’d advise the News. If on the other hand you’re Tory, you might do well to take either the Times or the Standard!”

  “We’ll have the Times,” Lizzie said.

  “Are we Tory?” Felicity asked.

  “Y’could be worse, miss,” the newsboy said, grinning, and counted out the change for the coin Lizzie handed him. “Thank you, ma’am,” he said, and Lizzie wondered when “miss” became “ma’am” in Europe. In Fall River, she was Miss Lizzie. Here in England, Felicity was miss, but she herself had been ma’am or madam on more than one occasion now. She had celebrated her thirtieth birthday on the nineteenth day of July, three days before they’d boarded the Teutonic. Felicity was twenty-four. Did those six years make such a difference here? Vaguely troubled, she opened her purse and was dropping the loose change into it when the door on the corridor side suddenly opened.

  A man with the word Inspector stamped onto a round brass plate pinned to his cap stepped into the compartment and said, “Tickets, please, tickets.” She rummaged in her purse for the tickets she had purchased, regretting more and more the chore the others had imposed upon her. The uniformed man took the tickets, and with a heavy punch gouged into each of them a pie-shaped wedge. “Have a pleasant journey,” he said, and touched the peak of his cap. Outside on the platform, there was a sudden bustle of activity as uniformed men ran along slamming the doors of the cars. Just as suddenly, the train began to move.

  She sat opposite Felicity in the narrow compartment, their skirted knees almost touching, and began reading the London Times.

  They learned soon enough that the train offered none of the comforts or conveniences to which they were accustomed on American railroad coaches. Not anywhere in the car was there a toilet stand, a closet, a heating apparatus or a drinking-water cylinder. The weather was brisk compared to what they were used to in July, and with the windows closed, the compartment was quite close. Anna complained of a headache. Felicity, after a tour of the car and a search for toilet facilities, indelicately suggested that had she known such accommodations would be lacking, she would have carried along her own slop pail. Rebecca, now reading the Times Lizzie had already read from first page to last, visibly winced at Felicity’s comment.

  It was with considerable relief, therefore, that they learned from the inspector, who flung open the corridor door again just as the train was pulling into the Chester station, that they would be stopping here for twenty minutes should the ladies care to stretch their legs. He assured them he would make certain that no one occupied their seats, and Lizzie wondered if he expected a tip for his concern. As if to confirm her surmise, the inspector returned just as the train was pulling into the station, carrying a narrow strip of paper dripping with paste. The paper, Lizzie saw as he affixed it to the window of their compartment, was a printed form that he had filled in with pencil. It read:

  What then to tip this great grinning ape who now backed away from the window and stood beaming with pride at his primitive accomplishment? According to Lizzie’s calculations, a shilling was the equivalent of twenty-five cents. But surely even a man with the word Inspector emblazoned in brass on his cap would not expect so exorbitant a fee for posting his simple bill and insuring his vigilance. Would a half shilling suffice? She glanced across the compartment to Rebecca and by the look on her face saw that she was engaged in the same process of calculation. Rebecca shrugged behind the waiting inspector’s back. Lizzie dug into her purse and handed the man a shilling after all. He seemed satisfied; at any rate, he touched the peak of his cap before he left the compartment.

  His little sign, in fact, worked remarkably well almost all the way to London. But as the train was pulling out of the Oxford station, the door on the corridor side was yanked open, and a man peered into the compartment and said, “Excuse me, ladies, may we join you? The other first-class sections are fully occupied.”

  She wondered for a moment who the “we” might be; she had no desire to share the compartment with two strange men. But the man seemed to be utterly alone, a tall, brown-eyed Englishman (judging from his speech), wearing a single-breasted lounge jacket cut to button four but worn to button one, the sleeves short enough to show his fashionable, colored linen cuffs, his close, small-buttoned trousers cut well up to reveal his fancy patent leather buttoned boots. He wore beneath the jacket a vest with a small check repeated in the fabric of his hat, which in every other respect resembled a bowler. Like most of the other men Lizzie had seen here in England (and it was a relief from the bearded men at home), he was clean-shaven except for short side-whiskers and a mustache. Without waiting for their reply, he threw the small valise he was carrying up onto the overhead rack, said, “Thank you,” and then ducked out into the corridor again and called, “Allie! I’ve found us some spaces!” and backed away a few steps, waiting.

  The woman who appeared in the doorframe was quite the most beautiful woman Lizzie had ever seen in her life. She stood almost as tall as her companion, some five feet eight or nine inches, Lizzie guessed, her extraordinary height exaggerated by the modest gabled toque she wore, a close-fitting hat trimmed with velvet and feathers, its inverted V-front exposing a fringe of frizzed blond hair. The toque was green, echoing the green of her eyes, as deep as any forest glade, perfectly matching the Norfolk jacket bodice and plain-fronted skirt she wore. Her face was as pale as milk, a perfect oval with a generous mouth and an aquiline nose. Her eyebrows lifted slightly when she saw how nearly full the compartment already was. “I do hope we shan’t be crowding you,” she said, and behind her the man nodded a belated apology.

  “Please join us,” Lizzie said graciously, and first the woman and then the man entered the compartment. She had given her window seat to Rebecca when the train left Warwick. The woman sat beside her now on her right — Lizzie noticed with relief that her bustle was small and fashionable — the faintest scent of eau de cologne wafting about her as she smoothed her skirt. She was wearing black stockings, Lizzie saw, and laced shoes with rounded toes and low heels. The man sat diagonally across from Lizzie, beside Felicity, who had swapped her window seat with Anna.

  “This is so very kind of you,” the woman said.

  Her voice was pitched rather low, sounding more like an adolescent boy’s than a woman’s, somewhat breathless now after her supposed dash for the train and the struggle to find a seat. The man, Lizzie noticed, though he was in the company of ladies, had not yet removed his absurd checked bowler. She immediately assumed he was ill-mannered. And yet, the woman seemed so fashionably dressed. And, certainly, their speech hadn’t sounded at all like what Lizzie had expected of lower-class Englishmen. Both of them were silent now. The man shifted his weight and stretched his long legs. The woman stared directly ahead of her, her slender, gloved hands folded in her lap.

  “Allow me to introduce ourselves,” Lizzie said, turning to the woman and seeming to take her quite by surprise. “I’m Lizzie Borden, and these are my friends. Felicity Chambers...”

  “Charmed,” Felicity said.

  “Rebecca Welles...”

  “How do you do?”

  “And Anna Borden... there by the window.”

  Anna nodded behind her veil.

  “Americans, of course,” the man said, and smiled.
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  “Yes,” Lizzie said, and returned the smile.

  “How often would you say I’ve taken this train in the past five years, Allie?” he asked the woman.

  “Countless times,” she said.

  “Countless times,” he agreed, nodding. “And never has anyone but an American spoken to me.”

  “Nôtre sang-froid habituel,” the woman said, and added in explanation, “We English, you know,” and smiled.

  “Even if you hadn’t been so kind as to speak first,” the man said, “I’d have known you were American.”

  “Oh?” Lizzie said. “How?”

  “Only lords, fools and Americans ride first-class,” the man said, and laughed.

  “Since you, my dear Albert, are neither an American nor a lord...” the woman said, and airily waved aside the rest of the sentence.

  “A fool for certain,” the man said, shaking his head. “The smoking compartment’s packed full, you know. Book a first-class ticket and ride all the way to London without a cigar.”

  “Please don’t ask the ladies if they’d mind,” the woman said.

  “Would you mind?” the man asked, looking across at Lizzie.

  “Anna isn’t feeling well,” Lizzie said apologetically.

  “Oh, what a pity,” the woman said, and glanced about at the other women, as though trying to recall which of them was Anna. Her glance settled unerringly on the veiled figure huddled beside Felicity in the window seat on the other side of the compartment. “Forgive me,” she said, “I’m Alison Newbury. This is my husband, Albert.”

  “Allie and Albie,” the man said.

  “The ‘Albie’, of course, is to distinguish him from our late and eternally lamented prince consort,” Alison said drily.

  “Who but a prince would book first-class?” Albert said. “Is the ‘Lizzie’ short for Elizabeth?”