Miss Lizzie

by Walter Satterthwait

“I’m not lying. I killed her.”

  “Oh, really? So how’d you kill her?”

  “With a hatchet.”

  “Where’d you find it?”

  “What difference does it make?”

  “See? You don’t even know where you found it.”

  He grinned. “In that old shed by the swamp.”

  “What were you doing in there?”

  “That’s where I went after we had the fight. I was just sitting there and I saw it lying under some boards.”

  “Where is it now?”

  “I threw it in the swamp. Afterward.”

  “Where in the swamp?”

  “I don’t remember. I was running away. I was in a hurry.”

  “They’ll look in the swamp, you know. The police.”

  He shrugged. “Then they’ll probably find it.”

  “All right, William.” I crossed my arms over my chest. “Why’d you kill her?”

  “I was sick of her. Her dumb whining and complaining. The way she treated Dad, the way she treated us. I was tired of the way she looked at me, and her fat white hands, and the way she touched me sometimes.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He stopped himself before he answered, and he frowned. “Look, I was just sick of her, okay? Everything about her. And I was angry, really angry. I saw the hatchet lying there and I picked it up. I walked back to the house along the beach.”

  “With a hatchet in your hand?”

  “I shoved it into my pants. It’s only a couple hundred yards from the swamp to the back of the house, and there wasn’t anyone around.”

  “How’d you get into the house?”

  “The back door was latched, so I came around and used the front door.”

  “Was the front door locked?”

  “No. I just walked in. I looked for her up in her room, but she wasn’t there, so I came downstairs—”

  “You went upstairs first? The back stairs?”

  “Yeah, but she wasn’t up there. So I came down and then I went up the front stairs. She was asleep in the guest room.” He shrugged. “And I killed her.”

  I shook my head. “You’re lying, William.”

  “I’m not lying.”

  “Did you look in my room?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “I didn’t think she’d be in there.”

  “I was, you know.”

  “So? I never looked inside.”

  “How come I didn’t hear you?”

  He shrugged. “I was walking on tiptoes.”

  “I still should’ve heard you.”

  “But you didn’t.” He smiled as though taunting me.

  I took a deep breath. “So what did you do after you killed her?”

  “I had some blood on me, so I took a shower in the washroom, and then I wrapped the hatchet in the dirty towel and came downstairs and left.”

  “With the hatchet and the towel.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And you threw them both in the swamp?”

  “Yeah. Separately. The towel first, then the hatchet. And then I walked up the path along the creek for a mile, up to the road, and I hitchhiked a ride to Boston.”

  “Who was the man who gave you the ride? The man you had a fight with?”

  “I made that up. Because of those stains on my shirt. I tried to get them out in the washroom, but some of them were still showing.”

  “So who gave you a ride?”

  “Some guy. I don’t remember.”

  “What did he look like?”

  “Just a guy. Short. He had a mustache.”

  “William, you’re lying.”

  He shook his head. “Nope. Sorry, Amanda. I’m not lying. I killed her.”

  “You did not.”

  “It doesn’t matter whether you believe me or not. I did it.”

  “When you left the house, did you lock the front door?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “It was locked.”

  “Then I guess I locked it.” He smiled again. “Give it up, Amanda. Forget about it. I killed her.”

  “He’s lying, Miss Lizzie,” I said. “I know he is. Father must’ve told him all that stuff, and he’s using it now to say that he killed Audrey. He was making it all up as he went along.”

  She frowned. “It does sound almost as though he were trying out the role, doesn’t it? Trying it out on you before he tried it out on the police. Like a New York show going first to Boston.”

  “But he is going to tell the police.”

  “Did he say why he hasn’t told them already?”

  “He said he didn’t want Father to know. But now he sees that he’s got to tell, he says, no matter what.”

  “And you say you left your father at the police station?”

  “Yes. He doesn’t know yet.”

  “You didn’t tell him about this?”

  “William made me promise not to. He said it was his responsibility.”

  She nodded.

  We were sitting at the table on her back porch, a cup of her universal panacea, chamomile tea, resting before each of us.

  “The thing that bothers me,” I said, “is that towel he was talking about. He said he wrapped the hatchet in a towel before he left. Maybe there really is a towel missing, and if there is, how did William know about it?”

  She smiled. “Just because you and I didn’t know about it doesn’t mean that there wasn’t a missing towel. Very possibly, whoever used the washroom did take a towel with him, so as not to leave it as evidence. And the only way the police could’ve determined that was by asking you or your father. If they did ask your father, he could easily have told your brother.”

  “That’s it!” I said. “That must be it! He got it from Father, just like he got everything else.”

  “So it would seem. Did he mention anything about the key? Your stepmother’s key?”

  “The one that’s missing? No.” I leaned toward her. “Miss Lizzie, we’ve got to do something.”

  “Yes,” she said, and frowned. She looked down into her teacup.

  I stood up and crossed over to the screen that faced my house. From there I could see through the tattered privet hedge that divided the two properties, Miss Lizzie’s and ours. I could make out the beach behind our house, most of our sandy yard, and the weathered gray stoop at the back porch, where, just three days ago, my stepmother and William had fought with each other.

  “If I’d only been standing here on Tuesday,” I said. “Then I could prove that William didn’t come back like he says he did.”

  Behind me, Miss Lizzie said softly, “There are no ifs in the world, Amanda, I’m sorry to say.”

  I turned to her. “Why is William lying? What’s he doing it for?”

  “Well,” she said, “I can think of several reasons.” She smiled. “But let’s not worry about them right now. The important thing, it seems to me, is to prove that he is lying, and I’ve got an idea or two as to how we can do that. Mr. Boyle called earlier and said he’d stop by after lunch. We can discuss it with him. How would that be?”

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ll be back by lunchtime.”

  She frowned. “Where are you going?”

  “To the swamp.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  MISS LIZZIE DID not want me to go alone—“I don’t think it’s safe, dear”—and for a while she threatened to come along herself. I had visions of her trudging across the hot sand, a strained intrepid smile on her lips, her black dress billowing like abanner in the breeze; and I knew that for her (although neither of us would ever admit it) the trip I was planning would be difficult and uncomfortable. Finally, when I promised to get Annie Holmes to accompany me, she agreed to let me go. It was eleven o’clock when I left, and I assured her I would be back by one-thirty.

  Annie’s house lay a block north of ours on Water Street. Her family, like mine, lived in Boston, but this was their third summer at the shore. She knew more about
the neighborhood than I did, as she had often pointed out, and she might even know whether there had ever been a hatchet somewhere in the old shed by the swamp.

  Annie opened the door, saw me, and suddenly, without actually withdrawing, seemed to shrink back behind it, using it almost as a shield. “Uh, hello, Amanda.”

  “Hi, Annie.” I had expected a more exuberant reaction; but perhaps the past few days had left her feeling a bit awkward. “Come on out, okay? Let’s go for a walk.”

  She hesitated. “Urn, well, I don’t feel very good.” Annie was a poor liar; and now, quite clearly, she was lying. I knew it, and she knew I knew it. She looked down at her shoes, her eyelids fluttering. “I guess not.”

  “What is it?” came the voice of Mrs. Holmes, and then she was standing in the doorway, a big-boned officious woman wearing a flowered apron over a brown cotton dress. “Amanda,” she said, her face tightening as she put her hand protectively on Annie’s shoulder. “Annie’s not feeling well. She needs her rest.”

  Annie was, except for Miss Lizzie, my best friend at the shore; her mother had always treated me with kindness. Now they were shutting me out, both of them. Their faces were taut and empty, a pair of blank masks; but what lay beneath them, what revealed itself in their eyes, was fear.

  I felt open and exposed, as though my skin had been flayed away to reveal the hot raw flesh beneath.

  For a moment I could not breathe, could not find my voice. I swallowed, and weakly I said, “Yes.”

  “We’ll see you some other time,” said Mrs. Holmes. She forced a brittle smile. “All right, dear?” As though she wished me to ratify the humiliation.

  “Yes,” I said meekly, but already she was closing the door.

  The rims of my eyes stung like the lips of a wound. I turned and walked down the stairs, my body clumsy. I will not cry, I told myself. I will not cry.

  I stood for a moment in front of Annie’s house, blinking back the acid, wondering what to do. I almost returned to Miss Lizzie’s. I had an excuse: I had told her I would make the journey only if Annie came with me. But I remembered how Miss Lizzie had stood up to the crowd yesterday while they taunted her and hurled their idiotic vegetables. She had not run away. I would not either, not at least from bulky boring witchy Mrs. Holmes and her sniveling treacherous backstabbing daughter. Anger, as it often does, had replaced pain.

  A large part of it was directed at myself, for agreeing so quickly, with such cowardice, to my own dismissal; for lacking the courage to call them, to their faces, the bitter names I silently called them now.

  Very well, I told myself. I did not need them. If I could live without heaven, I could live without traitors and rats like Mrs. Holmes and Annie. I could live without anyone.

  But because the heat wave had ended, all the people were back on the beach, clusters of murmuring adults and giddy children; and as I passed by them, I could hear their whispers and giggles, feel their stares prickle the small of my back. I might believe today that I imagined all this, had I not heard, behind me, a shrill childish voice start to chant, “Lizzie Borden took an axe—” Then the sharp smack of palm against skin, followed by a thin high wail.

  The tide was up and the breeze was mild, the sun was shining. It was a beautiful day, almost certainly. I really did not notice. I was trying to keep my shoulders squared and maintain my head upright atop a suddenly fragile stalk of neck. For the first time I understood Miss Lizzie’s determined walk, that slow relentless march of hers.

  The shed, which I believe had once belonged to a fisherman, was simply a shed, abandoned and ramshackle, smelling of dust and sun-scorched wood. As William had said, there were boards scattered about, and empty tin cans and other bits of rubbish. At one corner, an old Police Gazette lay curled in a rictus. But along the dust that lined the floor there was no convenient silhouette of a hatchet. I do not know what I should have done if there had been.

  Just beyond the shed was the swampy inlet that led to the mouth of the creek. The swamp was about a hundred yards wide and a hundred yards deep. The air seemed thicker here, and smelled of rot and mold. Small dense clouds of midges hovered above the clumps of skunk cabbage and the thickets of marsh grass, nasty stuff with long narrow blades as sharp as swords.

  Amid the brackish water and slick black mud were small weeded islands, and between many of these someone had slung old boards to form a sort of meandering passageway. I picked up a stick and stepped out onto one. It sagged beneath me and dipped down into the muck, smack, and clammy water gushed in over the tops of my shoes. I shuddered. A pair of pallid fiddler crabs scuttled away, into the grasses.

  Carefully, I slid the stick down into the water, into the mud. Water striders skimmed off across the surface. The stick went two feet deep before it stopped.

  If a hatchet had been thrown in there, somewhere in those five or six acres of slough, no one would ever find it. And last night’s storm would have snatched away anything like a towel that might have been floating about.

  I left the stick in the glop and stepped back onto solid ground. My shoes were soaked. I sat down on an old stump, untied the laces, took them off. I stripped off my socks, wrung out the yellow swamp water, wrestled them back on, and then tugged on the shoes. They looked perfectly presentable, but felt terrible against my feet, cold and damp.

  I looked around the swamp. Except for the shifting swarms of midges, everything was still. But I knew that behind the quiet, down where the blades of marsh grass poked through the sodden earth, the place was slithering with life. Rats and snakes, leeches and slugs, chiggers and beetles and centipedes.

  And then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a sudden quick flicker of movement. Off to my left, in the woods.

  I might have imagined it. But just then, as the fear shivered along my skin, I did not think so. Over there, in the shadows between the trees, something had moved. Or someone.

  And I cannot say why, but I was certain that it was Audrey’s murderer.

  I saw him, in my mind’s eye, watching from behind a tree, hatchet in hand, waiting for his chance to come at me. He had passed me over when he slaughtered Audrey, but now he would correct that mistake.

  And then, from the same part of the woods, another flutter of movement: The branches of a small tree trembled.

  Suddenly I felt very much alone. The swamp was silent and the woods were abruptly darker, abruptly thicker. I was far from the nearest help. And out of earshot: If I were to scream, no one would hear me. If he killed me here, hacked at me, shattered me with his weapon, he could push my body deep into that black, foul-smelling ooze, and no one would ever find it.

  I stood up and began to walk back along the path toward the beach, my shoes squishing beneath me. I walked calmly, slowly—I did not want to alert him, to let him know that I was aware of him. But I was aware, acutely so; I could feel the weight of his stare all along my body.

  When I got back to the beach and saw the people up ahead, the same people whose whispers had disturbed me earlier, I was shamelessly glad to see them. And by the time I reached the street again, heading for the police station to talk to Father about William, I had convinced myself that I had imagined that presence in the woods, that no one had actually been there. That the movement I saw had been, at most, a squirrel; perhaps a rabbit.

  But, as I later learned, I was wrong. Someone had been in the woods that day; someone had been watching me.

  The policeman sitting behind the big desk in the lobby of the police station, a middle-aged fat man with a shiny bald scalp, told me that Father had gone to Boston. When I asked to see William, he seemed suddenly embarrassed. “Well now, he says he don’t want to see nobody.”

  “But I’m his sister.”

  “I know that, miss. But he don’t want to see nobody, he says. Even a prisoner’s got his rights, see. He don’t wanna see nobody, he don’t see nobody.”

  “Is the chief of police here?”

  “He’s a busy man, the chief is.”

 
“Can I see him?”

  He frowned. “He’s talkin’ with Tommy Medley just now.”

  “Please? Could you ask him? It won’t take long.”

  He shrugged. “I’ll check. But I can’t promise nothin’. On account of he’s busy, see, like I said.”

  He got up from the desk, walked over to a door on his right, knocked on it, waited, opened it and stuck his head in for a moment. Leaving the door open, he returned to the desk. He shrugged again, defeated or surprised or both. “He says to come ahead.”

  In his single-sleeved starched white shirt, Chief Da Silva sat starchly upright behind the desk. Officer Medley, who had been sitting in a chair to my left, stood up. “Hi, Amanda.” He grinned earnestly.

  “Hello.” This was the man who had dragged my brother from my grandparents’ house: he would get from me nothing more than curtness.

  He said, “I guess it’s been a rough week for you, hasn’t it?”

  “Yes,” I said, and turned to Da Silva. “Could I please talk to you?”

  Da Silva nodded. “Certainly. Have a seat.” He turned to Officer Medley. “I’ll expect to hear from you by tonight, then.”

  “Yessir. Bye, Amanda.” Another grin.

  “Good-bye,” I said. Rat. I sat down.

  Medley left, closing the door behind him, and Da Silva said, “Now. How can I help you?”

  “My brother didn’t do it.”

  He nodded noncommittally, his dark eyes as unreadable as ever.

  “He wouldn’t do something like that.”

  He nodded again. “I agree.”

  I had been about to continue; caught off guard, I said, “What?”

  “I don’t believe he killed your stepmother.”

  Indignant: “Then what are you keeping him here for?”

  He made his small quick smile. “One. By all the evidence, he left town shortly after the time the murder occurred. Two. He didn’t come forward voluntarily. Three. An article of his clothing was proved to contain bloodstains that matched the blood group of the deceased—”

  “But they match his too. He’s got the same kind of blood.”

  “I’m aware of that. Four. He’s confessed.”

  So William had actually done it. The fool. The silly, silly fool. “But he’s lying,” I said.