Miss Lizzie

by Walter Satterthwait

  “I’m fine, Father. Where are you?”

  “Still in Boston. I’ll be there tomorrow morning, early: Are you sure you’re all right?”

  “Yes, I’m fine. Really. But how come you’re in Boston?”

  “I had some things to take care of. Business. But everything’s done, most of it, anyway, and I’ll be driving back in the morning.”

  “An awful lot’s been going on here, Father. I was all over town today, talking to all kinds of people. I’ve been out with Miss Lizzie, and with Mr. Boyle—”

  “Amanda, I’m sorry, I don’t mean to cut you short, but I’ve got to go. I’m sorry, baby. I only called to make sure you were all right. Try to understand.”

  Everyone wanted me to understand, but no one seemed willing to tell me what, or why.

  “Amanda?” he said.

  “Yes.” I pouted into the mouthpiece. “I’m here.”

  “Amanda, I truly am sorry,” said the brittle, attenuated voice. “I know I haven’t been able to spend much time with you lately. I don’t know whether you believe me or not—and I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t—but it’s been bothering me a lot. It has, Amanda. I’m sorry we can’t talk longer, but I hope you’ll remember that I love you very much, and that I always will, no matter what happens.”

  “What do you mean?” I said, suddenly uneasy. “What’s going to happen?”

  “Nothing, baby, nothing.” But I could hear the strain, the tightness, in his voice. “Everything will be all right. And I love you. Okay?”

  “Are you okay, Daddy?”

  He cleared his throat. “Fine, baby, I’m fine. I’ll see you tomorrow morning. Say hello to Miss Borden for me. All right?”

  “What time are you going to be here?”

  “Around nine. I love you, baby.”

  “I love you too, Daddy.”

  “Good-bye now.”

  “Good-bye.”

  The phone clicked against my ear, a metallic, inhuman sound.

  I set down the receiver and stood there for a moment. What was so important in Boston? Was it that Susan St. Clair person again? How could she be more important that I was? Than William was?

  And what had he meant by no matter what happens?

  I heard Miss Lizzie call me from the kitchen.

  The sadness, the worry, had lumped together in my throat. I swallowed them away (temporarily) and left the parlor. From the hallway, walking toward her, I called out, “It was Father. He was in a hurry, and he couldn’t talk. He says hello.”

  Bent over the sink, she called back to me, “Amanda, in the hallway closet there’s a toolbox. I think there’s a wrench inside. Do you know what that is?”

  “Yes, sure, of course.” I was not an entirely benighted female; back in Boston, I had seen William use one.

  “Could you get it for me?”

  The closet was halfway between the parlor and the kitchen. I opened the door and looked for a light switch. There was none, but a string dangled from the ceiling. I tugged it, and bright-yellow light filled the narrow recess.

  Hanging from the rack were a black poplin raincoat and a lightweight wool jacket, also black. Standing at stiff attention on the floor, a pair of black rubber galoshes and a pair of black walking shoes. The toolbox lay in the corner.

  It was gray metal, two feet long, one foot wide, one foot deep, with two metal clasps on the front. I undid these and swung up the top. There were screwdrivers on the first shelf, and neatly arranged cardboard boxes that held screws and bolts and nuts and nails. No wrench.

  When I lifted off the shelf to get down into the interior of the box, I saw a rusted crescent wrench lying at the bottom.

  And I saw, lying just beside it, the hatchet.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  THE DAY HAD been an eventful one, and long; but that night, as I lay on the camphor-scented sheets, the image that kept appearing before me was not of Annie Holmes and her mother edging behind their front door, nor of Roger Drummond proudly reading his article, nor of Mrs. Marlowe ranting, nor of old Charlie grinning, nor of Mr. Mortimer and his checked suit, nor of Boyle, nor even of Mr. Slocum. It was of that hatchet.

  For a moment, bending over the toolbox in the closet, I had hesitated. Then, not breathing at all, I had reached into the box, taken it by the handle, and lifted it out.

  It was old and it was heavy. The handle was dark hickory, its surface as smooth as glass. Except for the sweep of sharp curved blade, the head was coated with a fine powdery black rust. In the harsh yellow light, I could just make out the words engraved at its base, where it met the shaft. Underhill Edge Tool Co.

  From the kitchen, Miss Lizzie called out, “Amanda? Did you find it?”

  “Yes,” I called back, and I set the hatchet back in the box, easing it down very carefully, as though it might somehow explode. I picked up the wrench and carried it out into the kitchen.

  I stood beside Miss Lizzie as she dealt with the faucet. I had never seen a woman effect repairs before—Audrey, whenever something broke, merely threw it away or called in a team of experts. Miss Lizzie’s blunt fingers, so nimble when she manipulated the playing cards, were strong and sure now as she fitted the wrench to the faucet’s base.

  “It’s a good thing the wrench was there,” I said.

  “Umm-hmmm,” she said, concentrating on her work.

  “That toolbox,” I said. “Did it come with the house?”

  “No,” she said, twisting the wrench with a firm, swift efficiency. “I brought it with me. You can never tell when things will start acting up on you.” She straightened up, turned to me, and smiled. “And I think it’s a good idea for people to be able to take care of problems on their own.” She tested the faucet. “There. That should do for a while.”

  She handed me the wrench. “Thank you. Let’s finish up the dishes, and then we’ll have some tea.”

  We had finished the dishes, and drunk our tea, and we had talked for a while, I forget now about what. I was distant, distracted, and at ten o’clock, pleading exhaustion, I had gone upstairs to my bedroom. Perhaps half an hour later Miss Lizzie came up the stairs and went down the hall to her room. I barely heard her; only the creak and whisper of a floorboard told me she had passed; she could move almost silently when she wished.

  “I’ll bet you, Amanda, I’ll bet you that hatchet is lying right around here somewhere.” So Roger Drummond had said, two days before, when he sat with me in the parlor.

  I did not believe that Miss Lizzie had killed my stepmother. I reminded myself of her kindness, her insight, her strength. She was intelligent and, more than that, she was wise. She was, finally, and in a way which few people were capable of being, a truly good person.

  And besides, as I had told Roger, she had absolutely no reason to commit an act of such brutality, such mindless, venomous evil.

  The hatchet was merely another tool. Probably it had lain in the box for years, gathering rust and dust, entirely forgotten.

  I did not believe that Miss Lizzy had killed Audrey. But I spent quite a long while not believing it before I was at last able to fall asleep.

  When I came downstairs next morning at nine, Miss Lizzie was in the parlor, speaking on the telephone. As I came into the room, I heard her say, “I understand. And you’ll ask Mr. Foley to do the other thing? Thank you. Have a pleasant trip. Good-bye.”

  She hung up the phone and turned to me. “My,” she said, and smiled. “Don’t you look lovely this morning.”

  I was wearing my favorite dress, the white organdy trimmed with lace. Beneath it, stiff petticoats made a comforting rustle. My shoes were white patent leather, fastened with straps rather than laces, and the shoes, too, I liked very much.

  “Thank you,” I said. “Do you really like the dress?”

  “I do. You look altogether pre-Raphaelite. Now, what would you like for breakfast? I picked up some nice smoked bacon yesterday.”

  We started moving toward the kitchen. “Pre-Raphaelite,” I said. “Is th
at good?”

  “It is indeed.”

  “That wasn’t Father on the telephone, was it?”

  “No. It was Mr. Boyle. He’s going to Boston for the day.”

  As we passed by the hallway closet, I was suddenly aware of the hatchet inside: as though my skin, magically hypersensitive, was able to perceive the subtle radiation emitted by that thing of wood and iron.

  “What for?” I asked Miss Lizzie.

  “Two reasons, I gather. Something about his reports, for one. He wasn’t very forthcoming, but I think that when he writes them, he tends to be a bit less revealing than his superiors would like.”

  I smiled. “He’s a funny man, isn’t he?”

  “Yes,” she said, opening the icebox door. “And competent as well.”

  “What’s the other reason?”

  “The other reason,” she said, and she smiled, “is that they’ve located the salesman, the Norton person who gave William a ride to Boston.”

  “Really?” I said, excited. “That’s great.”

  “Mr. Boyle thinks it would be helpful if he went up there to speak with him. I agreed. Reluctantly.”

  “How come reluctantly?”

  She set the eggs on the counter beside the white butcher-wrapped package of bacon. “Because I have a feeling that the situation here is going to come to a head fairly soon, and I’d feel more comfortable with him about.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “I’m not entirely sure. Instinct, I suppose.”

  She was busy in the cupboard, taking out bowls and plates.

  “What about Mr. Chatsworth?” I asked her. “Did Mr. Boyle get a chance to talk to him last night?”

  Without looking at me, she said, “He did, yes.”

  “What did he say?”

  She pulled open the silverware drawer.

  “Miss Lizzie?”

  She turned to me and clasped her hands below her stomach and she sighed. “He admitted it. Your stepmother was blackmailing him.”

  On the moral map with which I navigated at the time, blackmail did not possess much personal significance. I was even, as I have said, in a way rather pleased that Audrey had found something to do with her life besides complaining about it and making mine miserable. Certainly the fact of her being a blackmailer, after my experience of her character, came as no real surprise. I was not nearly so distressed to learn about it as Miss Lizzie seemed to think I ought to be.

  Still, everyone around me—Miss Lizzie, Mr. Slocum, Boyle—appeared to agree that it was an Extremely Bad Thing, and I supposed they were right, and I kept my own council.

  As we prepared our breakfast, and then as we ate it, Miss Lizzie told me what Boyle had learned. Mr. Chatsworth, while admitting to being blackmailed, had resolutely denied any involvement in Audrey’s death. He had been, so he said to Boyle, in Boston that Tuesday, all day; and he had given to the detective the names of several people there who would corroborate this. Boyle planned to speak with them today.

  What about Mrs. Archer? I wanted to know.

  Boyle would be talking to her today, before he left town. And he had obtained from Mr. Chatsworth her former address in New York City, and had telephoned the Pinkerton office there to see what they could discover about her earlier life.

  We finished eating at around ten o’clock, and, fifteen minutes later, Father telephoned. He was back at the Fairview, he told me, and he would be coming over to Miss Lizzie’s in another half an hour or so.

  Miss Lizzie, who had asked to speak with him, took the telephone when I was done with it and asked him if the two of us might come to the hotel instead. If possible, she said, she should like to speak with him. He agreed.

  Overlooking the sea from a broad flat spit of land, the Hotel Fairview was a huge white wedding cake of a building with an air of fading but still finicky respectability. (Father had once taken us all to dinner here, and the only sound in the entire dining room had been the subdued click of silver against porcelain.) Running round its octagonal circumference was a wide colonnaded wooden porch. On sunny days the older guests sat out there in the white wicker furniture, their faces empty, and stared silently across the green lawns, beyond the younger couples lobbing tennis balls, toward the small boats sliding slowly in and out the harbor.

  The sky today was overcast, the sun hidden, yet some of them were out there still; a few, despite the heat, bundled in blankets against the breeze that scudded in off the ocean and scattered small flickering whitecaps along the gray water.

  We were coming up the wide porch stairway when someone called out, “Hey! Miss Borden!”

  It was a short man in a brown suit that was, unlikely as this seemed, even baggier than Boyle’s. Below the brown fedora, his face was narrow and pointed, like a fox’s. As he scurried toward us across the porch, he whipped a notebook from his coat pocket with his left hand and plucked a pencil from behind his ear with his right.

  “Phillips,” he announced when he reached us. “The Tribune.” His sharp chin bobbed as he chewed at a wad of gum. “How well did you know Mrs. Burton?”

  Except for Roger Drummond, we had so far been untroubled by reporters and photographers. Those who had gathered outside Miss Lizzie’s house during the days of the siege seemed to have dispersed with the rest of the mob. But our luck, evidently, had changed.

  “I’m sorry,” Miss Lizzie said politely. “But I have nothing to say.”

  She moved forward, but he sidestepped to block our path.

  “Hey, c’mon, gimme a break.” It was more a demand than a request.

  Miss Lizzie said, “Would you please get out of my way?”

  “Whaddy ya think about the cops arresting the Burton kid? You got an opinion on that to share with our readers?”

  “I have nothing whatever to share with your readers.”

  He nodded exactly as though she had answered the question, and continued, “So what about the possibility it could of been a burglar?”

  “If you don’t stop pestering us,” Miss Lizzie said, “I shall find a policeman and report you.”

  The man’s face puckered with irritation. “Look, lady, I’m only doin’ my job.”

  “Please do it somewhere else.”

  “Listen,” he said, suddenly sincere, “we’ll make a deal. You talk to me, exclusive, and I’ll keep all the other guys off your back. I guarantee it.”

  Her voice low, precisely enunciating each word, Miss Lizzie said, “Get … out … of … my … way.”

  The man threw up his hands and stood aside. “’Kay okay okay,” he said, managing to convey by his tone, remarkably, both aggrievement and threat. He nodded at me as we passed him. “That the other Burton kid? I heard the two a you are buddies now.” And then from behind us, his voice raised: “She know about Nance O’Neil?”

  Miss Lizzie marched on, ignoring him; but I craned my neck to look back. The man was standing there, hands on his hips, head back, leering at us while his jaw worked methodically on the chewing gum.

  I did not know what he had meant, but I did know that if this was what Roger Drummond wanted to become, he was welcome to it.

  Far across the empty lobby, Father sat with Mr. Foley, the other Pinkerton agent, on a long, purple velvet divan bracketed by two small, dispirited palm trees. Wearing a two-piece gray suit, his legs crossed, Father was tapping his hat lightly against his knee. When he saw us, he stood up, smiled and waved, and then walked across the white marble floor. “Hi.” He bent down, hugged me, kissed my cheek. As always, his mustache tickled. “How are you, Amanda?” He smiled.

  “Fine.” After last night’s telephone call, I felt tentative, awkward, and still a bit sulky. “How are you?”

  “I’m all right.” But as he straightened up away from me, his eyes shifted, very slightly. Then his glance found mine and he smiled again. “You look very pretty in that dress.”

  As pretty as Susan St. Clair? I wanted to say. “Thank you,” I said.

  He turned t
o Miss Lizzie. “Miss Borden, how are you?”

  “Quite well, thank you.” She turned to Mr. Foley, whom she had not met, and who had just come up behind Father.

  “I’m Foley, Miss Borden,” he said. He was a tall, thin man whose closely cropped hair and neatly trimmed mustache were prematurely white, and he looked very dapper in a pinstriped dark-gray suit and a pair of white spats. “I talked to Harry Boyle. How about I give you a phone call later on?”

  “That would be fine,” said Miss Lizzie. “Thank you.”

  Mr. Foley nodded, turned to Father and said, “I’ll check in with you too, Mr. Burton.”

  Father nodded. “Thank you, Foley.”

  “Bye now,” said Foley, and nodded to Miss Lizzie. “Miss Borden.”

  As soon as he was out of earshot, Miss Lizzie said to Father, “If you’ve a minute, I’d like to speak with you. In private.”

  Father pursed his lips—a bit surprised, I imagine, by the need for privacy—and then he nodded. “We can use the library. There’s never anyone in there.”

  Miss Lizzie turned to me. “Amanda, excuse us for just a moment, will you?”

  My turn to be surprised; I frowned. Why would she want to talk to Father alone?

  She said, “You can wait here, dear. We’ll be only a few minutes. I promise.”

  Father smiled at me. I think he meant it to be reassuring, but it seemed to me forced and uncertain.

  “All right,” I said.

  They walked away and disappeared around the corner at the north end of the lobby. I sat down on the divan, leaned forward, and lifted a Collier’s from the stack of magazines on the coffee table.

  Less than a minute passed before someone sat down beside me and tossed a brown fedora to the coffee table. “Hey, kid.” Phillips, the reporter, was perched on the edge of the divan, a few feet to my right. “Too bad about your mom.”

  “I haven’t got anything to say,” I told him.

  “Here’s the deal,” he said quickly, his eyes wide and honest. “Just a couple questions and I am-scray, right?” His eyes narrowed and the honesty vanished. “Look, I heard you and your mom didn’t get along, and I heard the two a you had a big blowout on Tuesday, before she got chopped. All I wanna know is this—did your friend Lizzie know about the fight? I mean, did she see it happen? Maybe hear it happen?”