The Trial of Lizzie Borden(11)
Puzzled by the inconsistencies in Lizzie’s account of her movements at the time of the murders, the police began to suspect the bereaved daughter of having had a hand—or two—in the murders. In his notes from his interview with Lizzie Borden on the evening of August 4, Officer Phil Harrington struggled to voice this horrifying suspicion: “Lizzie stood by the foot of the bed, and talked in the most calm and collected manner; her whole bearing was most remarkable under the circumstances. There was not the least indication of agitation, no sign of sorrow or grief, no lamentation of heart, no comment on the horror of the crime, and no expression of a wish that the criminal be caught. All this, and something that, to me, is indescribable, gave birth to a thought that was most revolting. I thought, at least, she knew more than she wished to tell.” When he joined Assistant Marshal Fleet and the other officers in a search of the barn, where Lizzie claimed to have been at the time of her father’s death, he told Fleet: “I don’t like that girl.” After a comprehensive search of the barn and its loft, Harrington said to Fleet: “If any girl can show you or me, or anybody else what could interest her up here for twenty minutes, I would like to have her do it.” Shaking his head, the stolid Lancashireman Fleet could only mutter that it was “incredible.”
There were other oddities. For example, there was the missing note. Lizzie said that her stepmother received a note from a sick friend and had gone out. Abby’s presumed absence from home was given as the reason for Lizzie’s failure to search for Abby after discovering her father’s body. Yet, no note was found at the house and no one came forward to identify herself as the author. Even if, for reasons of her own, the mysterious sender did not wish to declare herself, it seemed “strange,” as the reporter Edwin Porter observed, “that the boy who delivered the note has not made himself known.”
Lizzie’s estranged uncle Hiram Harrington all but accused her directly. He told the police and the Fall River Daily Globe: “When the perpetrator of this foul deed is found, it will be one of the household.” He left little doubt about which member of the household he suspected. “I had a long talk with Lizzie yesterday, Thursday, the day of the murder, and I am not at all satisfied with [her] . . . demeanor.” He also remarked: “She is very strong-willed, and will fight for what she considers her rights.” Abby’s brother-in-law George Fish went further. He directly accused Lizzie (and Morse) of hiring an assassin to kill the Bordens “simply to get them out of the way.”
The day after the murders, Emma and Lizzie offered a five-thousand-dollar reward “to any one who may secure the arrest and conviction of the person or persons who occasioned the death of Andrew J. Borden and his wife.” No one came forward. They also hired Superintendent O. M. Hanscom of the Pinkerton Detective Agency to supplement the police investigation. Hanscom had been a celebrated Boston police detective, fired for running afoul of high-ranking and corrupt members of his own police department. Speculation that he was really in place to safeguard the family interests was given credence by his visits to Andrew Jennings’s office. But, after only two days on the job, Hanscom “disappeared as mysteriously as he came.” Meanwhile, Fall River seethed with tension. In the view of Edwin Porter of the Fall River Daily Globe, the town believed “it must clear up the mystery or go insane.”
Chapter 3
DONE WITH THEORIES
Second Street neighborhood, Boston Globe
Andrew and Abby Borden’s funeral took place on Saturday, August 6. As Lizzie had specifically requested on the day of the murders, the firm of James Ellis Winward handled the arrangements. At 11:00 a.m., the elderly pastor of First Congregational Church, Rev. W. W. Adams, assisted by Rev. Edwin A. Buck, began the private service at 92 Second Street. It was a snug affair. About seventy-five people—relatives, business associates, and neighbors—crowded into the sitting room. The service itself was as simple as the black cloth-draped cedar coffins containing the bodies of Andrew and Abby Borden: “There was no singing and no remarks.”
Few of the mourners continued to the interment; it was for immediate family only. But the funeral cortege was well attended. According to the Boston Globe, 2,500 people waited outside on Second Street. The New York Times put the number between 3,000 and 4,000. The front door slowly opened, and Lizzie Borden left the house leaning on the undertaker’s arm. Emma emerged with John Morse, the clergymen, and the gentlemen pallbearers, Andrew Borden’s friends and business peers. They entered the waiting carriages and followed the hearse to Oak Grove Cemetery. Andrew Borden’s final route took him past the Andrew J. Borden building on South Main Street: “As the procession wended its way along North Main Street many old associates of Mr. Borden were seen to raise their hats.” Once the carriages had departed, Marshal Hilliard and his deputies began their search of the house. It was, as the the New York Herald observed, “their first chance to work undisturbed by the presence of the Borden girls . . . They ransacked the house from attic to cellar.” Over the course of their investigation into the murders, the police pulled up pieces of carpet, removed wall trim, and counted blood spots. Fingerprint analysis, as a standard method of police procedure, would not be used in the United States for another decade.
A smaller but still sizable crowd of several hundred people awaited the funeral party at the gates of Oak Grove Cemetery, the traditional resting place of Fall River’s Protestant elite. Here, as at the house, more than a dozen policemen kept the spectators in order. At the grave site, Andrew’s cousins and business associates, Richard A. Borden and Jerome Cook Borden, served as two of his pallbearers. Frank Lawton Almy, one of the owners of the Fall River Daily Evening News, captained Abby’s pallbearers. Except for John Morse, the family members remained in their carriages. One uninvited mourner, “an elderly lady in plain dress,” approached the grave. It was thought that she had been “employed long ago by the Bordens.” The police quickly hustled her back behind the barricade.