The Trial of Lizzie Borden(14)
Knowlton replied with irritation: “I am not answering questions but asking them.” He tried again, asking how often Morse had visited between that visit of fourteen years ago and this current one.
Lizzie said that he had visited “once” since then but added, oddly, that she did not know “whether he has or not since.”
To narrow down the number of visits, Knowlton asked, “How many times this last year has he been at your house?”
Lizzie did not answer the question: “None at all to speak of. Nothing more than a night or two at a time.”
Knowlton pursued the overnight visits, seeking perhaps to arrive at a number: “How often does he come to spend a night or two?”
Lizzie purported to be unable to produce the required answer: “Really, I don’t know. I am away so much myself.” Knowlton could not quite believe what he was hearing.
He repeated: “Your last answer is that you don’t know how much he had been here because you had been away yourself so much?” Then he added: “That is true the last year or since he has been east?”
Lizzie admitted: “I have not been away the last year so much but other times I have been away when he has been here.” After some prodding, Lizzie finally agreed that he had made one other visit in the intervening period, perhaps five or six years earlier. Knowlton returned to the recent past and asked about Morse’s presence at the house during the last year. Again Lizzie claimed to know little of his visits, as she was “away a great deal in the daytime; occasionally at night.” As for his current visit, Lizzie would not speculate about when Morse arrived before the murders. She said she knew he was there on Wednesday because she heard his voice during the day, but she did not see him at any point that day. She went out to visit Alice Russell in the evening. When she came back from her visit about 9:00 p.m., she went straight up to her room. Moreover, she did not see him the next morning, and she also failed to ask about him. It seemed unfathomable that she should display a complete dearth of curiosity about the uncle in the bedroom next to hers, a point Knowlton specifically pursued. (Morse himself explained that he had visited in 1865, 1876, 1878, and 1885—once for an entire year.)
Whether or not Morse’s presence at the house was directly connected to the murders, it revealed the extent of Lizzie’s estrangement from her parents. Despite sharing a house, they conducted their lives separately. Even Lizzie’s own biological uncle seemed to fall into the category of Andrew and Abby’s visitor and therefore did not merit a greeting. Nor did John Morse think to knock on the door of his niece to inquire after her health. Was this typical of their lack of interest in each other? Or had something fundamentally changed in their relationship? And did this particular visit have a special significance that accounted for their studied avoidance of each other? It was decidedly odd.
Another coincidence prompted Knowlton to make one final inquiry before turning to the details of Thursday morning: She had planned to join a group of friends who left for Marion earlier in the week. Had she departed as scheduled, she would have been away on August 4. Why had Lizzie postponed her trip? Lizzie said that she had decided to wait until Monday because, as secretary-treasurer of the Christian Endeavor Society, she had to attend a meeting on Sunday. Knowlton accepted the answer for the time being but the matter did not rest there.
Lizzie had written to one of the group early in the week of the murders, presumably to explain her decision. The recipient had burned the missive, fearing that it might be misconstrued in light of the murders. On September 14, the Fall River Daily Herald would report that Lizzie had volunteered to chop the firewood for the kitchen stove at the cottage, as she had a “very sharp hatchet” in her possession. Officer Phil Harrington had passed along the story to Knowlton the previous week but had discounted its authenticity. Summarizing the story in a letter to Attorney General Pillsbury, Knowlton added: “If this is so, it means insanity.”
Officers questioned Elizabeth Johnston about the letter but she refused to discuss it, stating “I have said all I think I should about that letter.” She then consulted Andrew Jennings, “who told her that she need not tell the contents of the letter if she did not want to; and she did not want to.” None of the other women in the Marion party (Anna C. Holmes, Mary L. Holmes, Isabel Fraser, Louise Remington, or Mabel Remington) would speak to the police.
Knowlton then moved on to the timeline of events, turning to questions of opportunity. Where exactly was Lizzie Borden throughout the morning of August 4? There were two short windows in which the murders of Abby and Andrew must have occurred and for which Lizzie and Bridget were the only other surviving occupants of the house. Morse left immediately after breakfast. Andrew Borden left the house at 9:15 a.m. and returned at about 10:45 a.m. By then, Abby was dead. Andrew Borden himself was dead by 11:45 a.m.
Knowlton turned his attention to the first part of the morning. Lizzie explained that she decided to iron handkerchiefs. Because the “flats” were not yet hot enough, she passed the time reading an old Harper’s magazine. She said: “I sprinkled my handkerchiefs . . . and took them in the dining room. I took the ironing board in the dining room and left the handkerchiefs in the kitchen on the table and whether I ate any cookies or not, I don’t remember. Then I sat down looking at the magazine, waiting for the flats to heat. Then I went in the sitting room and got the Providence Journal and took that into the kitchen.” She also said she had not seen her stepmother since Abby had gone up to freshen up the guest room around the time Andrew left the house. Abby had told her that she had already changed the bedsheets and only needed to put new covers on the shams. According to Lizzie, Abby also intended “to close the room because she was going to have company Monday and she wanted everything in order.”