The Trial of Lizzie Borden(15)
Knowlton inquired, “What explanation . . . can you suggest, as to what she was doing from the time she said she had got the work all done in the spare room, until 11 o’clock?”
Lizzie appeared stumped. She suggested that Abby might have made her own bed. But that, given the Bordens’ system of locks and bolts, would have required Abby to come down the front stairs, retrieve the key from the sitting room shelf, and go up the back stairs to the bedroom she and Andrew shared. Lizzie, however, said she had not seen her pass even though she claimed to be downstairs during Andrew’s absence. Later she speculated Abby might have been using the sewing machine in the guest room but she admitted she had not heard the noisy machine.
Contrary to Bridget’s statement after the murders and at the inquest, Lizzie testified that she was downstairs when her father came home. A few minutes later, she said she was upstairs when her father came home but she had only been there a few minutes.
Knowlton delicately pointed out the discrepancy: “You remember, Miss Borden, I will call your attention to it so as to see if I have any misunderstanding, not for the purpose of confusing you, you remember that you told me several times that you were downstairs and not upstairs when your father came home.”
Nonplussed, Lizzie replied: “I don’t know what I have said. I have answered so many questions and I am so confused I don’t know one thing from the other.”
Knowlton ignored the outburst: “Calling your attention to what you said about that a few minutes ago . . . you have said you were upstairs when the bell rang and were on the stairs when Maggie [Bridget Sullivan] let your father in, which now is your recollection . . . That you were downstairs when the bell rang and your father came?” Lizzie again said she thought she was downstairs.
At times it seemed that Lizzie was deliberately tormenting Knowlton with a Yankee version of the rope-a-dope. He was forced to repeat questions or ask slightly rephrased versions about every subject covered. She answered questions as tersely as possible and, when caught in a contradiction, wiggled out of the bind by suggesting she had misunderstood the question. Or she digressed, answering in an elliptical and unresponsive manner. All in all, it was an infuriating performance. But by the end of the afternoon, Lizzie Borden herself seemed exhausted and even disoriented. Her stories were contradictory; she might have frustrated her interlocutor but her answers were on the record. She had also revealed a great deal about the background tension in the Borden household, information that Knowlton was sure to put to use. Knowlton, however, revealed nothing for the time being. Instead, he issued a brief press bulletin indicating only that two witnesses testified.
The next day, when the inquest resumed, Lizzie Borden returned to the witness stand and Knowlton returned to the timeline. First, he sought to pin down Lizzie’s version of the early-morning period, in particular, when exactly she had seen Abby and her father on Thursday. Lizzie said that before her father left that morning, she had seen Abby in the dining room and her father in the sitting room. Alluding to the family’s gastric distress of the previous day, Abby had asked her how she was feeling. Abby then told her that she was going out and would get their dinner. Knowlton paused this line of questioning to ask if it was “usual” for Abby to go out and to be gone for dinner. Lizzie again appeared stumped and had recourse to an awkward formulation: “More than once in three months, perhaps.” Put in a more normal syntax, her answer meant that Abby rarely was out for dinner—at most, every other month or so. Returning to the timeline, Lizzie said she had gone into the kitchen and down into the cellar for clean clothes. When she walked through the main floor, she had seen her father reading the paper.
With one important exception, Lizzie hewed to her prior day’s testimony about being downstairs all morning. She volunteered that she had gone upstairs and “basted a piece of tape” on a dress.
Knowlton exploded: “Do you remember you did not say that yesterday?”
Unmoved, Lizzie replied, “I don’t think you asked me. I told you yesterday I went upstairs directly after I came up from down cellar, with the clean clothes.”
In exasperation, Knowlton said, “Miss Borden, I am trying in good faith to get all the doings that morning of yourself and Miss Sullivan and I have not succeeded in doing it. Do you desire to give me any information or not?”
Now flustered herself, Lizzie replied that she could not give him information she did not have, adding “I don’t know what your name is!”
Significantly, Lizzie placed herself at the center of the house, in the best position not only to see any theoretical intruder but also to observe Abby’s movements or lack thereof. If she was alone downstairs between her father’s departure and return, then, as Knowlton commented, “it would have been extremely difficult for anybody to have gone through the kitchen and dining room and front hall without your seeing them.” But there was another problem with that story. Bridget Sullivan said she had been inside washing the windows downstairs when Andrew Borden returned. She had, after all, unbolted the front door to admit him. Knowlton asked: “Do you think she might have gone to work and washed all the windows in the dining room and you not know it?” Lizzie persisted in her denial. Knowlton declared: “It is certain beyond reasonable doubt she was engaged in washing the windows in the dining room or sitting room when your father came home. Do you mean to say you knew nothing of either of those operations?”