The Trial of Lizzie Borden(17)

Later that day, the significance of that property dispute was confirmed by the inquest testimony of Emma Borden and Hiram Harrington. Emma reluctantly agreed that her father’s equalizing gift of property to the girls “did not entirely heal the feelings.” Emma insisted, however, that she—not Lizzie—bore the real grudge against Abby. Emma also called Morse “a very dear uncle of ours, of mine.” Like Lizzie, she named her uncle Hiram Harrington as the only person known to be on bad terms with her father. Harrington, for his part, admitted that he and Andrew did not speak to each other but, except for that, the households were on good terms. He also said that Lizzie spoke of her stepmother in “an unfriendly way.”

In the course of their testimony, Dr. Bowen and Adelaide Churchill confirmed the timeline, Lizzie’s change of dress, and that Lizzie told them Abby had received a note and gone out. Adelaide Churchill also testified that Lizzie had later asked her to look for Abby. Adelaide said: “She said she wished somebody would try to find Mrs. Borden because she thought she had heard her come in.”

But the most intriguing piece of information came from John V. Morse. He testified that Andrew had spoken to him of making a will in the last year. On the Monday after the murders, Charles Cook, Andrew Borden’s business manager, told Officer William Medley that Andrew had spoken to him of making a will—though he would later disavow the comment. At the time, he refused to comment on the Borden family relations “on account of my position . . . as I do not know what my relations may be with the family, when this thing is settled.” The police searched for a will, employing “an expert operator under police surveillance” who labored for eight hours to open Andrew Borden’s safe. The safe contained “quite a sum of money and many valuable papers” but no will. At the end of the day, Knowlton issued a bulletin for the press that listed the witnesses examined but gave no hint of the drama within the courtroom: “Inquest continued at 10 to-day . . . Nothing developed for publication.”

On August 11, the inquest resumed and Knowlton again questioned Lizzie Borden. But this time he was more concerned with what she might have done outside the home than in it. After hearing news of the murders, a clerk at a local drugstore told officers that Lizzie had tried to buy prussic acid before the murders, ostensibly to “put an edge on” a sealskin cape. Knowlton began: “Your attention has already been called to the circumstance of going into the drugstore of Smith’s on the corner of Columbia and Main Streets, by some officer, has it not, on the day before the tragedy?” Lizzie allowed that “somebody has spoken of it to me,” but she claimed she did not know that drugstore. Knowlton asked if she had gone into “any drugstore” to ask for prussic acid. “No,” she declared, saying that she was home all day on Wednesday, August 3. Later, he asked whether she had any “sealskin sacks.” She acknowledged that she did and that the sealskins were “hanging in [a] large white bag in the attic.” Knowlton asked if she ever put prussic acid on them. Lizzie insisted: “I don’t use anything on them.”

Knowlton accepted the impasse. He had what he needed. Three witnesses would testify to Lizzie’s visit to the drugstore. Later, in a letter to Attorney General Albert Pillsbury, he would describe Lizzie Borden’s inquest testimony as her “confession.” So he could afford to be magnanimous. He said: “You can appreciate the anxiety that everybody has to find the author of this tragedy, and the questions that I put to you have been in that direction. I now ask you if you can furnish any other fact, or give any other, even suspicion, that will assist the officers in any way in this matter.” Lizzie helpfully produced another dubious character. She had seen a shadowy figure around 9:00 p.m. lurking outside the house. She explained: “I came home from Miss Russell’s one night and as I came up, I always glanced towards the side door. As I came along by the carriage-way, I saw a shadow on the side steps. I did not stop walking, but I walked slower. Somebody ran down the steps . . . I thought it was a man because I saw no skirts . . . I hurried in the front door as fast as I could and locked it.” Unfortunately, she could be certain of neither the time nor the date. She said that she had seen the figure after her sister’s departure for Fairhaven two weeks before the murders. And, as if suddenly wakened to its apparent significance, she also reported yet another suspicious character skulking around the house the previous winter. She knew that she had seen him on a Thursday because she was coming home from church and she could say that he “was not a very tall person.” But that was all—except, of course, for the prospective renter ordered out by her father. That man, however, remained elusive. In essence, those were Lizzie Borden’s final words about the murders. She never uttered another word under oath.

Unlike Lizzie Borden, Knowlton had more information to disclose. In addition to the three drugstore employees, Knowlton called five more witnesses. Two witnesses, Charles Sawyer and Alice Russell, had firsthand knowledge of events after the murders were discovered. Charles Sawyer, an ornamental painter pressed into guard service at the Borden house, described the comings and goings to the Borden house. As a close friend, Alice Russell had more intimate knowledge of the household and was one of the first people to speak to Lizzie after the murders were discovered. She recalled Lizzie telling her that she had gone into the barn for some tin or lead to fix a window screen. Oddly, she could not remember any information about Lizzie Borden’s morning dress before she changed into a pink wrapper.