Chapelwood (The Borden Dispatches #2)(28)

I frowned at him, because I couldn’t imagine any other stories like ours having happened before, except maybe that lady who killed her parents with the hatchet . . . and that was a long time ago. “Stories of this type? Axes, and killings? Like Lizzie Borden?”

He looked surprised, then pleased with me. “Her case was a special one, yes. And it happened years before you were born, unless I wildly misjudge your age.”

I’m not sure why, but that made me blush. “I’ve heard the skip-rope song, that’s all. About her, and the axe murders.”

“Truly, that poor woman shall live on forever on playgrounds and schoolyards.”

Pedro’s eyebrow went straight up his forehead. “That poor woman? Why would you say that? She killed people.”

“Not according to the court,” the inspector argued. “There was no real evidence against her, so either she didn’t do it, or she got away with it cleanly. The world may never know. And yes, I said ‘that poor woman’ because I meant it. I met her . . .” His voice trailed away.

“You did?” I asked. It was rude to be so interested in something so awful—that’s what my momma would’ve said, but she wasn’t there, and I was interested anyway. Besides, it was pretty obvious that the inspector liked to talk. I was just being a good hostess, giving him an excuse.

“Yes, I did. A handful of times, many years ago. Not so long after her trial,” he explained. “She lived alone with her sister in a big house, in that same town. It was a beautiful place.”

“Were you investigating her axe murders?” I pressed.

“Oh, heavens no. And again, Miss Borden remains innocent in the eyes of the law. But no, my trip to Fall River had nothing to do with that case. There were some . . . other crimes. A couple of years after that. Her sister proved a valuable witness.”

He was staring off into nowhere again, thinking hard about something. His voice came and went, like a radio tuning in and out. “A man who had been corresponding with her sister . . . well, he’d gone quite mad, you see. He went on a killing spree, murdered . . . oh, I forget how many people, in some of the most gruesome ways. The worst of it was kept out of the papers, of course. We never released the details. No one would’ve wanted to hear them, believe me. I wish I could forget them myself.”

“Did you catch him?” I asked. I sounded too eager, I bet.

“Catch him? That’s a hard question to answer,” he told me, and now I got the feeling he was the one being careful about how he chose his words. “The murders stopped, and I believe justice was served. But the particulars are classified, you understand.”

I didn’t understand, but I wasn’t about to tell him that. “Sure, sure. But the Bordens . . . Lizzie and her sister . . . they were all right? Nobody murdered them, that’s what you mean?”

“Nobody murdered them, that is correct.”

Pedro wanted to know, “What was she like, Lizzie Borden? Do you think she killed those people?”

“I think . . . I think that there was much more to the story than any of us will ever know,” he answered the second bit first. “As for the rest, it’s not for me to speculate. She was a small woman, average in appearance, but with a sturdy look to her—and she was stronger than you’d expect, or so I’d wager. Pleasant, well spoken, well educated. But very, very lonely. I liked what little I knew of her. I believe that she was trying hard . . . to do the right thing.”

I thought it was a mighty strange way to sum up an axe murderess, or an alleged axe murderess, to borrow one of Chief Eagan’s expressions. Maybe he did, too, because he wound up finishing on a different note after all.

“That said, all of this . . . her case, that other case . . . they were years and years ago. I should probably say something else instead: I hope these intervening years have treated her fairly—and she’s either found the peace she wished for, or the justice she had coming.”





Leonard Kincaid, American Institute of Accountants (Former Member)




BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA SEPTEMBER 26, 1921


The rail yard between the stationary boxcars was as dark as Chapelwood. Row by row those cars were lined up, like children’s blocks; all along the rails, sometimes eight or ten cars deep they sat. Many of them were packed with freight, stopped at this junction in order to switch engines or find themselves redirected elsewhere, but many of them were empty, too. Hobos knew about them, and they camped inside some of the better ones.

I had to avoid those hobos when I caught wind of them, either by their tin-can cookery and small fires, or their mumbled conversations held upon the couplers, over a bottle of whatever booze was cheapest and easiest to get.

I also had to avoid the rail yard men, though by that hour there weren’t so many of them. They were guards who took their guarding duties only semi-seriously—tired men, most of them, who’d rather be home in bed by midnight than stuck on the graveyard shift.

Mostly they ignored the boxcar men, but sometimes they engaged them, trading cigarettes for news or letters. Rarely, if things got too rowdy or a fight broke out, they’d separate the participants and boot them from the grounds.

Here and there a dog barked . . . at me, or at another dog, or at a man with a can of beans who might be persuaded to share. The dogs were not really guard dogs; they were only part of the background scenery, part of this weird and clandestine community that survived between the cracks.