“Why did you not use the money for your own gain?”
“I have enough money of my own. The man who stood me up this evening was after my money. I suspect that the adventurer chanced upon some dowager with an even fatter purse, or you and I wouldn’t be sitting here tonight. Anyway, I made it clear to the two sisters that if the first to die didn’t leave the bulk of her whole fortune for the benefit of the neglected animal population of Fall River, Massachusetts, I would publicize the revelatory letter to the detriment of the surviving sister. Prior to her death two weeks ago, I went to Lizzie, knowing her to be in her last extremities due to that terrible surgical infection. I asked if she remembered my request from several years previous.
“She merely laughed at me, as best as one can laugh through the throes of abdominal agony. ‘You have figured this all wrong, Alice Rose,’ she said, with bite. ‘While I share your love of animals, I have no love for my sister, and it should give me no greater pleasure, in whatever afterlife awaits me, than to see Emma finally implicated and brought to late-life ruin. It was always I who had to suffer the indignity of that dreadful schoolyard rhyme, and it was I who in time lost the support of nearly all friends and family. The consensus now is that I did do it — I alone. Whether out of obsessive hatred for my father and my stepmother, whether in some fugue state of menstrual epilepsy. Whatever the reason, the jury of public opinion has now reached a contrary ‘what-say-you.’ They say nothing of Maggie, who sits fat and financially secure with her smelter husband in Anaconda. And they are deafeningly silent as to what part Emma may have played in the scheme — Emma, who, in reality, dreamt it all up in the first place; Emma, who placed herself conveniently out of town at the time of the murders so that I must do the work of cleaving my father’s skull as he lay napping, and Maggie the far more satisfying job of hacking away at the witch. So here is my revenge, beside the point that I plan to leave her not one thin dime in my will — that if she should die first, I will be protected under the constitutional defense of double jeopardy. And if I should go first, which seems the more likely, you may reveal her complicity — no, no, her mastermind brilliance for all the world to know, for I plan to give the Animal Rescue League only $30,000. Which is no small sum, I might add. Oh, and you may have my shares of stock in the Stevens Manufacturing Company.’
“Which I assume, my loverman, is the exact bequest that we should expect to see when the will is ultimately probated,” Alice Rose concluded.
“And what of Emma? It seems that her fast-following death kept you from carrying out your plan to get all of her money into the hands of the Rescue League.”
“Yes and no.” Alice Rose smiled mischievously. “When I went to tell her what it was that I was now compelled to do, courtesy of her sister’s long-nursed hatred for her, Emma suffered an attack of nephritis and then fell down her back stairs.”
“And died there as you stood watching?”
Alice Rose shook her head. “A couple of days later. But I cannot help attributing the demise to my threat.”
“Are you pleased with this outcome?”
“I’m not pleased with the fact that I was unable to wring more money for the Animal Rescue League from the two sisters, but I’m quite satisfied that two of the three most notorious murderesses in the long chronicle of New England criminality are now gone from this Earth. And the third — that Bridget, whom Lizzie and Emma insisted on calling Maggie, probably because their previous maid was named Maggie and they couldn’t be bothered to learn a new name — would receive a personal visit from me if there were profit in it. Alas, there is not, and I fear for my own safety, besides, since the maid has already demonstrated that she will not hesitate to use a hatchet when the situation requires it.”
“And what happens to the incriminating letter?”
“I plan to sell it to some future biographer for a kingly sum.”
“No doubt to the benefit of the Fall River Animal Rescue League.”
“That very charity.”
“And where is the letter now?”
“Safe and quite secure. I have just this morning placed it in my safety deposit box in the Union Savings Bank. That was Andrew Borden’s bank, you know.”
1928 MISDEEMED IN INDIANA
Two things crossed Amelia’s mind when she woke that morning. First that she was married. At long last. At the ancient age of thirty-one. When no one in her family thought it should ever happen. Here she was, wed for life to a handsome man, a prosperous man, officer in the local Kiwanis, a man who loved every little thing about her — even the fact that she wasn’t from Richmond and wasn’t (horrors!) even a Hoosier.
The second thing that crossed Amelia’s mind was that the marriage, only one month old, was a mistake — a terrible, grievous mistake. For all his William Haines/Ramon Navarro boyish good looks, for all his charm and bonhomie, for all the respect that he commanded in this very odd community that had welcomed Amelia with, if not open arms, then at least with arms that were not blatantly closed, she should not have wed Chester Bream.
Richmond, Indiana, in the year 1928, was a Midwestern dichotomy of Quakers and non-Quakers; of men who wore white collars and those who wore blue; of men whose collars, in fact, were hidden under white hooded robes, and those men and women who were the object of their disfavor. This last group included Negro jazz musicians like Louis Armstrong and Joe “King” Oliver and Jelly Roll Morton, who recorded with the town’s Gennett record label and were earning Richmond the impressive nickname “The Cradle of Recorded Jazz” in spite of all the Klanimosity.
Richmond had colleges. It had a large artistic community, and a full orchestra. But it also had factories that made farm machinery and lawnmowers and school buses. Amelia’s new husband Chester was employed by Wayne Works, where the school buses were put together. He headed WW’s national sales department. Chester, thirty-eight, had come a long way from his early years as stock boy at Knollenberg’s Department Store, elastic-stitcher at the Atlas Underwear Company, and assistant to the chief ivory procurer for the Starr Piano Company.
Amelia wondered where her husband was this morning. She wondered if he’d gone to work as usual. The night before, as he was stalking out of the house, she’d asked where he’d be spending the night. He said he was going to the Rex Hotel. He packed a large suitcase. This made Amelia think that it might be a while before he ventured back home.
Amelia wanted to go home. Back home to Ohio. She wanted an end to the marriage, an end to this ill-begotten sojourn in Richmond. She didn’t like Richmond. She’d made only one friend since Chester moved her here after their brief three-day honeymoon in Chicago. The woman was a neighbor. Her name was Lurelle. Lurelle was thirty-three and married to a fireman who spent over half of each week at Hose House #3 (on North A between 15th and 16th Streets). Lurelle’s husband Gaines felt guilty for being away from his wife and three daughters for so long at a stretch. He easily agreed to Lurelle’s demand that her kitchen be rewired and fitted with multiple outlets so that she could have as many electrical appliances as her lonely heart desired. On Amelia’s first visit to drink coffee and exchange gossip about people whom Amelia neither knew nor had any desire to know, Lurelle showed off her new electric table grill, her electric corn popper, her flat-top toaster, her no-burnout iron, her electric waffle iron, and her shimmering, newly minted Nicalume four-piece percolator set with gold-plated creamer and sugar bowl.