In the sitting room the clock ticked.
She did not know how long the silence persisted. She was aware of the ticking of the clock, the minutes falling soddenly on the still summer air. At last she said — loud enough for her father to hear, hoping her voice sounded as it always did, everything normal, everyone in this house going about the normal business of the day, washing windows, ironing, chatting — “Are you going out this afternoon?”
“I don’t know,” Maggie said, her eyes meeting Lizzie’s again, a question in them. “I might. I don’t feel very well.”
“If you go, be sure and lock the door,” Lizzie said pointedly. “Mrs. Borden’s gone out on a sick call, and I might go out, too.”
“Who’s sick?” Maggie asked, idiotically.
“I don’t know,” Lizzie said, a warning in her eyes. “She had a note this morning. It must be in town.”
She glanced toward the sitting room again, hoping her father was listening to every word. Maggie went out into the kitchen with her stepladder, washed out the cloths she had used on the windows, and hung them behind the stove. Lizzie came in a moment later, placing the flatiron she’d been using back on the stove, picking up the flat that was still heating there. In a voice loud enough for her father to hear, she said, “There’s a cheap sale of dress goods at Sargent’s this afternoon, eight cents a yard,” and then, in a whisper, “Are you all right?”
“I feel faint,” Maggie whispered, and in her normal voice said, “I’m going to have one. Sargent’s, did you say?”
“Then go to your room,” Lizzie whispered. “There’s nothing more to be...”
From the sitting room, her father said, “Eh? What’s that?”
“Father?” she said, alarmed.
“Were you talking to me?”
“No, sir.”
“I thought I heard...” His voice trailed.
Maggie gave her a look she could not read, and then went up the back stairs. The stairs creaked beneath her footfalls. She listened to the footfalls, all the way up to the attic, heard the attic door opening and closing. She was carrying the flatiron back into the dining room when she heard her father’s voice again.
“What’s this doing here?”
What? she thought. Where?
“This candlestick,” he said, and she froze in her tracks. “Doesn’t it belong upstairs? In the guest room?”
He turned to her. She stood in the doorway between the rooms, the flatiron in her right hand, staring at him.
“It...” Her mind worked frantically. “I brought it down for Maggie to polish. She must have polished it. Must have been polishing it.”
“Shouldn’t be down here,” her father said.
She kept staring at him.
“I’ll take it up,” he said.
“No...” she said, and took a step toward him.
“Eh?”
“I’ll take it when I go up again. I have some basting to do...”
“Finish your ironing,” he said, and turned away from her.
She watched helplessly as he walked from the dining room and into the sitting room again, and then passed from sight into the front entry. She was not prepared for the discovery just yet, had hoped it would be made later in the day when concern for her mother’s absence would have necessitated notifying the police. She wanted the police to make the discovery and not any member of the household. Nor did she want that candlestick to be found in the room where her stepmother—
The candle!
The broken candle!
It still lay on the floor of the room upstairs, an unmistakable link to the candlestick, identifying the weapon, eliminating the possibility that what had been done was anything but a spur-of-the moment act, no assassin lurking about the house with a weapon brought here for the purpose of murder, no, an object at hand instead, an object familiar to the members of this household of which there were but two present at the time of the bloody deed. Herself and Maggie. Only those two. He would make the connection. He could not fail to make the connection.
She did not want to be in this house when he came downstairs again, could not face the accusing look in his eyes, could not hope to answer the questions he would most certainly put. Her eyes darted. Like a bird poised for precarious flight, she raised her arms, her hands fluttering, and turned from where she stood in the kitchen doorway, and then rushed into the entry and threw open the screen door, knowing only that she had to get away from here, run, hide, run!
Unmindful of whichever neighbors might be watching, she hurtled in terrified flight into the backyard, and then stopped dead when she saw the carriage outside the fence, standing near a tree. An open buggy, a box buggy with a high top seat and a high back. A man was sitting in the carriage. For a shocking instant she thought it was he again, the pale young man returning; had he witnessed what she’d done in that upstairs room? But no, the shutters had been closed. And then she saw that this man was dressed differently, wearing a brown hat and a black coat, and she dismissed him from her mind as but a passing stranger, her eyes darting again, wondering where, where, seeing the barn and running toward it, thinking she would hide in the hayloft, cover herself with hay, hide there forever from the wrath of her father, a witness in effect though he had not been present, a witness the moment he put together candlestick and candle.
She stopped again just outside the barn door, reaching for the pin in the hasp, and then hesitated, pulling back her trembling hand, realizing in a crystal instant that she could never hope to protest innocence if he found her cowering under the hay. She reversed her course at once, turning and starting slowly back for the house, knowing she had to confront him after all, face the wrath of a God sterner than the one who’d banished Eve from the garden, express surprise and shock, grief and concern, claim ignorance and innocence, I know nothing, I saw nothing, I heard—
She heard the sound of horses on the street outside as she crossed the yard from the barn to the house, turned her head to see a team and wagon — the ice-cream peddler, Mr. Lubinsky, his head craned for a look at her as she walked toward the back steps. The team went by, the wagon moved out of sight. She opened the screen door, and went into the house again.
The house was silent.
She did not move out of the kitchen. She stood near the cookstove, waiting, listening for the tiniest sound.
She heard his footfalls on the front stairs.
Unhurried, slow, ponderous.
She heard him entering the sitting room.
She did not move from where she stood near the coal scuttle.
He loomed suddenly in the doorframe between the kitchen and the sitting room. There was nothing in his hands, neither candlestick nor broken candle. Had he failed to make a connection? She looked into his eyes and saw there only stricken confusion. Her heart quickened. There was yet hope; he had not yet put it together.
“Someone has killed your mother,” he said. His voice was dull, lifeless, his eyes wide and staring.
“What?”