“Your mother...”
“What?”
“Your mother lies dead upstairs.”
“No,” she said at once, “that can’t be,” her eyes opening as wide as his were, hoping that her voice conveyed shock and disbelief. “She’s not yet back from town.”
“She’s slain upstairs,” her father said. “Oh, my God, Lizzie!”
“Father!” she said, and went to him, and he took her in his arms, and she stood close in his embrace, her heart fluttering; there was yet hope!
“We must... we shall have to notify the police,” he said.
“I’ll go at once.”
“And Dr. Bowen.”
“I’ll use his telephone.”
“She’s slain, Lizzie, oh, dear God...”
“Come lie down. I’ll run to Dr. Bowen’s. Come in the sitting room...”
“I shall fall if I move. Hold me, Lizzie.”
She held him close. He was weeping now. She patted him as she would a child, listening to the sounds of his grief and his shocked mutterings (“Oh, my God, the blood, the blood...”), consoling him, “Yes, Father, yes,” thinking it would be she herself who sounded the alarm (“Blood on the floor,” he said, “the walls, the bed, a broken candle on the...”), she who would run across the street to Dr. Bowen’s house, telephone the police, alert the neighbors — and suddenly she realized that his words had stopped, and his weeping as well. He moved his cheek from hers and held her slightly apart and looked into her eyes, puzzled.
“The candlestick,” he said.
Her heart leaped.
“Whoever did this... but you heard no one?”
“No one.”
“Saw no one?”
“No one.”
“But you were here, weren’t you?”
“I was here, certainly, but I heard...”
“Didn’t she scream? When he was bludgeoning her with... oh my God, my God!”
“Father, please lie down. I must fetch the police, we must have them here!”
“But how could...?” he said, and hesitated, and she saw in his eyes the same puzzlement again. And then he blinked and said, “No, it couldn’t have been, you brought it down for Maggie to polish.”
“Yes,” she said quickly. “Father...”
“When did you do that, Lizzie?” he asked gently and in the same puzzled voice.
“Do what, Father?”
“Bring the candlestick down.”
“Why... this morning,” she said. “When I came down this morning. Father, I must...”
“I saw no candlestick when you came down,” he said, still puzzled.
“Later,” she said.
“Brought it down later?”
“Yes.”
“Went upstairs to fetch it?”
“Yes.”
“And brought it down for Bridget to polish.”
“Yes.”
“Fetched it from the guest room.”
“Yes.”
“Did the candle fall from it then?” he asked.
He was working it out, oh God, he was putting it together!
“I... I really don’t...”
“When you went to fetch it?” he asked.
“Perhaps... well, yes, it must have.”
“And you didn’t stop to pick it up?”
“Well, I thought of picking it up, yes, I must have, but...”
“When you knew your mother would be having company? And had tidied the room?”
“I planned to do it later,” she said.
He looked directly into her eyes. They stood not two feet apart in the doorway to the sitting room, he in one room, she in the other. His voice when he spoke was stronger now.
“Was your mother up there when you went to fetch it?” he said. “The candlestick?”
“She’d already left,” Lizzie said.
“If the candlestick was the weapon...”
“It couldn’t have been,” she said quickly.
“If,” he shouted, and she fell silent.
He kept staring at her.
“How came it to be in the dining room?” he said.
“I told you. I...”
She hesitated.
“I...”
“Did you do this thing?” he asked.
She said nothing.
“Did you do this terrible thing?”
Still she said nothing.
“Why?” he asked. “Dear God, why? ”
Looking into his eyes, she said gently, “Father, she...” and could say no more, for continuing would have meant revealing to him the precipitating act, herself and Maggie in naked embrace, the act her stepmother had called monstrous and unnatural. When he saw that she would offer neither explanation nor excuse, he said, “Go from my sight, go!” and turned away from her and went into the sitting room. Like a child accepting punishment, she did as she’d been instructed, dutifully, obediently, going into the kitchen and standing silently by the cookstove, facing the wall, listening to the ticking of the clock. In the sitting room, the sofa springs protested under his weight as he fell back upon it. She heard him say, “Oh, God, oh, dear God,” and then all was silent save for the ticking of the clock.
Not five minutes had passed since she’d come back from the barn. Within the next five minutes, he would regain his strength and composure and go to telephone the police. And when they arrived, they would listen to the logic of candlestick and broken candle, and then go silently and gravely upstairs to look upon her stepmother’s shattered, open skull. And they would wonder why. And they would ask her why.
Herself and Maggie in embrace.
The discovery.
The shame.
Is it your passion that shames you so? Then are we, as women, not entitled to the same passion men consider their Cod-given right?
She looked at the hatchet where she had left it in the coal scuttle.
Chop your kindling on the block below, where you should. And take that hatchet downcellar, where it belongs.
She picked up the hatchet.
She picked it up deliberately, not as she had earlier lifted the candlestick, fully aware of her hand closing around the wooden handle. She went into the sitting room. Her father was lying full length on the sofa, his left leg extended, his right leg bent and dangling over the side, the foot touching the carpeted floor. His hands were folded over his chest as if in prayer. His eyes were closed. Tears were running down his face.
“Father?” she said softly.
He said nothing.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
His eyes opened.
She did not mean to say what she said next, was in fact surprised when it found voice.
“I shall take this downcellar.”
Her father looked at the hatchet in her hand.
“Don’t tell them,” she said. “The police. Please don’t.”
He looked at her uncomprehendingly.
“The candlestick,” she said.
And still he looked at her.
“Please,” she said, “help me, Father! If you love me...”
“Love?” he said, spitting out the word as if it were poison on his tongue. “I hate you for what you’ve done! I’ll hate you always for it! I’ll regret forever the day I spawned such a foul and murderous creature!” And then, more bitterly, as if he were echoing her stepmother’s words in yet another form, he said, “I shall tell them all, everything, all! Go from me! You disgust me! You offend my sight!” and closed his eyes against her, and turned his head into the cushion, concealing his right cheek again.
She raised the hatchet.
He sensed the motion, seemed to sense the motion, and started to lift his head from the cushion, his left eye opening wide, his legs swinging over the side of the sofa as if he would rise. The last thing she saw in that instant before she struck him was that single glaring eye and the silent accusation in it.