Bridget
AUGUST 4, 1892
Bridget Sullivan would later learn that the mundane paths her feet took that day were important, worthy of mapping, as if she were a queen whose bannered progress changed the fates of kingdoms. Yet she was just a servant in a dour household, dipping her rag into the vile spice of vinegar to ruin her hands.
She’d spent the morning trotting back and forth to the barn to refresh the pail of water as it blackened, cleaning the windows of the grit that clung to the glass. Fall River, Massachusetts, was a mill town, its air a smoke-infused vapor that clogged the lungs and smudged the panes.
Her trips to the barn would later be seen as a counterdance to the interior goings-on. Although the windows were high, and she used a brush affixed to a long pole, she also used a ladder. Had she been able to peer into this window, what would she have been able to see just before ten o’clock in the morning? At that window, would she have affected movements inside? Had she already moved to the north side of the home by the time blood was itinerantly spreading in the upstairs guestroom?
By ten-thirty, she was back inside, washing the other side of the glass. She heard her employer, Andrew Borden, trying to enter through the side screen door as usual, but for some reason the hook and eye had been engaged and, although she rushed to help, he’d already given up and gone to the front door, ringing the bell.
She ran to the front door and worked at the locks. There were no fewer than three to manipulate on this single door. She couldn’t understand why today they were giving her trouble. Easy enough to unlock a door from the inside, wasn’t it? On the front stoop outside, Mr. Borden would be impatiently awaiting entrance into his own home.
This family was fervent in its use of iron and latch to keep out the intruders of the world. Even interior doors were locked, as if kin feared kin.
“Oh, pshaw!” she said, angry now. From behind her, she heard a peal of laughter.
An inexplicable sound that doubled in its merriment as Bridget turned to glance at Miss Lizzie, stationed on the stairs. The middle-aged woman, her face broad and only a few shades short of handsome, thick-necked and somewhat jowly, yet with lovely auburn hair, stood about four steps down from the top. What was so comical about a door refusing to open?
The key finally turned, and Bridget pulled the door wide, stepping back to let Mr. Borden pass. He entered, his face an atlas of discontent. Predictably, he said nothing, not a scold nor a joke, as he brushed by her to enter the parlor with his newspaper. He wore his usual black double-breasted Prince Albert frock coat, even in summer, a prideful choice of warm garment to display his wealth. At sixty-nine, he showed his age with his snow-white hair and chinstrap beard, and deeply hooded dark eyes. The thinness of his downturned mouth seemed to hint at the parsimony for which he was known throughout town.
After the distraction of his passage, Bridget turned again. Lizzie walked past her, having descended, following her father into the sitting room.
Bridget was to forever remember the heartless bout of laughter on the stair, tossing at night thinking of the soul that could offer up such unholy gaiety when, had Miss Lizzie only turned her gaze, she would have been at eye level with the shape on the floor of the second-floor bedroom. It was the face-down body of Abigail Borden, the stepmother despised as any in a fairy tale, her head bearing vicious gashes from a hatchet.
Mrs. Borden had been crawling, her body partially under the bed, trying to protect her head. Anyone looking into the room halfway down the stairs would see her heaving her way toward the door, extinguished of life.
Had Lizzie been laughing at the sight of her devilish handiwork, her victory over the stepmother who had plagued her into seething odium? Or had she been laughing at the idea that the house with its faulty locks was preventing her father from entering, giving him temporary respite from an identical fate?
If Bridget had paid attention, she might’ve prevented the second death. If she had mounted the stairs or gone to fetch the dirty linens, she would’ve found the body. Instead, Mrs. Borden lay silent and lifeless, her ear to the floor as if listening to her husband, a level below, who, while dozing after reading the Providence Journal, accepted the same hatchet blows.
Perhaps it had been the washing of windows that saved Bridget’s life. If her task had been the sweeping of floors, would she be another body savagely attacked and left to cool in a bath of her own blood? Was it the luck of her pastime to not be in the house as an intruder prowled through its rooms, as she fecklessly washed and rinsed glass on the other side? Or was it more than luck—did someone know her routes and movements and plan the dual crimes on a day and at times when the master and mistress were left unattended by even the mildest of possible assistance?
She would never forget the sights of that day: Mr. Borden recumbent upon his sofa, his body politely slumped in a way that kept his Congress boots off the furniture, his face an unidentifiable festival of shattered bone, cartilage, and brain.
At Miss Lizzie’s request, Bridget had raised the alarm, running to fetch the doctor across the street, and thus the whole charade of an investigation began. Bridget was sent upstairs to get a sheet to cover Mr. Borden’s body—finding the second corpse as she climbed, which had been easily visible to Miss Lizzie when her laughter had chimed at the same spot where Bridget then quailed.
NOVEMBER 9, 1889
Her interview with Mrs. Borden three years earlier had been a brisk, smileless affair. “The Remingtons have good words for you,” Mrs. Borden had said, referring to the family with whom Bridget had last been employed. Bridget had left, thanks to the roving gaze of Mr. Remington, and before that, had left attorney Charles Reed for the same licentious fault. Smoldering looks led to wandering hands, so she was always quick to move on. She’d lived in three different states since coming to America three years earlier. Bridget was relieved Mrs. Remington had given her a good character, unaware of her husband’s furtive appearances in the kitchen. Hopefully, working for this family, with Mr. Borden already so old, would put an end to the mischief.
Mrs. Borden, in her early sixties, was the kind of woman one could tell had never had a heyday. Her face and lips had a froggish appearance, her hair thin, yet her expression conveyed the kindness of the humble.