“Well,” I said, “how do you get your milk? How could it be poisoned?”
“We have the milk come in a can,” she said, “and set on the step. And we have an empty can. They put out the empty can overnight, and the next morning when they bring the milk, they take the empty can.”
“Well, if they put anything in the can,” I said, “the farmer would see it. What time does the milk come?”
“About four o’clock.”
“Well, it’s light at four. I shouldn’t think anybody would dare to come then and tamper with the cans. For fear somebody would see them.”
“I shouldn’t think so,” she said. “They were awfully sick, and I wasn’t sick, I didn’t vomit. But I heard them vomiting and stepped to the door and asked if I could do anything, and they said no.”
I think she told me they were better in the morning, and that Mrs. Borden thought they’d been poisoned, and went over to Dr. Bowen’s — said she was going over to Dr. Bowen’s. And... I can’t recall anything else just now. Of course she talked about something else, because she was there two hours, but I can’t think about it. Well, about trouble with tenants, yes.
She said, “I don’t know, I feel afraid sometimes that father’s got an enemy. He has so much trouble with his men that come to see him.” And she told me of a man that came to see him, and she heard him say — she didn’t see him, but heard her father say — “I don’t care to let my property for such business.” And she said the man answered sneeringly, “I shouldn’t think you’d care what you let your property for.” And she said her father was mad and ordered him out of the house.
She told me of seeing a man run around the house one night when she went home, I’ve forgotten where she’d been. “And you know the barn’s been broken into twice,” she said.
And I said, “Oh, well, you know that was somebody after pigeons. There’s nothing in there for them to go after but pigeons.”
“Well,” she said, “they’ve broken into the house in broad daylight, with Emma and Maggie and me there.”
“I never heard of that before,” I said.
“Father forbade our telling it,” she said.
So I asked her about it, and she said it was in Mrs. Borden’s room, what she called her dressing room. She said her things were ransacked, and they took a watch and chain and money and car tickets, and something else, I can’t remember. And there was a nail left in the keyhole, she didn’t know why that was left. I asked her if her father did anything about it, and she said he gave it to the police but they didn’t find out anything. And she said her father expected they would catch the thief by the tickets, “Just as if anybody would use those tickets,” she said.
“I feel as if I want to sleep with my eyes half-open,” she said. “With one eye open half the time. For fear they’ll burn the house down over us. I’m afraid somebody will do something. I don’t know but what somebody will do something,” she said. “I think sometimes, I’m afraid sometimes, that somebody will do something to him, he’s so discourteous to people. Mrs. Borden told him she was going over to Dr. Bowen’s, and father said, ‘Well, my money shan’t pay for it.’ She went over to Dr. Bowen’s, and Dr. Bowen told her — she told him she was afraid they were poisoned — and Dr. Bowen laughed and said No, there wasn’t any poison. And she came back, and Dr. Bowen came over. I was so ashamed, the way father treated Dr. Bowen. I was so mortified.”
That’s all I can remember about our talk on the night before the murders.
My name is Martha Chagnon, I live on Third Street. My yard’s right in the rear of the Borden yard. There’s a fence between my yard and the Borden house, and a corner there where there’s a doghouse. On the night preceding the Borden murders, I heard a noise...
“Can you fix the time a little better?”
“It was about eleven o’clock at night.”
“Won’t you tell what you heard,” Jennings said. “What the noise sounded like?”
“Wait a minute,” Knowlton said. “I pray Your Honors’ judgment about that.”
“She may describe the noise,” Mason said.
“Please describe the noise,” Jennings said. “Tell us about it as well as you can.”
“Well, I couldn’t describe the noise, because I didn’t see it.”
“Well, you don’t often see a noise, do you?”
“Why, no, sir.”
“How it sounded to you,” Jennings said.
“Wait a minute, I object to that,” Knowlton said.
“That’s a proper question,” Mason said. “It calls for a description of how it sounded.”
... Well, the noise sounded like pounding. Like pounding on wood. On the fence. Or a board. It came from the direction of the Borden fence, somewhere along the line of the fence. It continued for about four or five minutes. I didn’t go outdoors to see what it was. I didn’t do anything to investigate the cause of the noise. I was in the sitting room downstairs, on the south side of the house. There’s a room between that and where the noise appeared to be. The dining room. The dining room was between me and where the noise appeared to be. My stepmother was with me when I heard the noise. I don’t remember whether she looked to see what had occasioned it. We couldn’t see out from where we were to the back part of the yard. It was too dark, and the curtains were down.
I’d been away all that day, went off at eight o’clock in the morning, to Providence. I got home at about six o’clock. My stepmother hadn’t gone with me, but she was in the room when I heard the noise. Her name is Marienne. Marienne Chagnon. She was in the room at the same time I was. The windows in that room were all shut. There are three of them in that room, and one of them faces east, onto the piazza. The other two face south. I can’t tell how I knew the direction from which the sound came. It was nothing more than an impression. I couldn’t say positively that the sound came from over the fence, but in that direction. I didn’t go out of the room, and I didn’t look out the window, either. I simply heard a noise, and it sounded to me as if it had come from that way.
There’s an icehouse, the next house but one to ours. But the sound didn’t come from the icehouse direction, it wasn’t from the icehouse, it wasn’t in that direction. There was a dog on the premises. On the piazza. He didn’t leave the piazza at any time when that noise was going on.
My name is Marienne Chagnon, and I live on Third Street in Fall River. My house is in the rear of the Borden house. On the evening before the murders, I was home, and something attract my attention. About eleven o’clock. Some noise. I would describe it as the sound of steps on wood. On a wood sidewalk. Or on a fence. There is a fence between our yard and the Borden yard. And a doghouse there at the corner. At the time I heard the noise, I was on the sofa in the sitting room, on the south side of the house.
I heard the noise coming from the back yard. Near the window of the dining room. We heard the noise and we thought that noise would be — I don’t speak very well — would be the same on the fence as on a wood sidewalk. There’s a short fence between Mr. Borden’s yard and our house. I heard the noise like it was a step on the fence. It lasted about five minutes, with space between the noise. We heard some noise, and after — we wait, and we heard noise again. There was a space of two or three minutes between the noises. I tell to my daughter, because I don’t wonder that she was afraid, I didn’t think it was the sound of a dog. The dogs sometimes come into our yard, I have seen them. I have an ash barrel in the yard, and it sometimes contains bones. And sometimes dogs come to that ash barrel. But...