"That has always been a mystery" said she.

[she_done_it]

At the Preliminary Hearing, Lizzie was asked: "What explanation can you suggest as to the whereabouts of your mother from the time you saw her in the dining room [at 9:00], and she said her work in the spare room was all done, until 11 o'clock?" Lizzie: "I don't know. I think she went back into the spare room, and whether she came back again or not I don't know; that has always been a mystery.

A mystery? Never occurred to her that Abby must've been out to market and gone on that sick call??

She was asked soon after whether she had any knowledge of Abby leaving the house. No. When the question was repeated, she replied, "She told me she had had a note, somebody was sick, and said, 'I am going to get the dinner on the way [. . .]" "Then why did you not suppose she had gone?" Lizzie stated: "I supposed she had gone." She supposed no such thing. She had just testified 10 breaths before that Abby's whereabouts during that time period had always been a mystery to her.

(See page 406 in Widdows and Koorey's The Preliminary Hearing in the Lizzie Borden Case, new edition.)

[snokkums]

I can relate to what Lizzie said. My father, brother and I have been in the house at the same time and I've had to go looking for them cause I haven't heard nor seem them. And they have been in the house at the same time as I have been. LOL!!

[patsy]

Her words do seem to be contradictory can't deny that, and yet I thought they could be taken more than one way. Maybe she meant the whole thing about a note has always been a mystery to everyone because there were so many question about that issue. I thought if she believed that Abby went out then could she have believed that Abby came back and went upstairs to the spare room for any number of reasons or just to be out of sight for awhile. Just thoughts from my brain because people can take our words so literally sometimes when we may just be thinking out loud or blurting out different thoughts that we don't necessarily mean.

[Lee]

Why was Abby up in the guest room to begin with? That was Emma and Lizzies job to clean it. I think Lizzie was up there pretending to straighten up and she called Abby hither to bring some pillow cases. Then she whacked her as soon as she came in. Lizzie knew exactly where Abby was all morning, bleeding out upstairs after she chopped her head into hamburger. And I think Brigit saw them both go upstairs through the stair window while she was outside washing aka lookout job