Alice + Freda Forever: A Murder in Memphis (5 page)

B
Y JULY, THERE WAS TROUBLE
.
Amid their post-engagement euphoria, plans for the future took shape, but their reality remained the same, and so did their behavior. Alice was still jealous and possessive, and Freda as flirtatious as ever.

Ashley Roselle, a twenty-three-year-old postmaster from Featherstone, Arkansas, was not the first man to court Freda, but he seemed to be the most serious. And Freda, despite being involved in a clandestine marriage plot with another, did nothing to resist his overtures. If anything, the photograph and letters she sent Ashley’s way did much to quicken his pursuit.

Even with eighty miles between them, Alice was no fool. Whenever she visited Golddust, she met as many of Freda’s new friends and neighbors as possible, with an eye toward recruiting informants. Back home, she would write to them, as well as to those she had not met but knew of. She wanted to ascertain their impressions of Freda, and find out whether she was being courted by yet more suitors. In Memphis, Alice exploited chance encounters with people who knew Freda for potentially damning scraps of intelligence. There was no guile in her investigative approach, no
attempt at artifice or reserve; she openly advanced on anyone who might have information.

It did not take long for Alice to learn about Ashley Roselle, and to make her displeasure known. Freda responded with her usual ambivalence; a dash of concern, a pinch of regret, but in the end, she was always an incorrigible flirt. In a letter to her betrothed, Freda callously reviewed her love for multiple suitors and reminded Alice of her desire to be onstage, yet another threat to their life together—all the while promising lifelong fidelity.

The whole courtship process seemed to be a game of youthful dalliance that Freda greatly enjoyed; proposals were like trophies, accolades she enthusiastically accepted without seriously considering what came after. And yet, Freda continually assured Alice—or rather, Alvin J. Ward, her fiancé—that their marriage would inspire fidelity, and she would embrace the virtues of true womanhood. Freda blithely encouraged the transition, never truly grasping the peril the terms of their engagement put her in.

As proof of sincerity, Freda enclosed a copy of a letter she had supposedly sent to Ashley.

True to form, Freda followed a gesture meant to quell jealousy with one that immediately inflamed it. It just so happened that Ashley was sure to be at a picnic Freda had also planned on attending. She promised, as if her word were reliable, that she would not speak to him—despite admitting to loving him.

“I will stop,” she assured Alice in a letter, “I will always be true to you hereafter.” Marriage, Freda promised, would fix all of their problems.

But their marriage would solve nothing if it never came to pass, and this Ashley Roselle was a direct threat to their future. Since Freda could not be trusted, Alice went to meet this romantic rival herself—twice.

Ashley would later testify that Alice seemed unwell during their conversations, and that she had threatened to harm herself. The long, menacing letter that followed certainly suggested as much. She knew Freda would disapprove of the visits, but she reasoned she had every right to make them. To Alice’s mind, Freda had made a commitment, and her infidelities warranted reprisal.

Ashley would have to die.

These were more than just words. Before picking up Lillie for one of their afternoon buggy rides, Alice went downtown alone, with just one goal in mind: She wanted to buy a gun.

And what would stop her? She had the money, and the right. The pistol was a few dollars less than Freda’s engagement ring, and there were no laws prohibiting a white woman from buying a firearm. The purchase was thwarted by a mere technicality: The guns were all too big. Had any of them been the right size, and had she not been due to fetch Lillie, Alice would have brought a gun home that day.

Alice returned home empty handed, but the trip was not a loss. She had illustrated, yet again, the deadly sincerity of her intentions. Despite the
growing body of evidence, it seems Freda understood lethal threats to be a part of Alice’s ardent manner of speech. Even as the situation devolved and Alice’s plans became concrete, Freda refused to take her words seriously.

With love weighing heavily on her mind that day, Alice visited more than just purveyors of pistols. She brought Lillie to 319 George Street, to the house Freda had called home in Memphis. Had she still lived there, Alice wrote, she could kiss her, but her visit was instead spent gloomily meandering around the property, collecting ivy and picking roses.

Burdened by desperation, Alice’s anger deepened into hopeless melancholy. The long, tortured ruminations in her letter were but a sampling of the thoughts that oppressed her. We will never know exactly how or when Alice and Freda fell in love, but the letter suggests it happened at Miss Higbee’s, when chumming turned into something much more. But now her beloved was fading away. Did Freda love Alice half as much as when she lived on George Street?

“You didn’t fall in love with every boy that talked sweet to you then,” she wrote. Other suitors had never been a real concern, but Alice saw these new romantic rivals as more than just competition. Freda admitted to
loving
them, even as she claimed to love Alice best.