Alice + Freda Forever: A Murder in Memphis (6 page)

Alice could not fathom entertaining other prospects; Freda was her one and only. It was getting harder to deny that her feelings for Freda were stronger than Freda’s feelings for her. In letters, Alice seemed to hope that drawing attention to this disparity might solicit comforting protestations, or perhaps she hoped it would inspire Freda to stop “loving” these other men
before
they married. But Freda consistently failed to rise to the occasion.

When Alice visited 319 George Street that day, she went in search of a phantom—the old Freda Ward, resident of Memphis, student at Miss Higbee’s, sweetheart of Alice Mitchell.

On August 1, 1891, Alice sent the lengthy letter to the new Freda Ward, resident of Golddust, a student of nowhere, a sweetheart to many. If their
elopement succeeded, Freda would likely leave her sister’s home before it arrived—but for all Alice knew, Ashley Roselle or some other suitor in Golddust was, at that very moment, tempting Freda away.

Unbeknownst to Alice, two letters were en route from Freda’s home to the Mitchell residence that very same day, by way of her older brother, Robert, and they confirmed her greatest fear.

Someone had indeed come between them—but it wasn’t Ashley Roselle.

A
FTER MONTHS OF REHEARSAL
,
Freda’s cue had finally come. On that summer night in 1891, she was, for once it seemed, fully committed to playing her role. She took supper with her family in Gold-dust as if it were any other meal, and then retired to bed, as she had so many nights before.

But once inside her room, Freda did not shed her clothing from the day, nor satisfy more than perfunctory ablutions. She was waiting for the moment—between ten o’clock and two in the morning—when the steamer would announce itself, confident that her performance that night had fooled everyone.

But as it turned out, Freda was not the only actress in the Ward family.

Ada Volkmar had also acted her way through their nightly ritual. And now, as Freda waited inside her bedroom for the steamer, Ada did the exact same thing just outside of it.

When their mother died in 1882, the eldest Ward sister was expected to assume her duties, and Ada had done her best for Jo and Freda.
¹¹
But she
was married now, and with the move up to Golddust, her focus had shifted on to her own household, which included at least one boarder. Thomas Ward had followed, youngest daughters in tow. Since new business opportunities kept him busy, Jo and Freda once again fell under Ada’s purview, moving in with her and her husband, William Volkmar.

Back in Memphis, Ada had noticed that Alice and Freda had grown very close. The Ward home had been but one backdrop for their relationship, interspersed with visits to the Mitchell and Johnson home, Miss Higbee’s, the many trips downtown, and the buggy rides.

But the move to Golddust initiated bouts of forced physical separation followed by lengthy visits, and offered Ada a front row seat to Alice and Freda’s conspicuous affection. She had seen girls chumming around Memphis, and Jo and Lillie regarded each other with particular warmth, but those romantic friendships looked increasingly tepid when compared to Alice and Freda.

Ada would later testify that she developed a strong aversion to their tender embraces, the constant kissing and fawning. But even so, the romantic charge that she witnessed was in no sense
meaningful
to her. Like most Americans in the nineteenth century, Ada had no explanation for what she was seeing. And thus it was dismissed as merely frivolous, if not irritating excess.

In fact, with Freda occupied, Ada had one less thing to worry about. She had welcomed Alice into her home for days at a time, and happily sent Freda down to visit the Mitchells in Memphis. Besides, Ada had never seen Alice act in an improper fashion, flirt with men, or wear inappropriate clothing, and there were no rumors to suggest otherwise. Alice was a lady, and her family, headed by the beloved “Uncle George,” was respected in Memphis.

She may have continued to unwittingly enable their plans had she not, by chance, caught a glimpse of Freda’s letters. The girls wrote often enough that the family limited them to two letters a week, but Ada was not so naïve as to ignore the many more that came and went. Alice and Freda were fond of pseudonyms and pet names, but all of the letters originated in the same cities, and were addressed by the same hands. Ada had probably regarded the excessive correspondence as the silly preoccupation of two young women, out of school but not yet wed, with little to do, spending their free time filling letters with gossip about former classmates or ads in the matrimonial paper.

But once Ada actually read the letters in their entirety, they revealed, in near chronological order, that Alice and Freda were doing something altogether different than chumming. They were corresponding as lovers would, using the kinds of words and sentiments Ada had likely exchanged with her own husband during their courtship. Why would two women be making such professions to each other? It made no sense to her—but that was not the most pressing issue.

As Ada discovered, Freda intended to sneak out of her own home that very night, marry Alice in Memphis, and light out for St. Louis. Ada had never read a similar tale in the papers, but she had read plenty of harrowing, moralistic tales about sheltered young women who thrust themselves into the world, only to be overwhelmed by its treachery. In these published stories, mothers were almost always depicted as careless, blind to the shameful schemes unfolding in their domestic sphere, while the men, once informed, would sprint out into the world as saviors, unrelenting in their gallant effort to preserve familial honor.

If the young woman was found, it was likely to be in a brothel, or under the influence of an unseemly man not dissimilar to George Wickham, the charming officer who convinces Lydia Bennett to run away with him in Jane Austen’s 1813 novel,
Pride and Prejudice
. Wickham had no intention of actually marrying Lydia, but Mr. Darcy used his powers of persuasion, or more specifically, his massive fortune, to tempt him into decency. But
few had such means and power, and the Wards were definitely not among them. Besides, if these rescue attempts were at all successful, the young woman’s return was hardly triumphant. Her reputation was tarnished, and that tainted her entire family.

For his part, William Volkmar was sure there was a “Wickham” laying in wait. No matter how many times Ada explained that Alice and Freda planned to marry
each other
, he insisted there was a man at the bottom of it. Surely Ada had misunderstood, and Alice was actually just an accessory in some unscrupulous man’s master plan. And so he spent that summer evening on the porch, Winchester rifle in hand, waiting for an unnamed miscreant who would dare pluck a chaste young lady from his respectable home.

And that was the scene in Golddust, with all three waiting in different places in and around the house, with differing ideas of what was going on, when the moment finally came. The boat cued its arrival with a whistle, which meant Freda, still fully clothed, was surely picking up her valise. William had heard it, too, but kept watching for a man to materialize. It was dark, but there was no rustling underfoot, no nasally sound of horses breathing. Unwilling to risk his wife’s ire if her youngest sister slipped out undetected, William was forced to quit his post, and headed toward his sister-in-law’s bedroom.

A
DA WOULD HAVE NO MORE OF
A
LICE
M
ITCHELL
.
After she recovered from the previous night’s theatrics—confronting Freda, and then interrogating her—Ada penned two letters to the Mitchells in Golddust, only one of which had Alice’s name on it.

The other letter was sent to Isabella Mitchell, Alice’s mother. Even though the circumstances were dire and demanded urgent attention, there was a protocol in polite society, and such domestic dramas fell under the purview of maternal authority. It had been Ada’s choice to tell her husband, but it was not her place to speak directly with Alice’s father. She had not even sent it directly to the Mitchell residence, but rather to Alice’s older brother, Robert, who safely delivered them to the family home.

If nothing else, Ada expected to be taken at her word. It was a bizarre tale for the turn-of-the-century, but the stakes were high enough that it surely warranted redress. Isabella read the letter, and made its contents known to her youngest daughter.

Alice adopted a mostly passive stance, playing the obedient daughter averse to scandal. It was the obvious choice, given that Isabella spoke of things Alice had never dared to write. Ada’s letter was brimming with intimate details that could only have come from Freda. Her fiancé had cracked under pressure, making neither any effort to protect her confidences with Alice, nor any attempt to preserve the possibility of a future together.

It now seemed prescient that Alice had, in the past, suggested to Isabella that Ada was not well. The letter she sent to Alice’s mother seemed so farfetched, so bold and out of touch with reality, that even Isabella concluded Ada must have “grossly exaggerated and misunderstood the matter.”
¹²
Of course, Alice did nothing to disabuse her mother of this interpretation, nor did she argue against Isabella’s verdict, the same one imposed by Ada.

Alice and Freda were never to speak again.