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The public are desired to suspend their opinions respecting the cause of the death of a young woman whose body was lately found in a well. . . .

Chapter Five

However some circumstances that have been published may seem to justify the horrid imputation of her murder which has been thrown on a certain young man, yet there are others which strongly militate against it, and appear to establish his innocence in an unquestionable manner. We understand he has, contrary to some accounts, the universal testimony in favor of his character. He is a moral, sober, industrious, amiable man.

—Anonymous piece in the New-York Daily Advertiser, January 9, 1800

New York City

January 9, 1800

“He has no conceivable temptation to perform such an atrocious action—that’s a bald-faced lie!”

“You won’t forget David’s birthday?” The coffeepot hove distractingly into Cadwallader’s line of vision.

Cadwallader Colden, assistant attorney general of the city of New York, moved himself and the New-York Daily Advertiser out of the way of the coffeepot.

“She had several times been heard to utter expressions of melancholy and throw out threats of self-destruction, particularly the afternoon before.” Cadwallader set the paper down slowly on the table, his eyes still fixed on the page. “They mean to make out the girl killed herself.”

“Cadwallader!” The coffeepot plonked down next to him.

Cadwallader ignored it. “Several other circumstances have come to our knowledge . . . What circumstances?”

“Could you perhaps turn your mind to the circumstance of your only child’s birthday?” Maria’s tone was as acid as the coffee. “Which happens to be today?”

Cadwallader shook his head, trying to clear it. No conceivable temptation . . . “Of course. Certainly. It’s just this matter of the girl in the well. . . .”

An easy, straightforward case. Or so it had seemed. Until today.

“There’s also the matter of your son’s third birthday.”

“Yes. Certainly. They might have had the decency to make themselves known, whoever it was who wrote this piece.” Cadwallader picked up the paper again, giving it an irritated flap. “It might be Colonel Burr—Josiah told me Weeks retained Livingston and Burr for the defense. Livingston didn’t put up much of a show in the Pastano case . . . and this doesn’t sound in his style . . . but Burr. It might be Burr.”

Livingston he’d faced off against before. The man was formidable—formidable and cutting—but one felt like one knew where one stood with him. Burr was slippery, tricksy. Look at the way he’d turned the Tammany Society from a philosophical society to a political organization. Cadwallader still felt sore over that. He’d enjoyed the old days of Tammany, when they debated topics like the true nature of man, not how many votes could be got for Burr’s Democratic-Republicans. Was man fundamentally good or evil? These were questions that deserved proper consideration; the nature of man called for as much study as Cadwallader’s botanist aunt would give to the veining of a leaf.

But these days, there was no room for abstract argument: there was only partisan combat and sharp elbows.

It would be just like Burr to place anonymous insinuations in the paper. “She was not, as it was said, pregnant, nor can it be proved that he was under an engagement to marry her.” It was true that the autopsy had established that Elma Sands wasn’t pregnant, but to claim there was no engagement . . . “What kind of proof do they expect? A written bond?”

“My father and Ben and Susanna will be here at four,” said Maria in a clipped voice.

That was the thing to do. Talk to the family, verify their testimony. “I’ll need to speak to the family,” said Cadwallader decidedly. “I wonder if there was anyone else to whom she might have spoken about her plans to be married. . . . One of the neighbors, perhaps.”

Marie tossed her serviette down on the table and pushed back her chair with an audible scrape. “Be here at four,” she said sharply. “And don’t forget to stop at Monsieur de Singeron’s confectionery to pick up the plum cake I commissioned.”

Cadwallader looked up from the paper. “You commissioned a plum cake?”

The door of the dining parlor slammed behind his wife.

For a moment, Cadwallader considered going after her, apologizing, before deciding, on the whole, that it was probably easier and more comfortable to let her work out her spleen on her own. He thought wistfully of the early days of their marriage, when Maria had entered into his interests and the breakfast table had been a place of domestic and intellectual harmony. But then had come a string of disappointments—that was what Maria called them, disappointments—and with each, Maria had withdrawn a little further from him, spending more time with her parents and siblings. When David had been born, all had been happiness for a bit—but David’s safe delivery proved the exception rather than the rule. They’d had another disappointment that autumn, close on the heels of the death of Maria’s mother in August.

Cadwallader had suggested a visit to the country, a sojourn in the south, a spa, a European tour—but Maria didn’t want to risk David to the vagaries of travel or to his father’s sole care at home. No use to point out David had a perfectly good nursemaid and a house full of servants. Maria refused to countenance the prospect.

Vaguely, Cadwallader thought it would be quite a good thing if they had another child. It would give Maria someone else on whom to practice her ideas of Republican motherhood. Not that she wasn’t a wonderful mother to young David. And David—if a man were to have only one child in this life, it were well that it be one like David, so clever, so sunny-natured. Most of the time.

If Maria were feeling more herself, she would understand what this case meant. They were already saying that Cadwallader wasn’t fit for office, that he’d been given this position only because his late sister’s husband, Josiah Hoffman, was the attorney general. And perhaps that was so, but that didn’t mean that Cadwallader couldn’t make a success of it.

It was just that he hadn’t managed to make a success of it quite yet. There had been that embarrassing business of the woman found strangled in a cistern in December. Rose Malone. A widow, remarried a week. Cadwallader had been so sure the new husband had done it—it was usually the husband—until the husband proved to have been unimpeachably elsewhere. With no other suspects, they’d quietly released the husband from the Bridewell and dropped the case.