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“But they grind all the same.” The other man had stopped on the corner, and seemed inclined to turn rather than go on. “Do you not return to the Ring house?”

“No, I’m on my way to my bride’s. The Widow Stackhaver—soon to be a widow no longer.” Mr. Croucher swelled with pride. “She has a house on Ann Street and we’re looking to buy the house next door as well, to make into a shop for my wares. We’re to be married next week.”

“My congratulations.” It was nice that someone had joy to look forward to in the midst of the death and bleakness that had enveloped the Ring boardinghouse. “Has she any children?”

“An adopted daughter of sorts—but she’s an unruly wench.” Croucher tapped his nose. “Came of bad blood. I’ve told my wife she’d best be rid of her or there’ll be trouble to come, but what can I say? The girl’s insinuated herself in her confidence.”

“Perhaps she’s just young and will mend.” A thought nagged at Cadwallader. The defense, he knew, planned to level that same notion of bad blood against Elma. Now, there was a topic for a paper, if Tammany Hall were still the discussion society it had been: Were men or women born bearing the sins of the parents? How was character formed and was it inherited or made? But the courtroom was no place for such musings, only for solid certainties. “Elma Sands—did she strike you as being of an unruly disposition? Possessed of bad blood?”

“Oh, no. I wouldn’t say that. Elma was a sensible girl.” Mr. Croucher’s lip curled. “But for her infatuation with Levi Weeks. When it came to him, she wouldn’t hear a word. She thought he was an Adonis.”

It was Mr. Croucher who had seen the two of them together, in flagrante. “Did you say anything to her about him? Try to warn her?”

“Of course. She didn’t thank me for my pains.” Mr. Croucher shook his head. “I was courting my dear bride-to-be, and perhaps I didn’t try as hard as I might. But who would think this would be the end of it? These violent delights . . .”

“Have violent ends,” Cadwallader finished for him, and watched as the other man strode off in the direction of Ann Street, away from the Ring boardinghouse.

The Ring house seemed a different place in the March sunlight, with the promise of spring in the air. A little shabby, perhaps, but not a sinister place of violent delights and violent ends. Just another of the rather ramshackle frame houses that had sprung up as the city had spread.

Elias Ring was at the front door, doing something to the hinges. He paused his work as Cadwallader stepped up.

“Mr. Colden. Did thee want me?”

Cadwallader resisted the urge to tell Elias to stop his work on the door. It was by the sticking of the door that Catherine Ring had known that Levi and Elma must have gone out together.

Why shouldn’t he fix his own door? In a week, the judges would sit for the quarter sessions; a grand jury would indict Levi Weeks; and his case would be brought forward to trial. It was right for the family to move on, to try to rise above the sorrow Levi Weeks had brought upon them, not save a squeaking door as a relic of tragedy past.

“I only came to tell you all that the quarter sessions sit next week and Levi Weeks will be taken up soon after. You’ll be called to testify, of course.”

“Thee knows I cannot swear.”

“Don’t worry; there are ways of dealing with such things. You’ll be affirmed rather than sworn. All you need to do is go in there and tell the truth.”

The Quaker’s broad hat cast a shadow across his face. “Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make thee free.”

“So we hope,” said Cadwallader.

But the Quaker wasn’t done with the verse. He seemed to be speaking more to himself than Cadwallader. “Jesus answered them, ‘Verily, verily I say unto you, whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin and the servant abideth not in the house forever.’”

“Well, I hope this house will once again be a pleasant place to abide once the trial is done. Is Mrs. Ring in?”

“She’s in the kitchen.” Elias jerked his head toward the back of his house.

Cadwallader went around to the small yard that was behind the house, trying to remember if there were any references in the scripture to kitchens. With his father-in-law a bishop, he felt he ought to know these things. Presumably, if there had been one, Elias Ring would have quoted it for him.

Toiling and spinning did seem to be represented here, and also the fruits of the field. Washing hung in lines, and someone had begun turning the ground for as large a kitchen garden as the small space would allow.

She was truly an excellent woman, Mrs. Ring. Cadwallader admired her industry tremendously. Country-bred, of course. That accounted for it.

Inside, he found as charming a scene as one could imagine. Hope Sands sat at the table with one of the Rings’ daughters, holding a hornbook in one hand and the girl on her lap as the girl struggled to sound out the letters. Mrs. Ring’s back was to them as she bent over a large kettle, which filled the air with a savory smell. Fresh loaves of bread sat covered with a cloth.

It might have been a painting, a Dutch domestic scene—Cadwallader was rather fond of Dutch domestic scenes—of the house in good order, both women neat in their brown dresses and white aprons and caps, the milk in its jug, not a dish out of place, so different from the way the house had been when Cadwallader had first called on them in January: the house overrun by curiosity seekers, Hope Sands’s anger, Mrs. Ring’s grief. This, he thought, must have been what it had been like in the house in Greenwich Street before Levi Weeks had shattered their peace.

He couldn’t bring Elma back to them, but perhaps he could give them this.

“Mr. Colden!” Mrs. Ring dropped her spoon at the sight of him. “Is there—have thee news?”

Cadwallader leaped forward to get it back for her. “Calm yourself, Mrs. Ring. All is well. I’ve only come to tell you your ordeal will soon be over. The quarter sessions begin next week and Levi will be called to trial shortly after.”