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Mrs. Ring clutched the spoon to her chest. “Over. Truly?”

Cadwallader felt an almost unbearable swell of sympathy for the bereaved family. Elma had disappeared on December 22. Their ordeal had stretched on for months now. “The defense will try to raise what misgivings they can, but I have no doubt justice will prevail. More evidence against Levi Weeks appears by the moment. A man came forward just today who says he saw Levi sounding the depth of the well the week before he eloped with Miss Sands.”

Hope Sands’s face went very white. “He sounded the well?”

“It is the purest example of villainy,” Cadwallader said happily. Belatedly, he remembered Levi had lived with them for months, been part of their household. There were rumors that Hope Sands had been fond of him, or he of Hope. “But how were you to know? He appeared—he still appears—as amiable a young man as one could imagine. We will rip the veils from him and reveal him to the jury as the monster he is. The force of the evidence against him is such that nothing can stand against it.”

Hope set her niece from her lap and stood, her knuckles white against the unvarnished wood of the table. “There’s no doubt, then? There’s truly no doubt?”

“Of course there’s no doubt.” Catherine Ring looked as though she hadn’t slept in weeks. Her auburn hair was lank beneath her cap and her cheekbones had a hollow look to them. “There’s never been any doubt.”

Cadwallader rushed to confirm her words. “Levi Weeks sounded the well. He promised your cousin marriage. His brother’s sleigh was seen leaving the lumber yard at eight o’clock, running without a light or bells. That same sleigh, without a light or bells, was seen heading in the direction of the well. And you, Mrs. Ring. You saw them leave together.”

“Yes.” Mrs. Ring shoved a lock of hair back under her cap. “I didn’t exactly see them leave—but I heard their steps on the stairs.”

It was enough. “Why would Levi come back here at eight o’clock but to keep his assignation with Elma? There was no reason for him to come to your house to sit ten minutes and then go back to his brother’s house. He came to meet Elma and he spirited her away in his brother’s sleigh.”

“And then he returned here and pretended he knew not what became of her,” Mrs. Ring said bitterly. “He left us all wondering and worrying. But for that muff I made her borrow—”

She covered her mouth with her hand, her whole body shaking.

Cadwallader couldn’t blame her. It was a sickening prospect, the girl’s body in the well, rotting, undiscovered, while her murderer feasted at her family’s board. Months, perhaps years of uncertainty as they wondered what became of her, not knowing if she’d run off, or if she’d killed herself in a love fit.

“But the muff was found,” said Cadwallader bracingly, “and so was your cousin. We can bring Levi Weeks to justice. And we will. Mrs. Ring, I’ll call you to the stand first. Then you, Miss Sands.”

“Thee wants me to speak first?” Mrs. Ring looked more alarmed than the occasion warranted, but Cadwallader supposed that for the non-lawyer, court was a fearsome thing.

“As the person who knew Elma best,” said Cadwallader reassuringly. “And you, Mrs. Ring—you were the last person to see her alive.”

Chapter Seventeen

While to my opponents it belongs as their duty to exert all their powerful talents in favor of the prisoner, as a public prosecutor, I think I ought to do no more than offer you in its proper order, all the testimony the case affords, draw from the witnesses that may be produced on either side all that they know, the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

—From the opening statement of Cadwallader Colden at the trial of Levi Weeks

New York City

March 21, 1800

“Other than Levi,” said Hope quickly. She didn’t like the way Caty looked at all. But then, she hadn’t liked the way Caty looked for weeks now.

“Of course,” agreed Mr. Colden hastily. “But the workings of the law do not permit us to bring Levi Weeks to the stand. And even if we did . . .”

“He’d lie,” Hope finished for him.

The way he’d lied the night he returned without Elma and said he’d no idea where she was. The way he’d lied when he wanted Hope to sign a paper saying he’d paid more attention to her than to Elma. The way he’d lied when he tried to make her think her sister knew something about Elma she didn’t.

“Precisely.” Mr. Colden seemed relieved that she’d understood him so readily. Since their dress was simple, he seemed to think they must be simple too. “All we need of you, Mrs. Ring, is to tell the jury exactly what you’ve told me. How you helped Elma get ready, how you saw Levi come for her, how you waited for her return. . . .”

“Yes,” said Caty woodenly. “Yes, I can do that.”

“As the first person the jury hears, you’re the one who will make the deepest impression on them.” Mr. Colden looked at Caty, and Hope saw her sister through his eyes: a respectable matron in a modest dress with work-reddened hands. The mother of children. A Quaker. The epitome of all that was honest and good.

They wouldn’t know that Caty hadn’t been herself recently, that she jumped at shadows and snapped at the children. Not that it was strange, Hope told herself. They’d all been changed by this. Elias had become surly, Caty anxious. And Hope? Hope wasn’t sure what she’d become but she didn’t like it.

“What you say will set the tone for the entire trial. You have the ability to create the story, Mrs. Ring. Not that it’s a story! It’s all truth.”

If you want to know the truth, apply to your sister.