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There was a difference between failing to provide aid and actively causing harm. Had Mrs. Ring crossed that line? Alexander doubted a jury would believe that the good Quaker housewife had first attempted to poison her cousin, and then, when that failed, pushed her into a well.

And yet . . .

“I couldn’t tell anyone. Not Ezra, not Hope.” Levi was lost in his memories, long lines carved into his tanned face. “I offered to marry her. She laughed at me and told me not to throw myself away on the likes of her. She said my brother wouldn’t like it and that I deserved better than to be shackled to the village ledger.”

Alexander raised his brows. “She called herself a whore?”

“Only because Ring made her believe herself one, General,” Levi said earnestly. “What she did, she did because she thought he loved her. You have to understand what it was here, during the sickness. Sometimes it felt like we were the only people left in the world, like Robinson Crusoe on his island.”

“There were cannibals on Crusoe’s island,” Alexander said.

“Sometimes it feels like there are cannibals in the Ring house too,” said Levi bleakly. “They were ready enough to devour Elma, and now they’re trying to tear the flesh from my bones. They’ll do it too.”

“Not if we convince the jury otherwise.” Alexander was trying to make sense of what Levi had told him, balancing it against what the prosecution would throw at him.

The revelation of Ring’s liaison with Elma would certainly raise doubts in the minds of the jury. Ezra Weeks and John McComb would testify that Levi couldn’t have made it to the well and back in the requisite times. But there were two points still weighing heavily against Levi.

“Why did she say she was going to be married to you?”

“I don’t know. Truly, I don’t! When Hope told me—I thought the earth was opening up underneath me.”

The only people to claim that Elma had gone to be married to Levi were Catherine Ring, whose husband had been sleeping with Elma, and Hope Sands. “Might Mrs. Ring have made it up, to cast the blame on you?”

“Mrs. Ring might have—but Hope wouldn’t. Elma had something in train that night,” Levi said reluctantly. “You could tell just by looking at her. She’d put on her best dress and she borrowed that muff from Beth Osborn.”

“Mrs. Ring claims that Elma said she was going to meet you at eight—and you came back to the house at eight. Why did you come back at eight?”

“John McComb was at my brother’s house, and I didn’t know how long he’d stay. When he starts to prose on . . .” Levi caught Alexander’s eye and flushed. “All right. I came back because I was worried about Elma. Since Ring threw her over and she lost the baby—it’s as though she didn’t care what happened to her anymore. I’d tried all day to get her to tell me what she was planning, but all she’d do was tell me that I’d see.”

“Your brother thinks she threw herself in the well.”

“No,” said Levi immediately. “She was . . . excited. She was happier than I’d seen her for weeks. She’d talked so often about running off to her father in Charleston. But why would she go at night? It made no sense. And I wondered . . .” He caught himself, his eyes shifting away from Alexander.

“You wondered?”

“Who she was going to meet,” he said, although Alexander was fairly certain that wasn’t what he had been about to say. “I followed her out. I thought if she wouldn’t tell me . . . But although there was a moon, the light was uncertain and I lost sight of her before she left Greenwich Street. So I went back to my brother’s. When I came back, I asked if she’d come in, and Mrs. Ring told me no, that she’d thought Elma was with me.”

They had better hope that no one had seen Levi follow Elma out—if the boy was telling the truth. Alexander thought he was. That air of bewilderment might be feigned, but if so, he ought to be treading the boards rather than sawing them.

“You have no idea where she went, or who she went to meet?”

Levi shook his head. “She stopped confiding in me after—”

“After?” Alexander prompted.

Levi hunched his shoulders. “It’s no matter.”

“You have just been indicted on a charge of murder,” Alexander said with some asperity. “Don’t you think it’s time you told me the truth? We would be much farther forward if you’d told me all this two months ago. Why did Elma stop confiding in you?”

Levi pressed his eyes shut. “Elma stopped confiding in me after I came upon her embracing Croucher.”

Chapter Twenty

[Burr] kept open house for nearly two months, and Committees were in session day and night during the whole time at his house. Refreshments were always on the table, and mattresses were set up for temporary repose in the rooms.

—From the diary of Benjamin Betterton Howell

New York City