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“How many are we up to now?” inquired Aaron.

Brockholst counted them off. “Weeks, Ring, Croucher—and the neighbor claims the girl was away of nights and lied about her whereabouts. The prosecution will attempt to stir the emotions of the jury by painting her as a virtuous woman seduced and betrayed. They’ll be less sympathetic to a loose woman.”

“She was a bastard, after all,” said Aaron.

“She was a woman betrayed by the men who promised to care for her,” said Hamilton abruptly. “She deserves better from us.”

Levi Weeks deserved the defense for which his brother was paying dearly. Elma Sands, on the contrary, deserved nothing from them at all. “My dear sir,” said Aaron, “you have done all in the service of justice which a man can possibly do.”

The diversion had served its purpose. Investigating Elma Sands had distracted Hamilton from Aaron’s other activities. Now it was time for Hamilton to stop before he complicated their case.

“This doesn’t change anything, I suppose.” Hamilton was still occupied with his own line of thought. “If Croucher knew of Ring’s affair with the girl—and we know he knew—then he might have been moved to take advantage of her himself. That Levi saw Croucher embracing Elma doesn’t preclude Croucher from having seen Ring push her in the well. The rest all follows as before.”

“As one argument among many.” Aaron held up a hand. “I know you hold the prospect of suicide in distaste, but the jury must at least be provided the option.”

Particularly since Ezra Weeks had made it clear he expected them to insist the girl had committed suicide and Ezra Weeks had a great deal to offer in the coming election if he so chose, in both money and influence.

Hamilton immediately took umbrage. “All those people heard cries from the well. . . .”

“Would you do the prosecution’s work for them?” asked Brockholst in exasperation.

“We have,” Aaron reminded him gently, “three doctors ready to testify that there were no marks of violence upon her, only such as might have been occasioned by drowning.”

“That does the girl an injustice—” began Hamilton.

“The girl seen embracing three men?” Brockholst barreled on before Hamilton could speak again, outlining the plan that he and Aaron had worked out the night before, without Hamilton to distract them. “I propose we proceed as follows. We open by introducing the possibility of suicide. Then we show the impossibility of the prosecution’s case: to wit, that there was no intimacy amounting to courtship; that even if there was intimacy, the girl was equally intimate with any other number of men; and finally, that the evidence shows that Levi never took out his brother’s sleigh and could not possibly have been at the well at the crucial time.”

“Why not begin with Ring?” Hamilton’s ruddy face was troubled. “We know he was heard to have relations with her; we believe Croucher to have seen them together at the well. . . .”

“Because it is Levi on trial, and unless we refute any case against him, we leave ourselves open to failure. We have no proof against Ring, only speculation. Certainly,” said Aaron temperately, “we will put the proposition to the jury—but as one of many elements.”

“Yes. I suppose.” Hamilton didn’t like it, he clearly didn’t like it, but he knew enough to know Aaron was right. “Is that what you mean to put in your opening statement?”

“My opening statement?” Aaron repeated.

The opening statement was the junior position, to be given to the less senior of the attorneys; the closing statement the position of honor.

“I had assumed you would wish to open our case,” said Hamilton innocently. “Unless Livingston would prefer to do it?”

Aaron and Hamilton had both been admitted to the bar in 1782, but Aaron had been admitted in April; Hamilton in October. Brockholst had been a year behind them. By strict precedence, Brockholst should open; Aaron should close. And Hamilton shouldn’t be here at all.

“And the closing statement . . . ?” inquired Aaron delicately.

Hamilton produced two closely written sheets of paper with a flourish. “I’ve already begun it.”

For Hamilton to deliver the closing oration made a powerful point, one that wouldn’t be wasted on the voting public when they went to the polls later in the month.

Aaron took the papers delicately by the edge. As usual, Hamilton had been writing with a pen with an indifferent nib and had watered his ink to the point of illegibility. But the words jumped out all the same.

Gentlemen of the Jury, I know the unexampled industry that has been exerted to destroy the reputation of the accused, and to immolate him at the shrine of persecution without the solemnity of a candid and impartial trial. I know that hatred, revenge and cruelty, all the vindictive and ferocious passions have assembled in terrible array and exerted every engine to gratify their malice. The thousand tongues of rumor have been steadily employed in fabrication . . .

It was classic Hamiltonian flourish, all self-righteousness and hyperbole. But powerful. There was no denying the sheer force of it, the way it moved the emotions just as he claimed the enemies of Levi Weeks had manipulated the emotions of the public.

We have witnessed the extraordinary means which have been adopted to enflame the public passions and to direct the fury of popular resentment against the prisoner. Why has the body been exposed for days in the public streets in a manner most indecent and shocking?—to attract the curiosity and arouse the feelings of numberless spectators.

“Such dreadful scenes,” Aaron read aloud, “speak powerfully to the passions; they petrify the mind with horror—congeal the blood within our veins—and excite the human bosom with irresistible but undefinable emotions. When such emotions are once created, they are not easily subdued.”

No, they weren’t. They weren’t at all. Anyone seeing Hamilton delivering this speech would indeed have undefinable emotions stirred.