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“Once I had—the reason was this, if you wish me to tell it—” Croucher paused. Alexander had no doubt he was contriving his story as he spoke. “Going hastily upstairs, I suddenly came upon Elma, who stood at the door. She cried, ‘Ah!’ and fainted away.”

There was a hooting from some of the men standing at the back.

“I wish pretty women fainted at my feet!”

“You think he’s so ugly he made her swoon?”

Mr. Croucher waited until the general hilarity abated. “On hearing this, the prisoner came down from his room and said it was not the first time I had insulted her. I told him he was an impertinent puppy. Afterwards, being sensible of his error, he begged my pardon.”

In the box, Levi was shaking his head furiously, looking like it cost him all his power not to burst into speech.

“And you say you bear him no ill will?” inquired Burr.

“I bear him no malice, but I despise any man who does not behave in character,” said Mr. Croucher with dignity.

Character. That was the crux of it all, wasn’t it? The character of Elma. The character of Levi. The character of the man standing before them in the witness box.

“How near the Manhattan Well do you think you passed that night?” Alexander asked.

Mr. Croucher gave it some thought. “I believe I might have passed the glue manufactory.”

The glue manufactory was out of his way, on the opposite side of the well. There was no reason for Mr. Croucher to have passed anywhere near the glue manufactory. “Do you not know what route you took?”

“I do not.” Croucher ought to have stopped there, but his unease betrayed itself in a flood of words. “I cannot certainly say, I might have passed by one route or another. I go sometimes by the road, sometimes across the field.”

“Was it dark?”

“I believe there was a little moonlight. The going was very bad.” That much Alexander believed to be true. It would have been dark and cold. It wasn’t far from 884 Bowery Lane to the Manhattan Well. Far closer than the Rings’ boardinghouse or even Ezra Weeks’s lumber yard. But the paths would have been rutted and pocked with frozen mud and uneven turf.

A strange route for a man to choose to take home on an icy, cold night.

Except that Croucher hadn’t gone home. Not until far later.

The discrepancy struck Alexander. Why would Croucher have been passing the well at the crucial time? It made no sense for him to have left Mrs. Ashmore’s, crossed to the well, and gone back again. Unless he had gone to Mrs. Ashmore’s later than he claimed? Or unless he was at the well by appointment. As Ring’s accomplice?

Colden took advantage of Alexander’s distraction to bring everyone’s attention back to Levi’s guilt. “Have you ever heard any noise in the room of the prisoner at an uncommon time of night, since this affair happened?”

“Yes, sir, I have.” Mr. Croucher seized on the change of subject with alacrity. “The night the deceased was missing and the next night and every succeeding night while he stayed in the house, I heard him up whenever I waked at all times from eleven o’clock at night until four in the morning, and a continual noise, almost. I thought then his brother had some great work on hand and that he was drawing plans, but since I have accounted for it in a different way.”

He looked meaningfully at the jury. It was pure melodrama, thought Alexander—but effective nonetheless. It was a potent image, the murderer, driven by an unquiet conscience, pacing the floor night after night, tormented by guilt.

“Mr. Croucher,” said Alexander, raising his voice so it could be heard in all corners of the room, “were you ever upon any other than friendly terms with Elma?”

“After I offended the prisoner at the bar, who she thought was an Adonis, I never spoke to her again.”

“Thank you, Mr. Croucher.”

Burr stepped up, dismissing the witness, cutting off Alexander’s line of inquiry.

“I had more questions for him,” murmured Alexander, keeping a pleasant expression on his face for the sake of the jury. “You overstep yourself, sir.”

“And you,” said Burr, smiling as if they were exchanging pleasantries, “are overplaying your hand—our hand. You might wager wildly on your own account, but not on mine.”

“This isn’t a wager. It’s a man’s life.”

“How good of you to recall that. If we spend less time on wild theories and more time on defending him, he might emerge with his neck intact,” said Burr pleasantly. “Shall we?”

Chapter Twenty-Five