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He is a grave, silent, strange sort of animal, inasmuch that we know not what to make of him.

—Aaron Burr on Aaron Burr

New York City

March 31, 1800

In his zeal to have the glory of finding Elma Sands’s murderer, Hamilton was going to see Levi Weeks hanged, and jeopardize Aaron’s fee in the process.

Ezra Weeks was not looking pleased. He looked even less pleased as Colden called the next witness to the stand: Levi’s apprentice, William Anderson.

“Did you notice your master pay particular attention to Elma?” asked Colden, who apparently proceeded under the principle that if he asked the same question often enough he might eventually get the answer he wanted.

“I never saw anything to make me suppose that my master was more particular in his attentions to Elma than to the other two, Margaret and Hope.” Young William looked appealingly at Levi, like a puppy hoping his master might pet him. “One day my master said to me, ‘You must not think it strange of my keeping Elma’s company. It is not for courtship nor dishonor, but only for conversation.’”

That statement was met with the derision it deserved. Everyone, thought Aaron grimly, was now entirely convinced that Levi had been carrying on a torrid affair with Elma. If they hadn’t believed it before, that comment about conversation had clinched it.

“Did you ever know your master to be in private with Elma? You are under oath,” Colden reminded the boy when he hesitated.

Young William looked from Colden to Levi and back again. “One night I pretended to be asleep, and the prisoner undressed himself and came with the candle and looked to see if I was asleep or not. Supposing I was, he went downstairs in his shirt and didn’t come back till morning.”

“Did your master always sleep with you?”

“Yes,” the boy said quickly.

“How did he rest the night after Elma was missing, and the next?”

“He slept as well as usual the night Elma was missing, and Monday and Tuesday nights, but on Wednesday night, near day, he sighed out in his sleep, ‘Oh! Elma!’”

“Was Elma of a lively and cheerful disposition?”

“Yes, she was that.” William Anderson caught sight of Ezra Weeks’s scowl and ducked his head. “But less so the day before she was missing.”

The boy stepped down, his future employment in jeopardy if the look on the senior Weeks’s face was anything to go by. Aaron hoped the boy had talent with his tools, because he didn’t with his tongue. He’d done more to condemn his master than anyone else so far.

This was not going well.

Yes, they’d succeeded in excluding Mrs. Ring’s evidence about Elma’s intentions; Mr. Ring had obliged them by making a scene; and they’d rattled Colden. But they’d entirely failed so far to counter Colden’s testimony about Elma’s state of mind—cheerful, gay, too gay for a Quaker; everyone agreed. It was going to be a hard thing to convince the jury that Elma had flung herself into the well under the influence of melancholy.

Perhaps if Hamilton had spent a little more time following the agreed line of questioning and less chasing after his own theories, they might be in a better position. A jury needed a clear line of reasoning to follow, not scattershot accusations.

They had been having somewhat more success making out that Levi had flirted with everyone, and not just Elma. That he’d taken Hope Sands to his brother’s was a nice touch. But it was flimsy, all of it. And William Anderson had just dealt them a blow from which it would be hard to recover.

Which left them with one line of defense. They needed to prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Levi Weeks had never been near the well that night.

Colden’s next witness was an elderly woman, who made her way with difficulty to the stand, leaning heavily on her stick and batting off the well-meaning attempts of the assistant attorney general to help her.

“I live opposite Ezra Weeks’s lumber yard, and on the night when the deceased was lost, I heard the gate open and a sleigh or carriage come out of the yard about eight o’clock. It made a rumbling noise but had no bells on it, and it was not long before it returned again.”

“How did you know it was eight o’clock?” Aaron asked her.

The old woman looked at him as though he were a half-wit. “Because my son and daughter was gone to meeting and meeting is done about eight o’clock.”

“When was this, Mrs. Broad? What month was it?”

Mrs. Broad bristled. “I don’t know the month. I know it was so.”

“Was it after Christmas, or before Christmas?” Aaron asked patiently.