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“It was after, I believe.” Mrs. Broad thought about it before announcing, “It was January.”

There was a stirring and rustling through the jury and the galleries. Colden’s mouth dropped open as an expression of sheer horror crossed his face.

“That you are sure of?” Aaron asked. “It was in January, you say?”

“Yes, I am sure it was in January,” said Mrs. Broad firmly.

“Did you ever hear this gate open before?” Aaron asked gently.

“No, gentlemen.” Belatedly, Mrs. Broad realized that something was wrong. Taking offense, she demanded, “Do you think I came here to tell a lie?”

Aaron glanced casually at Colden as he asked, “When did you first remember about this sleigh’s being taken out?”

Mrs. Broad scowled at him, aware that she was being manipulated, but not sure how. “When I saw this young woman at Mrs. Ring’s and helped to lay her out.”

Desperately, Colden tried to salvage something from his witness. “Did you observe any marks of violence when you laid her out?”

Mrs. Broad pursed her lips. “I found no bruises except on the right shoulder, when I felt and it was soft—but I thought her neck was broke,” she added.

No bruises. No sleigh. And this was Colden’s own witness. This, thought Aaron with grim satisfaction, was how it was done. Not chasing after will-o’-the-wisps, but methodically destroying the prosecution’s evidence, point by point.

It was just like Hamilton to go after a dramatic solution and ignore the basic work that needed to be done.

Mercifully, Hamilton had retreated into abstraction, attending with only half an ear to the testimony. All of his attention was on the bench where Mr. Croucher sat next to a woman in a gown of brocade too rich for court in a color which did not become her. Periodically, he would glance from Mr. Croucher to Elias Ring and back again, like a clock where the second hand had become stuck and stuttered back and forth between the same numbers over and over again, never advancing.

That, from Aaron’s point of view, was just as well. It left him free to get on with the real work. One by one, Colden called his long list of witnesses, building his story of the abduction by sleigh. One by one, Aaron and Brockholst tore their testimony to shreds.

The woman who claimed to have seen Elma on the street that night had to admit that she never saw the supposed Elma’s face, and certainly hadn’t seen any sleigh. Another woman, who claimed to have seen Elma in a sleigh, admitted she couldn’t identify the sleigh and the moon had been obscured.

Candles were brought in, branches of them, set around the courtroom. It had to be well past the supper hour now. Some of the spectators slunk off in search of sustenance. And still Colden went on, calling witness after witness.

The mood in the courtroom had begun to change. Subtly, but Aaron could feel it. The crowd had come in baying for Levi’s blood. But now . . . they weren’t so sure.

Buthrong Anderson testified that he had seen a one-horse sleigh on a full gallop heading toward the well, pulled by a horse the same size and color as that owned by Ezra Weeks.

Brockholst was in his element. “Do you pretend to distinguish the color of a horse in the night?”

“Not exactly—but I knew he wasn’t light-colored.”

Brockholst turned to the jury, inviting them to join him in his skepticism. They were all, he seemed to imply, men of experience, and could spot nonsense when they heard it. “Can you determine the size of a horse when he is on the gallop, and, as you say, on a full gallop?”

“I think he was such a horse as I have described him,” said the witness sulkily.

Mr. and Mrs. Van Norden, whose house was nearest the well, both testified to hearing a woman cry out, “Lord have mercy on me! Lord help me!”

“I got out of bed to hear and see what I could,” said Mr. Van Norden, “and I looked out of the window toward the well. I can see the well from my house, and I heard this noise that I tell you of, and I looked then to the well, and I saw a man walking near the well, about the well.”

“Did you see a sleigh at the time?” Brockholst asked.

“No,” said Mr. Van Norden. Clearly, the thought had never occurred to him.

“Might there not have been a sleigh there which you could not see from your chamber window?” Colden suggested desperately. “I’ll put the question a little more particularly—is not the make of the ground such that if a sleigh was standing near the fence at the well, you would look over it from your window, in looking at the well?”

“I don’t know,” Mr. Van Norden said, flummoxed by the question. “I never minded.”

Colden’s next two witnesses, mere boys of eleven and thirteen, didn’t even make it to the stand.

“Do you know what an oath is?” Justice Lansing inquired. “Dismissed as incompetent.”