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Her goodness shouldn’t surprise him, but somehow it always did. “Not all the world has your heart.”

“Only you,” she said, saying it before he could. “And our children.”

“And the widows and orphans,” said Alexander. He toyed with a piece of mutton. The smell of it was too strong; it made his stomach turn. “Someone killed that girl, Eliza—but I haven’t the means to prove who! If I had given this the care I gave Le Guen—if I had given this the care I gave the army—if I had only had more time—”

He ought to have listened to Eliza. He ought to have listened when she counseled against taking on too much. But it always seemed like a good idea at the time, all of it, every post, every case. Until it wasn’t.

“You were right. I took on too much and I’m doing none of it well.”

“If you weren’t there to stand up for Elma Sands, who would?” Eliza twitched her shawl closer around her shoulders. “Last winter, we delivered meals and medicine to a hundred widows and their families. Only a hundred. But those were a hundred who were kept from the poorhouse. Should I stop serving the hundred because there are four hundred more I failed? We do what we can, imperfect as we are.”

Alexander had never seen anything more perfect in his life, his Eliza, heavy-eyed with exhaustion, her hair half in a braid and half out where Betsy had tugged it, and a slight smell of sour milk about her person.

“I can make a case that Elias Ring did it—the cousin’s husband,” Alexander said slowly. “He took advantage of the girl—of Elma. We have witnesses to swear to it. He has a wife and four children and only the wife’s word to swear he was home that night. Ring forced his way into the courtroom when his wife gave her testimony.”

“For fear of what she might say?”

“Yes, but fear of what? Was he afraid she would tell of him and Elma? Or something more?” Alexander cast his mind back on Ring’s performance in the courtroom, his hat stubbornly jammed on his head, chin jutting out beneath. “He was sullen and furtive on the stand and when we tasked him—when I tasked him—with threatening Levi, he burst out that Levi had threatened to tell of him and Croucher.”

“Croucher?” Eliza stifled a yawn with the back of her hand.

“A lodger. Levi told me last week he’d also come upon this Croucher embracing Elma. Livingston seized on that, as you can imagine. More proof the girl was a wanton.” Alexander couldn’t keep the bitterness from his voice. “From what Levi said, I’d thought he’d caught them only the once, but on the stand, Croucher said that Levi had accused him of insulting Elma not for the first time.”

To embrace a woman once might be a man seizing an opportunity offered. But more than once—it was something different.

“This man, Croucher—he’d spoken of being by the well that night. And he’s been busy going from store to store spreading rumors about Levi Weeks. The most logical explanation is that he saw something and decided to use it as a business opportunity, to extort money from Elias Ring. But—” Alexander felt like a fool even saying it, but this was Eliza, and he was too tired to dissemble. “You’ll think me fanciful, but there was something diabolical about his countenance. It was the way he smiled when he thought no one was looking.”

“Did he have any reason to do away with Elma Sands?”

“That’s just it. I can’t think of any. Elias Ring had reason enough. He has a wife and four children and a reputation to uphold among the Friends.”

“This Mr. Croucher? Is he married?”

“He wasn’t at the time. He just married a rich widow.” Alexander straightened in his chair as the meaning of his own words was borne in upon him. “He just married a rich widow.”

“So it wasn’t just Mr. Ring who had something to lose,” said Eliza sleepily.

“He likes fine things, Mr. Croucher.” Alexander could picture him on the stand, the gleam of his ring, the rich silks and brocades. “His own means are small. He can’t make that much money peddling stockings, insistent about it as he is. His desire to sell stockings makes one not want to buy stockings.”

Eliza rested her head on one hand. “When did he marry his widow?”

“The day before the trial began.” Yesterday. That was yesterday. Today felt as though it had been weeks long rather than hours. “He was courting his widow at the same time Levi caught him with Elma. If his widow found out about Elma—”

“She would have had reason to jilt him,” Eliza supplied for him.

“And take her money with her.” Alexander was turning it over in his head, fitting the bits together like a puzzle box, which would spring open when solved. “Everyone agrees that Elma was to meet someone that night. She said she was to be married. She dressed in her best clothes. Would she do that for Elias Ring? But if Richard Croucher promised her marriage . . .”

“He might have promised her marriage to win her affections,” agreed Eliza.

“This Croucher claims to have been at the home of a Mrs. Ann Ashmore—which is also a brandy distillery.” And possibly something more, although he decided he didn’t need to share that with Eliza. “The well stands between the boardinghouse and the house he visited that night. He might have arranged to meet Elma there. Or he might have arranged for her to meet him at Mrs. Ashmore’s and intercepted her on her way.”

Of course Croucher would tell people he had been by the well that night, just in case anyone had seen him. And because he gleaned a perverse delight from taunting the law with his secret.

“I had him on the stand today—if I had known then what I suspect now—”

Eliza pushed back her chair and used her arms to lever herself upright. “Thanks to Mr. Colden’s industry, you have another chance.”

“I never thought I’d be grateful for a trial that ran into a second day—but I always knew enough to be grateful for you.” Alexander caught Eliza’s hand, looking up at her as she stood above him, with the light of the candle casting a glow about her white nightdress. “I am much more in debt to you than I can ever pay.”