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“Will this take long?” asked one of the jurymen. He looked considerably the worse for his night of sleeping on the floor of the picture gallery.

“Constables, if some refreshment might be found for the members of the jury? I suspect we have another long night ahead of us.” Justice Lansing rose. “Court is in recess until we return.”

At least this time it wasn’t Cadwallader causing the delay. He felt childish for thinking that way, but fatigue seemed to have stripped him to the most base parts of his character. Maybe Maria was right; maybe he should have tried to get some sleep. Maybe it was only exhaustion making everything seem so grim.

Cadwallader breathed deeply of the manure-scented April air. He hadn’t realized just how close the atmosphere was in the courtroom, overheated with all those bodies pressed together, how long they’d been there, until he stepped outside and saw the sun already well over the midway mark.

“How is little David?” General Hamilton asked.

“Not so little anymore,” admitted Cadwallader.

“Hmph,” said Justice Lansing. “They think they’re grown by the time they’re weaned. Last week, Sally went traipsing about the house in her mother’s best French heels. Nearly broke her neck.”

Justice Lansing’s youngest, Sally, was just David’s age. Someday, Sally and David would dance together at assemblies. They might even court. Here, in the sunlight, Cadwallader felt how foolish he had been, how much he had let the unnatural atmosphere of the courtroom wear on his nerves. These men—they weren’t judge and opponent. They were men he had known most of his life; their children were the age of his child. Their wives called on his wife.

The woman they had come to find turned out to be the Rings’ next-door neighbor, ensconced on a sofa with a baby in her arms and a blanket over her lap.

“I would have come to court myself but the doctor said I mustn’t.” The baby was sleeping, a faint line of drool dripping from her slack mouth. The baby had that wonderful milky smell that Cadwallader remembered from David’s infancy. “I don’t like to be a bother.”

“You’re not a bother, Mrs. Watkins,” said General Hamilton. “We’re all of us men with wives and children of our own.”

“This is our eighth,” said Mrs. Watkins resignedly. Cadwallader thought how jealous Maria would be, festering breasts and all. They didn’t need eight; they would be happy with two. Or possibly three. “But you didn’t come here to hear me talk about my family. It’s Elma you want to know about.”

General Hamilton flipped the tails of his coat and lowered himself to a stool that had been placed beside her sofa. “Mrs. Watkins, did Mrs. Catherine Ring inform you of anything respecting Levi Weeks’s character and his behavior in the family, and especially as to any person sick?”

“On Thursday evening—that was after Elma was missing—Mrs. Ring came to see me and said that Levi Weeks was one of the best, most civil, and kindhearted boarders that she ever had, and if any of the children were sick, he was as kind and attentive to them as if they were his own.”

Cadwallader could feel his chest loosen. This was only more of the same, the only argument the defense had to offer, which was that Levi was a young man of good character and not the sort to push a girl down a well. There was nothing to fear here.

“I know this is difficult for you, Mrs. Watkins,” said General Hamilton winningly, “but I hope you can clarify one further point.”

“I’m happy to help however I can,” said Mrs. Watkins, cocking an experienced eye at the baby, who was beginning to stir.

Someone had stoked up the fire for the new baby and mother. It was very warm in the house. Cadwallader could feel himself beginning to slide down in his chair, lulled by the warmth and that new baby smell. Until Hamilton asked his next question.

“Did you ever hear anything that induced you to suspect there was an improper connection between Mr. Ring and Elma?”

Chapter Thirty

Colonel Burr then addressed himself in behalf of the prisoner to the court and jury, in one of the most masterly speeches both with respect to composition and oratory which we have ever heard.

—An Impartial Account of the Trial of Mr. Levi Weeks for the Supposed Murder of Miss Julianna Elmore Sands, by James Hardie A.M.

New York City

April 1, 1800

“How did he take it?” Burr and Brockholst drew around Alexander as he returned to the courtroom.

“He had no notion.” Cadwallader Colden had fallen out of his chair in surprise. He’d been half-asleep, the poor boy, but that had woken him up with a vengeance. Alexander would never forget the look of staring horror on his face.

Brockholst nodded in satisfaction. “Now we have him all hollow. Once we show that the girl was no innocent seduced, but spreading her favors generously, his case melts into air.”

“I think I know who did it,” said Alexander abruptly. He’d been turning and turning it over in his mind since his conversation with Eliza, and the more he thought, the more sure he was. “I think Croucher killed her.”

The announcement did not garner quite the reaction he had hoped. “Yesterday you thought Ring killed her,” said Brockholst, with exaggerated patience. “Who will it be tomorrow? The man who cleans the streetlights?”

“Richard Croucher, more than any other, has been busy in pointing the finger of blame at Levi Weeks,” said Alexander. “He was seen embracing Elma Sands, just as he was on the verge of a marriage that would make his fortune. Why was he so keen to implicate Levi? To save himself!”