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Alexander barreled on before his co-counsel could get in the way. “Your Honor, the defense would like to recall Lorena Forrest to the stand.” Having already been sworn, she didn’t need to be sworn again. He could go right to the point. “Mrs. Forrest, have you had at any time conversation with Croucher, and what was it?”

“A day or two after Elma was found, he was at our house, and he said it was a very unfortunate thing that he had not come that way just at that time, as he might have saved her life. He said he had come by that night.”

“You are very well persuaded he said this?” Alexander could feel the blood singing in his ears.

“I am, very well,” Mrs. Forrest confirmed.

“Repeat the terms of the conversation.” Colden’s voice was hoarse.

Mrs. Forrest looked at him askance, but complied. “After the young woman had been found and after the jury had sat—”

“That is fifteen days after she was lost,” said Colden, his teeth clenched. “Give us the very terms, ma’am, if you please.”

“Upon my telling him what he had sworn before the grand jury—”

“You mean the coroner’s jury,” snapped Colden.

“—he said he did come along there that evening, but not at that hour.”

“Did he then say anything about Mrs. Brown or Mrs. Ashmore’s house?” demanded Colden.

“He did not say anything about any house, just that he—”

“Yes, we know.” Colden’s voice cracked in his frustration. He scrubbed a hand over his eyes. “No further questions.”

Brockholst intervened before Alexander could call his next witness. “The defense calls Dr. Prince.”

“I saw no marks of violence. I saw no appearances but what might be accounted for by supposing she drowned herself,” swore Dr. Prince.

Why were they wasting time suggesting the girl had committed suicide? No one believed the girl had committed suicide.

Alexander could see the jury blinking and yawning as the doctors quibbled over how much water had been in the body; whether she had been dead before she went into the water or after; if the bruising was caused by violence or by a prolonged immersion in water, leaving the jury both bored and bewildered. The sun was setting as another day waned, casting the courtroom into gloom.

If Brockholst hadn’t intervened with this useless medical havering, Alexander could have pushed forward with Ring and Croucher.

He’d had Colden rattled, the jury enthralled. And then this. Alexander’s old friend Hosack—to whom he would be forever grateful for saving Philip—was going on about authorities and dissection.

Alexander waited for him to pause for breath and thanked him and called Lorena Forrest’s husband to the stand.

“Do you know anything of a Mr. Richard Croucher?”

“On the day after Christmas, Croucher came to my store to buy a loaf of bread. He said Ring’s family was in great distress, and that being under the same roof it gave him great uneasiness. His own opinion, he said, was that the girl had made away with herself.”

Alexander looked to the jury to make sure they had heard that. “Did Mr. Croucher convey any other opinions to you, regarding the prisoner at the bar?”

“On Friday last, Croucher came running into my store and said, ‘What do you think of this innocent young man now? There is material evidence against him from the Jerseys, and he is taken by the high sheriff, sir, and carried to jail; he will be carried from there, sir, to the court and be tried; from there he will be carried back to jail, and from thence to court again, sir, and from thence to the place of execution, and there be hanged by the neck until he is dead.’”

The sheer malice of it came through strongly in the retelling. “Had he any particular business with you at this time?”

“He did not seem to have any but to tell me this.”

Throughout the courtroom, servants were quietly circling with tapers, lighting branches of candles. They set candelabra on either side of the high bench occupied by the three judges, and on the tables set aside for the prosecution and the defense. Burr leaned over to murmur something to Brockholst.

Alexander plunged ahead with his next witness. “Mr. Dustan, you, too, keep a shop, some distance from the Ring household. Did anyone come and speak to you of Levi Weeks?”

The flickering candles cast strange shadows across the shopkeeper’s face. “Last Friday morning, a man—I don’t know his name—came into my store.”

The candlelighters hadn’t made their way to the far side of the room yet. The area where Croucher sat was shrouded in gloom, turning him to a mere shadow among shadows.