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The architect had been busy: he had recently completed both a mansion for Archibald Gracie on the banks of the East River and St. Mark’s church in the Bowery. But he had still found time to call on Ezra Weeks that fatal night, and it was his testimony that was crucial in placing Levi well away from the well.

Aaron put first John McComb on the stand, and then Ezra Weeks. Hamilton held his tongue, although Aaron could feel him fidgeting. Was he trying to compose a new speech in his head? Aaron would be curious to see if even Hamilton’s eloquence was up to the task.

In the meantime, Aaron patiently took his witnesses through times and whereabouts. Levi had come in just after tea and sat discussing the business of the day with his brother until the McCombs came in. He chatted with them awhile, showing no great hurry to depart, and finally left around eight. The McCombs had stayed twenty minutes more, and Ezra had taken his candle and shown them down to Rhinelander’s corner. By the time he returned, Levi had come back to get his instructions for the following day, and sat there diligently taking down dimensions of doors for Mr. James Cummings’s house.

All very dull, perhaps, but the very dullness was a shield, far more reliable than the haphazard slashing of Hamilton’s sword, striking now at one possible culprit, now at another. If Levi had left his brother’s at eight, arrived at the Ring house at ten past, and was gone, as everyone agreed, from the Ring house by a quarter past the hour, that left him only fifteen minutes, twenty at most, before he was again at his brother’s hearth. And the sleigh with which he was meant to have spirited Elma away was under lock and key, with that key in Demas Meed’s pocket.

There was one last point Aaron wanted to make sure to settle. “Did your brother inform you that the muff was found prior to his arrest?”

“On the second day of January last, about two o’clock in the afternoon, I was sitting down to dinner and Levi came and told me that Mrs. Forrest had told him that the muff was found in a well near Bayard’s Lane.” Ezra Weeks glowered at the jury. “I told him that I supposed it must be the Manhattan Well.”

“How came you to mention the Manhattan Well?” Colden asked suspiciously.

“The reason why the Manhattan Well came first to my recollection,” said Ezra Weeks shortly, “was that I had furnished the wood materials for that well, and as my business often called me that way, I rode past the well almost every day.”

“Did your brother know where the well was?”

Ezra’s eyes shifted. “I believe he knew the situation to the well.”

“Had he not been there before the arrest?” pressed Colden.

“Not to my knowledge. I do not think he was there until his arrest. I understood him that he was never there before the officer took him there—but I am not certain.” Ezra Weeks finally stopped talking, having done more damage to his brother’s case than any number of the prosecution’s witnesses.

“Your Honor,” said Colden feverishly, “if you permit, the people would like to call a witness germane to this point.”

“The defense has witnesses yet to call,” intervened Brockholst, and called Ezra Weeks’s foreman.

The foreman testified that Levi had performed the business of the shop as usual the day after Elma’s disappearance. Peter Fenton and Joseph Hall, who had measured the distance from the Ring house to the Manhattan Well with chains, went on the stand to say they had found it seventy-nine chains long, or just under a mile. Frederick Rhinelander opined that he couldn’t have driven the road to the well in the dark on such a night. The cashier of the Bank of New York, for whom the Weeks brothers had built a house the previous year, averred that Levi was a very industrious, prudent, civil, and obliging young man.

Aaron could see each successive witness, each drip of the wax from the candles, wearing on Colden’s nerves; he was in a state of nervous excitement, wild to call his witness, barely attending to the testimony of the men on the stand.

What was it that Colden thought he had?

Meanwhile, Hamilton was markedly silent. Partly, Aaron suspected, because this was the sort of dull routine that had no charm for his volatile colleague—but largely, he guessed, because as their roll of witnesses drew to a close, so did the moment when Hamilton would have to stand and improvise, delivering a speech that could only be a pale echo of Aaron’s opening statement.

Aaron looked forward to that moment immensely.

“If it please Your Honor,” said Colden hoarsely, after three more witnesses had attested to Levi’s mild temper, “if the defense has done, the people would like to call a new witness.”

The witness was a young man, a carter. He took his oath and said, “I saw a young man at the well the Sunday week before the girl was missing with a pole in his hand—”

“Do you know Levi Weeks?” Brockholst interrupted. “Should you know the person you speak of if you saw him?”

“I don’t know as I should.”

Colden made a vain attempt to reclaim the situation. “Take the candle and look around and see if you can pick him out.”

That might have worked for Hamilton with Croucher, but Colden didn’t have the same flair.

“Objection,” countered Brockholst immediately. “One might assume the fact that the prisoner at the bar is standing in the dock does rather prejudice the inquiry.”

There were a few snickers from such of the jury as were sufficiently alert to snicker; several of the jury appeared to have entered a state of somnolence during the long string of witnesses to Levi’s good character, which was precisely what Aaron had intended. Hamilton might wish to excite the crowd; Aaron was content with exoneration by ennui. They would acquit Levi simply to be done with him.

Colden cleared his throat and tried again. “Will you undertake to swear that is the man you saw at the well?”

The man glanced nervously at Brockholst. “I cannot swear to him.”

Colden said quickly, “Well, sir, tell what you saw.”