Page 17 of The Girl from Greenwich Street

The Sunday before the young woman was missing, I saw a young man sounding the Manhattan Well with a pole. I went up to him and asked him what he was about. He said he made the carpenter’s work, and that he wanted to know the depth of the water. He measured it in different places and found it five foot five inches, five eight inches, and six foot.

—From the testimony of Matthew Mustee at the trial of Levi Weeks

New York City

March 21, 1800

Cadwallader Colden couldn’t believe his good fortune.

“You’re certain it was the Sunday before the young woman went missing?”

he asked the man in front of him.

The man heaved a barrel down off the back of his wagon. It bore the legend “FINEST brANDY.”

“Couldn’t have been any other day, since it’s Sundays I have free of my toil.”

“And you saw a young man at the well.”

Cadwallader dodged out of the way of another barrel, which, no longer braced by its fellow, showed a disturbing inclination to seek its own exit.

The man fielded the barrel with the expertise of long experience, setting it safely on the ground outside the tavern. “With a pole.”

“And he was sounding the depths, you say?”

The man paused, leaning on one of the barrels. “He said he’d done the carpenter’s work, and wanted to know the depth of the water. He made it between five feet five inches and six foot. Deep enough, he said.”

Deep enough. The words had an uncanny ring to them.

“And this man—do you think you might recognize him if you saw him again?”

“I’d recognize his jacket, for sure. Red as a robin’s breast.”

Clothing could be changed. “But his face—his voice—do you think you could pick him out in a courtroom?”

“Depends how many is in the courtroom,”

quipped the carter, but when Cadwallader didn’t laugh, he thought about it and said, “Might do.”

“It would be a great service,”

said Cadwallader seriously.

More service than this man knew. It chilled Cadwallader to the marrow to think of Levi Weeks testing the depth of the well, prying off the board, luring Elma with promise of marriage.

A crime of passion one could understand, if not condone. Actions taken in the heat of blood and then regretted. But this . . . It was monstrous, foul. No wonder people claimed the ghost of Elma Sands haunted the well, crying for justice. If ever justice was owed, it was here.

Levi Weeks might seem all that was amiable. But this was a man who took the time to sound the depth of the well before he dragged his lover, pleading for mercy, across the frosty ground and flung her into the unforgiving waters.

It shocked even Cadwallader.

He’d always supposed that the driving force came from Ezra Weeks, the stronger-willed of the brothers. But what if it was the other way around? What if it was Levi himself who had decided to rid himself of his unwanted encumbrance, and his brother, after the fact, who closed ranks around him?

A man could smile and smile and be a villain.

“I take it the young man was of assistance?”

Cadwallader turned to the man beside him, whose presence he’d nearly forgotten. “Mr. Croucher, I cannot thank you enough. Your aid has been invaluable.”

The Rings’ lodger shrugged modestly. “I was in Mrs. Wellham’s grocery and heard him say he’d seen a man by the well. I’d thought it might be of use.”

“Of use indeed,”

said Cadwallader warmly, as they fell into step together down Greenwich Street, back toward the boardinghouse. “If you could discover for me who might have been in the sleigh with Levi Weeks that night, I’ll have all I need to send the murderer to the gallows.”

“Ah, if only I could. If only I’d passed by the well at the right time that night, I’d be able to tell you all—or better, have stopped it before there was anything to tell.”

Mr. Croucher sighed heavily. “It haunts me, Mr. Colden. If I’d known—if I’d been there—”

A sentiment that Cadwallader felt fully, that sense of always being one step behind, failing those one most wished to serve.

“All we can do now is bring her justice,”

Cadwallader said soberly, “and hope it serves as a warning to other men who might seek to rid themselves of unwanted lovers in such a way.”

“There was that Malone,”

mused Mr. Croucher, expertly navigating his way around a protruding pump. “I knew her, poor lady.”

“You knew Rose Malone?”

Cadwallader had never met her in life, only in death. They had found her stuffed into a cistern, curled up like a baby. The doctors might disagree about what killed Elma, but they’d been certain about Rose Malone: she had been strangled.

“I have customers throughout the city. She bought stockings from me for her wedding, poor lady. When I heard the news, I felt I’d had some part in it, sending her to her death silk-shod. It was the husband who did it, they said.”

“The papers say a great number of things.”

“Did he ever come to trial?”

“No.”

Cadwallader had been so sure her husband had done it, but William Malone had a dozen friends who could testify he’d been with them at a lodge meeting that night and not one of them would say otherwise.

Pastano—released. Rose Malone—her murder unavenged. Cadwallader’s failures haunted him. He’d failed Mary Ann De Castro and Rose Malone.

But not Elma Sands. He’d bring her killer to justice, whatever it took.

“Ah, well,”

said Mr. Croucher. “They say the mills of the gods grind exceeding slow.”

“But they grind all the same.”

The other man had stopped on the corner, and seemed inclined to turn rather than go on. “Do you not return to the Ring house?”

“No, I’m on my way to my bride’s. The Widow Stackhaver—soon to be a widow no longer.”

Mr. Croucher swelled with pride. “She has a house on Ann Street and we’re looking to buy the house next door as well, to make into a shop for my wares. We’re to be married next week.”

“My congratulations.”

It was nice that someone had joy to look forward to in the midst of the death and bleakness that had enveloped the Ring boardinghouse. “Has she any children?”

“An adopted daughter of sorts—but she’s an unruly wench.”

Croucher tapped his nose. “Came of bad blood. I’ve told my wife she’d best be rid of her or there’ll be trouble to come, but what can I say? The girl’s insinuated herself in her confidence.”

“Perhaps she’s just young and will mend.”

A thought nagged at Cadwallader. The defense, he knew, planned to level that same notion of bad blood against Elma. Now, there was a topic for a paper, if Tammany Hall were still the discussion society it had been: Were men or women born bearing the sins of the parents? How was character formed and was it inherited or made? But the courtroom was no place for such musings, only for solid certainties. “Elma Sands—did she strike you as being of an unruly disposition? Possessed of bad blood?”

“Oh, no. I wouldn’t say that. Elma was a sensible girl.”

Mr. Croucher’s lip curled. “But for her infatuation with Levi Weeks. When it came to him, she wouldn’t hear a word. She thought he was an Adonis.”

It was Mr. Croucher who had seen the two of them together, in flagrante. “Did you say anything to her about him? Try to warn her?”

“Of course. She didn’t thank me for my pains.”

Mr. Croucher shook his head. “I was courting my dear bride-to-be, and perhaps I didn’t try as hard as I might. But who would think this would be the end of it? These violent delights . . .”

“Have violent ends,”

Cadwallader finished for him, and watched as the other man strode off in the direction of Ann Street, away from the Ring boardinghouse.

The Ring house seemed a different place in the March sunlight, with the promise of spring in the air. A little shabby, perhaps, but not a sinister place of violent delights and violent ends. Just another of the rather ramshackle frame houses that had sprung up as the city had spread.

Elias Ring was at the front door, doing something to the hinges. He paused his work as Cadwallader stepped up.

“Mr. Colden. Did thee want me?”

Cadwallader resisted the urge to tell Elias to stop his work on the door. It was by the sticking of the door that Catherine Ring had known that Levi and Elma must have gone out together.

Why shouldn’t he fix his own door? In a week, the judges would sit for the quarter sessions; a grand jury would indict Levi Weeks; and his case would be brought forward to trial. It was right for the family to move on, to try to rise above the sorrow Levi Weeks had brought upon them, not save a squeaking door as a relic of tragedy past.

“I only came to tell you all that the quarter sessions sit next week and Levi Weeks will be taken up soon after. You’ll be called to testify, of course.”

“Thee knows I cannot swear.”

“Don’t worry; there are ways of dealing with such things. You’ll be affirmed rather than sworn. All you need to do is go in there and tell the truth.”

The Quaker’s broad hat cast a shadow across his face. “Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make thee free.”

“So we hope,”

said Cadwallader.

But the Quaker wasn’t done with the verse. He seemed to be speaking more to himself than Cadwallader. “Jesus answered them, ‘Verily, verily I say unto you, whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin and the servant abideth not in the house forever.’”

“Well, I hope this house will once again be a pleasant place to abide once the trial is done. Is Mrs. Ring in?”

“She’s in the kitchen.”

Elias jerked his head toward the back of his house.

Cadwallader went around to the small yard that was behind the house, trying to remember if there were any references in the scripture to kitchens. With his father-in-law a bishop, he felt he ought to know these things. Presumably, if there had been one, Elias Ring would have quoted it for him.

Toiling and spinning did seem to be represented here, and also the fruits of the field. Washing hung in lines, and someone had begun turning the ground for as large a kitchen garden as the small space would allow.

She was truly an excellent woman, Mrs. Ring. Cadwallader admired her industry tremendously. Country-bred, of course. That accounted for it.

Inside, he found as charming a scene as one could imagine. Hope Sands sat at the table with one of the Rings’ daughters, holding a hornbook in one hand and the girl on her lap as the girl struggled to sound out the letters. Mrs. Ring’s back was to them as she bent over a large kettle, which filled the air with a savory smell. Fresh loaves of bread sat covered with a cloth.

It might have been a painting, a Dutch domestic scene—Cadwallader was rather fond of Dutch domestic scenes—of the house in good order, both women neat in their brown dresses and white aprons and caps, the milk in its jug, not a dish out of place, so different from the way the house had been when Cadwallader had first called on them in January: the house overrun by curiosity seekers, Hope Sands’s anger, Mrs. Ring’s grief. This, he thought, must have been what it had been like in the house in Greenwich Street before Levi Weeks had shattered their peace.

He couldn’t bring Elma back to them, but perhaps he could give them this.

“Mr. Colden!”

Mrs. Ring dropped her spoon at the sight of him. “Is there—have thee news?”

Cadwallader leaped forward to get it back for her. “Calm yourself, Mrs. Ring. All is well. I’ve only come to tell you your ordeal will soon be over. The quarter sessions begin next week and Levi will be called to trial shortly after.”

Mrs. Ring clutched the spoon to her chest. “Over. Truly?”

Cadwallader felt an almost unbearable swell of sympathy for the bereaved family. Elma had disappeared on December 22. Their ordeal had stretched on for months now. “The defense will try to raise what misgivings they can, but I have no doubt justice will prevail. More evidence against Levi Weeks appears by the moment. A man came forward just today who says he saw Levi sounding the depth of the well the week before he eloped with Miss Sands.”

Hope Sands’s face went very white. “He sounded the well?”

“It is the purest example of villainy,”

Cadwallader said happily. Belatedly, he remembered Levi had lived with them for months, been part of their household. There were rumors that Hope Sands had been fond of him, or he of Hope. “But how were you to know? He appeared—he still appears—as amiable a young man as one could imagine. We will rip the veils from him and reveal him to the jury as the monster he is. The force of the evidence against him is such that nothing can stand against it.”

Hope set her niece from her lap and stood, her knuckles white against the unvarnished wood of the table. “There’s no doubt, then? There’s truly no doubt?”

“Of course there’s no doubt.”

Catherine Ring looked as though she hadn’t slept in weeks. Her auburn hair was lank beneath her cap and her cheekbones had a hollow look to them. “There’s never been any doubt.”

Cadwallader rushed to confirm her words. “Levi Weeks sounded the well. He promised your cousin marriage. His brother’s sleigh was seen leaving the lumber yard at eight o’clock, running without a light or bells. That same sleigh, without a light or bells, was seen heading in the direction of the well. And you, Mrs. Ring. You saw them leave together.”

“Yes.”

Mrs. Ring shoved a lock of hair back under her cap. “I didn’t exactly see them leave—but I heard their steps on the stairs.”

It was enough. “Why would Levi come back here at eight o’clock but to keep his assignation with Elma? There was no reason for him to come to your house to sit ten minutes and then go back to his brother’s house. He came to meet Elma and he spirited her away in his brother’s sleigh.”

“And then he returned here and pretended he knew not what became of her,”

Mrs. Ring said bitterly. “He left us all wondering and worrying. But for that muff I made her borrow—”

She covered her mouth with her hand, her whole body shaking.

Cadwallader couldn’t blame her. It was a sickening prospect, the girl’s body in the well, rotting, undiscovered, while her murderer feasted at her family’s board. Months, perhaps years of uncertainty as they wondered what became of her, not knowing if she’d run off, or if she’d killed herself in a love fit.

“But the muff was found,”

said Cadwallader bracingly, “and so was your cousin. We can bring Levi Weeks to justice. And we will. Mrs. Ring, I’ll call you to the stand first. Then you, Miss Sands.”

“Thee wants me to speak first?”

Mrs. Ring looked more alarmed than the occasion warranted, but Cadwallader supposed that for the non-lawyer, court was a fearsome thing.

“As the person who knew Elma best,”

said Cadwallader reassuringly. “And you, Mrs. Ring—you were the last person to see her alive.”