Page 24 of The Girl from Greenwich Street

Here let us remark the collected composure of [the prisoner’s] manner, and the open expression of his countenance. His appearance interested us greatly in his favor. We waited with anxiety for the testimony—convinced that if his was not the expression of conscious innocence, he was indeed a man incapable of feeling.

—A Brief Narrative of the Trial for the Bloody and Mysterious Murder of the Unfortunate Young Woman in the Famous Manhattan Well, taken in shorthand by a gentleman of the bar

New York City

March 31, 1800

“For our next witness, the people call Miss Hope Sands.”

Hope rose from the bench, and walked with as much dignity as she could muster to the witness box, where Mr. Colden waited for her. She felt transformed by rage: against Levi, Levi’s lawyers, and most of all, with Elias, who didn’t have the common decency to let his wife testify in peace.

It was just like Elias, Hope thought furiously as she took her place at the stand. He was always throwing his weight around when it was least convenient and never there when Caty actually needed him. He kept bringing up fixing that door as though he’d built a palace in a day, as if Caty hadn’t been begging him for a year to do something about it.

Levi had offered to fix it, but Caty had demurred, saying she wasn’t going to burden one of her boarders; Elias would see to it. Eventually.

Now that squeaky door was a key piece of the evidence in condemning the man standing there in the dock. Levi Weeks.

Will you watch when they hang me?

Hope forced herself to look straight at Levi, really look at him, this man she had thought she loved, who she had never really known. He was a beast, she told herself, a beast masquerading as a man.

“Miss Sands,”

said Mr. Colden. Hope could see him nervously fingering the fobs dangling from his watch chain. “When were you first made aware of the intimacy between Elma and the prisoner at the bar?”

“The first time I knew them to be together in private was about two weeks after I and Caty came back to town. I was in her bedroom with Elma when Levi came in, on which Elma gave me a hint. I immediately went out, he followed me to the door, shut it after me, and locked it.”

Brockholst Livingston rose. “Did you ever tell Mrs. Ring of this?”

“Yes, I told her the same evening,”

Hope said promptly.

“How did the prisoner at the bar seem to you after Elma went missing?”

asked Mr. Colden.

Hope looked at the lawyer in surprise; this wasn’t what they’d practiced. She’d thought he’d meant to ask her about Elma’s plans to marry. Then she saw, over his shoulder, the trio of lawyers for the defense, General Hamilton with his vivid coat and lively expression, Colonel Burr in sober black, Brockholst Livingston looming over them both. All waiting to pounce if she gave them an excuse.

They would adore another chance to rip Mr. Colden to shreds over hearsay.

Hope found herself determined to thwart them. She’d give them no excuse to tear more strips off poor Mr. Colden, who was only doing his best, alone.

“On Monday, the day after she was missing, about ten or eleven o’clock in the forenoon, I met Levi upstairs alone. I attacked him about her—he denied knowing anything of her, though from his looks I was confident he did. He soon began to use all possible means to convince me of his innocence.”

“All possible means?”

one of the jury whispered to another, with a coarse laugh.

Hope lifted her chin. She couldn’t help the color in her cheeks, but she refused to let them unsettle her. “The Sabbath evening after she was missing, he came to me, saying, ‘Hope, if you can say anything in my favor, do it, for you could do me more good than any friend I have in the world to clear me; therefore, if you can say anything, do it before the body is found—’”

All the betrayal and revulsion she felt surged up through her throat, choking her. How could he? How could he refer to Elma as “the body,”

as though she were nothing more than a collection of bones?

Hope straightened, looking at the men in the jury box, the spectators in the galleries, Levi’s lawyers. Let them know the sort of man they were defending. “He said, ‘Do it before the body is found, as after it will do no good. But if the body is found a good way off that will clear me, as I was not a sufficient time from my brother’s to go far.’”

For the first time in the whole miserable proceeding, Hope saw Levi flinch, and was glad of it.

“He then pressed me very hard to go to the alderman’s and see him. I refused, upon which he gave me a paper he had drawn, wishing me to sign it.”

Loathing dripped from her words like poison. “The purport of the paper was that he paid no more particular attention to Elma than to any other female in the house—that nothing had passed between them like courtship or looking like marriage.”

Colonel Burr stepped forward, full of feigned sympathy. “Was not Levi as particular to you as he was to Elma?”

Hope looked directly at Levi. “No. He was not.”

“Was not Levi very much liked?”

There was no point in lying about it. “He was, very much. All spoke well of him.”

Colonel Burr exchanged a quick word with his colleagues. “Did Levi ever walk out with Elma—or with you?”

They knew this already. Caty had told them. “He went once to the museum with me and Elma. He went once to church with me of an evening; Elma was to have gone, but she was sick.”

“Did you not stop at some house on the way to church?”

“Yes, we did.”

Hope’s voice was firm and clear. That night, she had thought . . . Well, it didn’t matter what she had thought. “We stopped at Ezra Weeks’s, the brother of Levi.”

The three lawyers briefly huddled together. When they emerged, Colonel Burr said only, “No further questions.”

What did they mean, no further questions? Hope was ready to answer whatever they asked. She wanted to look into Levi’s eyes and have him know how much she knew he’d betrayed them. She wanted the jury to know how much he’d betrayed them, this man who looked so appealing but was so rotten at the core.

“Miss Sands, you may step down,”

said Mr. Colden.

They had kept Caty up there for the better part of an hour or more. Reluctantly, Hope stepped down. As she made her way back to the bench, she could feel Levi’s eyes on her. Hope turned and locked eyes with him.

Would she watch him hang? Gladly.

“Mr. Elias Ring,”

Mr. Colden called.

Hope took the seat Elias had vacated next to Caty.

“You did very well,”

Caty whispered. “I wish I had your strength.”

“You have your own,”

Hope said, surprised, but Elias had made it to the stand and there was no time to say more.

He mumbled his way through his affirmation, making clear he felt this whole process beneath his dignity.

Hope had never much cared for Elias, had never understood why Caty had chosen to marry him when she might have had so many others, but recently her vague distaste had bloomed into full-blown dislike.

It was, she realized, that she’d generally been able to ignore him. Caty ran the household and Elias slouched in and out as he pleased. Hope dealt with him as little as possible. But Elma’s murder had forced them all together, had brought these divisions into the open. To fail to repair a door was one thing; to humiliate Caty in court was another.

Mr. Colden began with the same question he’d asked Hope. “Mr. Ring, when did you first become aware of an intimacy between Elma and the prisoner at the bar?”

“Levi Weeks was a lodger in my house,”

said Elias brusquely. “In the ninth month—”

Brockholst Livingston broke in. “What is that month called?”

“I don’t know it by any other name,”

said Elias contemptuously. “Thee can tell.”

Mr. Colden was jingling his watch fobs again, all three of them. “Mr. Ring, you were saying. In the ninth month?”

“When my wife was gone into the country”—Elias looked reproachfully at Caty—“Levi and Elma were constantly together in private. I was alone and very lonesome and was induced to believe, from their conduct, that they were shortly to be married. Elma’s bed was in the back room, on the second floor,”

he added, directly contradicting Caty.

Hope took Caty’s hand, freezing even in her gloves, and squeezed.

“The front room had a bed in it, in which Isaac Hatfield slept about three weeks,”

Elias continued. He nodded to Hatfield, jammed in among the witnesses yet to be called. “Hatfield during this time was occasionally out of town. I slept in the front room below, and one night when Hatfield was out of town, I heard a talking and noise in his room. In the morning I went up into the room and found the bed tumbled and Elma’s clothes which she wore in the afternoon lying on the bed.”

“Did you see her in the room?”

inquired Colonel Burr pleasantly.

“No, I saw nothing, but I have no doubt she was there.”

One of the jurymen called out, “Did Elma, do you suppose, get up from her bed and go away naked? You say she left her clothes.”

Snickers and guffaws broke out throughout the room at the image of Elma prancing through the house naked.

Hope turned in her seat, glaring at them. How dare they? Her cousin had died and they were making mock of her.

“She left part of her clothes,”

said Elias shortly. “She had two suits and this was part of the best, which she had on the day before, being First Day.”

Hope stared down at her own skirt, gray and plain. Elma’s Sunday dress had been her pride: a calico gown over a white dimity petticoat. She had labored over it, trying to make it look like the ones the ladies in the fashion papers wore, over Caty’s protests that the calico was too gay, the cut too risqué, the overall impression too bold.

Elma had loved that dress.

Elma had died in that dress.

Mr. Colden made a valiant effort to reclaim the floor. “Did you see anything improper or immodest in the behavior of Elma, until she was acquainted with the prisoner?”

“No. Never.”

“Thank you, Mr. Ring.”

There was no disguising the relief with which Mr. Colden ended his questions; Hope wished Caty could be done with Elias as easily. “If the defense has any questions?”

“We do.”

General Hamilton bounced up on the balls of his feet, but Colonel Burr cut neatly ahead of him.

“Mr. Ring, did you ever see any intimacies between the prisoner and Margaret Clark?”

Elias looked from one man to the next, as if suspecting a trick. “I have seen, formerly, some familiarities between them,”

Elias said cautiously.

Hope could have told them that meant nothing at all. Peggy was familiar with everyone. It was what made her such good company, and so entirely unreliable. Not like Caty, who kept everything locked inside, but was true to her core.

Colonel Burr continued, conversationally, “Did you ever hear any noise when Hatfield slept in the room over you?”

“No,”

said Elias, relaxing a little.

“Did you ever know that the prisoner and Elma were in bed together?”

There was a pause. “No.”

General Hamilton pushed past Colonel Burr. “What materials is the partition made of between Watkins’s house and yours?”

Elias blinked. “It is a plank partition, lathed and plastered.”

“Is Mr. Watkins a clever man and a good neighbor?”

“Yes, he is.”

Colonel Burr gently eased past General Hamilton. “Do you remember how Elma appeared on the twenty-second of December?”

Elias’s chin stuck out pugnaciously. “She was as cheerful and gay as I ever saw her.”

“Pray tell what you remember particularly about that day.”

Elias expanded under Colonel Burr’s regard. “On the twenty-second of December, I had been to meeting in the afternoon.”

Once everyone had sufficiently admired his piety, Elias went on, “I returned and found Elma dressing and my wife helping her in dressing. About eight o’clock, Elma went out. I saw her go out of the room, and I heard the front door open and shut about three or four minutes after. My wife took the candle and was gone about two minutes.”

“Did you hear her go upstairs?”

inquired Colonel Burr as if it were a matter of only idle interest.

“I am not certain that I heard anybody go upstairs,”

said Elias dismissively. “When my wife returned, I asked, ‘Who went out?’ She said Elma and Levi. I answered that it was wrong, Elma would get sick. She replied”—Elias gave Caty another resentful look—“he will be more careful of her than I would be.”

Hope could have shaken him.

“Did Mr. Weeks return that night?”

Elias made clear what he thought of this “Mr. Weeks”

business. “About ten o’clock Levi came in. He asked if Hope had got home.”

It was foolish, but that still gave Hope a strange feeling in her stomach, every time. She felt exposed, raw, even though she knew Levi had only been using her as a cloak for his real actions, and not genuinely concerned about her whereabouts.

“He asked, ‘Is Elma gone to bed?’ My wife answered, ‘No, she is gone out.’ He observed it was strange she should go out so late and alone.”

A shaft of afternoon sunlight lit General Hamilton’s hair, making him glow like flame. “Have you not threatened the prisoner at some time since this affair began?”

Elias gaped at him. His mouth opened and closed, frog-like. “I never threatened him—that I know of,”

he sputtered.

He’d threatened to shoot Levi. Hope had heard him. So, apparently, had many other people. Maybe, thought Hope angrily, if he’d spent less time drinking at the tavern and more time at home helping Caty, he wouldn’t have been so loose with his words. Or so foolish as to try to lie about them!

Elias twisted like an animal in a trap. “I had a conversation with him! In which he asked me if I had not said certain things about him, respecting Elma being missing.”

“A conversation?”

repeated General Hamilton, his voice ripe with disbelief.

“It was he threatened me!”

Elias protested shrilly. “He said if I told such things of him he would tell of me and Croucher!”