Page 29 of The Girl from Greenwich Street

Question by the Assistant Attorney General: Suppose, Doctor, a person had been strangled by hand, would it not have left such an appearance upon the body?

Answer: I think it would.

—From the testimony of Dr. Skinner at the trial of Levi Weeks

New York City

April 1, 1800

“Dr. Skinner, are you not a surgeon in this city, and did not you see the body of Elma Sands after it was taken out of the well and examine it? Pray, sir, inform the court and jury.”

“I follow a branch of surgery, but I do not pretend to be a professed surgeon. I,”

Dr. Skinner declared proudly, “am a dentist.”

Hope sat next to Caty, just as she had yesterday. Levi stood in the dock, just as he had yesterday. But everything else had changed. Yesterday, they had been here with one purpose, united in their hatred of Levi. At least, Hope had thought they were united. She had never imagined that Caty—her Caty!—could keep such secrets from her.

Hope snuck a glance at Levi in the dock and found him looking at her.

He’d left with Elma—or, rather, Caty said he had left with Elma. Once, Hope would have fought anyone who had cast doubts on her sister’s word. But Caty had lied to her. She could understand why Caty would have kept the truth of Elma’s miscarriage from her, as much as it made her writhe with annoyance. There were times Caty seemed to think Hope was still Rachel’s age and needed to be shielded accordingly.

But Elma—and Elias!

It was impossible, it was sickening. Hope hadn’t slept last night. She’d walked her room, wondering, remembering. The way Elias expanded like a toad explaining his inventions to Elma when all the rest of them had long since stopped listening, since Elias’s inventions never came to anything anyway. The way Levi had hustled Elma off to the country. To get her away from Elias.

He’d offered to marry Elma, he’d said, but not in December.

Hope felt like the room was swaying beneath her like the ferry they took up the Hudson back to Cornwall when the roads were too bad for a carriage, tipping just when she thought she had her footing.

There had been something between Levi and Elma. They all knew it. Hope had seen it with her own eyes. But what if she’d misunderstood what it was?

But there had been Levi’s apprentice yesterday, speaking of Levi going downstairs in his shirt and staying away until dawn.

Only for conversation.

It was like poking at a sore tooth, but Hope couldn’t seem to stop herself doing it. What if she had been wrong? What if this whole trial was wrong? They’d taken up Levi as soon as Elma’s body was found; there had never been any question of anyone else hurting Elma, only of suicide, and Hope knew, with a certainty, that Elma would never have done away with herself.

Just as she’d known for a certainty that Caty had no secrets.

Hope wanted to drag Levi out of that box and demand that he tell her the truth. But she’d tried that, hadn’t she? When Elma went missing.

Everyone was lying, everyone was hiding something.

If she couldn’t trust Caty, who could she trust?

The only person who could tell them the truth was Elma, and Elma wasn’t here.

“I saw the corpse of the deceased twice. I had but a superficial view of it, however, as it lay in the coffin, exposed to the view of thousands. I examined such parts as were come-at-able—such as her head, neck, and breast.”

The dentist was still on the stand, speaking about Elma as though she were nothing but a collection of limbs. So many contusions to be noted, a bruise here, a scrape there, just limp flesh, the abandoned casing of the soul.

“I discovered several bruises and scratches, particularly a bruise upon the forehead and chin and upon the left breast or near it. The spots on the neck were reddish, black spots which might have passed unnoticed by a common observer.”

More doctors were called, all fighting over the evidence of Elma’s body. Her neck was broken—or it wasn’t. The spots around her neck were caused by strangulation—or immersion in water. The bruise upon her breast was the mark of violence—or of tumbling into the well.

No one seemed to know. Only Elma.

Hope wanted to shake her and demand, What happened to you? Why did you go out that night? Who did you meet?

Was it Levi, waiting in a sleigh? Or someone else?

“Was the compression that you spoke of around her neck such as might have been made by a hand?”

“My impression then was and now is that it was.”

Hope’s brother-in-law sat on the other side of Caty, his legs spread so that he took up more than his fair share of the bench, cramming Caty into Hope and Hope nearly off the edge. His hands rested on his thighs.

If he’d closed those hands around Elma’s neck, he could have easily choked the life out of her, especially if she was tilting her head up at him, laughing, expecting a kiss and not a lethal blow.

Foolish creature, Elias had called Elma, that night she had threatened to drink the laudanum. A creature, not a person. An inconvenience to be got out of the way.

But Elias had been home that night. Or so Caty said.

One of the men who had found Elma’s body took the stand. “On the second of January last, I together with Mr. Page had some business to do in breaking a horse and we went up to Andrew Blanck’s and we dined there. While we were dining, two persons, Mr. Watkins and Mr. Elias Ring, came there to get hook and poles to sound the Manhattan Well for the body of a young woman who was supposed to be drowned.”

Would Caty lie for Elias? Yes, Hope decided. Yes, if it meant protecting the children. Even if the weight of her conscience crushed her for it after.

“We got the poles and nails and went all together to the well, which we uncovered. I took the pole and hooked the nail in her clothes and drew her carefully to the top of the water. As soon as Mr. Ring saw her calico gown, he said it was she. He knew the gown.”

Elias had claimed Elma had killed herself in a love fit. He’d had them sound the waters around Rhinelander’s battery, in the opposite direction from the Manhattan Well. Hope wasn’t sure if that was proof of innocence or guilt. She wasn’t sure of anything.

Why had Elias brought Joseph Watkins with him to find Elma’s body? Was it so there would be someone else there?

“Her hat was off, her gown torn open just above the waist, her shawl was off, and her handkerchief and shoes were gone. Her hair hung over her head.”

The man’s voice was rough with emotion. He had to stop and clear his throat before he went on.

“She had a white dimity petticoat on. Her stockings were torn at the toe. Her right foot was bare and somewhat scratched. The scratches were on the upper part of the foot as if she had been dragged on the ground.”

Hope knew those stockings. She could picture Elma sitting there, on her bed in her room in the third floor, stretching out her leg in her woolen stocking, pointing her toes, asking how Hope thought she would look in clocked silk. After Sunday, she’d said, she’d have silks and brocades. She’d have a grand house—a house made to Levi’s designs, perhaps, she’d added archly. Nothing like this ramshackle boardinghouse with a rope bed and pegs in the wall for her two suits of clothes.

Hope had deliberately avoided Elma’s confidences. Now she wished she’d asked more, had pressed her about her plans.

Could Elma have believed that Elias would provide such things? He certainly hadn’t for Caty. It was true, he bragged of what their lives would be when his waterwheel was bought by the city, but his waterwheel hadn’t been bought by the city. They all knew his schemes to be so much bluster.

Unless Elma hadn’t.

Someone to take care of her, she’d said. She must have seen that it was Caty who did everything for Elias and not the other way around. Unless she believed that for her, it would be different. Caty and Elma never had appreciated each other; it had always been Hope who had had to play intermediary.

But no, it was all ridiculous. Elma couldn’t have meant to run off with Elias.

A week ago, a day ago, she’d have said Elma would never have sacrificed her virtue to Elias, and yet, apparently, she had. In the front room.

“How did her countenance appear?”

asked Mr. Colden.

“It looked like a person who had been walking against the wind.”

The man on the stand grimaced. “Her appearance was horrid enough—her hat and cap off, her hair hanging all over her head, her comb was yet hanging in her hair, tied with a white ribbon, her shawl was off, her gown was torn open with great violence, and her shoes were off.”

If there was one thing Hope knew of her cousin, it was that Elma would have fought back. She wouldn’t have gone gently. Unless her neck was broken before she could fight. It was impossible not to imagine the scene. The field, lit only by moonlight. Elma, struggling, trying to claw her attacker’s hands from her neck, her shoes coming off as he dragged her across the ground toward the well.

“I went to the police and then with the officer to find the prisoner.”

Everyone turned to look at Levi. “I told him I was very sorry for his situation. I felt affected—I expressed it to him—he turned about and said, ‘Is it the Manhattan Well she was found in?’”

One of the jurymen spoke up. “Was there any mention made of the Manhattan Well in the presence of the prisoner before he asked the question?”

“I did not hear any. I don’t believe there was.”

Hope looked at Levi. They were all looking at Levi, the whole courtroom, everyone sick with the image of Elma, limp and broken like a discarded doll, her hair about her face.

He had come back at eight. There was no reason for him to come back at eight and then leave again so soon, unless he had come to fetch Elma.

Colonel Burr rose. “How long before the deceased was found was the muff retrieved?”

“Blanck told me his boy found it just around Christmas,”

said the man on the stand.

“Objection!”

protested Mr. Colden. “My learned colleagues have argued hotly against the admission of hearsay evidence.”

“That’s not hearsay, that’s common knowledge,”

said Colonel Burr drily.

Was it? Hope couldn’t remember when she’d heard of the muff. It was New Year’s Day that someone paying a New Year’s call on Mrs. Blanck had recognized Beth’s muff, and the word had begun to spread that the muff Elma was carrying when she disappeared had been found.

But beyond that, Hope didn’t know.

“Your Honor,”

said Mr. Colden, “I would like to call the owner of the muff to the stand. She can testify as to when it became commonly known that the muff she had entrusted to Elma Sands was discovered in the Manhattan Well.”

“Then do so, Mr. Colden,”

said Justice Lansing.

“I had a slight acquaintance with Elma Sands.”

Beth Osborn had always thought she was better than they were and never bothered to hide it. “On the twenty-second of December, I lent her my muff. She came to borrow it herself, and I observed that she was very neatly dressed and she seemed to be very lively and very happy.”

Mr. Colden pulled at his cravat, which was tied crookedly. “When was the muff brought home to you?”

“It was brought home the day that she was found, and it appeared as if it had been wet.”

From the way Beth spoke, thought Hope, anyone would think the primary tragedy was that her muff had been doused, not that a woman had been killed.

Elma would find that hilarious. Elma had done a brilliant impression of Beth Osborn, sniffing and pursing her lips.

“Did you understand the muff was found in the well?”

asked Mr. Livingston.

“I did,”

said Beth, looking as though she smelled something unpleasant. Hope missed Elma so fiercely it was an ache in her chest.

“Did you also understand that it had been found considerably before it was brought home to you?”

“I only knew of it the morning it was brought home to me.”

Beth had known of it only that morning—but had Levi heard?

“It’s all tricks,”

muttered Caty. Her face was strained with lack of sleep. Her fingers were curled into claws in her lap. “They’re only trying to confuse us. He knew it was in the Manhattan Well because he put her there.”

A day ago, Hope would have agreed, emphatically. But now she wasn’t quite so sure. She twisted on the bench, looking at Levi, at Caty, at Elias.

If Levi hadn’t killed Elma, then who had?