Page 31 of The Girl from Greenwich Street

Colonel Burr then addressed himself in behalf of the prisoner to the court and jury, in one of the most masterly speeches both with respect to composition and oratory which we have ever heard.

—An Impartial Account of the Trial of Mr. Levi Weeks for the Supposed Murder of Miss Julianna Elmore Sands, by James Hardie A.M.

New York City

April 1, 1800

“How did he take it?”

Burr and Brockholst drew around Alexander as he returned to the courtroom.

“He had no notion.”

Cadwallader Colden had fallen out of his chair in surprise. He’d been half-asleep, the poor boy, but that had woken him up with a vengeance. Alexander would never forget the look of staring horror on his face.

Brockholst nodded in satisfaction. “Now we have him all hollow. Once we show that the girl was no innocent seduced, but spreading her favors generously, his case melts into air.”

“I think I know who did it,”

said Alexander abruptly. He’d been turning and turning it over in his mind since his conversation with Eliza, and the more he thought, the more sure he was. “I think Croucher killed her.”

The announcement did not garner quite the reaction he had hoped. “Yesterday you thought Ring killed her,”

said Brockholst, with exaggerated patience. “Who will it be tomorrow? The man who cleans the streetlights?”

“Richard Croucher, more than any other, has been busy in pointing the finger of blame at Levi Weeks,”

said Alexander. “He was seen embracing Elma Sands, just as he was on the verge of a marriage that would make his fortune. Why was he so keen to implicate Levi? To save himself!”

Brockholst lowered his voice, glancing over his shoulder. “We’ve no time for this. We have Colden ready to break. The only compelling argument he has is that Weeks knew where the body was found before being told. Once we deal with that, we’ve won.”

Alexander dug in his heels. “Have we really won if the murderer isn’t brought to justice? If we get Croucher on the stand—”

“By all means,”

said Burr smoothly. “Should he confess—or should Elias Ring confess—or should the man who cleans the streetlights confess—we shall all rejoice. But in the meantime, we must proceed as planned. I believe Justice Lansing is about to call us back to order.”

Brockholst glanced sideways at Burr. “You have the opening statement?”

“Oh yes,”

said Burr gently. “Yes, I have.”

The justice’s gavel pounded the table. The jurymen hastily swallowed the last of their bread and cheese. Court was back in session.

Burr rose, bowing to the judges at the bench, looking from the spectators to the jurors to the prisoner at the bar.

“Gentlemen of the jury, the patience with which you have listened to this lengthy and tedious detail of testimony is honorable to your characters.”

It was a wonder to Alexander how a man who preferred to surround himself with fine things, could, when he wanted, have such a common touch. Burr’s manner with the jury was rueful, solicitous, man-to-man, as if he were one with those laborers and they were one with him.

“It evinces your solicitude to discharge the awful duties which are imposed upon you and it affords a happy presage that your minds are not infected by that blind and indiscriminating prejudice that has already marked the prisoner for its victim.”

Several men were scribbling away, recording their impressions, taking down the words of Burr’s speech. They would appear in dozens of handbills and pamphlets across the city by the day after tomorrow.

They might be listening to Burr now, but Alexander’s oration was the one they would remember. Alexander put his hand to his breast pocket and felt the comforting bulk of paper: his closing speech.

Burr’s posture was relaxed, his tone frank. “You have relieved me from my greatest anxiety, for I know the unexampled industry that has been exerted to destroy the reputation of the accused and to immolate him at the shrine of persecution without the solemnity of a fair and candid trial.”

Alexander could feel himself freeze, disbelieving, wondering if he’d misheard. He could have sworn those were his words Burr had just voiced.

“I know that hatred, revenge, and cruelty, all the vindictive and ferocious passions have assembled in terrible array. The thousand tongues of rumor have been steadily employed in the fabrication and dissemination of falsehoods,”

Burr went on, speaking without a paper, speaking as though the ideas were his, as though they had only just rolled from his mind to his tongue. “We have witnessed the extraordinary means which have been adopted to enflame the public passions and to direct the fury of popular resentment against the prisoner.”

Alexander felt as though he had returned to his home to find Burr sitting at his table, wearing his clothes, embracing his wife, wearing them as of right, as if Alexander never was, never had been, as if there had never been anyone but Burr, stripping the inner recesses of Alexander’s mind and wearing them like the pelts of a conquered enemy.

“Why has the body been exposed for days in the public streets in a manner most indecent and shocking? Such dreadful scenes speak powerfully to the passions: they petrify the mind with horror—congeal the blood within our veins—and excite the human bosom with irresistible but undefinable emotions.”

Petrified, yes, Alexander was petrified. Burr had planned his strike brilliantly; there wasn’t a thing Alexander could do. If he complained, he would only weaken their case and make himself look small. Alexander’s speech weighed useless in his pocket.

Fool that he was, he’d given it to Burr. He’d had his own clerk make Burr a copy.

He didn’t miss the way Burr glanced at him, such a quick look that no one else would have noticed it, but Alexander did, and it burned.

Blandly, Burr went on, “Notwithstanding there may be testimony of an intimacy between the prisoner and the deceased, we shall show you that there was nothing like real courtship, for it will be seen that she manifested equal partiality for other persons as for Mr. Weeks. We shall show you that if suspicions may attach anywhere, there are those on whom they may be fastened with more appearance of truth than on the prisoner at the bar. Certainly you are not in this place to condemn others, yet it will relieve your minds of a burden.”

That wasn’t part of Alexander’s speech. That was Burr. It was dizzying and disorienting, this interweaving of Alexander’s words with Burr’s argument.

“There will be two modes of giving a solution. First, that the deceased sometimes appeared melancholy, that she was a dependent upon this family, and that a gloomy sense of her situation might have led her to destroy herself. As to the incident of the sleigh, we shall account for Mr. Weeks’s whole time during that evening, except for about fifteen minutes, which was employed in walking from one house to another.”

That was all Burr, pure Burr. Alexander didn’t understand how others couldn’t hear the difference, couldn’t know two different hands had written the words Burr spoke.

Burr paused, glancing again at Alexander before looking back to the jury, as Alexander’s words oozed off his lips. “The story, you will see, is broken, disconnected, and utterly impossible. In cases depending upon a chain of circumstances, all the fabric must hang together or the whole will tumble down.”

Alexander made the same mistake every time. With the Manhattan Company—a boon for the whole city, Burr had sworn, and Alexander had done all the work for him, when, in the end, it had been a boon only for Burr.

And now—this!

While Alexander stood there, sick and furious, Burr and Brockholst between them began calling the witnesses, carrying on without him, quizzing Ezra Weeks’s apprentice about the sleigh and the key to the gate and the bells on the harness, coolly taking apart Colden’s story about the sleigh, as if Alexander weren’t here, as if it were just the two of them for the defense, following their own strategy they’d agreed upon without him.

Brockholst had known, of course. They’d planned this between them when they’d left Alexander’s office the other day. He’d been a fool not to suspect something of the kind.

But, more fool he, he had thought they were all working together. For Levi. For justice.

Just as he’d thought the Manhattan Company was about bringing clean water for the city.

“It was about twelve o’clock, as near as I can recollect, on the second day of January, the day when she was found, that Levi Weeks came to our house to buy some tobacco.”

While Alexander was fuming, Ezra Weeks’s apprentice had already been questioned and stepped down, replaced by Lorena Forrest, whose husband ran the store next to the Rings. “I asked him if there was any news of Elma. He answered no. I told him I expected Ring’s family had, for they seemed much agitated.”

“Did you tell him of the muff?”

inquired Burr. This was Burr’s courtroom now, Burr’s case, Burr’s triumph.

“Levi went away and in about half an hour he came in again while we sat at table, about one o’clock—I had heard before this about the muff’s being found; Mrs. Ring had informed me—and I told him that Mrs. Ring had mentioned to me that the muff and handkerchief had been found in a drain near Bayard’s Lane.”

“Was the Manhattan Well mentioned?”

called the same juryman who had asked about that before.

“There was nothing said about the Manhattan Well.”

Alexander knew exactly what Burr was doing. He would prove that Levi had known where the muff had been found and use that to wrangle an acquittal and call it a win, never minding that a murderer sat in the courtroom, free to murder, and murder, and murder again.

They should be calling Joseph Watkins, they should be calling Ann Ashmore, they should be pointing the finger at the true guilty party, not quibbling over who had mentioned the Manhattan Well first.

Alexander could feel a strange energy surging through him. Burr and Brockholst had betrayed him; he owed them nothing more. But he did owe Levi Weeks—and Elma Sands.

Alexander pushed forward, claiming the attention of the witness. “Mrs. Forrest! Did you not hear Mr. Croucher say that he came near the well the evening when she was missing?”

Mrs. Forrest looked surprised at the change of subject. “Yes, he told me he did and said that he generally came that way.”

Before Burr or Brockholst could intervene, Alexander called, “The defense will now call Joseph Watkins to the stand.”

Alexander could see the look they exchanged. They might not like it, but there was nothing they could do about it, any more than he could do anything about Burr stealing his closing statement.

“Mr. Watkins,”

demanded Alexander, “do you remember anything in the conduct of Mr. Ring that led you to suspicions of improper conduct between him and Elma?”

The question was a lightning bolt through the courtroom. There was a whispering and rustling in the galleries.

Mr. Watkins nodded slowly. “About the middle of September, Mrs. Ring being in the country, I imagined one night I heard a shaking of a bed and considerable noise there, in the second story, where Elma’s bed stood. I heard a man’s voice and a woman’s. I am very positive the voice was not Levi’s.”

“Can you hear through the partition?”

called one of the jury.

“Pretty distinctly.”

Watkins looked apologetically toward the benches where the Rings sat. “The noise of the bed continued some time and it must have been very loud to have awakened me.”

Elias Ring’s chin jutted out beneath the brim of his hat, his arms folded across his chest. Mrs. Ring sat bolt straight and unblinking, a figure carved from salt.

Watkins rubbed his chin. “I heard a man’s voice pretty loud and lively, and joking. I said to my wife, it is Ring’s voice, and I told my wife, that girl will be ruined next.”

Colden found his voice. “How could you distinguish between the voice of Mr. Ring and Mr. Weeks?”

Watkins wasn’t shaken. “Ring’s is a high-sounding voice, that of Weeks a low, soft voice.”

“Did you ever tell anybody that you thought the persons you overheard were Mr. Ring and Elma?”

“No,”

Watkins admitted, looking again toward the Rings.

Colden tried again. “Did you ever speak of this noise which you and your wife heard in the night to anybody else?”

Slowly, Mr. Watkins said, “I don’t know but I once said to Croucher that I believed he had a hand in it.”

That was just the opening Alexander needed. “Did you ever converse with Croucher about where he was the evening Elma was missing?”

“I asked him once where he was that evening, but do not remember the answer he made.”

“Did you ever see Croucher busy in spreading suspicions about the prisoner?”

“The day she was laid out in the street, I saw him very busy in attempting to make people believe the prisoner was guilty.”

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.

It was time to shed some light on the matter.

Alexander grabbed up the branch of candles from the defense table and strode across the courtroom, brandishing the candles in front of Croucher’s startled face.

“Mr. Dustan,”

he demanded, “is this the man?”