Page 32 of The Girl from Greenwich Street

A careful investigation left no doubt in [Hamilton’s] mind of the innocence of the accused. . . . The evidence was circumstantial, with the exception of the witness who Hamilton felt convinced was the criminal. The prolonged trial had extended far into the night . . . Hamilton advanced, placing a candle on each side of [Croucher’s] face and fixed on him a piercing eye.

—History of the Republic of the United States of America, by John Church Hamilton

New York City

April 1, 1800

The candles carved strange hollows beneath Croucher’s cheekbones.

“Mark every muscle of his face, every motion of his eye,”

declared Hamilton, in thrilling tones. “I conjure you to look through that man’s countenance to his conscience. Was this the man you saw in your store?”

“Yes, it was,”

said the bemused shopkeeper.

He ought to have remembered, thought Aaron resignedly, that it was always a mistake to underestimate Alexander Hamilton.

Aaron refused to compare him to a phoenix from the flame—the man would enjoy that far too much—but it was undeniable that Hamilton had a remarkable capacity for emerging scarred but undaunted from conflagrations that ought to have reduced him to ash. The Maria Reynolds scandal should have knocked Hamilton out of politics once and for all—but here he was, a thorn in Aaron’s flesh and the only real threat to the Republicans in the coming election. The purloined speech ought to have rendered him speechless for the duration of the trial, but here he was, waving candles about and creating a grand spectacle out of a simple identification.

Never mind the medical evidence, never mind the painstaking detail about the sleigh, all anyone would remember would be Hamilton and his branch of candles. Like a conjuror, Hamilton had a talent for directing the eye to what he wanted them to see. It was all bombast, but it was the sort of bombast that led successful cavalry charges and turned mad schemes into triumphs.

It made Aaron very nervous.

He preferred situations he could control. And that was the thing about Hamilton. One could maneuver him—to a point. But the very impulsiveness that made him vulnerable also made him dangerously unpredictable. Every now and again, his shots hit their mark.

Every eye in the courtroom was transfixed on Hamilton and his branch of candles, shining on the face of a man who ought to have been a minor witness and had now become Hamilton’s prize villain.

“What did this man say to you?”

asked Hamilton, still in those ringing tones.

The shopkeeper coughed. “He said, ‘Good morning, gentlemen, Levi Weeks is taken up by the high sheriff and there is fresh evidence in from Hackensack.’ He then went away and as he went out, he said, ‘My name is Croucher,’ and this was all the business he had with me.”

Hamilton called his next witness, a voluble Scotsman with hair as red as Hamilton’s, a set of well-developed jowls, and grievances which he didn’t wait to air.

“I have been acquainted with this Mr. Croucher for some time but I never liked his looks,”

said Mr. McDougall frankly, rolling his r’s with abandon. “On the second of January, the day that the body was found, he was extremely busy among the crowd to spread improper insinuations and prejudices against the prisoner, who was then taken, and among other things told a story about his losing a pocketbook.”

Hamilton feigned shock. “Did he claim that Mr. Weeks had robbed him of his pocketbook?”

“Not to claim, but to imply. I thought his conduct unfair and told him so plainly,”

said Mr. McDougall robustly. “Oh, but says he, there’s the story of the pocketbook, and stopped there.”

“Thank you, Mr. McDougall—”

began Hamilton, but Mr. McDougall wasn’t done.

“He used to bring articles of wearing apparel, such as shawls, et cetera, to dispose of, but I noticed he always came just at dinnertime,”

said Mr. McDougall darkly. “I told my wife that I did not like the man and desired that she would tell him that in future if he wanted anything of me, I would call on him. But did he heed me? No!”

“Tell us what he said to you, Mr. McDougall,”

said Hamilton, just managing to get his question in while the Scotsman paused for breath.

“Last Monday, while I was busy in my garden, he came again! Now, says he, the thing has all come out, the thing is settled, there is point-blank proof come from the Jerseys of a new fact.”

Mr. McDougall stuck his chin out pugnaciously. “I told him I thought it was wrong and highly improper that he should persecute Weeks in such a manner when he had a difference with him, that for my own part, I wanted some further evidence before I should condemn the man—and my wife didn’t want any more shawls!”

“Objection,”

remonstrated Mr. Colden. “Is Mr. Croucher on trial or is Mr. Weeks?”

“The assistant attorney general will surely admit that such testimony is entirely germane to the matter of public opinion being roused against the prisoner at the bar,”

Aaron said silkily. Ezra Weeks looked like a kettle about to boil; it was past time to go back to the job they were here to do, proving Levi couldn’t have committed the crime. “However, that point having been amply proved, the defense now calls John McComb to the stand.”

After the tittle-tattle of shopkeepers, John McComb, the rising architect, was a dignified presence on the stand.

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.”

“The Sunday before the young woman was missing,”

recited the man, “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 foot eight inches, and six foot.”

Colden’s haggard face blazed with triumph. “How was this man dressed?”

“He had on a blue coatee, red jacket, blue breeches, and white stockings. I noticed the red jacket particularly.”

Brockholst looked down his impressive Roman nose. “How do we know that Levi Weeks owns such garments? Mr. Weeks is certainly wearing no such garment now. The man was unable to identify the prisoner’s face. Do we have evidence as to the contents of his wardrobe?”

Justice Lansing leaned forward. “Perhaps Mr. Ring might be recalled to speak to this point.”

“I’ve never seen him wear a red jacket,”

Elias Ring said flatly. All the fight seemed to have gone out of him. Elias Ring was a broken man. He didn’t even have the will to lie.

“Never?”

Colden asked desperately. “Stretch your memory.”

“Never.”

Sitting on her bench in the front row, Catherine Ring’s lips were buttoned tight, as if she were trying to keep herself from crying out.

“Perhaps the witness was mistaken—or he might have kept the jacket at his brother’s—”

Colden’s face sagged. “If the court please, we give up this point.”

Justice Lansing looked pointedly at the clock. The hands stood at a quarter to one in the morning. “If the prosecution has no further witnesses . . .”

“Your Honors, I beg the court to reconsider your ruling on the admission of the deceased’s statements,”

Colden pleaded. “It is not that I question the judgment of this court, but only that the complexion of the case has changed: the defense has made it a point that the deceased was melancholy—and deranged! Surely, the words of the deceased, as well as how she appeared to others, should be given in evidence in such circumstances? Without that, how are we to arrive at the truth?”

Aaron stepped forward, but Justice Lansing forestalled him.

“We are to arrive at the truth with the testimony of the seventy-five living witnesses you have already seen fit to call,”

said Justice Lansing drily. “You may spare us your eloquence, Colonel Burr. The court sees no reason to reconsider the point.”

“In that case . . .”

Colden turned, casting his eyes desperately around the room, at the assembled spectators and witnesses. “The people call Ann Ashmore to the stand!”

Hamilton’s face lit up like a Roman candle.

Aaron regarded the assistant attorney general with disbelief. If the man had any sense, he would have abandoned the whole question of Croucher, left him as he was, nothing more than a scandalmonger. Like the red coat, it was a point he ought to drop. But Colden—Colden was swaying as he stood, his cravat untied, drunk with fatigue, in that state of exhaustion where it was very hard to think straight.

Not that Aaron had terribly much respect for his powers when fully rested.

Ann Ashmore nodded at Aaron as she made her way to the stand, a composed and credible witness. “On the twenty-second of December, being my little boy’s birthday, I invited some of my friends to come and sup with me, and among the rest, Mr. Croucher. This was between twelve and one o’clock. Accordingly, between four and five in the evening he came, and remained there until four or five minutes after eleven.”

“Could he have been absent twenty minutes during that time?”

“No, he was not,”

said Ann Ashmore calmly.

Feverishly, Colden called the party guests, all four of them, but none could attest positively that the party had been before, rather than after, Christmas, only that it had been on a Sunday, and to celebrate the birthday of Ann Ashmore’s child.

Everyone in the courtroom was left with the impression that not only might the party have happened a week later, but even if it had occurred that Sunday, Croucher might have been traipsing through Lispenard’s Meadow, murdering maidens, and they’d still swear he was there. Some quantities of brandy, it seemed, had been consumed. In a celebratory way, of course.

Colden’s face had gone gray. He had made a mistake, and he knew it, but, in classic fashion, instead of doing what he ought to have done, and directing attention back to Levi, he redoubled his error and recalled Richard Croucher to the stand.

“How many times were you at Ring’s on Sunday evening of the twenty-second of December?”

Colden was so hoarse, his voice came out as a croak.

“Three times, and the latest about three o’clock.”

“Did you ever publish the handbills about apparitions, murder, et cetera?”

“No, I never did, nor do I know who did. I was at Mrs. Wellham’s and I saw one there which I asked leave to bring to Ring’s, but I was not permitted and that is all I know of them or ever saw of them.”

Hamilton seized his moment. “Mr. Croucher! Did you pass by the Manhattan Well that night?”

“No! I only might have said I wished I had that I might have saved the girl’s life. . . . I was never near the well!”

Colden held on to the table with both hands, as if it were the only thing holding him upright. “No further questions,” he said.

The hands of the clock stood at a quarter past two in the morning.

“Gentlemen of the jury.”

Aaron positioned himself in the center of the courtroom, letting them see him in contrast to Colden, calm, collected, unfazed. “I would call to your attention Hale’s guidance on presumptive evidence—which is all the assistant attorney general has to offer you in this case. In some cases, it is true, presumptive evidences go far to prove a person guilty, though there be no express proof, but it must be warily pressed—for it is better that five guilty persons should escape unpunished than one innocent person should die.”

Aaron lifted his candle and gestured with it toward Levi, putting a special emphasis on the word innocent.

“Your Honor.”

Colden swayed, bumping into one of the tables as he attempted to approach the bench. “Your Honor, I move that we adjourn until tomorrow.”

“The testimony is done,”

said Justice Lansing. “Only the summations remain.”

Colden made a sound somewhere between a laugh and a sob. “I beg of you—I have not slept since the night before the trial began. I have been awake for forty-four hours and I am sinking beneath my fatigue. I beg of you, sir, let us adjourn until tomorrow.”

“I won’t sleep another night on that floor!”

shouted one of the jurymen. “He gets to go home to his own bed! What about us!”

“Your Honor,”

intervened Aaron. “These poor men have been separated from their homes and families for one night already. They have given generously of their time and attention. Must we ask of them a third day merely because the assistant attorney general failed to sleep?”

Besides, if they adjourned, it would give Hamilton time to pen a proper closing statement.

“Please—the prisoner’s counsel have yet to give their closing address—it might be hours. And then I have first to make my address to the jury. It won’t be until morning.”

Sagging like a broken toy, Colden whispered, “I have not the strength to proceed further tonight.”

Hamilton strode forward. Unlike their opposing counsel, Hamilton showed no signs of fatigue. The candles stripped the years away, burnishing his hair, hiding the gray strands that had begun to appear among the red. It brought Aaron back twenty years.

Even then Hamilton had been an annoyance, General Washington’s pet, always assuming his opinion mattered more than anyone else’s and that any glory to be garnered should go solely to him.

“Your Honor,”

said Hamilton, turning all the force of his charm toward the bench, “the defense requires no labored elucidation. The testimony speaks for itself. In deference to the lateness of the hour—and the fatigue of the assistant attorney general—the defense cedes our closing statement.”

It was a brilliant bit of bravado. No one would ever guess Hamilton’s generosity arose solely because he had no speech to give.

“The defense rests?”

asked Lansing.

Hamilton looked straight at Burr. His lips turned up in a smug smile. “The defense rests.”