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“I thought it was such luck when I found that there were three pretty girls at the Ring house,” Levi said bitterly. “Not for dishonor. Just for . . .” He waved his hands helplessly.

“I know. I was young once.” Alexander could remember being a young lieutenant colonel in General Washington’s household, overwhelmed with his choice of beautiful women at the Morristown assemblies. “A bit of flirtation adds spice to the supper table.”

Levi nodded. “There were the three of them, all so different. Peggy was a game girl and she had tongue enough for two sets of teeth, but there was nothing in it. Hope, now—” His lips tightened over whatever he had meant to say. “And then there was Elma. We went to Mr. Baker’s museum once, Elma, Hope, and I. Elma had a way of walking, as if she owned the cobbles beneath her feet.”

Looking at him, Alexander thought it was a good thing that defendants weren’t allowed to speak in their own cause. Anyone seeing the expression on his face would have no doubt that the young man had been hopelessly smitten with Elma Sands.

“Somehow, we got to talking about the building, and the style of it, with those arches and the cupola sticking up out of the middle of the roof. I’d thoughts on it—and Elma had too. I drew a sketch for her, of how I’d have built it, if it were mine to make.” Levi’s throat worked. “My brother—he’s all for my being part of the family trade; he’s worked hard to train me in it—but as a builder, not an architect. He treats my designs as one step away from writing poetry, a dilettante’s game. But Elma, she would look at my designs with me. She’d suggest improvements too.”

“She had an interest in architecture?” Alexander knew he sounded skeptical, but it seemed unlikely the girl from the countryside had been studying Vitruvius. On the other hand, he was a boy from an island in the middle of the Caribbean Sea.

“She liked fine things. No, that sounds wrong. What I meant was, she had an eye for line and form. They set her to making hats, and she was good at it, or so they tell me,” he added, with masculine indifference to haberdashery. “If she’d been a man, she might have been an artist. She’d taught herself, she told me. Her family didn’t hold with such things. They didn’t hold with a lot of things—including Elma.”

“Because she was a bastard.”

Levi nodded. “Mrs. Ring never let her forget it. She’d make comments about Elma dressing too gay, and how she ought to be grateful for their kindness. She was always at her to come to meeting, but Elma insisted she wouldn’t profane their presence by forced attendance without a true conversion.”

Alexander was beginning to get a sense of this Elma, a forceful young lady with a somewhat dangerous sense of humor. A talented, restless girl, constrained by her birth, unable, as a man might—as he had—to break out of her circumstances.

“When did you first know of Elma and Ring?”

Levi grimaced. “When the others went away during the fever. . . . It was hard not to notice what was going on. Isaac Hatfield had taken the room below mine, but he was away more than not, and while he was gone—they used his room. I don’t know. Maybe Ring didn’t want to take her in his wife’s bed. Maybe the bed was better. It was right below me, and the floors aren’t thick.”

“Did you say anything to Ring—or to Elma?”

“I didn’t know what to say! It was ruin for her, anyone could see that. Mrs. Ring disliked her enough already; she made no secret of it, for all she thought she did. I’ve three sisters of my own,” he added abruptly. “Mercy, Sally, and Kate. I thought, what would I do if it were one of them? So I found Elma in the kitchen when Ring was out of the house and told her I’d heard them.”

“What did she say?”

“She asked if I meant to tell of them. I told her no, of course not, but had she thought of what she was doing.” Levi bit his lip. “She said it was no matter, Caty—that’s what she called her cousin—Caty was gone to the country and liked it there better anyway, and their marriage was only a marriage in the eyes of the meeting, and if he were to leave the meeting, he’d be free to marry again.”

Alexander knew little enough of Quaker marriage vows, but he didn’t think that sounded particularly likely, and said so.

Levi made a helpless gesture. “I’m not sure what he promised her and what—what she imagined. Men will say things when they—you know.”

“I know,” said Alexander grimly.

“Sometimes she’d talk of their going away, to Charleston, where her father was. Ring said they didn’t appreciate him in New York, so Elma had this idea they’d go elsewhere, start over somewhere where no one knew them.”

“It must have been a shock to her when Mrs. Ring came home.”

“It was like seeing a ghost, all the life knocked out of her. I got her to agree to visit friends in the country. I took her down to the docks myself, to make sure she wouldn’t change her mind. I thought that would be the end of it—maybe that she’d even decide to stay on in the country. I didn’t know what to do other than getting her away as quickly as I could.”

“Why you?”

“She didn’t have anyone else,” said Levi simply.

“When Elma came back, what happened then? Did she and Mr. Ring resume their intimacies?”

“No. I don’t know what he’d said to her before Mrs. Ring came back, but whatever it was—it wasn’t kind. If she saw him coming, she’d leave the room.” Levi frowned. “I don’t think he even knew about the baby.”

There were times when Alexander had trouble following Levi’s line of thought. “According to the autopsy, there was no baby.”

“Not by then there wasn’t. Mrs. Ring—I think Mrs. Ring gave her something. Or maybe she would have lost the baby anyway.” Levi rubbed his hands along his arms, as though he’d felt a chill. “I was afraid to leave her alone. I didn’t trust Mrs. Ring with her. It sounds mad, doesn’t it? But I was afraid of what Mrs. Ring might do.”

Alexander could feel the hairs prickling on his arms beneath his layers of linen and wool. A baby—now, that was a motive for murder. For Elias Ring—or for Catherine. “Did she know it was her husband’s child?”

“I don’t know,” said Levi helplessly. “I’ve never seen so much blood. I wanted to send for the doctor—I begged Mrs. Ring to send for the doctor—but she wouldn’t let me. I think she would have been just as happy for Elma to die along with her child.”