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Ring hastily followed his lead. “I did, and he appeared white as ashes and trembled all over like a leaf.”

Instead of going back to the question of what Ring and Croucher had to fear from Levi, Burr asked, “What was the character of the prisoner previous to this, and how was he liked in the family?”

Alexander frowned at him. They were losing the advantage he’d won. They needed to push forward against Ring, not fall back on Levi’s character.

“His character was very good, for anything I know,” said Ring sullenly. “His behavior was such that he was generally esteemed.”

Alexander pressed forward. “Were not you the friend and protector of Elma?”

Ring’s eyes darted to the bench where his wife sat. “Yes.”

“Did you ever speak to her about her improper intimacy with Levi?”

“I never did,” Ring said reluctantly.

Because it had never existed. It had been Ring with Elma in Hatfield’s room, not Levi. Alexander opened his mouth, prepared to say just that, but there was Burr again, cutting in with irrelevancies.

“On the night of the twenty-second, did you hear any whispering in the entry or anybody come downstairs?”

Ring looked from Burr to Alexander, clearly suspecting a trick. “I did not, for I set in the corner and was not attentive to these things.”

“Thank you, Mr. Ring,” said Burr. “The defense has no further questions.”

“What do you mean, no further questions?” Alexander hissed, as Mr. Ring stepped down, amid a flurry of whispers and speculation. “He was unsettled—we could have got him to admit to his intimacy with Elma! Or more!”

“Would you place all your wares in the shopwindow?”

“Yes, if they’re there to be sold!” They might not get such a good chance at Ring again. Opportunity was seldom a lengthy visitor, as Alexander knew all too well.

“Then you cheapen yourself and them.” Burr abandoned the mercantile metaphor, saying briefly, “We must keep to the point, not be distracted by irrelevancies.”

The point. Did he mean the shaky argument of suicide? It was absurd. Why have ammunition if one wasn’t to use it?

“You, sir,” murmured Alexander, “are too subtle for me.”

Burr bowed, as if Alexander had just paid him a compliment.

Alexander hadn’t missed the way Burr had used the hearsay argument to frame himself as the arbiter of law for the new nation, setting the pattern for the future. Burr talking about not letting expedience bend to justice struck Alexander as ironic in the extreme. This was the same man who had claimed the law was anything boldly asserted and plausibly maintained.

“Did you not observe a very particular kind of attention in the prisoner, to Elma?” While Alexander was distracted, Colden had called Margaret Clark to the stand.

“I can’t say I did. I can’t say there was anything looked like courting her.” Peggy Clark wasn’t a Quaker. Her dress was a brightly patterned calico. Her hat sported a broad bow, beneath which bobbed carefully contrived curls. “After I returned, he and she appeared more intimate together, which I suppose was from their having been together while I was in the country.”

Poor Colden looked utterly nonplussed. Alexander wondered why he hadn’t confirmed what his witness meant to say before he called her to the stand.

“Did you ever know of their being locked up together?” Colden asked hopefully.

“I knew once of their being locked up together in the bedroom—afterwards Levi told me they were in the bedroom together,” Margaret Clark added cheerfully, robbing the statement of any value for Colden. “That was the Monday evening before she was missing. Another time, I saw him standing in her room when she was sick, but I thought nothing of it because he was always attentive to anyone who was sick.”

Colden was looking rather sick himself. “Pray, how long did you live in the house, do you suppose?”

“I might have been absent about half the time,” she admitted.

Burr asked smoothly, “Did not Levi pay as much attention to Hope Sands as he did to Elma?”

Margaret Clark didn’t pause for a moment. “Yes, I think he did, and more too.”

There was a rustling as people turned to look at Hope Sands, who was sitting very straight on her bench.