City of Liars and Thieves (14 page)

I shook my head. “She would never speak that way.”

“It happened while you were in Cornwall. Others heard her as well.” Levi's voice grew adamant. “Mr. Ring was there. Right, Elias? Do you remember what happened while Caty was in Cornwall?”

Elias was slowly shaking his head, though his eyes remained locked on Levi.

“Where on earth would Elma get—” I started to say
laudanum
but stopped short. “The vial thy doctor forced on us!”

“Once, she even took out the vial.” Levi paused to watch me, and I flashed to the evening I walked in on them and saw the menacing little glass gleaming in the lamplight. “She said if the situation were dire enough, she would drink it full.”

“That's ridiculous,” I said again. “It would kill her.”

“I sat with her late into the night until she was calm.”

Our small parlor was smokier and more confining than ever. I sank into a rocking chair and my eyes settled on Patience's blanket. If Elma was carrying Levi's child, it was a dire situation indeed. Had she told Levi about her condition, or was it a burden she was shouldering alone? One she could not bear? If Levi knew of Elma's pregnancy, would he protect her—or his own reputation?

“Levi…” I wanted to appear bold and menacing, but tears were streaming down my cheeks. Elias remained silent. Sadness overwhelmed me as I realized he believed Levi's story. Charles's quiet cries grew into shrieks.

“Levi,” I said, “from the bottom of my heart, please tell me what's become of Elma.”

There was a flicker of sorrow in Levi's dark-blue eyes. Then they hardened. “Mrs. Ring,” he said, “it's my firm belief that Elma is now in eternity.”

Elias notified the police. We organized a search party.

On Christmas Day, the men assembled in front of our house: Some were concerned citizens wearing dark overcoats and boots; some sported their old military garb. Hats and scarves buried their faces, but nothing could obscure their prying eyes. Elma's plight was soon known throughout the city. The story spread rapidly about the raven-haired beauty who vanished into the night.

Reluctantly, I wrote my aunt a carefully worded letter. I struggled over the same phrases that unsettled my mind, vague expressions like
last seen
and
gone missing.
As tactfully as possible, I asked if Elma had returned home, praying that a misunderst
anding, or desire to hide her pregnancy, had driven her away.

Each dreadful day, strangers appeared on our doorstep bearing found and bedraggled items: a stray scarf, a lost shoe, a button. One man brought dogs. He rapped on our door, asking for an article of Elma's clothing so the hounds could pick up her scent. I deliberated a long time, not wanting to part with a single item of hers, and finally handed over a pillowcase, one embroidered with irises. A lone strand of Elma's dark hair clung to a purple flower. I watched through the window as the keeper held the delicately stitched case to the dogs' wet noses. The pack looked wild. They barked incessantly and climbed atop one another, then started off in five different directions, as hopelessly lost as I felt.

More distressing than the strangers were friends and neighbors who arrived, expressing concern and offering help. It was impossible to look them in the eye. I was the one who had invited Elma to this mean city. I had promised to care for her, and I had failed. Church elders spoke of faith. But sitting in silence, waiting for a divine light within, seemed futile. When Lorena Forrest took my hand in hers, encouraging me to look within myself, all I could feel was sorrow.

Two more days passed, but for me time was suspended. The snow melted; more fell. The crowd on our doorstep ebbed and flowed, and I watched them with the same detached interest with which I observed the dismal weather. The house needed dusting, linens needed washing, men and children needed feeding. I went through the motions, cleaning, cooking, mending, and life assumed a false sense of normalcy. But the pounding behind my eyes and tremor in my hands never quite left me. I felt neglectful, almost cruel, going about my daily chores when Elma's fate was unknown.

Each evening at the stroke of eight, I heard footsteps on the stairs and playful whispers, and I stood perfectly still and listened, as if this time I might be able to make out what was said. The front door opened, the couple crossed the threshold, and the door shut. Too late, I held a candle and looked out onto the pitch-black street.

The cold spell broke and more men arrived, holding fishnets, weighed down with sandbags to drag rivers and poles to probe under docks. People volunteered their boats and their time, and when the river ice softened into slush, they strung nets between boats and slowly, painstakingly, rowed parallel lines along the shore, stopping to poke at the putrid muck. Elias accompanied them, carrying a map and meticulously marking sections of the waterfront where Elma was not found with a large, sickening
X.

I watched with the wind in my face and my heart in my throat, but it was too awful, standing on the edge of the choppy river, squinting into the salty spray, as they pulled up garbage, dead dogs, even the bloated body of a frozen horse. After a few days, I stopped going, but Elias went dutifully. He had never spoken a kind word about Elma, nor did he say one now, but he did not complain. He returned home for dinner, his cheeks chapped, his lips dry and cracked, and his mood dismal. I was thankful for his help, though late at night I tossed and turned, wondering why it had come at such a high price.

My aunt's reply arrived all too soon. She must have received my letter and penned a response the same morning, trudging a mile through winter winds to the post in town. I tore it open, knowing it offered my last true hope. But the letter contained nothing but more questions, none of which I could answer. In a shaky, childlike scrawl, Aunt Mary wrote that Elma was not in Cornwall, nor had she heard from her in over a month. Then I recognized, at the bottom of the page, Mother's practiced hand. I read on, trembling.

“Catherine,” she wrote, her script sloping with weighty accuracy. “Where is thy cousin? Mary cannot eat a morsel, thy father will hardly speak, and I am extremely alarmed. Write immediately with more information.” Her concern felt like criticism. Resentful, I threw the letter into the fireplace and watched the paper crinkle and ignite.

Early on the morning of the twenty-ninth, when Elma had been missing for seven days, the sheriff knocked on our door. His visit confirmed my worst fears. Elma's disappearance was now a criminal matter. My first impulse was to ignore him, but the rapping grew more forceful, until it merged with the pounding in my head. A crowd collected outside, Charles clung to my skirt, Levi paced upstairs, and I allowed Sheriff Morris into our home. Though I had not called for him, Elias joined us in the parlor. Days earlier, he had welcomed Ezra Weeks into our home; now, arms crossed, he eyed the sheriff suspiciously.

The questions were abrupt and painful.

“Describe Miss Sands,” Sheriff Morris said.

“Her health was frail,” Elias offered reluctantly.

The sheriff gazed doubtfully around the parlor. “Would you have a miniature? Some likeness I could show?”

Elias shook his head.

“What was her usual routine?”

“She helped my wife run the boardingho
use,” Elias said. “Made breakfast, cleaned, sewed. And did laundry.”

I breathed in sharply, certain he was intentionally reminding me of the morning he found Elma's day-old clothing on the floor.

“Was she a Christian woman?” the sheriff continued, seeming to have picked up on the tension.

“Yes, she was,” I said.

“She did not frequently go to meeting, nor to any other church,” Elias added.

Though it was almost unbearable not to defend Elma, I stood behind Elias and did not contradict him. His cursory knowledge seemed to satisfy, and I had no desire to divulge more. Elma was not here, and I did not think it was fair to let a stranger scrutinize her behavior.

“And her parents?” the sheriff asked.

I collapsed into a chair, dismayed that he had so quickly cut to the heart of the matter.

Elias sighed. “Her mother's not well. She lives in Cornwall, up the Hudson.”

“And her father?”

“He was a preacher, but he died some time ago,” I said, before Elias could respond. “In England,” I added, so there would be little hope of checking the facts.

Elias and Sheriff Morris exchanged nods before the sheriff moved on to the next wrenching question. “Would you have reason to suspect that Miss Sands was unhappy?”

Elias rubbed his temples. “She was…temper
amental.”

I shot upright. “That's not true,” I said. “Her health was delicate, but her mood…” My thoughts roamed to the missing laudanum and Levi's sorry accusations. “My cousin would
never
take her own life.” Suicide was too desperate. Elma had options. She could have come to me. Why hadn't she come to me?

“Her mood was the same as ever,” I concluded quickly, though I saw Elma's wet eyes as she called herself useless.

The sheriff nodded, but he looked past me toward Elias. “Would you have reason to suspect that she might have run off? Either by herself or with a lover?” he asked. I could hear Levi pacing incessantly in his room, making the parlor ceiling groan.

I knew Elias would be furious if I made unfounded accusations, but I had to convey my instinct. “My cousin did not know many men,” I said. “She arrived in the city six months ago and has only associated with our tenants.”

The creaking upstairs stopped.

“Several men live in the house,” I said. “Isaac Hatfield travels often. Richard Croucher—” I shuddered at the thought of Croucher's distasteful manner, but he was not the focus of my indictment or fear. “And then,” I said, hearing my voice grow louder, “there's Levi Weeks.” Elias's eyes were boring holes through me, but I continued. “He and Elma were close friends. They were acquainted before she moved to the city.”

Nodding, Sheriff Morris looked up the stairs. I was sure he would call for Levi, but he turned back to me instead. “Mrs. Ring, were you away from home last summer?”

I should have found his knowledge surrounding the intricacies of our home reassuring, but I was only more disturbed.

Word spread about the sheriff's visit, and the crowd outside that day was dozens deep, extending from our front door to the Watkinses' house and beyond. A man claimed to have seen Elma on the Battery promenade. She had been spotted on a ferry to Brooklyn, a coach to Connecticut, and a ship bound for Europe. She was alone. She was with a foreign gentleman. She was laughing. She was being abused. They all gathered on the pretense of providing help, but the truth was that they were hungry for slander. My family had been twisted inside out, and vultures were picking through our remains.

“What was Elma wearing?” a woman hollered when I went outside to fetch water.

Her familiarity shocked me. With her long gray hair and eager expression, she had a frantic look. I was sure I had never laid eyes on her before, yet she addressed me as if we were friends.

“Have you no mercy?” Croucher chided, appearing suddenly at my shoulder. Despite my misgivings about his character, he had participated in each search party with solemn dedication and canvassed the entire neighborhood, questioning shopkeepers and cartmen, children, even Negroes. “Leave the poor woman to grieve in peace,” he shouted as I fled inside.

The same crowd—indeed, the same crazed woman—appeared the next day and the day after, and I became reconciled to the questions the way a wounded soldier learns to walk with a limp. I came to expect, even relish, the opportunity to discuss Elma. As many times as I related the details, I did not tire of defending her—or myself.

“It was a stormy night,” I said. “I did not want her to be cold, so I told her to dress for the weather. I sent my son next door to borrow a fur muff to keep her hands warm.”

“Was she alone?” someone asked, quieter than the rest of the mob. Unlike the other restless onlookers, who seemed desperate for every gruesome detail, this man had a curious but professional air. He was young, with kind brown eyes, a large nose, shaggy hair, and an eager expression. He reminded me of a faithful dog, a loyal companion I badly needed.

“Elma left the house with another tenant, Levi Weeks,” I said.

The fellow cocked his head. “Ezra Weeks's brother?”

“That's right.” I nodded.

“Was it a special occasion?” he asked.

I turned back toward the house and saw Elias standing behind the drapes, solemnly shaking his head. But I had to speak my piece, for Elma's sake and for mine. I lowered my voice and stepped toward the man with the encouraging gaze.