City of Liars and Thieves (16 page)

Elias was reading with Charles. At the sight of the muff, he closed the book and covered his eyes. “Is it the one she was carrying?” he asked, refusing to meet my gaze. Charles began to whimper.

Unable to find words, I nodded. I would have recognized the muff even if it had not had Elizabeth Watkins's initials printed on the lining.

“Where was it found?” Elias asked, his voice shaking.

The boy's father looked anxiously around the room. He was a farmer, in stained britches, and his boots left cakes of mud on the floor. Strangers jostled in the entranceway, anxious to hear the news.

“Give him room. Let him speak,” Joseph Watkins said.

The farmer set his hand on his son's shoulder. “My boy was playing by Lispenard's Meadows.” He shook his head. “I warned him not to go up there in this weather, but boys…”

“When?” I asked, unable to hide my mounting panic. Though the muff was in tatters, it was possible that Elma had only recently discarded it.

The farmer looked at Elias. He seemed unnerved by the urgency of my voice. “The boy brought it home the day before Christmas. I told him to get rid of the filthy thing, but he hid it in the barn. I can't say why. Maybe he sensed there was something to it. Then, this morning, we heard about the girl.”

“This morning?” I shouted, dimly aware that I was misdirecting my anger at him. “How can that be? It has been in all the newspapers!” Elma had been missing only two days when the muff was found, and it was now nine miserable days later.

The farmer shrugged, avoiding my gaze. “Don't read papers.”

I studied the man's scruffy beard and worn clothes. His fingernails were filthy. No doubt he could not read.

He shuffled, looking as if he regretted coming at all. “We live north of the city. Keep to ourselves.” The boy gazed expectantly at his father, who moved his hand to his son's head and ruffled his hair. I looked at Charles, seated at the table beside Elias, and was ashamed that I had accosted the poor man in front of his child.

“Did thou go to the meadow?” Elias asked.

“I did,” said the farmer. He seemed relieved to be addressing Elias rather than me.

“Was there anything unusual?” Joseph Watkins asked.

The farmer nodded. “The snow was fresh and I saw a sleigh track. There is no road there so I thought someone had lost their way in the storm.”

“Gather the search party!” Watkins called. He took the muff. The foul thing smelled like wet leaves and rank hides, yet I was loath to let it go.

I collected my bonnet and shawl. Elias scowled and Charles began to sob.

“This is no job for a woman,” Elias said.

“Joseph,” I said, tying the strings of my bonnet. “Will Elizabeth stay with the children?”

“Yes, yes, of course,” he said.

“Don't go,” Charles begged, throwing himself toward me. “Mama, don't leave me too.”

His cries pierced my heart, but I had no choice. If there was a trace left of Elma, I would unearth it. I would find her.

It was what I had been waiting for. It was what I had been dreading.

A dozen men assembled. Several brought sleighs and shovels. Too tired to argue, Elias helped me into Joseph Watkins's sleigh. I sat wedged between the men as the horse flew at a full gallop up Greenwich Street.

We crossed Canal Street, and the road narrowed into a farmer's lane. The path was ungraded. The runners whistled as we slid across patches of ice. More than once, the sleigh was thrown off-balance, forcing Elias to jump down and set it right. The winter sun was slung low on the horizon. My face was raw from wind and cold. My body was frozen with fear.

“This isn't right,” I said more than once. “Elma would never have come this way.”

Elias gazed at me with dull eyes and did not respond. Though the conditions were poor, the ride could not have taken more than ten minutes. We cut through fences, galloped up and down hills, and crossed over a small bridge. The ground grew low and swampy, and clumps of thick brown dirt splattered our clothing and flew into our eyes. In the spring, the trees and gently rolling hills made the meadow a popular picnic ground, and in wintertime, people often skated on the frozen marsh.

Now the fields were a patchwork of crusty snow and mud, deterring even the most devoted sportsman. Brush weighed down the twisted tree limbs with frost, and snowdrifts surrounded the fields. A pillar of smoke rose from the chimney of the nearest farmhouse. I took a deep breath and inhaled the sweet smell of fire as it mingled with the cold air. It was a scent I associated with Cornwall and home, but it no longer soothed me.

The party slowed as the tracks ended. The horses came to a halt, stomping and snorting. Steamy breath billowed from their nostrils. I knew logically that Elma might have come to some kind of harm. Still, I had held out hope. In my wildest dreams, I never imagined she would be found in such a godforsaken place.

Reluctantly, as if he shared my horror, Elias stood on shaky legs. I caught the tail of his overcoat.

“She's not here,” I said, trying to suppress a mounting sense of doom.

Elias pried my hands away and climbed down from the sleigh. Watkins and his crew jumped down and began to examine the ground.

“This way,” said the boy who had found the muff.

Half a dozen men followed him on a path that seemed to lead nowhere.

“No,” I called, but Elias was trudging away across the barren field. As I stood to follow, I caught a glimpse of a distant home. If not for the bare trees, I do not think I would have spotted it. The house was grand, two stories, with a wide second-floor balcony. It was painted white and sat in a clearing.

“What's that?” I asked a man who had remained behind to look after the horses.

“The mansion?”

“Yes.”

“Richmond Hill. It was General Washington's headquarters during the war.”

I knew the name. And I knew the current owner. “Doesn't Colonel Burr live there now?”

“He does.” The man glanced up to where I stood gawking in the sleigh and seemed to recall the purpose of our trip. “May I help you, ma'am?” He held my arm as I climbed down.

Alone, I forged through crusty snow and bramble. Twigs snagged my skirt and scratched my hands, as if trying to hold me back. Willowy weeds resembled skeletons. I walked about a hundred yards before joining the others in front of a knee-high mound. It was thicker than the other drifts and almost perfectly round.

“Here it is,” said the boy's father.

“What is it?” Elias asked.

“They call it the Manhattan Well. My boy was fishing around in there and spotted the muff.”

The men gathered round the abandoned well. Frozen boards lay across the top. A single plank was tossed to the side, leaving an opening so narrow that it was hard to believe even the muff had slipped through. The party grumbled and speculated. No one seemed eager to make the first move.

One man broke the silence. “My neighbor did some work up here. Water was supposed to run down to the city, but quicksand choked the pump.”

“It ain't old,” the boy's father said. “Manhattan Company dug it last fall.”

“Now Burr's more interested in getting elected,” someone added.

There was a chorus of assent. Still, no one moved.

I studied the frozen mound with resolve. This hole in the ground did not look like much, nor would it ever amount to anything. It was exactly as Elma had said: The Manhattan Company was a fraud. My anger slipped into dread as I focused on the hellish pit. I had little doubt that this was the scene of terrible violence. A place born of such cutting deception could only yield misery.

Elias stood apart from the others, hat in hand.

“Elias,” I whispered. “Ezra and Levi work with Burr. Their men dug this well.”

Elias did not respond. I wasn't even sure he heard me.

“Elias,” I said again, turning toward him.

His eyes were closed and his head was bent in prayer. “He visits the sins of the fathers upon the children.”

I drew away, wondering how, even now, Elias could hold Elma responsible for the weaknesses of her forebears. She didn't deserve this. No one did.

Elias approached the well. He knelt down on hands and knees and peered into the abyss, looked left and right, then shook his head. “Too dark,” he mumbled, grasping one of the boards with his bare hands. His knuckles grew red from the cold, then white from exertion. He applied more pressure and the plank broke free with a crack, exposing a circle of rough-hewn bricks below. Elias punched his fist into the well to break the ice. His hand was bloody when he pulled it back. Bright-red droplets seeped into the snow as he braced himself over the hole and leaned down for a closer look. “Can't see much!” he called out.

A man named James Lent—I knew him from Greenwich Street and as a friend of the Watkinses—lit a candle and knelt beside Elias. The thin flame flickered, then expired. Two others, wearing tall boots, advanced. More boards were removed, but the winter light was waning, the well deep and shadowy.

“We need to feel it out,” Watkins suggested. “Does anyone have a pole?”

“That's Lispenard's property,” the farmer said, pointing toward the house with the chimney smoke.

I remembered the man named Lispenard, who had challenged Burr at the water meeting and accosted Ezra Weeks at the pump. He had accused the Weeks brothers of digging useless holes. Now I stood helplessly in front of one, awaiting Elma's fate. Reaching deep in my pocket, my fingers grasped her lost ribbon. I had carried it with me as a talisman, never imagining it would lead me here.

The farmer's boy was sent to fetch Lispenard.

Ten frigid minutes followed, while the men made a show of studying tracks and footprints. Some bent over to examine the ground at various angles, squinting eyes and tilting heads. One paced back and forth to the wagons, counting strides. A man with overgrown whiskers and buckteeth tasted the snow.

My boots were wet, my toes frozen, but my thoughts were clear. If Ezra Weeks's men had laid the pipes for this well, there was no doubt Levi knew of its existence. It seemed proof of his guilt. I stared at the well and its impossibly small opening. A grave was more inviting.

The boy reappeared with the outspoken man I recognized as Lispenard. Each carried a long pole. A chubby woman waddled behind them.

“Mr. and Mrs. Lispenard?” Joseph Watkins asked. The couple nodded. “We're here to investigate the disappearance of a missing girl.”

“I told you,” Mrs. Lispenard said, wagging her finger at her husband. “I told you I heard something.”

“You heard about the missing girl?”

Lispenard spoke for his wife. “Arnetta and I heard about a girl that ran off with her lover.”

“Yes,” Watkins said, taking care to avoid my gaze. “Blanck's boy found her muff in the well.”

“I knew I heard shouting,” Arnetta Lispenard said.

My stomach dropped.

Watkins held up his hand. “Slow down and tell us what happened.”

“That was the night the chimney backed up.” Arnetta Lispenard turned to her husband. “Remember, Anthony? It was that snowy day, and when you came back from town, the house was near filled with smoke.”

“Mrs. Lispenard,” Watkins said. “What about the girl?”

“I was about to tell,” she said. “Anthony was out in the barn. I was fanning smoke but couldn't get nowhere with it. That's when he came inside. Said smoke didn't bother him and went to bed. But my eyes were stinging such that I couldn't sleep a wink, so I cracked open a window. That's when I heard her.”

“Her?” I asked, though I can't say for sure that I spoke aloud.

“At first I thought it was a loon. Those birds have the sorriest cries. Then I leaned farther out. The snow had stopped, stars were out, but it was dark and the moon was dull. It was no night for birds. That got me thinking, it must have been a woman's voice. It was quite pitiful.”

“Could you make out what was said?” Watkins asked.

Arnetta Lispenard nodded. “ ‘Lord have mercy on me, Lord help me,' ” she cried with theatrical drama. “A few minutes later I heard another cry, but it was not as loud as the first. The noise was strange, almost…smo
thered.”

There was a loud, shrill scream. I could hear Elma pleading for life, choking and gasping for air, and, as clearly as I saw the gray sky above, I saw her at the bottom of an icy well, fighting to keep her head above water—and drowning.

“Help her! Someone help her!”

Elias was shaking me, and I realized the screams were my own. “Caty,” he said, wrapping his arm around me. “Hush, now.”

All eyes turned to Lispenard.

“Your wife heard screams and you did nothing?” Watkins demanded.

“That's what she heard. I didn't.”

Arnetta Lispenard, happy enough to criticize her husband, seemed to take offense when others did. “He couldn't have known. It's been a peculiar winter,” she said. “Few weeks back, there was a barn cat got itself caught in twine and was hanging from the rafters as sure as if it planned its own end. And before that, Abe—that's our beagle—poor Abe fell clear through the ice.” She raised an arm and pointed toward the marsh. “He howled something terrible, but there was no getting to him. Then the calf got sick. I remember saying I'd be happy when this winter passed.”

“Elma's a girl,” I shouted, “not a barn cat or a beagle!”

Lispenard shook his head, stealing looks at the abandoned well. “My wife's always hearing noises. I didn't think much of it. She got me up and I went to the window. There was nothing there.”

Watkins's friend James Lent stepped forward. “There was no sleigh?”

Lispenard blew air into his cheeks. “Not that I saw. It was a starry night but, like my wife said, the moon was dull. It was difficult seeing. If I'd seen a sleigh, I'd have gone out,” he said, with an apologetic shrug. “Boys come up here. They fool around.”

“But your wife said the voice was female,” Watkins said.

Lispenard shuffled and avoided Watkins's gaze. He was a shadow of the man who had spoken so fervently at the water meeting. “Her ears are old,” he said. “Young boys, women, even the wind, it all sounds the same to her.”

“Might there have been a sleigh on the far side of the well, down the embankment?” Lent asked.

“I suppose there could've been.” Lispenard frowned and looked at the well. “If I'd seen it, I would have gone out,” he said again.

“The girl disappeared the Sunday before Christmas,” Watkins explained. “Was that the same night?”

Arnetta Lispenard stared into the distance. “Yes,” she said, nodding slowly and then with more assurance. “I believe it was, because we'd been to church that day and the minister gave a sermon about sacrifice. Remember, Anthony?”

Lispenard grew pale and nodded as if he were only now realizing the gravity of his error. “We can feel out the well with these,” he said, passing a pole to Lent.

Climbing the snowbank, Lent balanced on the rim of the well and sank the first pole. It was longer than a grown man, but once it was submerged, no more than a foot could be seen.

“Pass the other,” Lent said, and someone handed him the second pole. Like a witch's cauldron, the well was stirred and poked.

For days I had thought of nothing but locating Elma, though I had never considered how she would be found or what would happen when she was. I wanted to find Elma. I needed to find her, but not here. Not in this lifeless, miserable place.

“I think I feel something,” called Lent.

I covered my mouth so as not to scream.

The men's circle grew tighter. Watkins took hold of the pole and nodded. I watched as he directed the others.

“Grab it,” Watkins said. His muscles flexed, and his face grew red and hardened into lines.

“Can you get underneath and hook it?” Lent asked.