The Witch of New York by Alex Hortis

Author:Alex Hortis
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pegasus Books
Published: 2024-03-05T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN The Opposite Counsel

THURSDAY MORNING, APRIL 3, 1845

James Whiting could feel the Houseman sisters closing ranks again. For his cross-examination of Caroline Van Name, he tried to trip her up by quizzing her on factual details. Mrs. Van Name, what exact day did you go over to your father’s house before Christmas? What was the title of the book you said Polly read on Sunday?

La la laaaaa la la! During Whiting’s tedious cross, a chubby boy sitting in his mother’s lap burst out in song to the delight of those around them. La la laaaaa. As his mother picked him up to leave, the boy sang the whole way out the door. Laaa laaaaa.

Nothing shook Caroline. “I am positive I saw Emeline sweeping off the stoop on Sunday morning; she was near the back kitchen door; she had a broom in her hand,” she testified.

The Defense calls Matilda Rorke.

The young niece of Polly and Emeline corroborated her other aunt Caroline Van Name’s sighting of Emeline alive on Sunday morning. “I was up at the attic window of the house where I live; it was between 9 and 10 o’clock,” she testified, “my aunt was carrying in wood from the yard when I saw her.” Asked how she could identify Emeline from the two-hundred-fifty yards distance, she replied, “I knew it was her from the way she walks and the swinging of her arms.”1

The Defense calls Dr. Howard R. Harrison.

Here, the defense team presented testimony of its first new witness. Notwithstanding Albert Bodine’s alibi for George Waite, the defense hadn’t given up on pointing to some alternative suspect. Dr. Harrison saw something on Christmas Eve that had bothered him. On his way back from church, between nine and ten that Sunday night, December 24, he “met a man carrying a bundle, going towards the shore from the direction of George Houseman’s house,” Harrison testified. “When I first saw him he was 200 feet from the house,” he said.2

District Attorney Clark used his knowledge of Granite Village to put this sighting of a random man in context. “It is not unusual to see persons at that time of night carrying a bundle,” Harrison agreed. There were two churches in the vicinity, and, yes, “it was about the time their congregations were generally dismissed,” he further agreed. By the end of his cross-examination, a man walking on the road on Christmas Eve didn’t seem quite so suspicious.

The Defense calls Mrs. Mary Houseman.

“I am the mother of Mrs. Mary Bodine,” she said, using her daughter’s proper name. “She is very kind; very fond of children,” said Mrs. Houseman. David Graham then methodically asked her questions to counter every major point of the prosecution.

Where was Mrs. Bodine on Christmas Eve? “Mrs. Bodine slept on Sunday night in the same room with myself and my husband,” she testified. “I don’t sleep sound… I am sure she did not leave the house that night.”

Did Mrs. Bodine pack any baskets for New York? “She put a flannel

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