They’re heeeeeere!!!

Some people see April showers or bluebirds as harbingers of spring.  For me?  It’s the Pinkorama.  I look forward every year to seeing which scenes you’ll chose, what incredible literary confections you’ll create.  This year did not disappoint.

It is with great pleasure that I bring you the first of this year’s Pinkoramae!

Our inaugural entry comes from Kali, with “Is this the Peep?” from The Peep from Greenwich Street.

Kali presents to us Alexander Hamilpeep in the courtroom, in the famous episode where Hamilton thrusts a branch of candles in front of the face of a certain person in the courtroom, demanding of the witness, “Is this the man?”

(Why, yes.  Yes, it was.)

At this point, the trial of Levi Weeks for the murder of Elma Sands had been going on for two days, and well into the evening of the second day.  Candles had been lit and the trial carried on in that strange, flickering half-light.

Note how brilliantly Kali captures that eerie candlelit quality of the scene.

Also, isn’t it just so Hamilton to be the one blue Peep in a world of yellow Peeps?

Brava, Kali!

Here’s the scene, but– warning!– for those of you who haven’t read the book yet, it might contain spoilers.  So if you haven’t read The Girl from Greenwich Street, click back to the Home page now!  (Or go buy your copy and start reading.)

Join me here tomorrow for Pinkorama #2….

Alexander waited for him to pause for breath and thanked him and called Lorena Forrest’s husband to the stand.

“Do you know anything of a Mr. Richard Croucher?”

“On the day after Christmas, Croucher came to my store to buy a loaf of bread. He said Ring’s family was in great distress, and that being under the same roof it gave him great uneasiness. His own opinion, he said, was that the girl had made away with herself.”

Alexander looked to the jury to make sure they had heard that. “Did Mr. Croucher convey any other opinions to you, regarding the prisoner at the bar?”

“On Friday last, Croucher came running into my store and said, ‘What do you think of this innocent young man now? There is material evidence against him from the Jerseys, and he is taken by the high sheriff, sir, and carried to jail; he will be carried from there, sir, to the court and be tried; from there he will be carried back to jail, and from thence to court again, sir, and from thence to the place of execution, and there be hanged by the neck until he is dead.’”

The sheer malice of it came through strongly in the retelling. “Had he any particular business with you at this time?”

“He did not seem to have any but to tell me this.”

Throughout the courtroom, servants were quietly circling with tapers, lighting branches of candles.  They set candelabra on either side of the high bench occupied by the three judges, and on the tables set aside for the prosecution and the defense. Burr leaned over to murmur something to Brockholst.

Alexander plunged ahead with his next witness. “Mr. Dustan, you, too, keep a shop, some distance from the Ring household. Did anyone come and speak to you of Levi Weeks?”

The flickering candles cast strange shadows across the shopkeeper’s face. “Last Friday morning, a man—I don’t know his name—came into my store.”

The candlelighters hadn’t made their way to the far side of the room yet. The area where Croucher sat was shrouded in gloom, turning him to a mere shadow among shadows.

It was time to shed some light on the matter.

Alexander grabbed up the branch of candles from the defense table and strode across the courtroom, brandishing the candles in front of Croucher’s startled face.

“Mr. Dustan,” he demanded, “is this the man?”