Free The Murder of Jim Fisk for the Love of Josie MAnsfield: A Tragedy of the Gilded Age by H. W. Brands

character?”
    “No. I met him accidentally at her house.”
    “Do you recollect on that occasion pointing to your dress and saying in substance that was the best you had in the world, and you had not money enough to pay your week’s rent?”
    “I don’t remember anything of the kind.”
    “Did you say to her that you wanted to know him, as you had no way of earning your living?”
    “I have no recollection of anything of the kind. I never said to Miss Wood, before or after my introduction to Fisk, that I was poor and needy, because I was not in such a condition.”
    “Did you later tell Miss Wood that Mr. Fisk had taken a fancy to you, but that he had not done much for you yet?”
    “I never told her so.”
    Referring to a subsequent incident, Beach demands: “Did you show Miss Wood some costly diamonds and elegant dresses which you said were given you by Fisk?”
    “No.”
    Josie’s attorney McKeon objects that these questions have been fed to Beach by someone with a “wicked heart” and an intent to “insult the witness.”
    Beach responds: “I am not able to judge of the character and heart of the gentleman who furnished me these questions. But I may be permitted to say they don’t come from Mr. Fisk.”
    “I suppose they come from someone who is ready to do his dirty work,” McKeon answers.
    Judge Bixby sustains the objection.
    Beach pushes forward nonetheless. “Did you say, ‘There, Annie, look at these compared with my stock when I got acquainted with Fisk. Then I had nothing but that black and white silk dress, and no money in my purse and owing some rent’?”
    McKeon objects again. Judge Bixby again excludes the question.
    “Did Miss Wood reply to that, ‘You have been with him long enough to have got more than that if you were smart’? And did you answer you did not mean to beat him too fast?”
    Another objection, again sustained.
    “Did Miss Wood ask you upon that occasion if you esteemed or loved Mr. Fisk, and did you reply: ‘No, I don’t love him, only his money. He is not the style of man I like. I will get all the money I can out of him and then he may go’?”
    McKeon jumps to his feet. This interrogation is all for the newspapers, he declares: to create a sensation and distract from the case at hand. Judge Bixby sustains the objection.
    Beach alters his course. “Do you know Nelly Peris?”
    “Yes, I did. I sent for her to my house in Twenty-third Street. She might have been there when Mr. Stokes was present.”
    “Do you recollect that you three were talking upon any occasion when you had a conversation in regard to making money out of Fisk?”
    “Never. I did not say in words or substance that I intended to blackmail him.”
    Josie has been calm until now, but suddenly she struggles with her emotions and breaks down. She apologizes to the court and says she feels ill.
    Judge Bixby comes to her aid. He comforts her verbally and glowers at Beach, who terminates the questioning.
    Josie steps down and, still crying, leaves the courtroom.

The spectators in the Yorkville court appreciate what the rest of New York will learn when the next day’s papers hit the newsstands: that the Fisk team has impeached Josie Mansfield’s testimony, impugned her motives, and caused her to flee the courtroom—but not caused her to recant her story.
    It is now her alleged accomplice’s turn to enter the witness box. Stokes’s debonair nonchalance contrasts utterly with the sobbing disconcertion of Josie; he treats his testimony as a mildly amusing diversion from what a handsome young man ought to be doing on a Saturday.
    The hostile tone of Beach’s questions affects Stokes not at all. He recounts his background and his relationship to Josie. “I am thirty years of age,” he says, “and have resided at the Hoffman House since last July. I am married and have a family. I first formed the acquaintance of Miss Mansfield in Philadelphia some three years ago; I was there on business and met