“Maybe I’ll kill you,” he said.
Antoinette fled into the kitchen. Her own little gun was hidden in the pocket of her apron. She grabbed it, then waited for an opportunity to run to the door and outside. Antoinette stood, breathing heavily, waiting for the signal of Sonta’s deep snore. Once she heard it, she left in haste.
About a half hour later, Antoinette returned home to find Sonta asleep, still sitting in the rocking chair. She could see her husband asleep in the bedroom. As she tried to sneak past Sonta, he grabbed her arm, pulled his gun, and again attempted to pull her down into the chair with him. His breath and hands were on top of her. She pulled out her gun and shot him in the head.
“You have done me,” Sonta said, dying, “what I intended to have done you.”
In the courtroom, Antoinette waited patiently for the strange sounds of the translation to end. When it did, the prosecutor asked how Sonta could have said anything with a bullet in his head. Antoinette became confused. She started to cry.
On the afternoon of April 26, the case went to the jury. Two hours later, Antoinette Tolla was pronounced guilty of murder. When her sentence was translated, she collapsed in her seat, before being taken back to the Hackensack jail.
The next week, as the trees began to bloom, the judge sentenced Antoinette Tolla to be hanged the following month, on June 9, 1905. After an appeal, the Supreme Court of New Jersey sustained her conviction and resentenced her execution for January 12, 1906. There were a few personal petitions from some of Tolla’s friends, but Governor Edward C. Stokes was not swayed by any of them. As Christmastime came, fast and cold, they began building gallows in the prison yard.
*
The woman who was rapidly taking the stairs of the Essex County courthouse was tall, thin, and dressed almost completely in black. Those who turned to stare saw just a touch of white at her sleeves and neck. She wore a magnificent hat that swept behind her like a great black bird. From the back of her hat flowed short folds of what looked like mourning veils. As she sped by, someone thought she was a nun and called her “sister.” When her hat tilted forward, the woman’s mouth lit up with a twitch of amusement.
Inside the courtroom, all the seats were taken. So when the woman opened the back door and walked in, courteous men in the back row stood and offered their chairs. But she kept walking, straight as an arrow. Halfway down the aisle, another man stepped out to offer her his place. As she raised her head to politely refuse, people noticed that she was young and pretty, with jet-black eyes and hair. She kept walking all the way to the front of the courtroom. When she reached the first row, the confused prosecutor even offered her his seat, but she declined. She set her bag on the table and addressed the judge with a bright glance.
“Mrs. Mary Grace Quackenbos,” the woman said. “For the defense.”
*
Four years earlier, a man stopped talking in front of a small lecture hall on Washington Square in New York City. He was in his late forties, with a full brown beard and soft eyes. His paisley cravat was loose under his dark wool suit coat.
“Think for yourself,” he said, his eyes searching for the ones in the room who might actually be paying attention to him. “Be an inquirer—make no assertion unless you can support it by reason.”
This was the signature lesson of William Clarence D. Ashley, dean of the New York University School of Law, and every student sitting before him who expected to graduate knew it by heart. When he moved across the front of the room, he would sometimes disappear behind the oddly placed Doric column that was stuck right in the middle of the room. Ashley would eventually reappear on the other side, his voice still going. When he lectured during the day, the rows of wooden seats were filled with stalwart, earnest young men.
But here, in the night class, the spaces between students was greater. So were the differences. There was a Chinese man, a black man, even a professional baseball player who couldn’t help yawning. There were Russians, Germans, and Jews. There were women, too, though never more than a handful. The night class was its own creature; it wasn’t easier, it was just different. And on this night, seated in the front row, was a woman in white clothing.
Mrs. Mary Grace Quackenbos was a mysterious figure, even for the night class. There were whispers that she was actually a rich heiress who was only slumming as a law student because she wanted to figure out how best to protect her family’s millions. She was supposedly married to some kind of doctor. There was even talk that she had once been a singer and had taken up the law only as a punishment by her father, who was some big name. And everyone knew she was often late to class because she was always out shopping. In the night session, there was always this kind of gossip. The long hours encouraged it.
Part of the truth was that Grace was at NYU because the more prestigious Columbia Law School didn’t admit women. NYU had, in fact, been admitting women to its law school since 1890, a full sixty years before Harvard. There was no better choice in the city. But that didn’t mean that NYU was without its pitfalls. Another female law student named Clarice Baright was in a property law class when a pocket of snickering classmates opened the skylight, dumping her with heaps of cold snow, even though she was already sick with fever. After that, the girls all decided to sit up front.
On this night, Grace was indeed in the front row, but not because she was afraid of a little weather. Not that anyone would have the guts to dump snow on her, anyway. She sat in the front to be closer to the source. She wanted to give Dean Ashley her full attention. He taught the law in a way that made infinite sense to her. He always started with facts. In his view, there was no correct solution, only the logic of a good defense. He valued opinions but made his bacon in the argument itself. He taught the importance of contracts and hated recitation. Famous names and cases didn’t matter to him. Ashley’s students were taught to analyze the facts of a case, select the important points, and reason correctly in order to deduce principles from such facts. It was in this crucible of ideas that not only the lawyer but the detective was born.