“I’m glad to do it, but I’m afraid I will have to have a favor in return,” he added with a smile.

“What kind of favor?” she asked, intrigued.

“Some friends of mine are giving a party on Halloween. I was hoping you would accompany me.”

Sarah’s mother would be so pleased. “Of course,” she said.

SARAH THOUGHT ENOUGH TIME HAD PASSED SINCE Malloy had put her into the Hansom cab. He would have long since been to the mission and gone, so it was now safe for her to go there herself and speak with Mrs. Wells about her plans. If she also happened to learn more about Emilia while she was there, she’d certainly be happy to share that information with Detective Sergeant Frank Malloy.

The girl who opened the door to her had red hair and freckles, and she looked at Sarah suspiciously. News of Emilia’s death would certainly have upset everyone in the house and made them wary. Sarah asked to speak with Mrs. Wells and was admitted and instructed to wait in the parlor.

Mrs. Wells appeared a few minutes later. Her expression was somber, her smile of greeting sad. “Mrs. Brandt,” she said. “How good of you to come. Won’t you sit down?” She directed Sarah to the horsehair sofa and took a seat beside her, her back still rigidly straight, her hands folded tightly in her lap. Like most women, she had been taught to put on a good face in public, no matter what her private pain might be.

“I’m terribly sorry about Emilia,” Sarah said.

“So are we,” Mrs. Wells said. “She had struggled for a long time against the forces of evil. At least we can take comfort that she is at peace now.”

Sarah thought that an odd thing to say about someone so young and healthy as Emilia had been, but she knew her view of life and death was different from Mrs. Wells’s.

“I was surprised,” Mrs. Wells continued, not waiting for Sarah to respond, “that you had been asked to identify Emilia’s body.”

Sarah heard the unspoken question. She wondered how Malloy had explained it to her. “Detective Sergeant Malloy recognized the hat Emilia was wearing as one he’d seen me wear.”

“He must know you very well,” Mrs. Wells observed. “Few men would remember a lady’s hat.”

Sarah wasn’t sure if she heard a note of disapproval in Mrs. Wells’s voice or not. Few people would think it proper for her to be on intimate terms with a policeman, since the police were considered as corrupt as the criminals they arrested. She reminded herself that her own mother disapproved of her acquaintance with Malloy. “I have been able to assist Mr. Malloy on several of his cases – cases that involved people with whom I was acquainted,” she added when Mrs. Wells’s eyebrows rose a notch.

Her eyebrows rose even higher, but she said, “I suppose as a midwife, you must encounter all sorts of people.” Obviously, she wouldn’t have expected Sarah to meet people who got themselves murdered in the ordinary course of her life.

“Just as you do, in your work,” Sarah pointed out.

“I’m sorry if I seem overly curious about your personal affairs, Mrs. Brandt, but I don’t believe I’ve ever known the police to be particularly vigilant about solving crimes involving people like Emilia. But Mr. Malloy has made an extraordinary effort, and I was wondering why.”

Sarah couldn’t take offense at that. Mrs. Wells was absolutely correct. “You’ll be happy to know that Mr. Malloy is unusually conscientious. He has also promised to do everything he can to find out who killed Emilia so brutally and bring her killer to justice.”

The blood seemed to drain from the other woman’s face, and she pressed a handkerchief to her lips. Sarah instantly regretted reminding her so coldly of Emilia’s death.

“Are you ill?” Sarah asked in concern, leaning forward and ready to catch her if she fainted.

“No, I’m fine,” she said, a little weakly. She drew a deep breath and forced herself to look up at Sarah as if to prove her assessment of her own condition. “That poor, dear girl. It’s just been very difficult…”

“I’m sure it has. The other girls must be terribly upset.”

“I’ve tried to set a good example, of course,” Mrs. Wells explained. “We must not grieve for those who have gone to be with the Lord. They are much happier than we can ever imagine.”

Sarah supposed this was a good way to deal with grief. She liked to think of Tom as living happily in the hereafter. It had never been enough to make her content to live without him, however. “I suppose Emilia had a very unhappy life before she came here,” she ventured, hoping to allow Mrs. Wells an opportunity to tell her about the girl in whom she had invested so much effort. As Sarah knew, talking about the deceased helped ease the pain of loss. Not to mention, she might reveal some useful information in the process.

“Her family was no worse than most, I suppose,” Mrs. Wells said, not looking at Sarah. She seemed to be speaking more to herself, lost in her own memories. “The Italians are of an emotional temperament, as I’m sure you know. Emilia was a sensitive girl. She suffered more than most under her parents’ inability to control themselves. I’m afraid that made her easy prey for the wrong kind of man.”

“You mentioned that she had been seduced by a man who wouldn’t marry her,” Sarah reminded her.

“Emilia wasn’t his first conquest, I’m afraid. He promised her marriage, but he had no intention of keeping that promise. Why should he when Emilia had already granted him every privilege of marriage without it?”

Sarah had heard this same story many times, innocent girls betrayed by faithless lovers.

“How did she come to the mission?” Sarah asked.

Mrs. Wells sighed. “The first time she was desperate. When her lover refused to marry her, she had enough self-respect left to leave him, but her parents refused to take her back. She’d disgraced them, they said. As if people like that had any honor to begin with.”

Her contempt was probably well deserved, Sarah thought. People who turned a child away were despicable. “So she came to the mission?” Sarah guessed.

“Not then,” Mrs. Wells said with a sigh. “She allowed herself to be deceived by yet another man who was even worse than the first one. This one forced her to… to sell herself in the streets.”

Sarah winced. Too many girls ended up in this situation, never to escape. “How did she manage to get away from him?”

“She became ill, and he threw her out. She wandered the streets and ended up on our doorstep.”

“She was fortunate.”

Mrs. Wells gave her a sad smile. “I only wish she had realized it. As soon as she was well, she left us.”

“She went back to her pimp?” Sarah asked in amazement.

“At least it wasn’t that bad,” Mrs. Wells said. “She returned to the man who had originally seduced her. She still loved him, and she was grateful he still wanted her after what she’d done.”

“Did he promise to marry her this time?”

Mrs. Wells shook her head. “She didn’t care. She just wanted someone to love her, she said. And someone who wouldn’t make her walk the streets again.”

Sarah’s heart ached for a girl so desperate for love that she would believe any lie and endure any humiliation. “What brought her back to the mission?”

“She found herself with child. She begged her lover to marry her, for the sake of the baby, but he refused. He said he couldn’t even be sure the child was his. Then he beat her until she lost the baby.”

Sarah couldn’t hold back a low moan. She could feel Emilia’s pain and the despair she must have endured after losing her baby. “So that brought her back here,” she guessed.

“I’m afraid so. God works in mysterious ways, Mrs. Brandt, and all things work together for good. We cannot question why evil things happen if they lead us to Him.”

Sarah had long since stopped trying to understand why evil things happened. “She seemed very happy when I saw her on Sunday.”