The watch on her lapel said seven-thirty when she saw a familiar figure hurrying down the street, but not the one she’d been expecting. She rushed to the front door and threw it open.

“Gina!” she called, and the girl turned toward her voice.

“Oh, Mrs. Brandt, I’m so glad to see you!” she cried. She ran over and stumbled in her haste to climb Sarah’s front steps. “I didn’t think I’d ever find you.”

“What are you doing here?” Sarah asked as she ushered the girl inside.

Gina needed a moment to catch her breath. “Mrs. Wells sent me. I’ve got a message for you.” She searched in her pocket and produced a crumpled envelope. Her name had been scrawled on it. “Mrs. Wells told me you lived on Bank Street,” she explained as Sarah tore it open. “She said to just go up Seventh Avenue and ask people until I found the street. She said someone there would tell me which house was yours.”

Sarah quickly scanned the note. It was from Father Ahearn. He said he’d found out who the killer was, and he needed her help. She remembered him saying he couldn’t reveal the secrets of the confessional. Had the real killer confessed to him? Maeve was Irish and had most certainly been raised Catholic. She might have felt compelled to confess her guilt, if she was the killer. Father Ahearn certainly wouldn’t be able to tell the police what he’d learned, but perhaps he hoped Sarah could help him convince the girl to surrender herself.

“How did you get this note?” Sarah asked her.

“Somebody brought it to Mrs. Wells. It’s from a priest, she said. He didn’t know how to find you, but he thought she would. What does he want?”

“I have to go meet him.” The note urged her to come as soon as possible, since he was worried the killer might harm herself or someone else. “I’m expecting some visitors, though, so I need to leave them a message before I go.”

Gina sat down to rest from her frantic mission while Sarah found paper and a pencil and began to compose her notes to Malloy and Richard. The one to Malloy was the most difficult. How could she explain in a few words that Mrs. Donato was innocent and someone else – she suspected it was Maeve but wasn’t completely sure – was guilty and that she’d gone to see a priest about finding out for certain? She understood it all, and the story still sounded unbelievable to her. She could just imagine Malloy’s reaction.

The note to Richard was easier. She apologized for her rudeness and explained she had to meet with someone to save an innocent woman’s life. He might consider her foolish, but he’d forgive her.

When she had inserted the notes into envelopes and addressed them to each man, she was ready to leave. “How did you get here?” Sarah asked.

“I walked,” Gina said. No wonder she was tired.

Sarah put on her hat and took her cape from the hook by the door. “Let’s see if we can get a Hansom.” She didn’t think a cab would take them all the way to the mission, but they could probably get a lot closer than the El would take them. She stuck the notes in the door for the men to find and then led Gina down the street toward Seventh Avenue, where they would be most likely to find a cab.

Frank knew he should feel at least a little guilty, but he didn‘t, not one bit. Sarah had sent for him, so he had a perfectly legitimate reason to be calling on her. He’d happened to hear Richard Dennis make an engagement with her for eight o’clock this evening, and he knew she’d be home at this hour, waiting for him. He should have gone earlier, of course, so he wouldn’t interfere with their plans. Unfortunately, he hadn’t gotten her message until he returned to Headquarters after investigating a fatal knife fight in one of the neighborhood’s stale beer dives. He could have waited until morning, of course, but she obviously thought her news too important to wait. He’d calculated that he had just enough time to reach her before Dennis carried her away in his carriage. And just enough time to interrupt Dennis’s plans. Perhaps he could even spoil them altogether. He was smiling as he turned the corner onto Bank Street.

Even though the city clocks hadn’t yet struck eight, Frank could see Dennis’s carriage waiting outside Sarah’s house. He quickened his pace. He didn’t want to have to flag them down as they drove by. But as he approached, he saw Dennis standing beside the coach and no sign of Sarah. Dennis appeared to be reading something by the light of the coach lamp.

As Frank reached him, he looked up. His puzzled frown dissolved into recognition. “Mr. Malloy,” he said. “Good evening. Mrs. Brandt has left you a message, too.”

Frank glanced up and only then realized the lights were out in her flat. He saw what appeared to be an envelope stuck in the crack between the front door and its frame. He realized she must have gone out and left a similar note for Dennis, and that’s what he had been reading.

Frank quickly retrieved his own message and carried it back to the coach light. His feeling of satisfaction had long since evaporated. Now he was uneasy and growing more so by the minute. By the time he’d finished the note, he was deeply troubled.

“What does she say?” Dennis asked anxiously. “If you can tell me,” he added when Frank looked at him sharply.

“She’s gone off to meet some priest,” Frank said, wondering if he’d have any trouble getting Dennis to reveal her message to him. “What does she say to you?”

“She apologizes for canceling our engagement. We were going to have dinner together,” he explained, either rubbing it in or having forgotten that Frank knew their plans. Frank didn’t bother to decide which it was. “She says she has to meet with someone who has information about that girl’s murder. I thought you were going to settle all that yesterday.”

Frank could have taken offense, but Dennis sounded genuinely concerned about Sarah, so he overlooked the provocation. “I arrested the girl’s mother yesterday. She confessed, or at least it sounded like she did. She doesn’t speak English very well. But Mrs. Brandt’s note says she can prove the woman is innocent.” The thought was difficult to contemplate. Even if the woman hadn’t confessed, she hadn’t protested her innocence either, not even when they locked her up. She’d behaved as if she was guilty. What was Frank supposed to think?

“If the mother isn’t the killer, then who could it be?” Dennis asked.

A good question. “Mrs. Brandt thought it might be someone at the mission, or at least she did until it looked like the mother did it.”

Frank could see that Dennis was trying to make sense of all this. “What priest is she going to meet?”

“She doesn’t say, but I know she went to St. John’s the other day to ask them to pay for the girl’s funeral. That must be where she’s gone.”

“How would a priest know who the killer is, especially if it’s someone at the mission?”

Frank had been trying to figure that out himself. “Maybe the killer made a confession to the priest. A lot of those girls are Catholic, or they were before Mrs. Wells got them. But priests aren’t allowed to tell anyone what they hear in the confessional.”

Dennis frowned as though something was bothering him. “Mrs. Brandt said that the murdered girl looked as if she’d suffocated. How would that make someone look?”

Frank considered the question. From the tone of Dennis’s voice, he knew it wasn’t idle curiosity. “The girl’s skin was blue and her eyes were open real wide.”

Something changed very slightly in Dennis’s expression. He’d already been worried, but now he looked alarmed. “Would she have been gasping for breath before she died?”

Now Frank knew it wasn’t idle curiosity. “I’m not sure, but it seems likely.”

Dennis had unconsciously crumpled the note he still held as his hands closed into fists. “Sarah… Mrs. Brandt said the girl had been stabbed in the back of the neck.”