Sarah couldn’t help the sound of protest that escaped her.
He glanced at her. “Would you have taken her to the hospital?”
“Probably,” Sarah said. “Although there are some things you can do to help the baby along. I would’ve tried those first, and then-”
“Kathleen wouldn’t go to the hospital. Her mother died in a hospital. She was terrified of them. Didn’t want a doctor either. Didn’t want a strange man to see her like that. In the end, I sent for one anyway, but it was too late by then.”
“Didn’t the midwife do anything?”
“Oh, yes, she did something all right. She used these… these instruments to pull the baby out.”
“Forceps,” Sarah guessed.
“Yes, that’s right.” The bitterness was thick in his voice.
“Do you know it’s illegal for a midwife to use them?” she asked him.
“I do now. And I guess I know why, too, don’t I? She got the baby out, but she tore something inside… inside Kathleen. She was bleeding and… I sent for the doctor, but by the time he came, she was gone.”
His efforts to conceal the depths of his anguish only made it more profound. Moved beyond tears, Sarah reached over and laid her hand on his arm. She understood the pain only too well, the agony of losing someone you dearly love in such a senseless way. “I’m sorry,” she said.
He looked down at where her hand rested on his arm, then up to meet her gaze. “It’s not your fault,” he reminded her. Or perhaps he was reminding himself. He’d hated her on sight because of what she was, but now he was saying he no longer held that against her. Or at least she hoped he was saying that.
As for herself, she’d long since forgiven him for being a policeman. Now that she understood his reasons, she could not condemn him for doing the only thing he could to make sure his son was well provided for.
Aware that they had reached a new level of understanding, she self-consciously withdrew her hand and placed it in her lap. The silence between them was no longer comfortable, but heavy with unspoken things. She cast about for some way to break it.
“What do we do now?” she asked again, not even certain this time to what she referred.
“About Gerda’s killer, you mean?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said, glad to have that settled.
When she met his gaze, she thought she saw her own relief mirrored in his dark eyes.
“I told you, there’s not much we can do,” he said.
But Sarah wasn’t going to give up quite so easily. There was still one more thing she could do, and if that didn’t work, well, then maybe, just maybe, she’d give up.
14
SARAH KNEW SHE HAD NO REASON TO FEEL APPREHENSIVE. It was the middle of the day. No one would know she was here. At least Lars Otto wouldn’t know, unless his wife chose to tell him. Since it seemed unlikely Agnes would do so, no harm would be done. And she did need to see Agnes and the baby, to make sure they were still doing well. It was her duty.
All that rationalization didn’t remove the butterflies from her stomach, though. The building was quiet as she made her way up the dark stairway. All the children were outside, playing in the street on this summer afternoon. She could hear the faint echoes of their cries and laughter, but only dimly. She’d been practicing what she would say all the way over here so she could adequately feign surprise at just happening to see Agnes on her way someplace else, but when she reached the landing, the Ottos’ door was closed tightly.
Sarah found this strange, since it was so hot today, but perhaps Agnes was out. As she’d planned, she went up the stairs to the third floor, where another of her patients lived. Mrs. Gertz was genuinely happy to see her. Her time was drawing near, and since this was her first baby, she had a lot of questions. Sarah answered them patiently, then allowed Mrs. Gertz to serve her some cookies. As she nibbled politely, she managed to turn the subject to where she wanted it to be.
“How are Agnes Otto and her baby doing?”
Mrs. Gertz frowned. She was a plump woman made bigger still by her pregnancy. Her yellow braids had been wound around her head so tightly, Sarah wondered that her features weren’t distorted. Everything about her was spotlessly clean and relentlessly tidy.
“Yelling? From whom?”
“From Mr. Otto. He is not happy with anything she does. The baby cries too much, the food is not to his liking, he thinks the floors are dirty. Things like that. I know she still misses her sister, too, but he will not even let her say the girl’s name. That part she told me. I would like to help her, but I do not know how.”
Sarah wasn’t sure she did either, but she was certainly going to try. “I was going to say hello to her just now, but her door was closed. Is she out, do you know?”
“Oh, she keeps her door closed all the time, even in the heat. We never see her anymore. She does not even let her children come down and play with the others.”
“They must be stifling in there,” Sarah said, horrified.
“Ja, I am sure they are. But she will not listen to reason. We have tried to talk to her, but it does not help. She is afraid.”
“Of her husband?”
Mrs. Gertz looked away, perhaps worried she had gone too far, but after a moment she said,
That was all Sarah needed to hear. If Lars Otto was mistreating his wife, as Sarah had suspected, she would do whatever she could to put a stop to it. Mrs. Gertz didn’t even make a token protest when Sarah said she had to leave. She merely nodded.
Sarah hurried down the steps and stopped outside the Ottos’ door, listening for any sounds from within. She thought perhaps she heard weeping, but she couldn’t be sure. She knocked. The sound she thought was weeping ceased abruptly. Someone was inside, but no one answered her knock.
She knocked again, more loudly this time. Still no response.
This time she pounded, so there could be no mistake. “Mrs. Otto, it’s Mrs. Brandt. I know you’re in there, and if you don’t open the door, I’ll have to get a policeman.”
There, knowing how frightened Agnes was of the police, that should do the trick, although she had no idea what she would do if it didn’t. Malloy seemed hardly likely to come over here and force his way into this poor woman’s home, and she certainly didn’t know any other policemen who would do such a thing, either.
After a long silence, she heard a slight scuffling sound that might have been footsteps. Then the sound of a bolt being drawn, and the door opened a crack. “Go away, Mrs. Brandt,” a disembodied and very frightened voice said. “Lars will be angry if he knows you come here.”
“He won’t know unless you tell him. I just want to make sure you’re all right,” Sarah said. “Your neighbors are worried about you.”
“I am fine,” she insisted, although she had yet to show herself.
“What about the baby?” Sarah asked. “How is she? This heat can’t be good for her.”
“She is… ”The voice broke, and Sarah felt the hairs on her arms rise as every nerve in her body sparked to attention. “She will be all right,” Agnes insisted after a moment.
“If she’s sick, you should let me see her. I can help.” In the city, bringing children safely into the world was only the first of many battles that must be won in order to raise a child to maturity.
Sarah let her think this over, but when Agnes didn’t respond, she tried another tactic. “If you won’t let me in, I’ll have to got to the settlement house for the visiting nurse. She might take your baby away if she thinks you aren’t taking good care of her.” It was a stretch of the truth, but Sarah was desperate enough to try anything.
Just as she’d hoped, the door flew open, and Agnes cried, “You cannot take my baby away!”
Sarah would have reassured her, but what she saw shocked the breath from her body. Agnes’s fragile face was swollen and discolored. Both eyes were black, and her jaw was puffed out on the left side and mottled black-and-
