How true, Sarah thought, but she said, “I’m sure they’ll find the killer soon. Is there some reason the police should have come back? Have you heard anything or has someone remembered something?”
Mrs. Higgins shook her head and turned a ball of dough out of the crockery bowl in which she had mixed it and began to knead it with practiced strokes. “Not that I know of. It’s just… the children are still so upset. They have nightmares. They think the killer is coming back to get them.”
Sarah felt an instant empathy with them. How many times had she dreamed she was Maggie, bleeding to death on a tenement floor? And she had been nearly grown when that happened. Their little imaginations must be running wild.
“I’d be happy to talk to them, if you think it would help. I know you’ve reassured them, but sometimes they don’t believe their parents. If an outsider-another grownup-tells them they don’t need to be afraid, they might believe it.”
Mrs. Higgins’s lined face brightened instantly. “Oh, would you, Mrs. Brandt? They all think the world of you. Mary Grace says she’s going to bring ladies babies when she grows up, just like Mrs. Brandt does.”
Sarah smiled, absurdly gratified by the compliment. “I’d be happy to speak to them.” From the sounds she could hear through the open kitchen doorway, she was sure she’d find most of them playing in the tiny yard behind the house. Probably, they’d been sent outside to escape the heat. “I’ll just take little Harry out for some air,” she offered, shifting the baby to her shoulder as she rose from the chair.
The Higgins children were racing around out in the yard, along with several of the neighbor’s children, engaged in some game only they could understand. Drawn by the novelty of a visitor, they came to her immediately, circling around like shy fireflies. She called each of them by name and tousled a few heads before seating herself on the steps. The smaller ones claimed the seats nearest to her, snuggling up and preening, basking in the undivided attention of a stranger. Little Harry gurgled contentedly, squinting in the bright morning sunlight where he lay on Sarah’s lap.
They chatted for a while, Sarah inquiring politely into their activities before bringing up the subject of bad dreams and bad men who came to get little children in the night. She hoped she wasn’t lying when she assured them the bad man who had hurt Alicia was gone and wouldn’t be back. At least she could be fairly certain he wouldn’t be back to the Higgins house. After a few minutes, the novelty of her presence wore off, and the younger children wandered away, back to their games. Sally and Mary Grace claimed the seats vacated by the little ones and asked what they perceived to be more grown-up questions, until Sally, too, grew bored. She took her doll back to the makeshift playhouse her father had built out of wood scraps in a comer of the yard, leaving Mary Grace alone with Sarah.
Sarah smiled at Mary Grace as she bounced Harry gently in her lap, but the girl didn’t smile back. She wished Mary Grace didn’t look so old for her years. Sarah could almost believe she carried the weight of the world on her slender shoulders.
“That black bag you carry, is that what you bring the babies in?” Mary Grace asked suddenly.
Sarah bit back a smile, knowing if she showed amusement, she would damage Mary Grace’s fragile pride. “Is that what your mother says?”
“She says it’s none of my business, and I’ll understand when I’m older.”
She wouldn’t ever understand it if no one ever explained it to her, Sarah thought. “What do you think?”
Mary Grace frowned thoughtfully and pulled on one of her pigtails. “I think the baby was in my mother’s stomach.”
“What makes you think so?”
“Because her stomach was big when we went to bed that night, and in the morning it was small again, and Harry was born.”
“You’re very smart to figure that out, Mary Grace,” Sarah said, a little relieved that Mary Grace was so perceptive and Sarah wouldn’t have to risk telling her something her mother would be angry to hear about.
“What I can’t figure out is how Harry got out of her stomach,” Mary Grace said, her small face pinched in frustration.
Sarah wasn’t about to explain this to a girl of ten years. The actual mechanics of birth were still hard for Sarah to accept, even after all her years of experience. Explaining to a young girl how a baby could pass through an opening she probably didn’t yet know existed wasn’t something she was about to attempt on this spring morning.
“That’s what the midwife does,” she said by way of compromise. “I help the baby come out. Like your mother says, it’s something you’ll understand when you’re older, but you don’t have to worry about it right now. It will be a long time before you have to think about babies.” At least she hoped so, remembering how very young Alicia VanDamm had been.
Sarah expected Mary Grace to wander off, too, now that their conversation was over, but she sat where she was, pretending to play with Harry, letting him grab her fingers with his tiny hands. Sarah sensed the girl had another question she wanted to ask and was just trying to work up the courage. She just hoped it was one she could answer honestly without incurring Mrs. Higgins’s wrath.
Finally, she said, without looking up, “There was two of them.”
“Two of who?” Sarah asked.
“In Alice’s room that night.” She glanced up to see if she’d shocked Sarah. She had, of course, but Sarah managed to register only surprise. She didn’t want to frighten Mary Grace into silence.
“You saw the men who went to Alicia’s-um, Alice’s room?” she asked.
“Wasn’t men. It was a man and a woman.”
A thousand questions swirled in Sarah’s mind, but she resisted the urge to throw all of them at the girl at once. If she was too eager or overanxious, Mary Grace might feel she was doing something wrong, and Sarah would learn nothing more. “Was it someone you knew? Ham Fisher, maybe?”
Mary Grace shook her head. “He was there, but it wasn’t him. He let them in, I think. They come to the back door, and somebody let them in. Then Mr. Fisher goes out. He was carrying the bag he brought with him when he come. I guess it was his clothes, ’cause Mama said all his things was gone the next morning.”
“The man and woman, what did they look like?”
“I don’t know. It was dark,” she said simply.
Of course it was. “But you recognized Ham Fisher,” Sarah reminded her, shifting Harry and bouncing him a little when he started to fuss.
“I knowed the way he walks.”
“Could you tell anything about the man and woman? Were they tall or short? Was there anything unusual or familiar about them?”
“Tall and short. He was tall and straight up and down. She was short and round, like a ball. She walked slow. She had a stick in her hand, a cane, I think it was, like she was crippled or something. He had to help her up the steps.”
“Why didn’t you tell anybody this before, Mary Grace?” Sarah asked.
The girl smoothed the fabric of her skirt. As the oldest child, she never had to wear hand-me-downs, so the quality was still good. “Nobody asked me,” she said simply.
Sarah would enjoy telling Malloy that he’d missed a good bet by not questioning the children. She wondered that they didn’t teach detectives how important that could be. “But I didn’t ask you either,” she pointed out.
Mary Grace flashed her a look. Her eyes were still shadowed. “I thought if I told the policeman… You won’t tell my Mama, will you?”
“Why not?”
“Because I was supposed to be asleep. I like to sit up late, when everybody’s asleep and everything’s real quiet, but Mama yells at me. She says I need my rest. I think she just gets mad because I don’t wake up when she calls me in the morning.”
Sarah could believe this. She could also imagine how a girl like Mary Grace might treasure a few minutes of solitude in a house so full of people. But she couldn’t spend too much time worrying about Mary Grace’s sleeping habits. She had a job to do, one Malloy would probably do much better since he was trained to do it. But Malloy wasn’t here, and Sarah would have to manage somehow on her own. What would Malloy ask if he were here? What else would be important to know?