“Stop it, Francisca!” VanDamm shouted. “Have you no shame?”

“Have you no shame?” she countered. “You’re the one who used your own children like whores!”

“And when you couldn’t pass off Alicia’s baby as your wife’s the way you did Mina’s,” Malloy guessed, “you hired an abortionist to get rid of it. Except she refused to operate because Alicia was too far along.”

“That’s a lie! I told you, I wasn’t even there!” VanDamm insisted. “I have witnesses! Sarah’s father-”

“And when you realized she was going to leave you and take the child with her,” Malloy continued, “you flew into a jealous rage and strangled her!”

“No! No!” VanDamm was gasping again, clutching his chest. “I’d never hurt her! I swear it! How can you even think such a thing?”

“Stop it!” Mina cried. “Can’t you see you’re killing him? Father, you must let me take you to your room. I’ll take care of you, just like I used to. You’ll see, it can be just like it was before! I won’t let them bother you anymore. I’ll take care of everything.”

“The first thing you’ll need to take care of is finding out who killed Alicia,” Malloy reminded her. “A man went to the boardinghouse that night with Mrs. Petrovka, the abortionist. That man killed Alicia, and the same man killed Mrs. Petrovka and Harvey. If it wasn’t you, VanDamm, who was it? Someone you hired? Was it Mattingly? Or his man Fisher? Who was it? Don’t you want to see the person who killed her punished?”

“Not if it would cause him embarrassment,” Mrs. VanDamm said from the staircase. “His good name is all he has left since he lost his soul the first time he used his baby daughter for his pleasure.”

“Don’t listen to them, Father,” Mina said, reaching up to stroke his face. “They can’t make you say a thing. Come with me. I’ll make you forget she ever existed! I can be your little girl again just like it was before she came!”

He stared at her for a long moment, and Sarah watched in amazement as his expression slowly changed from distaste to disbelief to horror. “It was you!” he said, his voice a hoarse croak. “You killed Alicia!”

“Don’t be ridiculous!” she scoffed, thoroughly offended. “You heard him. The witness said it was a man.”

“It looked like a man. But it was you, wasn’t it, Mina?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about! You’ve had a shock, Father. You aren’t yourself. Mother has a sedative that will help you-”

“I know about you,” he said, silencing her.

The two of them stared at each other as if they’d completely forgotten about the others, and in that moment, Sarah had a chance to figure it all out.

“Mina was the man with Emma Petrovka!” she told Malloy, whose expression told her he doubted her sanity.

“What are you talking about?”

“Look at her!” Sarah said, pointing to where Mina stood beside her father, shorter by only a few inches and almost as tall as Malloy. Her body was sturdy and angular beneath the flounces of her dress. “If she were wearing men’s clothes, and it was dark, she could easily pass for a man.”

Malloy couldn’t believe it. “Why would she want to-?”

“For the freedom!” Sarah explained, unable to believe he couldn’t comprehend it at once. “As a man, she could go wherever she wanted and do whatever she wanted.”

“And she did.”

This time the voice came from behind them, from someone they’d completely forgotten was there. Alfred’s face was gray and slack, but his eyes burned with a righteousness Sarah would never have guessed he possessed.

“Alfred, if you want to continue in our employ…” Mina began, but he simply shook his head.

“No one will work for you when they know what you’ve done in this house.”

“Stop it! Stop it right now!” Mina shrieked. “I won’t have it, I tell you!”

“What do you mean, Alfred?” Malloy said, ignoring her outburst. “What did she do?”

“She dressed like a man and went out at night. Been doing it for years. I don’t know everything she does, but someone saw her going into an opium den once, wearing her man’s clothes, or that’s what I heard.”

“There were prostitutes, too,” her father said, his voice hollow. “Women she would pay for God knows what.”

Distracted by the shock of it all, Sarah had lost track of what she should be surmising, but Malloy hadn’t.

“You dressed like a man,” he said to Mina, “and hired Emma Petrovka to get rid of your sis-” He stopped himself and made the correction, “… of Alicia’s baby. And when Petrovka wouldn’t operate and left, you killed Alicia to get rid of both her and her child.”

“Lies! It’s all lies! Father, don’t believe them!”

But he did believe them. “You killed her,” he murmured incredulously. “You killed my darling girl!”

On the staircase, Mrs. VanDamm cried out like a wounded animal.

“No! No, I didn’t, I swear it!” Mina screamed.

“How did she know where to find Alicia that night?” Malloy asked.

“I didn’t! I couldn’t have!” Mina insisted.

“The report,” VanDamm said. “Sylvester had sent it here to the house. We’d been trying to find her diary before we brought her back, and he had a man in the boardinghouse with her, looking for it. But I was out and didn’t see his report until the next morning. Mina could have read it, though. She would have known where to find Alicia that night.”

“And when she realized Mrs. Petrovka could implicate her, she killed her, too,” Malloy reminded them.

“I don’t know who you’re talking about! I never saw this person!”

“And poor Harvey,” Sarah remembered. “Did she kill him, too?”

“Yes. She was dressed like a man again,” Malloy said. “One of the servants saw her riding away. She must have come up behind him and strangled him with a piece of rope. He might have even known she was there. He wouldn’t have considered her a danger, so she could pretty much do whatever she wanted. Then she somehow got him up and hanging from a rafter. How did you do it, Miss VanDamm? You must be much stronger than you appear.”

“Father, you can’t believe this… this bogtrotter over your own daughter!” Mina grabbed him by the lapels, clinging when he would have pulled away. “Have you forgotten Alicia left you? She ran away, but I stayed! I’ve stayed with you all these years! That must count for something. I love you, Father! You must love me, too. That’s what you said! That’s what you told me all those times when you-”

“No!” VanDamm roared as thunder shook the house. “You killed my beautiful girl! Get out! Get out of my sight!”

“Father, please!” she begged, but he tore her hands away from his coat and shoved her from him.

“I’ll be glad to take her out of your sight,” Malloy said. “Would the women’s lockup be far enough?”

The look Mina turned on him was pure venom, and Sarah took a step backward just from instinct. “Malloy, I wouldn’t try to-” she began, but Mina interrupted her.

“You’ll never arrest a VanDamm,” she told him acidly. “Tell him, Father. You’d never allow it, would you? No matter what I’ve done or haven’t done.”

Everyone looked at VanDamm, and for a moment, Sarah believed he would forbid Malloy to take her. As much as he might despise her for killing Alicia, he would have to risk losing everything he prized in life in order to see his daughter arrested and tried for murder. But to her surprise, his expression hardened. His dark mustache stood out boldly against his pale skin, and sweat dampened his forehead, but he held his head high as he said, “You killed Alicia. How can you think I would care what happened to you?”

The sound she made was so anguished, it chilled Sarah’s blood, and for a moment she thought Mina might attack her own father out of sheer rage. But the balled fists struck his chest in frustration, not fury, and when he grabbed her wrists to hold her, she wrenched free, and with one last shriek, she picked up her skirts and ran.