“A lover?” Mrs. VanDamm echoed in outrage. “Alicia most certainly does not have a lover! She isn’t even out yet!”

For a minute, Frank couldn’t think what she might have been out of, but then he realized she meant the girl hadn’t made her debut into society yet.

“Alicia is just sixteen!” Mrs. VanDamm was saying. “She has no suitors. She’s never even been alone with a young man! A lover, indeed! Cornelius, why are you standing there listening to this rubbish?”

“Francisca, go back to your room,” VanDamm said coldly. “I’ll explain everything to you later.”

“I certainly hope so. And I fully intend to complain to your superiors,” she told Frank as she floated and fluttered her way out of the room, murmuring her outrage at Frank’s effrontery.

Frank couldn’t help wishing she really would complain to Commissioner Roosevelt about him. Everyone on the force hated the playboy-turned-reformer who had gotten himself appointed to the Police Commission with an eye toward cleaning up the corruption in the department. A rebuke from Roosevelt would likely propel him to Captain even without paying the requisite bribes as soon as Roosevelt got bored and went back to his old life and things in the department returned to normal.

“I’m afraid I can’t be of any assistance to you, Detective,” VanDamm said when she was gone. The only sign of whatever emotional distress he was experiencing was the way he idly fingered his gold watch chain. “I have no idea why my daughter chose to run away from the safety and comfort of her home and family. And my wife is right, Alicia doesn’t know any young men, certainly no one who could have lured her away.”

He was lying, of course. Parents always lied at first. Either they didn’t want their children to look bad or they didn’t want to look like irresponsible parents. Frank figured a cold fish like VanDamm would be more worried about his own reputation.

And VanDamm hadn’t seemed the least bit surprised that his daughter was living in a rooming house in Greenwich Village. Hadn’t even questioned the identification of the body, as most parents did. As his wife had done. She was sure Frank had made some mistake.

VanDamm didn’t think Frank had made a mistake. He’d known where she was. Certainly he knew her condition, which was why she’d been banished to the country house in the first place, and he might also know with whom she’d run away. He wouldn’t tell Frank, though, at least not today.

Frank was just about to suggest that VanDamm go with him to the morgue to identify the girl’s body when once again the parlor doors opened. This time a younger woman entered. She must have just come in from outside, because she was still wearing her hat. She was large-boned and tall for a female, almost as tall as Frank’s five feet, eight inches, and she was dressed in the most outlandish outfit Frank had ever seen. Probably considered the height of fashion, the bold plaid of her skirt and matching jacket made him dizzy. Or maybe it was the woman herself, who came in with the force of a whirl-wind.

“What’s going on here, Father? Alfred said the police are here!”

VanDamm didn’t seem too happy to see his daughter, although with VanDamm it was a little hard to tell exactly what he was feeling. Frank figured this must be the one Sarah Brandt knew, the one she’d mistaken Alicia for. The one VanDamm obviously thought Frank had come to tell him about. Frank could imagine this one getting into some kind of scrape. She looked like one of those suffragettes, always looking to cause trouble. He tried to see the resemblance Mrs. Brandt had noticed, but if this woman had ever looked like the dead girl, it was a long time ago.

“Mina, I’m afraid Alicia has been murdered.” There it was, bald and brutal, but Mina VanDamm could obviously take it.

“I knew it!” she declared, pulling off her gloves with furious motions. “I knew she’d come to no good. Didn’t I tell you that when she ran away?”

So much for sisterly affection, Frank thought. So much for any normal human reaction at all. The mother, whom Frank had pretty much decided was crazy as a bedbug, was the most regular person in the bunch.

“Do you know why your sister ran away?” Frank asked her, hoping to catch her off guard.

But Mina VanDamm was never off guard. She looked at him as if he was something that had just crawled out from under a rock for having dared to speak to her directly without benefit of a formal introduction.

“Mina, this is Detective…” VanDamm realized he hadn’t bothered to get Frank’s name.

“Detective Sergeant Malloy,” Frank supplied. If he’d hoped to impress them with his title, he failed.

Mina simply stared at him in acknowledgment.

“Mina doesn’t know the reason Alicia ran away either. It’s a mystery to us all,” VanDamm assured him.

“She ran away because she’s an ungrateful little baggage,” Mina said, making her father a liar. “After all Father has done for her, this is the way she repays us. Running away, getting herself murdered and bringing disgrace down on all our heads. How will we ever go out in polite society again?”

“I doubt she got herself murdered just to ruin your social life,” Frank tried, unable to resist. But it was obviously impossible to insult the VanDamms, at least by criticizing their finer feelings. They merely stared back at him blankly. He sighed in defeat. “Mr. VanDamm, I’ll need for you to go down to the morgue and identify the body.”

He frowned at that, but Mina was positively outraged. “How dare you ask my father to go to a place like that? Don’t you know who he is?”

“He’s the father of a murdered girl,” Frank said. “We need positive identification of the victim. You wouldn’t want to bury some stranger, would you?”

“I’m afraid the officer is right, Mina,” VanDamm said reasonably. “We must be sure it’s Alicia.”

Mina opened her mouth, but she must have changed her mind about whatever she’d been about to say. She closed it again with a snap and took a moment to collect herself. Then she smiled a queer little smile that gave Frank gooseflesh because it looked so forced, and she said, “You mustn’t do this,” using a voice that surprised Frank. Suddenly, she was kind and gentle, as if speaking to someone infirm. “No one will blame you for not wanting to see her like that. No one can expect you to put yourself through such an ordeal.”

VanDamm considered this for a moment, wanting to agree with her, and then he remembered something. “I thought you said someone already identified her,” he said to Frank. “An old family friend.”

Mina looked shocked, as well she might. “A family friend?” she echoed incredulously.

“She didn’t exactly identify her. Your daughter’s name was sewn into her jacket, and this woman said she’d thought the girl looked like Miss Mina VanDamm. She knew you, she said.”

“Who is she?” Mina asked skeptically.

“Sarah Brandt. She’s a midwife.”

Mina widened her eyes at him. “I know no such person, although I suppose it’s possible she may know of me. We’re one of the oldest Knickerbocker families in New York.”

She didn’t have to tell Frank, of course. Everybody knew the Dutch families-dubbed Knickerbockers ages ago because of the knee britches the early arrivals had worn-had been the first to settle in what was then New Amsterdam. Frank didn’t think that made them particularly special, just because their ancestors had fled persecution a hundred and fifty years before his had, but that was the way of the world. Mina VanDamm seemed intent on making the most of it, too.

“In any case,” Frank explained doggedly, “Mrs. Brandt hadn’t seen Alicia in a number of years, so she couldn’t make a positive identification.”

Mina VanDamm sighed to show her impatience, then she had another thought. “Alfred can go, then,” she told her father. “He’ll recognize Alicia as well as any of us.”