Malloy glanced at Sarah. “Would your father lie to protect him?”
“No.” Her father had many faults, but he valued his reputation as a man of his word, and he certainly wouldn’t protect a killer.
“Then that’s a foolish lie, VanDamm,” Malloy tried, but VanDamm didn’t blink.
“It’s the God’s truth, I swear it. I’d never hurt Alicia.”
“You’d never hurt Alicia!” Sarah echoed horrified. “You raped her and got her with child! Your own daughter!”
“It wasn’t rape!” he cried in anguish. “Alicia was willing. She loved me, and I loved her. She was everything to me.” His voice broke, and he covered his face with one hand, still supporting himself with the other.
“Father, don’t!” Mina pleaded, wrapping her arms around him. “You still have me!”
He tried to push her away, his discomfort obvious. “Mina, please,” he tried, but she clung to him fiercely.
“I love you, too!” she insisted. “I’ve always loved you! We still have each other, and now it can be just like it was before she came!”
Sarah watched in horrified fascination as the father and daughter each struggled to prevail, but before the battle could be decided, a voice said, “Can’t you see he doesn’t want you?”
They all looked up in surprise to see Mrs. VanDamm on the stairs. She wore a frilly dressing gown which she clutched to her throat with one of her clawlike hands. With the other, she held onto the banister, as if afraid she might pitch headlong down the stairs if she let go.
“He doesn’t want you anymore, Mina,” she told her daughter again. “He hasn’t wanted you for a very long time. You’re too old. When are you going to accept that?”
“Shut up, Francisca,” VanDamm said, a little more vigorously. “Go back to your room.”
“What do you mean, he doesn’t want her anymore?” Malloy asked before Sarah could.
Francisca VanDamm lifted her chin, savoring the novelty of having such a large audience. She had probably not enjoyed this much attention in years. “You didn’t think Alicia was the only daughter he used, did you?”
Plainly, Malloy hadn’t thought of this, and Sarah hadn’t had time to. She needed only another moment to determine something else. “Did he get Mina with child, too? Is that how Alicia was born?”
“What are you talking about?” Malloy asked.
“She’s crazy!” Mina cried. “Don’t listen to her!”
“He told me I’d have to pretend she was mine,” Mrs. VanDamm said, “or else he’d give the baby away to strangers. Now I realize he was only trying to frighten me. He had no intention of giving her away. He wanted her for himself, especially when he saw how beautiful she was. He used to stand over her cradle and unbutton his pants-”
“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.