‘Don’t badger her, Nelly.’ Realizing that the child was in a state of shock and in danger of being overawed by the presence of herself and Marlow, Emma thought the best thing was to let the child recover enough to explain lucidly exactly what had brought her to this door at such a deadly hour, and in such terror.

‘No! No!’ When Nelly made an effort to help Sal into the house, she was astonished at the vehemence with which the girl fought her off. ‘STOP HIM, Nelly… we’ve got to stop him! He’s killed Tilly, and he’s taken the young ’uns.’ The memory of the awful scenes she had witnessed that night was too much. Sobbing loudly, the child fell to the floor, her arms doubled beneath her head and her whole body helpless in the grip of convulsive sobs.

As Nelly made to stoop and raise the child, Emma came forward, gentle in her manner and soothing little Sal with her low, soft voice. A terrible suspicion had crept into Emma’s heart. A suspicion which only this small girl, Molly’s girl, could answer. ‘We will stop him, Sal,’ she told her, ‘but we need to know his name. Who killed Tilly? Who took the young ’uns?’

‘The man! The man who wants to kill my mammy too!’ Sal could hardly speak for the choking sobs, her vivid blue eyes raised to Emma’s tender, loving face – the face of her own grandmother, although she was not yet aware of that. ‘I want my mammy back,’ she cried now, ‘please, missus… I want my mammy back!’

‘We’ll get your mammy back, sweetheart,’ Emma promised, ‘but first… we need to know who the man is. Can you tell me his name?’

For one agonizing moment, when little Sal raised her head in response to Emma’s question, it was thought that all would be revealed. She opened her mouth to speak. But the name they all waited to hear was lost in a whisper as the exhausted child sank away in a dead faint.

Tenderly Marlow carried the small, limp figure up the stairs, where it was put carefully to bed, and the doctor urgently summoned. ‘Later, when she’s rested,’ he told the anxious Emma, ‘we will know who “the man” is.’ The intimate smile he gave her was a curious yet reassuring one. It came to Emma in that moment how Marlow also might have been secretly mulling over all the events that had taken place regarding Molly. Events that were deeply woven into his own life, and into the life and death of old Sal, the beloved tramp.

One thing Emma believed was that Marlow could not be agonizing over whether Molly was his own daughter. Because Emma had never confided the truth in him, and so he knew nothing of her either conceiving or giving birth to his girl-child. That was the way that Emma had wanted it, for it would have served no real purpose for Marlow to know, except to cause him heartache.