Sarah didn’t have to push her way into the Ottos’ flat. The women parted to allow her to enter, apparently as grateful for her arrival as the policeman had been.

Agnes Otto sat at the table in her small kitchen with her head on her arms, sobbing as if her heart would break. Plainly, Sarah would get no straight answers from her.

She turned to the women still hovering in the doorway. “Is she in labor?”

“We do not know,” one of them said. “But we were afraid, with the shock of it…”

Sarah nodded. Shock had a way of hurrying things along, and Agnes was due anytime now. Sarah set her medical bag on the table and started to unbutton the jacket that fashion dictated she wear out in public, in spite of the heat. From the front room of the flat, the one facing the street, Sarah could hear the cries of a young child. That would be Agnes’s daughter, who was about two. Looking around, she found Agnes’s son, a boy of about four. He was huddled in the comer, practically under the sink, and staring at his mother with wide, terrified eyes.

“Would one of you take care of the children, please?” Sarah asked as she rolled up her sleeves. “They shouldn’t be here.”

Two of the women hurried to do her bidding, removing the children from the flat and leaving her alone with Agnes. “Do you want me to send for your husband?” Sarah asked, gently stroking the other woman’s shoulders in a gesture of comfort.

Agnes didn’t hesitate. She shook her head vehemently, then made an effort to raise her head. Her usually pale face was swollen and blotched with weeping. She brushed at her running nose with the cuff of her sleeve, and said, “He will not come. He would lose his day’s wages.”

Some men would count that a small cost to be able to comfort a pregnant wife, but Agnes knew her husband better than Sarah did. “How are you feeling? Are you having any pains?”