"One common interest is very plainly indicated in these reports and in what McCann has told us."
"What do you mean, Ricori?"
"Babies," he answered. "Or at least-children."
Braile nodded: "I noticed that."
"Consider the reports," Ricori went on. "Miss Bailey is described as charitable and devoted to children.
Her charities, presumably, took the form of helping them. Marshall, the banker, was interested in
child-welfare. The bricklayer, the acrobat and the trapeze performer had children. Anita was a child.
Peters and the Darnley woman were, to use McCann's expression, 'daffy' over a baby."
"But," I objected, "if they are murders, they are the work of one hand. It is beyond range of possibility
that all of the eight were interested in one baby, one child, or one group of children."