Daisy is pushed into the canal and killed by Miss Frost after Albert Pinnegar’s abuse has left Daisy pregnant and frightened for her brother, Tommy Branning. The murder is not shown as it happens: Miss Frost reveals it during her later confrontation with Sunday Small, making the confession both the confirmation of Daisy’s death and a turning point in the danger facing Sunday.

Causes and Background

Daisy’s pregnancy follows Pinnegar forcing her to go to his office and assaulting her. When Daisy threatened to tell, he warned that he would send Tommy to Hatter’s Hall. The threat made disclosure perilous not only for Daisy but also for the brother she was trying to protect. Sunday discovered the pregnancy after Daisy had been working at the Spooner household and, fearing that telling others could expose Daisy to the kind of treatment Cissie had suffered, chose to keep the discovery quiet for the time being.

Cissie’s experience gives that fear a specific precedent. After telling Sunday that Pinnegar had made her pregnant, Cissie was promised care for herself and her baby but instead was taken away in an asylum carriage. She protested that she had been told she could care for her child; Miss Frost denied her accusation against Pinnegar and helped discredit her. Later, Lady Huntley learned that Cissie had been classified as dangerous and was told that her baby had died at birth. This history does not establish why Miss Frost killed Daisy, but it shows the vulnerability surrounding Daisy’s pregnancy: the women had reason to fear both Pinnegar’s power and the institutions that could separate mothers from their children.

Daisy’s feelings about the pregnancy were conflicted and painful. She called the unborn child evil because it carried a connection to Pinnegar, and asked whether it could be given away. Sunday opposed that response by recalling her own abandonment at the workhouse and asking Daisy to consider what rejection might mean to the child. The conversation establishes the emotional and social pressures around the pregnancy, but it does not show Daisy resolving them before her death.

The Killing and Its Disclosure

The novel does not stage the attack directly. Instead, the reader learns what happened when Miss Frost holds Sunday captive in a cellar. While threatening Sunday, Miss Frost admits that she pushed Daisy, along with the child she was carrying, into the canal. She says Daisy fought back, and contrasts the killing with the death of Pinnegar, whom she says she stabbed the previous night. The confession places Daisy’s murder amid Miss Frost’s other violence, while leaving the precise circumstances of the canal attack outside the scene.

Miss Frost’s words confirm both Daisy’s death and the death of her unborn child. Her account is a boast delivered to frighten Sunday, not an independent investigation or a neutral report. Nevertheless, the scene presents the confession as the decisive disclosure: Sunday understands that Daisy suffered and died, and Miss Frost makes clear that she herself was responsible. The account supplies no evidence that Daisy’s body was recovered or that any public inquiry into her death followed.

Consequences and Significance

For Sunday, the revelation transforms her fear for Daisy into knowledge that there is no longer any way to protect or help her friend. Her anger at Miss Frost is sharpened by imagining Daisy’s terror, even as Sunday remains bound and at risk herself. The disclosure also clarifies the scale of the threat: Miss Frost has killed Daisy and Pinnegar and now intends to harm Sunday, whom she blames for taking Pinnegar from her and for losing her workhouse position.

The murder completes a chain of harm begun by Pinnegar’s abuse and sustained by threats that constrained Daisy’s choices. It also gives the pregnancy a tragic outcome: Daisy is killed before the child can be born, so neither mother nor child survives. By revealing the crime through Miss Frost’s later confession rather than depicting it directly, the narrative makes the truth arrive at the moment Sunday is herself in danger. Daisy’s fate is thus disclosed as part of the reckoning that exposes Miss Frost’s violence and precipitates Sunday’s rescue.