At one of the cottage windows, a strikingly beautiful young woman with glorious strawberry blond hair leaned out the window to number thirteen. “Joseph! Come in for breakfast, love!”
Margo started violently. Then stared as a thickset man hurried across the narrow court to open the door to number thirteen. He gave the beautiful blonde girl a hearty kiss. My God! It’s Mary Kelly! And her unemployed lover, the fish-porter, Joseph Barnett! Mary Kelly’s laughter floated out through the open window, followed by her light, sweet voice singing a popular tune. “Only a Violet I Plucked From My Mother’s Grave . . .” Margo shuddered. It was the same song she’d be heard singing the night of her brutal murder.
“Let’s get out of here!” Margo choked out roughly. She headed for the narrow doorway that led back to Dorset Street. She had barely reached the chandler’s shop when Shahdi Feroz caught up to her.
“Margo, what is it?”
Margo found dark eyes peering intently into her own. Shadows of worry darkened their depths even further. “Nothing,” Margo said brusquely. “Just a little shook up, that’s all. Thinking about what’s going to happen to that poor girl . . .”
Mary Kelly had been the most savagely mutilated of all, pieces of her strewn all over the room. And nothing Margo could do, no warning Margo could give, would save her from that. She understood, in a terrible flash of understanding, how that ancient prophetess of myth, Cassandra of Troy, for whom Ianira Cassondra was named, must have felt, looking into the future and glimpsing nothing but death—with no way to change any of it. The feeling was far worse than during Margo’s other down-time trips, worse, even, than she’d expected, knowing it was bound to strike at some point, during her Ripper Watch duties.