Ripping Time by Robert Asprin & Linda Evans

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Margo Smith glanced at her wristwatch for the tenth time in three minutes, fizzing like a can of soda shaken violently and popped open. Less than seven hours! Just seven more hours and she would step through the Britannia Gate into history. And, coincidentally, into her fiancé’s arms. She could hardly wait to see Malcolm Moore’s face when she showed up at the Time Tours gatehouse in London, guiding the final contingent of the Ripper Watch Team. Malcolm had been in London for a month, already, acclimating the other Ripper Watch Team members. Margo hadn’t lived through four longer, lonelier weeks since that gawdawful misadventure of hers in southern Africa, going after Goldie Morran’s ill-fated diamonds.

But she’d learned her lessons—dozens of them, in fact—and after months of the hardest work she’d ever tackled, her gruelling efforts had finally paid off. Her grandfather was letting her go back down time again. And not through just any old gate, either. The Britannia! To study the most famous murder mystery since the disappearance of the Dauphin during the French Revolution. All that stood between her and the chance to earn herself a place in scholarly history—not to mention Malcolm Moore’s embrace—was seven hours and one shooting lesson.

One she dreaded.

The elite crowd gathered in the time terminal’s weapons range talked nonstop in a fashion unique to an assemblage of late-arriving wealthy tourists, world-class scholars, and self-important reporters—each hotly defending his or her own pet theories as to “whodunnit.” They ignored her utterly, even when she stuffed earmuffs and lexan-lensed safety glasses into their gesticulating, waving hands. Most of the students stationed along the firing line were tourists holding ordinary tickets, many of them for the Wild West tour set to leave tomorrow.