The House That Jack Built by Robert Asprin & Linda Evans

Her eyes closed over a look of utter horror. “Lady, help me . . .”

Losing patience, Lachley poured the drug down her throat, waiting for it to take effect, then put her into a deep trance. She lay without moving, scarcely even breathing beneath the coverlet he straightened over her. “Now, then,” he said gently, “tell me about the letters.”

Her lips moved. A bare whisper of sound escaped her. “Eight letters . . .”

“Tell me about the eight letters. Who has them?”

“Morgan . . . down in the vaulted room with the tree and the flame that always burns . . .” A shudder tore through her despite the grip of the strong medication. “Polly is dead . . . and poor Annie, who could scarcely breathe . . . Stride carries Eddy’s words beneath the knife . . . Kate fears the letter in her pocket, picks hops in the countryside, afraid to touch it . . . and the pretty girl in Miller’s Court, she’ll die cut into pieces, poor child, for a letter she learned to read in Cardiff . . .”

“What girl in Miller’s Court?”

Ianira’s eyes had closed, however, so deep in the grip of the drug that no amount of slapping would rouse her. Lachley paced the bedroom in agitation. What girl in Miller’s Court? Annie Chapman hadn’t mentioned any such person! He narrowed his eyes, thinking back to that last conversation with the doomed prostitute. They’d been interrupted, he recalled, just as she’d been telling him who she’d sold the letters to, mentioning Elizabeth Stride and Catharine Eddowes. He’d thought she was finished, after giving those two names, but wondered now if perhaps that interruption had kept him from learning the name of a third person in possession of Eddy’s incriminating letters?