The House That Jack Built by Robert Asprin & Linda Evans

The video she had already obtained of Lachley was worth a literal fortune, video footage showing him in company with the young prince, footage of him meeting the soon-to-be-notorious Aleister Crowley, and with the founders of the Golden Dawn magical order, Mathers and Waite and the rest. Whether or not these occultists were also involved in the conspiracy of the letters, Dominica didn’t know. That, too, she intended to discover.

“We’re going to win that Carson Historical Video Prize!” she told Guy Pendergast as they set out from the flat they’d rented in SoHo. “Lachley will strike again September 30th. The night of the double event . . .”

“Which means Elizabeth Stride and Catharine Eddowes must have possession of the letters he’s after!”

“Yes. And Mary Kelly must have another one. Guy . . .” Dominica mused, slanting a glance up at her partner. “How good are you at picking pockets?”

“Picking pockets?” he echoed, brows drifting upward in startlement.

She smiled. “Well, it occurs to me that we could probably unlock the key to this whole thing if we could lay hands on one of those letters. Just long enough to photograph it. Then we slip it back into the pocket you steal it from, long before he kills Stride and Eddowes. All we have to do then is follow him after the double-event murders. Videotape those, then collect our Carson Prize. And rather an enormous amount of money,” she ended smugly.

Guy Pendergast smiled slowly. “Dominica, my pet, you are brilliant.”

“Of course I’m brilliant! I didn’t get where I am by being stupid. We’ll have to tackle Stride, since Catharine Eddowes is leaving London to head out to Kent, picking hops. It might be interesting to videotape Eddowes out there, working the harvest.” She frowned. “You know, it doesn’t make sense, that. If she’s in possession of something so valuable that Lachley is committing brutal murder to obtain it, you’d think a woman like Catharine Eddowes would try to convert it into cash. She’s plagued her own daughter for money so often, the poor thing moves every few weeks around South London, just to keep her mother from tapping her for tuppence. Yet Kate Eddowes walks—walks, mind you, in this weather—all the way from London to rural Kent, just to break her back working in wet fields picking hops as a migrant agricultural laborer.”