The House That Jack Built by Robert Asprin & Linda Evans

“We’re off for Cheltenham,” their newfound friends said as they came to the turning for London, “so we’ll say goodbye and luck to you. Kate, look here, I’ve got a pawn ticket for a flannel shirt up there in London, why don’t you take it? It’s only for two pence, but the shirt might fit your old man, there, and I’d say he needs a bit of a warm shirt, what with that cough of his.”

“Thank you.” Catharine accepted the crumpled pawn ticket gratefully. “I worry about John’s health, with the cold weather coming and us with no money. It’s good to us, you are.” She slipped the ticket into one of her pockets, next to the wrinkled letter she’d bought from Annie Chapman, poor soul, the letter she’d been too terrified to have translated, after what had happened to poor Annie. And Dark Annie had confessed to buying the letters from Polly Nichols, who was also brutally dead.

Maybe the smartest thing would be to get rid of the letter altogether?

Just throw it away or burn it, never even try to have it translated?

As they waved goodbye and set out walking again, taking the fork in the road that would lead them back to London, Catharine stole worried glances at John. His color wasn’t good and his breathing was labored. His kidney complaint had flared up again, too, given the number of times he had to stop along the roadside and from the way he rubbed his side and back from time to time, when he thought she wasn’t looking. They needed money for a doctor and medicine, just as poor Annie had, and they’d very little left to sell or pawn to obtain it. They’d so counted on the money from the hop harvest to see them through the winter and now there wouldn’t be anything in reserve at all, with the coldest months yet to come.