And brought instant attention from an older woman who leaned out a second-story window. "Where d'you think you're going, eh?" the irate resident shouted down. "I know your kind, missies! How many times I got to tell your kind o' girls, keep out me yard! Don't want nuffink to do wiv the likes o' you round me very own ‘ouse! Go on wiv you, now, get on!"
Caught red-handed trying to sneak into the yard, Margo did the only thing she could do, the one thing any East End hussy would've been expected to do. She let the door close with a bang and shouted back up, "It's me gormless father I'm after, nuffink else! Lager lout's said ‘e ‘ad a job, workin' down to Lime'ouse docks, an' where do I see ‘im, but coming out the Blue Boy public ‘ouse, ‘at's where! Followed ‘im I did, wiv me ma, ‘ere. Sore ‘im climb over the fence into this ‘ere yard. You seen ‘im, lady? You do, an' you shout for a bottle an' stopper, y'hear?"
"Don't you go tellin' an old woman any of your bloody Jackanories! Off wiv you, or I'll call for that copper me own self!"
"Ah, come on, ma," Margo said loudly to Shahdi Feroz, taking her arm, "senile owd git ain't no use. We'll catch ‘im, ‘e gots to come ‘ome sometime, ain't ‘e?"
As soon as they had gained enough distance, Shahdi Feroz cast a curious glance over her shoulder. "How in the world will Annie Chapman slip through that door with seventeen people asleep in the house and nobody hear a thing?"
Margo shot the scholar an intent glance. "Good question. Maybe one of the working girls got tired of having that busybody interfere with using a perfectly suitable business location? One of them could've poured lamp oil on the hinges?"
"It's entirely possible," Dr. Feroz said thoughtfully. "Pity we haven't the resources to put twenty-four hour surveillance on that door for the next week. That was quick thinking, by the way," she added with a brief smile. "When she shouted like that, I very nearly lost my footing. I had no idea what to say. All I could imagine was being placed in jail." She shivered, leaving Margo to wonder if she'd ever seen the inside of a down-time gaol, or if she just had a vivid imagination. Margo, for one, had no intention of discovering what a Victorian jail cell looked like, certainly not from the inside. She had far too vivid a memory of sixteenth-century Portuguese ones.
"Huh," she muttered. "When you're caught stealing the cookies, the only defense is a counterattack with a healthy dose of misdirection."
Shahdi Feroz smiled. "And were you caught stealing the cookies often, my dear Miss Smith?"
Margo thrust away memory of too many beatings and didn't answer.
"Miss Smith?"
Margo knew that tone. That was the Something's wrong, can I help? tone people used when they'd inadvertently bumped too close to something Margo didn't want bumped. So she said briskly, "Let's see, next stop is Dorset Street, where Elizabeth Stride was killed in Dutfield's Yard. We shouldn't have any trouble getting in there, at least. Mr. Dutfield has moved his construction yard, so the whole place has been deserted for months." She very carefully did not look at Shahdi Feroz.
The older woman studied her for a long, dangerous moment more, then sighed.
Margo relaxed. She'd let it go, thank God. Margo didn't want to share those particular memories with anyone, not even Malcolm or Kit. Especially Malcolm or Kit. She realized that Shahdi Feroz, like so many others since it had happened, meant well; but raking it all up again wouldn't help anyone or solve anything. So she kept up a steady stream of chatter about nothing whatsoever as her most useful barrier to well-intentioned prying. She talked all the way down Brick Lane and Osborn Street, across Whitechapel Road, down Plumber Street, past jammed wagon traffic on Commercial Road, clear down to Berner Street, which left her badly out of breath, since Berner Street was all the way across the depth of Whitechapel parish from number twenty-nine Hanbury.
Dutfield's Yard was a deserted, open square which could be reached only by an eighteen-foot alleyway leading in from Berner Street. A double gate between wooden posts boasted a wooden gate to the right and a wicker gate to the left, to be used when the main gate was closed. White lettering on the wooden gate proclaimed the yard as the property of W. Hindley, Sack Manufacturer and A. Dutfield, Van and Cart Builder. The wicker gate creaked when Margo pushed it open and stepped through. She held it for Shahdi Feroz, who lifted her skirts clear of the rubbish blown against the base by wind from the previous night's storm.
The alleyway, a dreary, dim passage even in daylight, was bordered on the north by the International Workers' Educational Club and to the south by three artisans' houses, remodeled from older, existing structures. Once into the yard proper, Margo found herself surrounded by decaying old buildings. To the west lay the sack factory, where men and teenaged boys could be seen at work through dull, soot-grimed windows. Beside the abandoned cart factory stood a dusty, dilapidated stable which clearly hadn't been used since Arthur Dutfield had moved his business to Pinchin Street. Terraced cottages to the south closed in the yard completely. The odor of tobacco wafted into the yard from these cottages, where cigarettes were being assembled by hand, using sweatshop labor. The whir of sewing machines, operated by foot treadles, floated through a couple of open windows in one of the cottages; a small sign announced that this establishment was home to two separate tailors. The rear windows of the two-story, barn-like International Workers' Educational Club overlooked the yard, looming above it as the major feature closing in this tiny, isolated bit of real estate. The club, a hotbed of radical political activity and renowned for its Jewish ownership, also served as a major community center for educational and cultural events.
Standing in the center of the empty construction yard, Margo gazed thoughtfully at the rear windows of the popular hall. "Bold as brass, wasn't he?" she muttered.
Shahdi Feroz was studying the yard's only access, the eighteen-foot blind alley. She glanced up, first at Margo, then at the windows Margo was gazing at. "Yes," the scholar agreed. "The hall was—will be—filled with people that night."
It would be the Association's secretary, in fact, jeweler Louis Diemshutz, who would discover Elizabeth Stride's body some four weeks hence. Margo frowned slowly as she gazed, narrow-eyed, at the ranks of windows in the popular meeting hall. "Doesn't it strike you as odd that he chose this particular spot to kill Long Liz Stride?"
Shahdi frowned. "Odd? But it is a perfectly natural spot for him to choose. It is completely isolated from the street. And it will be utterly dark, that night. What more natural place for a prostitute to take her customer than a deserted stable in an abandoned yard?"
"Yes..." Margo was trying to put a more concrete reason to the niggling feeling that this was still an odd place for Jack to have killed his victim. "But she didn't want to come back here. She was struggling to escape when Israel Schwartz saw her. Given the descriptions he gave of the two men, I'm betting it's our mystery doctor who knocked her to the ground and Maybrick who ran Schwartz off."
Shahdi turned her full attention to Margo. "You know, that has always puzzled me about Elizabeth Stride," the Ripper scholar mused. "Why she struggled. As a working prostitute, this is not in character. And she had turned down a customer earlier that evening."