A choked sound escaped pale lips. "No..."
He frowned. "No? Of course you shall marry me, dear girl. I cannot have you living under my roof, unmarried. People will talk and talk is one thing I cannot afford."
She was struggling to speak. "My husband... children..."
Astonishment swept through him. "Married? You are married?" Then he began to laugh. "Widowed, you mean. I shot your dear husband dead in the street. Put a bullet into his head."
She strained away from him, dark eyes wide with revulsion. "No! Not Jenna... Marcus."
Lachley frowned again. "The man I shot was not your husband?"
The girl lay trembling, tears sliding down her face. She had given him only one name to call her by, despite the drugs he'd fed her, refusing against all efforts he'd made thus far to reveal her full name.
"What is your husband's surname, girl?"
She shook her head. "What... what is a surname?"
"A last name!" he snapped, growing impatient. "Dammit, I know they use surnames even in Greece!"
"Not Greek..." she whispered. "Poor Marcus, sold in Rome... He'll be frantic..."
She was babbling again, raving out of her head. He gripped her wrists, shook her. "Tell me your last name, girl!"
"Cassondra!" she shrieked the word at him, fighting his hold on her. "I am Ianira, Cassondra of Ephesus!"
"Talk sense! There is no city of Ephesus, just a ruin buried only the ancients know where! How did you come to London?"
"Through the gate..."
They were back to that again. The sodding gate, whatever the deuce that was. She babbled about it every time he questioned her. Lachley changed his line of attack. "Tell me about the letters. Eddy's letters."
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?
He swore savagely, wondering what in God's name to do now.
The bitch must be found, of course, found and silenced.
She lived in Miller's Court, Ianira had said. He knew the place from his childhood. Miller's Court was not a large space, after all. How many girls from Cardiff could there be, living in that dismal little square? He closed his eyes against such a monstrous spectre. A Welsh girl, in possession of Eddy's Welsh letters... Had she already sent a blackmail demand to the palace? Were Eddy's power and position in mortal peril, after all? Because Annie Chapman, the stupid bitch, had neglected to mention a third recipient of her letters?
He drew a deep, calming breath. Surely no blackmail demand had been sent, yet. Eddy would've come to him in a high state of panic, if one had. Hopefully, Polly and Annie's grisly fate had frightened the Welsh tart too deeply to act. Still, she had got to be found and done away with, the sooner the better. God, would this nightmare never come to an end? With yet another woman to trace and destroy, perhaps Lachley ought not send his damning Ripper letter to the press, after all? A moment's consideration, however, convinced him to risk it, anyway. Maybrick would be in London at the end of the week, so this girl in Miller's Court could be eliminated on the same night as Stride and Eddowes. Three women in one weekend was a bit much, true...
But he hadn't any real choice.
He spared a glance for the mysterious Ianira, pale and silent in her bed. "You," he muttered aloud, "must wait a bit. Once this business is done, however, I will discover the identity of your husband."
Christ, yet another murder to be undertaken.
This mess occasionally bade fair to drive him insane.
The silence in the dusty little Colorado mining town was so utterly complete, Skeeter could hear the distant scream of an eagle somewhere over the sunbaked mountains. The scrape of his chair as he dragged it harshly around and sat down caused several women to jump. Julius' too-young face, waxen with that ghastly, bluish color death brought, floated in his mind's eye, demanding vengeance. The dark look he bent on Sid Kaederman went unnoticed, because the detective was busy glaring at Orson Travers. Clearly, the Time Tours guide had stalled him off until Kit and Skeeter's return. The silence lay so thick, the creak of wooden floorboards as tourists shifted sounded loud as gunshots.
The moment Kit settled into an easy stance beside Skeeter's chair, Sid Kaederman growled, "All right, Travers, you want to tell us just what's been going on?"
"Yes, let's have the details, please," Kit agreed. "This is messier than you can possibly guess."
Orson Travers, an unhappy man made monumentally unhappier by Kit's pronouncement, cleared his throat. "There wasn't any hint of trouble on the way up here. Oh, it was a rowdy enough bunch, lots of high spirits. We packed our gear in by mule from Colorado Springs, whipped the town into shape for the competition, refurbished a couple of houses to bunk down in, built the target stands and laid out the course of fire for the running action events. All that prep work was part of the package tour, using nineteenth-century techniques to build the competition course and refurbish the camp. And we planned the wedding, of course—"
"Wedding?" Kaederman interrupted, startled.
A pretty girl in a muslin gown blushed crimson and leaned against a tall, gangly kid in buckskins. He grinned. "Got ourselves hitched proper, brought a preacher with us and all, held the ceremony over at the trading post last week."
"Oh, it was so wonderful!" his bride put in excitedly. "There were real Indians and mountain men and everything! And the silliest salesman you ever saw, selling ordinary crescent wrenches, called them a new high-tech invention out of Sweden, patented only three years ago. People were paying outrageous prices for them! It was amazing, I'd never seen anything like it, fur trappers and miners buying crescent wrenches!" The blushing bride was clearly determined not to let the tragedy of a double murder mar her honeymoon.
Kit smiled. "Congratulations, I'm sure it was a wedding to remember. Now, what the hell happened?" He swung his gaze back to the Time Tours guide.
Travers sighed. "The action and endurance course runs through the hills and gullies around town. The idea is, you stalk and shoot every full round of the course over a period of several hours, to test your endurance and accuracy under pressure. Well, Cassie Coventina, or rather, the kid we thought was Cassie Coventina, was moving steadily through it on horseback, just as planned. We put spotters out along the route to act as judges and scorekeepers, but she—I mean he—never made it to the first target. Let me tell you, it was one helluva shock, when Dr. Booker stripped that kid off and we discovered Cassie Coventina was a teenage boy in drag!"