Anno Dracula (24 page)

Beauregard blushed at her forthrightness. The policeman was scarlet-faced, rubbing his angry wounds.

‘The bloodline of Vlad Tepes is polluted,’ she continued. ‘One would have to be addle-pated with disease to drink from such a well. But London is full of very sick vampires. The Ripper could as easily be of their number as be some warm grudge-holder.’

‘He could also be after the women’s blood because he himself wants to become un-dead. You’ve the fountain of youth flowing in your veins. If our Ripper is warm but sick, he might be desperate enough to seek such measures.’

‘There are easier ways of becoming a vampire. Of course, a lot of people distrust easy ways. Your suggestion has some merit. But why so many victims? One mother-in-darkness would suffice. And why murder? Any one of the women would have turned him for a shilling.’

They left the square and began drifting back towards Commercial Street. The thoroughfare was at the centre of the case. Annie Chapman and Lulu Schön had been killed in streets off the road.
The police station from which the investigation was being conducted was there, and the Café de Paris, and Toynbee Hall. Last night, at some point, the Ripper must have crossed Commercial Street, and perhaps even have strolled, bloody knife under his coat, along its extension south of Whitechapel High Street, the Commercial Road, following his own route to Limehouse and the docks. There was a persistent rumour that the murderer was a seaman.

‘Maybe he’s a simple madman,’ he said. ‘Possessed of no more purpose than an orang-utan with a straight razor.’

‘Dr Seward claims madmen are not so simple. Their actions might appear random and senseless, but there is always some pattern. Come at it from a dozen different ways and you eventually begin to understand, to see the world as the madman does.’

‘And then we can catch him?’

‘Dr Seward would say “cure him”.’

They passed a poster listing the names of the latest criminals to be publicly impaled. Tyburn was a forest of dying thieves, exquisites and seditionists.

Beauregard considered. ‘I’m afraid there’ll only be one cure for this madman.’

At the corner of Wentworth Street, they saw a gathering of policemen and officials in Goulston Street. Lestrade and Abberline were among them, clustered around a thin man with a sad moustache and a silk hat. It was Sir Charles Warren, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, dragged down to a despised quarter of his parish. The group were standing by the doorway of a block of recently-built Model Dwellings.

Beauregard sauntered over, the vampire girl with him. Something important, he assumed, was under discussion. Lestrade moved aside
to let them into the group. Beauregard was surprised to find Lord Godalming with the civilian dignitaries. The new-born wore a large hat to shade his face, and was puffing on a cigar.

‘Who is this man?’ Sir Charles asked grumpily, indicating Beauregard and ignoring Geneviève as beneath his notice. ‘You, fellow, go away. This is official business. Chop-chop, scurry off!’

Having made his reputation in the Kaffir War, Sir Charles was used to treating everyone without official rank as if they were a native.

Godalming explained, ‘Mr Beauregard represents the Diogenes Club.’

The Commissioner, watery-eyed in the early morning sun, swallowed his irritation. Beauregard understood why the police resented his presence, but was not above taking a little pleasure in Sir Charles’s discomfort.

‘Very well,’ Sir Charles said. ‘I am sure your discretion is to be trusted.’

Lestrade made a disgusted face behind the Commissioner. Sir Charles was losing the support of his own men.

‘Halse,’ Lestrade said, ‘show us what you found.’

A square of packing-case rested against the fascia by the doorway. Halse, a Detective Constable, lifted the make-shift guard. A bloated rat, body as big as a rugby ball, shot out and darted between the Commissioner’s polished shoes, squeaking like rusty nails on a slate. The constable disclosed a chalk scrawl, grey-white against black bricks.

THE VAMPYRES

ARE NOT THE MEN THAT WILL BE

BLAMED FOR NOTHING

‘So, obviously the vampires are to be blamed for something,’ deduced the Commissioner, astutely.

Halse held up a ragged piece of once-white cloth, spotted with blood. ‘This was in the doorway, sir. It’s part of an apron.’

‘The Eddowes woman is wearing the rest of it,’ Abberline said.

‘You are certain?’ Sir Charles asked.

‘It’s not been checked. But I’ve just come from Golden Lane Mortuary, and I saw the other piece. Same stains, same type of tear. They’ll fit like puzzle pieces.’

Sir Charles rumbled wordlessly.

‘Could the Ripper be one of us?’ asked Godalming, echoing Geneviève’s earlier musings.

‘One of you,’ Beauregard muttered.

‘The Ripper is obviously trying to throw us off,’ put in Abberline. ‘That’s an educated man trying to make us think he’s an illiterate. Only one misspelling, and a double negative not even the thickest costermonger would actually use.’

‘Like the Jack the Ripper letter?’ asked Geneviève.

Abberline thought. ‘Personally, I reckon that was a smart circulation drummer at the
Whitechapel Star
playing silly buggers to drive up sales. This is a different hand, and this is the Ripper. It’s too close to be a coincidence.’

‘The graffito was not here yesterday?’ Beauregard asked.

‘The beat man swears not.’

Constable Halse agreed with the inspector.

‘Wipe it off,’ Sir Charles said.

Nobody did anything.

‘There’ll be mob rule, a mass uprising, disorder in the streets. We’re still few and the warm are many.’

The Commissioner took his own handkerchief to the chalk, and rubbed it away. Nobody protested at the destruction of evidence, but Beauregard saw a look pass between the detectives.

‘There, job done,’ Sir Charles said. ‘Sometimes I think I have to do everything myself.’

Beauregard saw a narrow-minded impulsiveness that might have passed for stouthearted valour at Rorke’s Drift or Lucknow, and understood just how Sir Charles could make a decision that ended in Bloody Sunday.

The dignitaries drifted away, back to their cabs and clubs and comfort.

‘Shall I see you and Penny at the Stokers’?’ Godalming asked.

‘When this matter is at a conclusion.’

‘Give my kindest regards to Penny.’

‘I’ll be sure to.’

Godalming followed Sir Charles. And the East End coppers stayed behind to clean up.

‘It should have been photographed,’ Halse said. ‘It was a clue. Dammit, a clue.’

‘Easy, lad,’ said Abberline.

‘Right,’ said Lestrade. ‘I want the cells full by sundown. Haul in every tart, every ponce, every bruiser, every dipper. Threaten ’em with whatever you want. Someone knows something, and sooner or later, someone’ll talk.’

That would please the Limehouse Ring not a bit. Furthermore, Lestrade was wrong. Beauregard had a high enough estimation of the criminal community to believe that if any felon in London had so much as a hint of the identity of the Ripper, it would have passed directly to him. He had received several telegrams, indicating
which avenues of enquiry would prove fruitless. The shadow empire had ruled out several investigative threads the police still pursued. It was perhaps disquieting to consider that the group in Limehouse had a higher percentage of first-rate minds than that which had just gathered in Goulston Street.

With Geneviève, he walked back towards Commercial Street. It was late afternoon already, and he had not slept in over a day and a half. Paper-boys were hawking special editions. With a signed letter from the killer and two fresh murders, the hysteria for news was at a peak.

‘What do you think of Warren?’ Geneviève asked.

Beauregard considered it best not to confide his opinion, but she understood it exactly in an instant. She was one of
those
vampires, and he would have to be careful what he thought in her company.

‘Me, too,’ she said. ‘Precisely the wrong man for the position. Ruthven should know that. Still, better him than a Carpathian maniac.’

Puzzled, he put a suggestion to her. ‘To hear you, one would think you prejudiced against vampires.’

‘Mr Beauregard, I find myself surrounded by the Prince Consort’s get. It’s too late to complain, but Vlad Tepes hardly represents the best of my kind. No one dislikes a Jewish or Italian degenerate more than a Jew or an Italian.’

Beauregard found himself alone with Geneviève as sun set. She took off her cap.

‘There,’ she said, shaking out her honey-coloured hair, ‘that’s better.’

Geneviève seemed to stretch like a cat in the sun. He could sense her increasing strength. Her eyes sparkled a little, and her smile became almost sly.

‘By the way, who is Penny?’

Beauregard wondered what Penelope was doing exactly now. He had not seen her since their argument of a few days ago.

‘Miss Penelope Churchward, my fiancée.’

He could not read Geneviève’s expression but fancied her eyes narrowed a shade. He tried to think of nothing.

‘Fiancée? It won’t last.’

He was shocked by her effrontery.

‘I’m sorry, Mr Beauregard. But believe me, I know this. Nothing lasts.’

Dr Seward’s Diary (kept in phonograph)

2 OCTOBER

I feel their hot breath on my neck. Had Beauregard not finished her, Stride would have identified me. Others must have seen me about my nightwork: between Stride and Eddowes, I ran through the streets in a panic, bloodied and with a scalpel in my fist. I came close to being caught. I’d just begun work on Stride, when a cart thundered by. The horse snorted like Hell clearing its throat. I bolted, sure the Carpathian Guards were at my heels. By some miracle, the carter never saw me. According to
The Times,
my ‘person from Porlock’ was Louis Diemschütz, one of the Jewish-socialist crew who congregate around the International Working Men’s Educational Club. With Eddowes, I was more fortunate. I’d calmed down enough to conduct business with her. She knew and trusted me. That helped greatly. With her, the delivery was successful.

Indeed, I think the Eddowes delivery my greatest achievement to date. At its conclusion, I was calmed. To throw my pursuers off the
scent, I left a message on a wall. I walked back to the Hall, changed my clothes in good time, and was ready to meet the police when they arrived. All things considered, I carried off the unpleasantness with Stride well. Beauregard’s steady eye and silver bullet finished my work. I feel better in myself than in some months. The pain in my hand has abated. I wonder if this is not an effect of the bleeding. Since Kelly tapped me, the pain has been receding. I’ve looked Kelly up in our files, and have an address for her off Dorset Street. I must seek her out and again solicit her attentions.

There are so many fabulations about the Ripper, fuelled by silly notes to the press, that I can hide unnoticed among them, even if the occasional rumour strikes uncomfortably close. After all, my name
is
Jack.

Today, a patient, an uneducated immigrant named David Cohen, confessed to me that he was Jack the Ripper. I turned him over to the police and he has been removed in a strait-waistcoat to Colney Hatch. Lestrade showed me the file of similar confessions. A queue of cranks waits to claim credit for my deliveries. And somewhere out there is the letter-writer, chortling over his silly red ink and arch jokes.

‘Yours truly, Jack the Ripper’? Is the letter-writer someone I know? Does he know anything about me? No, he does not understand my mission. I am not a lunatic practical joker. I am a surgeon, cutting away diseased tissue. There is no ‘jolly wouldn’t you’ to it.

I worry about Geneviève. Other vampires have a kind of red fog in their brains, but she is different. I read a piece by Frederick Treves in
The Lancet
, speculating on the business of bloodline, as delicately as possible suggesting that there might be something impure about the royal strain the Prince Consort has imported. So many of Dracula’s get are twisted, self-destructing creatures, torn apart by changing bodies and uncontrollable desires. Royal blood, of course,
is notoriously thin. Geneviève is sharp as a scalpel. Sometimes she knows what people are thinking. With her, I try to keep my mind on my patients, on schedules and time-tables. There are traps in any train of thought: thinking of the injuries I treat in a new-born who was run down by a carriage reminds me of the injuries I have inflicted on other new-borns. No, not injuries. Cuts. Surgical cuts. There is no malice, no hate, in what I do.

With Lucy, there was love. Here, there is only the cool of medical procedure. Van Helsing would have understood. I think of Kelly, of our bestial moments together. She is so like the Lucy that was. As I remember the feelings in my skin, my mouth dries. I become aroused. The bites Kelly made itch. The itch is pain and pleasure at once. With the itch comes a need, a complicated need. It is unlike the simple craving for morphine I have experienced when the hurt gets too much to bear. It is a need for Kelly’s kisses. But there is so much wrapped up in the need, so many thirsts.