Supping With Panthers (43 page)

Nothing last night, however. Westcote and myself took it in turns to sit on guard; Stoker is staying tonight. I will grab a few hours’ sleep; and then return to relieve him and take my own place on watch.

22 August.
– Huree still not here. I don’t understand where he can be. If he knows that Lucy is in danger, then surely he also knows that he should be by her side. I don’t have the experience to handle this affair on my own.

Lucy herself still in a stable condition. An interesting event last night, though, around 3 a.m., shortly after my arrival to replace Stoker on guard. I heard a curious scratching at the window; I rose to see if I could make anything out, but my path was blocked by Lucy who had likewise risen and crossed the room. Her eyes were open, but when I spoke to her she was oblivious to my call; she brushed past me and began to open the window, and I heard the scratching at the pane again. But when I crossed to stop her she suddenly flinched, like a patient wakened from a mesmeric trance, and stared at me in a puzzled way. ‘Jack?’ she whispered. ‘What are you doing here?’ Then she fainted into my arms. I returned her to her bed. She began to dream, moaning again and clutching at her throat; then her dreams deepened and her convulsions died away.

Nothing else of any interest to record. No further scratchings at the window pane.

23
August.
– The bounds of logic and probability have already been so strained by the events of the past few months that, ready, I should have ceased to be surprised by anything. Nor am I, in fact. No – I am
not
surprised – although it reassures me, I think, to believe that I am. After all, the web of connections was an elementary one; I would normally have recognised and traced it myself. But I had not yet wholly accepted Huree’s favourite dictum, that the impossible is always a possibility. Once that is granted, then in a peculiar way the laws of logic can reassert themselves. Perhaps there is hope for my methods, after all.

For Huree himself, despite the startling nature of his premises, has undoubtedly displayed a flair for deductive investigation. He arrived early this afternoon and went up to see Lucy immediately. He knelt by her bedside, staring at her in silence for a good while, then glanced up at me suddenly. ‘Kirghiz Silver,’ he said. ‘Not available in London, I suppose?’

‘Everything is available in London,’ I replied. ‘But probably not from the costermonger.’

‘Garlic, then,’ said Huree. ‘It while have to do. Its effect is much weaker, but perhaps it will serve to keep him at bay.’

‘Him?’ I asked in a tone of surprise, for I had told Huree of Lucy’s dreams. But he smiled at me and tapped at his nose, then lumbered to his feet.

‘Come,’ he said, ‘I have something most interesting to show to you,’ Together we went downstairs; Huree told Westcote of the need for fresh garlic, and when Westcote looked at me, startled, I inclined my head. Huree and I then proceeded out to Farringdon Road, where we hailed a cab. ‘Bethnal Green,’ said Huree to the driver. ‘The National Portrait Gallery.’

This was not a destination I had been expecting, but I knew better than to inquire. Huree smiled at me, or rather he smirked; as the cab began to jolt away, he drew out some papers from under his coat and handed me one: it was the message that Polidori had left on the door of his shop. Huree then handed me a second sheet of paper, a letter this time; I saw at once that the handwriting was identical.

‘Where did you obtain this from?’ I asked.

Huree smirked again. ‘Kelmscott Manor,’ he replied.

‘Where Rossetti lived?’

Huree nodded.

‘What was it doing there?’

Huree’s smirk began to stretch beyond the tops of his ears. ‘It was among Rossetti’s papers. I wasn’t surprised; I had expected it would be. Jolly simple, ready. He was Rossetti’s uncle, you see.’

‘Who was? Not Polidori?’

Huree bobbed his head and turned out to stare at the passing street. ‘Dr John William Polidori,’ he murmured. ‘Died, supposedly, by his own hand – 1821. Physician, student of somnambulism, occasional writer of unreadable tales…’

‘yes,’ I said, suddenly remembering. ‘Stoker mentioned him. I never thought…’

‘Did Stoker tell you
what
he wrote, though?’ inquired Huree, his eyebrows darting up and down as he spoke.

I shook my head.

‘His most famous tale, Jack, was called “The Vampyre”. Can you guess the vampire’s name?’ He paused, in his showman’s way. ‘No? Then let me help you with that one too. He was an English aristocrat. An English
Lord,
to be strictly precise.’

‘Surely not Ruthven?’

Huree beamed.

I sat back in my seat. ‘Extraordinary,’ I murmured. ‘And Huree, I must congratulate you – your zeal and intelligence have evidently been put to their customary good use. How did you find this story out?’

‘Child’s play!’ exclaimed Huree, snapping his fingers with relish. ‘you forget, Jack, that the vampire has long been a quarry of mine. It would have been pretty poor if I had been ignorant of Polidori’s work. You only had to mention his name, and I remembered his reference to a vampire named Lord Ruthven. It came to me at once’ – he snapped his fingers again – ‘like that! But it was only the beginning. Wait and see. My journey round England has been most profitable. I have been finding out who Lord Ruthven ready is.’

I frowned. ‘What do you mean, who he ready is?’

Huree smiled, then rapped on the side of the cab. ‘Let us go and look,’ he said as the cab slowed to a halt He paid the cabby, then trotted towards the Gallery entrance-way. Oh yes,’ he giggled. ‘Let us go and jolly well look!’

I followed him up stairways and through canvas-laden rooms. At last, by an imposing doorway, he halted and turned. ‘You will kick yourself, Jack. You will be jolly cross that you ever missed this,’

‘Why?’

‘Mr Stoker told you about Polidori. But did he tell you whose physician Polidori had been?’

‘yes,’ I replied. ‘Lord Byron’s…,’ And then the syllable froze on my tongue as I spoke it. Lord Ruthven. Lord Ruthven! That was why Huree had wanted to see him! That was why he had asked me, when we left Lord Ruthven’s home, if I read poetry! I must have stood there quite numbed, for I never even felt Huree take me by the arm. He led me into the Gallery and across to a painting on the wall. I stared up at it. Lord Byron, dressed in the scarlet and gold of some eastern uniform. Only it was not his face I saw smiling at me from beneath a fringed turban, but another man’s, a man I had met, a man whom I knew, not as Byron, but as Ruthven. ‘Good Lord,’ I murmured. I turned to Huree. ‘It seems impossible, but…’ I stared back up at the painting again.

‘But it is not,’ whispered Huree, completing my sentence for me.

I nodded slowly. ‘So who else might be out there, do you think, drinking people’s blood? Beethoven? Shakespeare? Abraham Lincoln?’

Huree smiled and shook his head. ‘I believe not. The circumstances connected with Lord Byron, you see, are most particular,’ We began to leave the Gallery, and as we did so, Huree explained the course of his research in Nottinghamshire graveyards, and lawyers’ firms, and assorted public records offices. He had traced the first mention of Lord Ruthven back to 1824 – the year of Byron’s death in Greece; he had demonstrated that Lord Ruthven had been the major beneficiary of the dead poet’s wealth; he had searched for a Ruthven family tree, anything which might disprove that the Lords Ruthven and Byron were one and the same. But he had searched in vain. There was no Lord Ruthven: the tide was nothing but an alias.

‘But Lucy?’ I asked. ‘Arthur? Where are they from?’

Huree’s expression darkened; he lifted a hand. ‘This is where it grows serious, Jack. You remember the telegram I sent?’

‘Naturally.’

‘Yes, jolly good, of course you do.’ Huree paused. We were out in the sunshine by now; he lifted his face to the rays, as though invoking the daylight for assistance, then looked round for a bench and sat down on it with a sigh. I joined him. Huree was taking out his papers again. He laid them on his lap; he stared at them in silence for a while; then he dabbed at his brow and looked up at me again. ‘Lucy’s family line, like the references to Lord Ruthven himself, go back only as far as 1824. Logical conclusion? – the Ruthvens are descended from Lord Byron himself.’

I frowned. ‘Logical?’

Huree raised his hand again. ‘There’s more.’

‘Indeed?’

‘It is not very cheerful, Jack.’

‘Tell me.’

Huree nodded. He reached for a sheaf of papers and handed them across. ‘These are copies of death certificates. Each Ruthven, once he or she has had a child, has then died within a year. The moment the bloodline has been perpetuated – pouf!’ – he snapped his fingers –’the parent at once becomes expendable. It is an absolutely infallible rule, you see, Jack. Cast iron! And even that is not the worst: their deaths, when you know what to look for, all seem to result from a catastrophic loss of blood. Your friend Arthur is only the most recent example of this.’

‘But Arthur never had a child.’

‘No. But Lucy did.’

I shook my head in disbelief, and stared up at the sky. ‘It seems impossible,’ I muttered, ‘impossible. And yet you truly believe this, Huree, that Lord Ruthven has been feeding on his own blood-line, draining them dry?’

‘I am convinced of it. What other theory can fit all the facts?’

‘But is there any tradition,’ I asked, ‘of the vampire feeding on his blood-line like this?’

Huree shrugged. ‘There are many traditions. Vampires are not like some bloody microbe, Jack; you cannot just study them, and say what is true and what is not.’

‘But we
can
study Lord Ruthven. I have his blood under my microscope even as we speak.’

‘Yes,’ said Huree impatiently, ‘what of it?’

‘It seems strange that he should employ me and then drink from under my very nose.’

‘Not at ad,’ said Huree. ‘Use your damn brain, Jack. That is precisely what explains his desperation. He is a slave of his passions.’

‘But it is over a year since Lucy had her child. Why should he start to feed on her now?’

Huree shrugged. ‘Perhaps you should look at it the other way. Perhaps he has come to you because he has felt his hunger growing worse, and he knows that he cannot withstand it any more.’

‘Then it is a race, you think? Either I cure him or he drains Lucy dry?’

Huree nodded. ‘That is one way of approaching the matter.’

‘And a fairly desperate one, I’m afraid. I do not feel encouraged by the progress of my research. There must be something more we can do.’

‘Kirghiz Silver,’ said Huree. ‘Infallible.’

‘Yes, but if we can’t find that, what other course should we take? Do we confront Lord Ruthven?’

‘He is dangerous.’

‘Thank you, Huree, I had deduced that for myself. Yes, he is dangerous – but is he indestructible? There must be some way we can stop him, even destroy him if needs be.’

‘I will need time to work on this.’

‘Unfortunately, you may not have much of that’

‘No.’ Huree sniffed contemplatively. ‘But at least now we know who our adversary is. And that has to be a start.’ He rose to his feet ‘Don’t you agree, Jack? That has to be a start!’

Yes. A start. But perhaps not on the course that Huree believes us to be on. His discoveries have certainly been an excellent piece of work; his knowledge of vampirism is unexcelled, and his conclusions on the blood-line must surely be correct. But I am still not entirely convinced that we do know who our adversary is; we may be missing something here. Even taking into account all Huree’s revelations, Lord Ruthven is not the only suspect we have; the proof against him is damning, but not
conclusive.
I need to sit down and think about this. There are other factors to take into account.

1 a.m. – Stayed up late, working on the bone-marrow cells. No breakthrough. The more I consider my dealings with Lord Ruthven, the less likely I find it that he is preying on Lucy, although I do not doubt that she is in terrible danger from him; for I remember, the first time I met him, how he smelled Lucy’s clothes, having dearly detected the trace of her blood. Doubtless, also, it was he who killed Arthur Ruthven; it was shortly after Arthur’s death, after all, that Lord Ruthven came to me with his request that I work to cure him of his thirst; psychologically, then, such a theory rings true. But with Lucy, by contrast, the psychology is all wrong: she is my patient; for Lord Ruthven to be feeding on her while also employing me would be a virtual act of treachery. I do not believe, odd though it may seem, that he would behave in such a way. Am aware, of course, that this is hardly a logical assumption to make.

As it happens, though, there is a second problem with the theory of Lord Ruthven’s guilt. Why does Lucy imagine her intruder to be a woman? Huree has attempted to brush over this question. But it is surely possible that our adversary is Haidée. We know almost nothing about her. What is her relationship with Lord Ruthven? Even more importantly – what is her relationship with Lucy? Does she too have common blood with the Ruthvens? Until we have the answers to these questions, we must consider Haidée a suspect as well.

And there is a yet further possibility: we may not be searching for a Ruthven at all. There are other predators abroad in London at the moment. Female predators. My thoughts – as they have so often seemed to do recently – start to turn again towards Rotherhithe.

24
August.
– A day in the laboratory, working on the leucocytes and bone-marrow cells. As yet, no real developments. I begin to think wistfully of the insights I have experienced in Rotherhithe. I wonder if the risk is worth taking. Difficult to decide.

As it happens, Lilah has been on my mind for another reason. This morning, during the surgery, Mary Kelly was one of the out-patients. Her health good; no hint of any relapse; her vital signs stable. Only one thing troubling her, she reported: she had begun to have nightmares, vivid, so that they would seem very real at the time. She would dream that she was in her bed in Miller’s Court, and hear a woman’s voice calling out to her. Going to a window, she would see the negress standing in the street below. Despite her fear, she would feel a desperate longing to obey the woman’s call. She would leave her room, then follow the negress through the empty streets; she would realise they were walking through Rotherhithe. The negress would start to kiss and fondle her lasciviously, and then, as she had done before, slice her wrist above a golden bowl. The blood would start to flow in a great stream, until Mary Kelly would imagine she was drowning beneath a sea of red. She would struggle to wake, would imagine that she did so. She would find herself in a dark room, with a picture of a beautiful lady on the wall Ht by a single candle. She would feel a curious longing to He there for ever, to surrender herself to the lure of the dark. But she would remember my warnings of the danger that lurked for her in Rotherhithe. Again, she would struggle to wake. This time she would be successful and find she was standing in some unfamiliar street, sometimes more than a mile from her room. If true, and I have no reason to doubt her – indeed, just the opposite – then she is reporting a most remarkable display of somnambulism.