Anno Dracula (20 page)

A small group of urchins played marbles in a corner, while Diarmid Reed held court by an open fire. He sucked on a pipe as he lectured a circle of Grub Street toilers.

‘A story is like a woman, lads,’ he said, ‘you can chase her and catch her, but you can’t make her stay longer than she wants to. Sometimes, you come down to a kipper breakfast and she’s upped stakes.’

Beauregard coughed to attract Reed’s attention lest he embarrass himself before his niece. Reed looked up, and grinned.

‘Katie,’ he said, without a speck of regret for his indecent metaphor. ‘Come in and have some tea. And Beauregard, isn’t it? Where did you find my benighted niece? Not in some house hereabouts, I hope. Her poor mother always said she’d be the ruin of the family.’

‘Uncle, this is important.’

He looked benignly sceptical. ‘Just as your women’s suffrage story was important?’

‘Uncle, whether or not you agree with my views on that question, you must concede that a mass expression of them, involving many of the greatest and wisest in the land, is news. Especially when the Prime Minister responds by sending in the Carpathians.’

‘Tell ’em girl,’ said the man in the straw hat.

Kate gave Beauregard her umbrella and unbuckled her document case. She laid a paper on the table, between teacups and ashtrays.

‘This came in yesterday. Remember, you had me opening letters as a punishment.’

Reed was examining the paper closely. It was covered in a spidery red hand.

‘You have brought this straight to me?’

‘I’ve been looking for you all night.’

‘There’s a good little vampire,’ said a stripe-shirted new-born newsman with waxed moustache points.

‘Shut up, D’Onston,’ Reed said. ‘My niece drinks printers’ ink, not blood. She’s got news in her veins just where you’ve got warm water.’

‘What is it?’ LeQueux asked, breaking his telephone connection to catch up with the development.

Reed ignored the question. He found a penny in his waistcoat pocket and summoned one of the urchins.

‘Ned, go to the police station and find someone above the rank of sergeant. You know what that means.’

The sharp-eyed child made a face that suggested he knew all about the varieties and habits of policemen.

‘Tell them the Central News Agency has received a letter,
purporting
to be from Silver Knife. Just those words, exactly.’

‘Pr’porten?’

‘
Purporting
.’

The barefoot Mercury snatched the tossed penny out of the air and dashed off.

‘I tell you,’ he began, ‘kids like Ned will inherit the earth. The twentieth century will be beyond our imagining.’

No one wanted to listen to social theories. Everyone wanted a look at the letter.

‘Careful,’ Beauregard said. ‘That is evidence, I believe.’

‘Well said. Now, back off boys, and give me some room.’

Reed held the letter carefully, rereading it.

‘One thing,’ he said when he had finished. ‘This is an end for Silver Knife.’

‘What?’ said LeQueux.

‘
“Don’t mind me giving the trade name,”
it says in the postscript.’

‘Trade name?’ D’Onstan asked.

‘
“Jack the Ripper”
. He signs himself
“Yours truly, Jack the Ripper”
.’

D’Onstan whispered the name, rolling it around his mouth. Others joined in the chorus. The Ripper. Jack the Ripper. Jack. The Ripper. Beauregard felt a chill.

Kate was pleased, and looked modestly at her boot-toes.

‘Beauregard, would you care?’

Reed gave him the letter, exciting grumbles of envy from the rival newspapermen.

‘Read it out,’ the American suggested. Feeling a touch self-conscious, Beauregard tried to recite.

‘
“Dear Boss,”
’ the letter began. ‘The hand is hurried and spiky, but suggests an education, a man used to writing.’

‘Cut the editorial,’ LeQueux said, ‘give it us straight.’

‘
“I keep on hearing the police have caught me but they wont”
– no apostrophe –
“they wont fix me just yet. I have laughed when they look so clever and talk about being on the right track...
”’

‘Bright boy,’ D’Onstan said. ‘He’s got Lestrade and Abberline bang to rights there.’

Everyone shushed the interruptor.

‘
“That joke about Silver Knife gave me real fits. I am down on leeches and shant quit ripping them till I do get buckled. Grand work the last job was. I gave the lady no time to squeal. How can they catch me now. I love my work and want
to start again. You will soon hear of me with my funny little games.”
’

‘Degenerate filth,’ spluttered D’Onstan. Beauregard had to agree.

‘
“I saved some of the proper red stuff in a ginger beer bottle over the last job to write with but it went thick like glue and I cant use it. Red ink is fit enough I hope. Ha ha. The next job I do I shall clip the ladys ears off and send to the police officers just for jolly wouldnt you...”
’

‘Jolly wouldn’t you? What is that, a joke?’

‘Our man’s a comedian,’ said LeQueux. ‘Grimaldi reborn.’

‘
“Keep this letter back till I do a bit more work, then give it out straight.”
’

‘Sounds like my editor,’ said the American.

‘
“My knife’s so nice and silver and sharp I want to get to work right away if I get a chance. Good luck.”
And, as Reed said,
“Yours truly, jack the Ripper. Dont mind me giving the trade name.”
There’s another postscript.
“Wasnt good enough to post this before I got all the red ink off my hands, curse it. No luck yet. They say I’m a doctor now, ha ha.”
’

‘Ha ha,’ said an angry elderly man from the
Star
. ‘Ha bloody ha. I’d give him a ha-ha if he were here.’

‘How do we know he isn’t?’ said D’Onstan, rolling his eyes, wiping his moustache like a melodrama villain.

Ned was back, with Lestrade and a couple of constables, puffing as if they had been told the murderer himself, not merely a communication from him, were in the Café de Paris.

Beauregard handed the letter to the Inspector. As he read, his lips forming the words, the journalists discussed it.

‘It’s a ruddy hoax,’ someone said. ‘Some joker making trouble for us all.’

‘I think it’s genuine,’ opined Kate. ‘There’s a creepiness about it that sounds authentic to me. All that fake funny. The perverse relish drips off the page. When I first opened it, even before reading, I had
a profound sense of evil, of loneliness, of purpose.’

‘Whatever it is,’ the American said, ‘it’s news. They can’t stop us printing this.’

Lestrade put up his hand as if he might have some objection, but let it fall before he said anything.

‘Jack the Ripper, eh,’ said Reed. ‘We couldn’t have done better ourselves. The old Silver Knife monicker was wearing thin. Now, we’ve a proper name for the blighter.’

Dr Seward’s Diary (kept in phonograph)

29 SEPTEMBER

Today I went to Kingstead Cemetery to lay my annual wreath. Lilies, of course. It is three years to the day since Lucy’s destruction. The tomb bears the date of her first death, and only I – or so I thought – remember the date of Van Helsing’s expedition. The Prince Consort, after all, is hardly likely to make it a national holiday.

When I came out of the woods a little less than three years ago, I found the country turning. For months, as the Count climbed to his current position, I expected always to be struck down. Surely the invader who took such delight in the public ruination of Van Helsing would eventually reach out his claw and smash me. Eventually, as the fear subsided to a dull throb, I supposed I had become lost in the teeming crowds that so attracted our new master. Or maybe, with that diabolical cruelty for which he is famous, he had decided that allowing me my life would be a more fitting revenge. After all, I pose little threat to the Prince Consort. Since then, life has seemed
a dream, a night-shadow of what should have been...

I still dream of Lucy, too much. Her lips, her pale skin, her hair, her eyes. Many times have dreams of Lucy been responsible for my nocturnal emissions. Wet kisses and wet dreams...

I have chosen to work in Whitechapel because it is the ugliest region of the city. The superficialities which some say make Dracula’s rule tolerable are at their thinnest. With vampire sluts baying for blood on every corner and befuddled or dead men littering cramped streets, one can see the true, worm-eaten face of what has been wrought. It is hard to keep my control among so many of the leeches but my vocation is strong. Once, I was a doctor, a specialist in mental disorders. Now, I am a vampire killer. My duty is to cut out the corrupt heart of the city.

The morphine is making itself felt. My pain recedes and my vision becomes sharper. Tonight I shall see through the murk. I shall slice the curtain and face the truth.

The fog that shrouds London in autumn has got thicker. I understand all manner of vermin – rats, wild dogs, cats – have thrived. Some quarters of the city have even seen a resurgence of medieval diseases. It is as if the Prince Consort were a bubbling sink-hole, disgorging filth from where he sits, grinning his wolf ’s grin as sickness seeps throughout his realm. The fog means there is less distinction between day and night. In Whitechapel, many days, the sun truly does not shine. We’ve seen more and more new-borns go half-mad in the daytime, muddy light burning out their brains.

Today was unexpectedly clear. I spent a morning tending severe sun-burns with liberal applications of liniment. Geneviève lectures the worst cases, explaining that it’ll take years for them to build a resistance to direct sunlight. It is hard to remember what Geneviève is;
but at moments, when anger sparks in her eyes or her lips draw back unconsciously from sharp teeth, the illusion of humanity is stripped.

The rest of the city is more sedate, but no better. I stopped off at the Spaniards for a pork pie and a pint of beer. Above the city, looking down on the foggy bowl of London, its surface punctured by the occasional tall building, it would be possible, I hoped, to imagine things were as they had been. I sat outside, scarfed and gloved against the cold, and sipped my ale, thinking of this and that. In the gloom of the afternoon, new-born gentlefolk paraded themselves on Hampstead Heath, skins pale, eyes shining red. It is quite the thing to follow fashions set by the Queen, and vampirism – although resisted for several years – has now become acceptable. Prim, pretty girls in bonnets, ivory-dagger teeth artfully concealed by Japanese fans, flock to the Heath on sunless afternoons, thick black parasols held high. Lucy would have become one of them had we not finished her. I saw them chattering like gussied-up rats, kissing children and barely holding back their thirst. There is no difference, really, between them and the blood-sucking harlots of Whitechapel.

I left my pint unfinished and walked the rest of the way to Kingstead, head down, hands deep in my coat pockets. The gates hung open, unattended. Since dying became unfashionable, churchyards have fallen into disuse. The churches are neglected too, although the court has tame archbishops, desperately reconciling Anglicanism with vampirism. When alive, the Prince Consort slaughtered in defence of the faith. He still fancies himself a Christian. Last year’s Royal Wedding was a display of High Church finery that would have delighted Pusey or Keble.

Entering the graveyard, I could not help but remember everything again, as sharp and hurtful as if it had been last week. I told myself
we destroyed a
thing
not the girl I had loved. Cutting through her neck, I found my calling. My hand hurt damnably. I have been trying to curb my use of morphine. I know I should seek proper treatment, but I think I need my pain. It gives me resolve.

During the changes, new-borns took to opening the tombs of dead relatives, hoping by some osmosis to return them to vampire life. I had to watch my step to avoid the chasm-like holes left in the ground by these fruitless endeavours. The fog was thin up here, a muslin veil.

It was something of a shock to see a figure outside the Westenra tomb. A slim young woman in a monkey-fur-collared coat, a straw hat with a red band on it perched on her tightly-bound hair. Hearing my approach, she turned. I caught the glint of red eyes. With the light behind her, she could have been Lucy returned. My heart thumped.

‘Sir?’ she said, startled by my interruption. ‘Who might that be?’

The voice was Irish, uneducated, light. It was not Lucy. I left my hat on, but nodded. There was something familiar about the new-born.

‘Why,’ she said, ‘’tis Dr Seward, from the Toynbee.’

A shaft of late sun speared through and the vampire flinched. I saw her face.

‘Kelly, isn’t it?’

‘Marie Jeanette, sir,’ she said, recovering her composure, remembering to simper, to smile, to ingratiate. ‘Come to pay your respects?’

I nodded and laid my wreath. She had put her own at the door of the tomb, a penny posy now dwarfed by my shilling tribute.

‘Did you know the young miss?’

‘I did.’

‘She was a beauty,’ Kelly said. ‘Beautiful.’