Anno Dracula (22 page)

‘Drink, my child, drink...’

Geneviève’s blood, of the pure bloodline of Chandagnac, might heal Lily, might wash out the taint of Dracula’s grave-mould, might make her whole again...

Might, might, might.

She held Lily’s head to her breast, guiding the girl’s mouth to the wound. It hurt as if her heart were pierced by a silver ice needle. To love was to hurt. Her blood, bright scarlet, was on Lily’s lips.

‘
I love you, little yellow bird...
’ Geneviève sang.

In the back of her throat, Lily made a throttling sound.

‘
Goodbye, little yellow bird, I’d rather brave the cold...
’

Lily’s head fell away from Geneviève’s breast. Her face was smeared with blood.

‘
... on a leafless tree...
’

The child’s wing flapped once, a convulsive jerking-out that unbalanced Geneviève.

‘
... than a prisoner be...
’

She could see the gaslight glowing like a blue moon through the thin membrane of the wing, outlining a tracery of disconnected veins.

‘
... in a cage... of... gold.
’

Lily was dead. With a spasm of heart-sickness, Geneviève dropped the bundled corpse on the cot and howled. Her front was soaked with her own useless blood. Her damp hair was stuck to her face, her eyes gummed with clotted blood-tears. She wished she did believe in God, so she could curse Him.

Suddenly cold, she stood away. She rubbed the obstruction from her eyes and wiped back her hair. There was a basin of water on a stand. She washed her face clean, looking at the clean grain of the wooden frame which had once held a looking-glass. Turning from the basin, she realised there were people in the room. She must have made enough commotion to excite considerable alarm.

Arthur Morrison stood by the open door with Amworth behind him. There were others outside in the hall. People from outside, from the streets,
nosferatu
and warm alike. Morrison’s face was dumbstruck. She knew she must be hideous. In anger, her face changed.

‘We thought you should know, Geneviève,’ Morrison said. ‘There’s been another murder. Another new-born.’

‘In Dutfield’s Yard,’ said someone with the hot news, ‘off Berner Street.’

‘Lizzie Stride, ’er as only turned last week. Teeth not yet through. Tall gel, rorty-like.’

‘Cut ’er froat, didn’t ’e?’

‘Long Liz.’

‘Stride. Gustafsdotter. Elizabeth.’

‘Ear to ear.
Thwick!
’

‘She put up a barney, though. Sloshed ’im one.’

‘Ripper was disturbed ’fore ’e could finish ’is job.’

‘Some bloke with an ’orse.’

‘Ripper?’

‘Louis Diemschütz, one o’ them socialisticals...’

‘Jack the Ripper.’

‘Louis was passin’ by. Must of been the moment Jack was a-rippin’ Lizzie’s throat. Must of seen ’is rotten face. Must of.’

‘Calls ’isself Jack the Ripper now. Silver Knife is gone and done.’

‘Where’s Druitt?’

‘Damn bleedin’ busybodies, them socialisticals. Always pokin’ into a bloke’s business.’

‘Haven’t seen the blighter all evening, miss.’

‘Speakin’ agin the Queen. And them’s all Jews, y’know. Can’t trust an Ikey.’

‘Bet ’
e
’s an ’ook-nose. Jus’ bet ’e is.’

‘Ripper’s still on the streets, ’e is. The coppers is givin’ chase. By sun-up, they’ll have ’is carcass.’

‘If ’e’s ’uman.’

I
t was as if the city were on fire!

Beauregard was at the Café de Paris when the cry went up. With Kate Reed and several other reporters, he ran to the police station. The street was full of people running and shouting. A masked lout, a dozen assorted crucifixes strung about his neck, drunkenly smashed windows, yelling that the Judgement of God was at hand, that vampires were Demons of the Pit.

Sergeant Thick was minding the shop. A come-down for the detective, but a responsible position. Apparently, Lestrade was at the murder site and Abberline off duty. Kate dashed out to find Dutfield’s Yard, but Beauregard decided to stay.

‘Nothing we can do yet, sir,’ the sergeant said. ‘I’ve put a dozen men out, but they’re just blundering in the fog.’

‘Surely the murderer will be covered in blood?’

Thick shrugged. ‘Not if he’s careful. Or if he wears a reversible.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

Thick opened his grey tweed coat and showed a tartan interior. ‘Turns inside out. You can wear it both ways.’

‘Clever.’

‘This is a bloody messy job, Mr Beauregard.’

A couple of uniformed constables dragged in the window-smasher. Thick hauled off the struggling man’s flour-sack hood and recognised one of John Jago’s fearless Knights of Christendom. The sergeant cringed away from the Crusader’s whisky breath.

‘The unholy leeches shall be...’

Thick balled the hood and shoved it in the vandal’s mouth.

‘Lock him up and let him sleep it off,’ he ordered the constables. ‘We’ll talk about charges when the shopkeepers get up tomorrow and see what damage he’s done.’

For the first time Beauregard was at hand when the murderer was about his business, but he might as well be safe in bed in Chelsea for all he could do.

‘Headless chickens, we are, sir,’ Thick said. ‘Running around in bloody circles.’

Beauregard hefted his sword-cane, and wished the Ripper would come out and fight.

‘Cup of tea, sir?’ Thick asked.

Before Beauregard could thank the sergeant, a warm constable, out of breath, shoved through the doors. He took off his helmet, gasping.

‘What is it now, Collins? Some fresh calamity?’

‘He’s gone and done it again, sarge,’ Collins blurted. ‘Two for a penny. Two in one night.’

‘What!’

‘Liz Stride by Berner Street, now a bint called Eddowes in Mitre Square.’

‘Mitre Square. That’s off our patch. One for the City boys.’

The boundary between the jurisdictions of the Metropolitan and
City Police ran through the parish. The murderer, between crimes, had crossed the border.

‘It’s almost as though he’s trying to make us look complete bollock-heads. He’ll be ripping them outside Scotland Yard next, with a note for the Commissioner written in scarlet.’

Beauregard shook his head. Another life wasted. This was no longer just a commission from the Diogenes Club. Innocent people were being killed. He felt an urgent need to do something.

‘I had the news from PC Holland, one of the City blokes. He said this Eddowes...’

‘Name of Catharine, I reckon. A familiar face around these parts. Spent more time sleeping it off in our cells than wherever she was lodging.’

‘Yeah, I reckoned it’d be Cathy,’ said Collins, pausing to look upset. ‘Any rate, Holland says the bastard finished his job this time. Not like with Liz Stride, just a slash at the throat and a scarper in the dark. He was back to his usual, and gutted her proper.’

Thick swore.

‘Poor bloody Cathy,’ Collins said. ‘She was a dreadful old tart, but she never did anyone no harm. Not real harm.’

‘Poor bloody us, more like,’ Thick said. ‘After this, unless we get him sharp-ish, it’s not going to be the easy life being a copper in this parish.’

Beauregard knew Thick was right. Ruthven would have someone important’s resignation, maybe Warren’s; and the Prince Consort would probably have to be restrained from impaling a few lower-ranking policemen,
pour encourager les autres
.

Another messenger appeared. It was Ned, the fleet-foot from the Café de Paris. Beauregard had given him a shilling earlier, pressing him into the service of the Diogenes Club.

Thick glowered like an ogre and the child skidded to a halt well away from him. He had been so eager to bring Beauregard a message that he had dared venture into a police station. Now, his nervousness was reasserting itself; he trod as gingerly as a mouse in a cattery.

‘Miss Reed says you’re to come to Toynbee ’All, sir. Urgent.’

H
er eyes dry, she wrapped Lily in a sheet. The corpse was already rotting, face withering on to the skull like an orange left too long in the bowl. The girl would have to be removed to quicklime and a pauper’s grave before the smell became too bad to bear. The job of winding done, Geneviève would have to fill out a certificate of death for Jack Seward to sign and draft an account for the Hall’s files. Whenever anyone died about her, another grain of ice clung to her heart. It would be easy to become a monster of callousness. A few more centuries and she could be a match for Vlad Tepes: caring for nothing but power and hot blood in her throat.

An hour before dawn, the news came. One of the ponces, arm carved up by someone’s razor, was brought in; the crowd with him had five different versions of the story. Jack the Ripper was caught, and being held at the police station, identity concealed because he was one of the Royal Family. Jack had gutted a dozen in full view and eluded pursuers by leaping over a twenty-foot wall, springs on his boots. Jack’s face was a silver skull, his arms bloodied scythes, his breath purging fire. A constable told her the bare facts. Jack had killed. Again. First, Elizabeth Stride. And now Catharine Eddowes.
Cathy!
That shocked her. The other woman, she said she didn’t think she knew.

‘She was in here last month, though,’ Morrison said. ‘Liz Stride. She was turning and wanted blood to keep her going. You’d remember her if you’d met her. She was tall, and kind of foreign, Swedish. Handsome woman, once.’

‘He’s takin’ them two at a time,’ the constable said, ‘you almost have to admire him, the Devil.’

Everybody left again, for the second or third time, the crowd melting away from the Hall. Geneviève was alone in the quiet of the dawn. After a while, each fresh atrocity just added to an awful monotony. Lily had bled her dry. She had nothing more to feel. No grief left for Liz Stride or Cathy Eddowes.

As the sun rose, she fell into a doze in her chair. She was tired of keeping things together. She knew what would happen later. It had been getting worse with each murder. A troupe of whores would call, mainly in hysterical tears, begging for money to escape from the death-trap of Whitechapel. In truth, the district had been a deathtrap long before the Ripper silvered his knives.

In her half-dream, Geneviève was warm again, heart afire with anger and pain, eyes hot with righteous tears. A year before the Dark Kiss, she had cried herself empty at the news from Rouen. The English had burned Jeanne d’Arc, slandering her as a witch. At fourteen, Geneviève swore herself to the cause of the dauphin. It was a war of children, carried to bloody extremes by their guardians. Jeanne never saw her nineteenth birthday, Dauphin Charles was in his teens; even Henry of England was a child. Their quarrels should have been settled with spinning tops, not armies and sieges. Not only were the boy-kings now dead, so were their houses. Today’s France, a
country as strange to her as Mongolia, did not even have a monarch. If some of the English blood of Henry IV still flowed in Victoria’s German veins, then it was also liable to have filtered down to most of the world, to Lily Mylett and Cathy Eddowes and John Jago and Arthur Morrison.

There was a commotion –
another
commotion – in the receiving rooms. Geneviève was expecting more injuries during the day. After the murders, there would be street brawls, vigilante victims, maybe even a lynching in the American style...

Four uniformed policemen were in the hallway, something heavy slung in an oilcloth between them. Lestrade was chewing his whiskers. The coppers had had to fight their way through hostile crowds. ‘It’s as if he’s laughin’ at us,’ one of them said, ‘stirrin’ them all up against us.’

With the police was a new-born girl in smoked glasses and practical clothes, tagging along, looking hungry. Geneviève thought she might be one of the reporters.

‘Mademoiselle Dieudonné, clear a private room.’

‘Inspector...’

‘Don’t argue, just do it. One of them’s still alive.’

She understood at once and checked her charts. She realised immediately that there was an empty room.

They followed her, straining under their awkward burden, and she let them into Lily’s room. She shifted the tiny bundle and the policemen manoeuvred their baggage into its place, pulling away the oilcloth. Skinny legs flopped over the end of the cot, skirt-edge trailing on odd stockings.