Anno Dracula (29 page)

‘How is Swinburne?’

‘He’ll live,’ she said. Most girls had a fierce sort of contempt for customers like Algernon. They liked to look at a perfectly dressed gent and think of him wriggling naked in pain, sneering at them for preferring a whipping to a good shag. Mary Jane felt different. Maybe her turn had changed the way she felt about what folk did with each other. Sometimes she dreamed of opening the throats of angels as they sang, then straddling them as they died.

‘How he loves you women,’ Theodore said. ‘He talks about your “cold immortal hands”. Strange.’

‘He knows what he likes,’ Mary Jane said. ‘No shame in bein’ partial to something out of the ordinary.’

‘No,’ Theodore agreed, unsure. ‘No shame at all.’

They stood in the reception room. There were portraits of famous men on the walls and still more books. Mary Jane had a picture of
the Champs-Elysées, cut out of an illustrated paper, pasted to the wall of her room in Miller’s Court. She saved up for a frame once when she was warm, but Joe Barnett, her man at the time, found the pennies in a mug and drank them away. He’d blacked her eye for holding back on him. When she turned, she’d thrown Joe out, but not before she had repaid him with interest for the bruises.

Theodore gave them a guinea apiece and escorted them out to the carriage. Mary Jane tucked her guinea safe into her poke, but Nell had to hold her coin up to catch the moonlight.

Mary Jane remembered to bid Theodore a good night and to curtsey as Uncle Henry had taught her. Some gentlemen had inquisitive neighbours, and it was only polite to act like a proper lady caller. Theodore didn’t notice and turned back into the house before she had straightened up.

‘A guinea, blimey,’ Nell exclaimed. ‘I’d ’a bitten ’is balls fer a guinea.’

‘Get in the coach with you, you embarrassin’ tart,’ Mary Jane said. ‘I don’t know of what you’re thinkin’.’

‘I do believe I will, Duchess,’ she said, squeezing through the door, wiggling her rump from side to side.

Mary Jane followed and settled down.

‘Oi you,’ Nell shouted to the driver, ‘’ome, an’ don’t spare the ’orses.’

The carriage lurched into motion. Nell was still playing with her gold coin. She had tried to bite it. Now she was shining it against her shawl.

‘I’ll be off the streets fer a month,’ she said, licking her fangs. ‘I’ll go up West an’ find myself a guardsman with a knob like a firehose, an’ suck the bastard dry.’

‘But you’ll be back in the alleys when the money’s gone, on your back in the muck while some drunkard wobbles all over you.’

Nell shrugged. ‘I ’ardly think I’ll be marryin’ royalty. Yer neither, Marie Jeanette de Kelly.’

‘I’m not on the streets any more.’

‘Just ’cos there’s a roof over the bed yer shag in don’t make it a church, girl.’

‘No strangers, that’s my rule now. Just familiar gentlemen.’

‘
Very
familiar.’

‘You should be listenin’ to me, you know. It’s not healthy on the streets these nights. Not with the Ripper.’

Nell was unimpressed. ‘In Whitechapel, ’e’d ’ave to kill an ’ore a night til kingdom come til ’e got to me. There’s thousands of us, an’ there will be long after ’e’s rottin’ in Hell.’

‘He’s killin’ them two at a time.’

‘Garn!’

‘You know ’tis true, Nell. ’Tis over a week since he did for Cathy Eddowes and the Stride woman. He’ll be out and about again.’

‘I’d like to see ’im try anythin’ with me,’ Nell said. She snarled, a mouthful of wolf-teeth glistening. ‘I’d rip ’is ’eart out, an’ eat the blighter.’

Mary Jane had to laugh. But she was being serious. ‘The only safe thing is familiar gentlemen, Nell. Customers you know, and are sure of. The best thing would be to find a gentleman to keep you. Especially if he wants to keep you outside Whitechapel.’

‘Only place that’d keep me is the zoo.’

Mary Jane had been
kept
once. In Paris, by Henry Wilcox. He was a banker, a colossus of finance. He had gone abroad without his wife, and Mary Jane had travelled with him. He told everyone she was his
niece, but the French understood the arrangement all too well. When he travelled on to Switzerland, he left her behind with an old frog rakehell to whom she did not take. ‘Uncle Henry’, it turned out, had lost her on a hand of cards. Paris had been lovely but she still came back to London, where she knew what folk were saying and she was the only person gambling with her life.

It was almost dawn when they got to Whitechapel. She’d not known enough at first to stay out of the sun, and her skin had burned to painful crackling. She had ripped dogs open for their juice. It had taken her months to catch up with the other new-borns.

She gave directions to the warm driver, realising with a nice hot surge that the man was petrified of his vampire passengers. She rented a room just off Dorset Street, from McCarthy the chandler for four and six a week. Some of the guinea would have to pay the arrears and keep McCarthy off her back. But the rest would be for her. Perhaps she could find a picture-framer?

Once they were out of the coach, it trundled off quickly, leaving them on the pavement. Nell gestured after the departing driver and howled like a comical animal. She even had fur growing around her eyes and up behind her pointed ears.

‘Marie Jeanette,’ croaked a voice from the shadows. Someone was standing under the Miller’s Court archway. A gentleman, by his clothes.

She smiled, recognising the voice. Dr Seward stepped out of the dark.

‘I’ve been waiting most of the night for you,’ he said. ‘I’d like...’

‘She knows what yer’d like,’ Nell said, ‘an’ yer orter be shamed of yerself.’

‘Shush, furface,’ she said. ‘That’s no way to be talkin’ to a gentleman.’

Nell stuck her snout in the air, rearranged her shawl, and trotted off, sniffing like a music hall queen. Mary Jane apologised for her.

‘Do you want to come in, Dr Seward?’ she asked. ‘It’s nearly sunup. I have to have my beauty sleep.’

‘I’d like that very much,’ he said. He was fidgeting with his neck. She had seen her customers do that before. Once bitten, they always came back for more.

‘Well, follow me.’

She led him to her room and let him in. Early sun fell through the dusty window on to the unwrinkled bedspread. She drew the curtains against the light.

T
he cabal was further depleted. Mr Waverly was gone, though no one remarked on his passing. Mycroft again held the chair. Sir Mandeville Messervy sat quiet throughout the interview, face fallen. Whatever path Beauregard pursued in Whitechapel, he could never know of the secret campaigns his masters waged in other quarters. In Limehouse, the Professor had referred to the business of crime as a shadow community; Beauregard knew this was a world of shadow empires. He was privileged to see the veil lifted, if only at odd moments.

He recounted his activities since the inquest on Lulu Schön, omitting nothing of importance. He did not, however, feel obliged to report the matters that passed between him and Geneviève in Clayton’s cab shortly before the attack by the vampire elder. He was still unsure in himself what precisely he had shared in that moment of intimacy. He concentrated on the facts of the case, elaborating on the details available in the press, adding his own observations and comments. He spoke of Dr Jekyll and Dr Moreau, of Inspector Lestrade and Inspector Abberline, of Toynbee Hall and the Ten Bells, of
Commercial Street Police Station and the Café de Paris, of silver and silver knives, of Geneviève Dieudonné and Kate Reed. Throughout, Mycroft nodded intently, fleshy lips pursed, fingers steepled under his soft chins. When Beauregard’s account was concluded, Mycroft thanked him and said he was satisfied with the progress of the affair.

‘Since these letters, the murderer is generally known by the “Jack the Ripper” soubriquet?’ the Chairman asked.

‘Indeed. You never hear of “Silver Knife” any more. Whosoever devised the name must have some species of genius. The consensus is that he must be a journalist. The fellows have the knack for the memorable phrase. The good ones, at least.’

‘Excellent.’

Beauregard was puzzled. So far as he could see, he had been of no use at all. The Ripper had murdered again. Twice, with impunity. His own presence had deterred the madman not one whit, and any involvement he might be contracting in Whitechapel hardly bore upon the investigation.

‘You must catch this man,’ Messervy said, his first words since Beauregard entered the Star Chamber.

‘We have every confidence in Beauregard,’ Mycroft said to the Admiral.

Messervy grunted and slumped into his armchair. He wrestled with a pill-box and popped something into his mouth. Beauregard suspected the former Chairman had suffered an indisposition.

‘And now,’ Beauregard said, consulting his half-hunter, ‘if you will excuse me. I must return to Chelsea on a personal matter...’

In her mother’s house in Caversham Street, Penelope would be waiting in her cold fury. Waiting for an explanation. Beauregard would rather have faced the Chinese elder again, or Jack the Ripper
himself. But he had a duty to his fiancée, as solemnly undertaken as his duty to the Crown. He had no idea what conclusion their conversation would reach.

Mycroft raised an eyebrow, as if surprised personal matters should enter into it. Not for the first time, Beauregard wondered what manner of men were set over him in the Diogenes Club.

‘Very well. Good day, Beauregard.’

Sergeant Dravot was not at his post outside the Star Chamber. A warm rough with the weather-beaten face and knuckles of an old-fashioned pugilist stood in his place. Beauregard went down to the foyer and left the Diogenes Club. He emerged into Pall Mall to find the afternoon chilly and overcast. Fog was again gathering.

He should be able to get a cab to Chelsea. Looking about, he noticed the streets were thick with people. He recognised a thumping sound as a marching drum. Then he heard the brass. A band was coming down Regent Street. He was not aware of any formally announced parade. Lord Mayor’s Day was nearly a month off. With irritation, he realised the band would make hailing a hansom difficult. Traffic would be disrupted. Penelope would most definitely not understand.

The band rounded the corner and marched down Pall Mall, towards Marlborough Street. Beauregard assumed they were zigzagging through the streets, picking up followers, aiming to congregate in St James’s Park. The uniformed bandmaster marching at the head of the parade held up a giant flag of St George, the standard of the Christian Crusade. The thin red cross on a white background billowed as the band advanced.

After the band came a choir, mainly of middle-aged women. They all wore long white dresses with red crosses on their fronts. They were
singing some version of the song that had been ‘John Brown’s Body’ and evolved into ‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic’.

‘
In the beauty of the lillies, Christ was born across the sea,

With a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me:

As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,

While God is marching on...’

The crowds now pressed around on all sides. Most of the onlookers, and all of the marchers, were warm, but there were a few jeering murgatroyds on the pavement, brought out by the gloom of the late afternoon, flapping their batwing cloaks and hissing through red lips. They were outnumbered and ignored. Beauregard thought their mocking attitude unwise. Potential immortality was not actual invincibility.

After the choir came an open carriage drawn by six horses. Standing on a platform, surrounded by worshipful acolytes, was John Jago. Behind him came an orderly rabble with banners bearing holy pronouncements, ‘Thou Shalt Not Suffer a Vampire to Live’ and ‘Holy Blood, Holy Crusade’. Amid these marchers struggled a couple of hefty crusaders who carried between them a twenty-foot pole, upon which was impaled a papier-mâché figure, a vampire Guy Fawkes. The pole pierced its breast, and there was red paint splashed around the wound. It had red eyes, exaggerated fang-teeth, and was dressed in tatty black.

The murgatroyds fell silent for a moment. Beauregard knew there would be trouble. There were two mounted policemen in the street, but no one else with any authority. Warm people had flooded from somewhere. He could not move of his own accord, but found himself
swept along with the march. Jago preached his usual hate and hellfire and Beauregard was pushed along beside his carriage. They swept down Marlborough Street towards the park. Once in the open, he could escape the crusaders.

One of the murgatroyds, a pale adonis with black ribbons in his golden hair, picked a handful of horse-dung from the gutter and flung it, with a degree of accuracy that betokened no little skill as a bowler, at the preacher. The ball exploded against Jago’s face, browning him like a fakir. For an instant, between the notes of the marching hymn, the crowd was as frozen as a photograph. Beauregard saw burning fury in Jago’s eyes, a mixture of triumph and dawning fear in the face of the murgatroyd.

With a cry as loud as the last trump, the marchers fell upon the murgatroyds. There were four or five of the new-borns. Dandified in their dress, effete in their gesture, spinelessly vicious, cold-hearted poseurs: they encapsulated every fault commonly considered to epitomise the vampire. Beauregard felt himself thumped in the back by people struggling towards the scrum. Jago still preached, inciting the wrath of the righteous.