Anno Dracula - Kim Newman [125]
‘Charles,’ Geneviève said sharply. ‘Stop dreaming.’
Mrs Churchward was tottering on the verge of a faint. Beauregard caught her and helped her into a chair.
‘I never... thought...’ she said. ‘Poor, poor Penny.’
She understood her daughter better now, Beauregard knew.
‘Penelope,’ Geneviève said, trying to get the invalid’s attention. Penelope’s eyes wandered and her mouth trembled. She licked away the last of the blood. ‘Miss Churchward, can you hear me?’
Penelope purred an answer.
‘You must rest,’ Geneviève told her.
Penelope nodded, smiled and allowed her eyes to flutter shut.
Geneviève turned to Mrs Churchward and snapped her fingers in front of her face. Penelope’s mother was jolted from her daydream. ‘Two days from now, the same, you understand? With supervision. You must not let your daughter take too much blood from you. And that must be the last time. She must not become dependent on you. Another feeding will bring her up to strength. Then, she must fend for herself.’
‘Will she live?’ Mrs Churchward asked.
‘I can’t promise an eternity, but if she’s careful she should survive the century. Perhaps the millennium.’
46
KAFFIR WAR
Each night, Sir Charles sent out constables with paint pots to obliterate the day’s Crusader Crosses from walls within sight of Scotland Yard. But after dawn the thin red signs would appear again, daubed on anything conveniently white or white-ish in the vicinity of Whitehall Place and Northumberland Avenue. Godalming watched as the Commissioner barked orders at his latest group of amateur redecorators.
Living loiterers in thick coats and scarves watched, hostile natives on the point of attacking the fort. One of Sir Charles’s wiser measures was to prepare the Yard for siege, ensuring rifles were readily available and all doors and windows defensible. Whenever the situation skewed from a police to a military matter, the Commissioner had a spurt of competence that was almost heartening. Good soldier, terrible copper: that would be the verdict on Sir Charles Warren.
The fog was back, thicker than ever. Even vampires found it impenetrable. Seeing in the dark was not the same as seeing through the sulphur-soup. Godalming still watched over Sir Charles for the Prime Minister. The Commissioner was steadily losing his grip. When he next met with Ruthven, Godalming intended to recommend replacement. Matthews had been after Sir Charles’s scalp for months, so the Home Secretary – himself hardly secure in his position – would be mollified.
Somehow Crusaders had managed to paint their cross on the main doors of the Yard. Godalming suspected Jago had warm sympathisers on the force. Whoever was appointed in Sir Charles’s stead would have to purge the ranks before order could be re-established.
The Cross of St George was an obvious symbol for insurrectionists: simultaneously the crucifix vampires are proverbially unable to face, and the standard of an England bridling under the Prince Consort.
‘This is intolerable,’ Sir Charles fumed. ‘I am surrounded by blackguards and blunderers.’
Godalming kept quiet. The punishment for unauthorised wall-painting and slogan-scribbling was now five strokes of the lash, to be administered in public. At this rate it would soon be summary impalement, or at least the chopping off of the offending hand.
‘That dolt Matthews and his penny-pinching,’ Sir Charles continued. ‘We need more men on the streets. Troops.’
Only Godalming paid attention to the Commissioner. His subordinates got on with the business of policing, trying to ignore the ravings of their commanding officer. Dr Anderson, Sir Charles’s Assistant Commissioner, had extended his walking holiday in Switzerland, while Chief Inspector Swanson was doing his best to seem part of the wallpaper, hoping to keep his head down until the shooting was over.
A derelict-looking