Anno Dracula - Kim Newman [139]
‘Jack loved her,’ Geneviève said. ‘That was what drew him in with the Van Helsing circle. What happened must have driven him out of his wits. I should have realised. He calls her Lucy.’
‘Her?’
‘His vampire mistress. It’s not her real name, but it’s what he calls her.’
Geneviève was sorting through the extended drawer of a stout filing cabinet, flicking past individual files with a nimble finger.
‘As for Kelly,’ she said, ‘we have lots of Kellys on our books. But only one who fits Jack’s requirements.’
She handed him a sheet of paper, the details of a patient’s treatment. Kelly, Mary Jane. 13 Miller’s Court.
Geneviève’s face was ash-grey.
‘That’s the name,’ she said. ‘Mary Jane Kelly.’
54
CONNECTIVE TISSUE
On November the 9th, 1888, Geneviève Dieudonné and Charles Beauregard left Toynbee Hall at almost precisely four ante meridiem. Dawn was still hours off, the moon clouded over. The fog, although slightly thinned, was sufficient to impair even a vampire’s night-sight. Nevertheless, their journey was accomplished swiftly.
Geneviève and Beauregard proceeded along Commercial Street, turned west into Dorset Street by the Britannia, a public house, and sought out the address they had for Mary Jane Kelly. Miller’s Court was accessible through a narrow brick archway on the north side of Dorset Street, between Number 26 and a chandler’s shop.
Neither took much note of a rag-wrapped personage huddled just inside the court, assuming him to be a tramp. Dorset Street was referred to locally as ‘Dosset Street’, because of the number of vagrants attracted to the temporary lodgings, or ‘doss houses’, offered there. It was common for those who lacked the fourpence for a bed to sleep rough. In actuality, the personage was Arthur Holmwood, Lord Godalming, and he was not sleeping.
Geneviève and Beauregard expended a few moments on determining which doorway gave entrance to Number 13, a single-room dwelling at the ground-floor back of 26 Dorset Street. They were drawn by a line of thin red firelight spilling on to the doorstep.
The quarter-hour had not yet sounded. By the time of their arrival, Dr John Seward had been at his work for more than two hours. The door of 13 Miller’s Court was not locked.
55
FUCKING HELL!
Charles swore, fighting to keep his breath. Geneviève, no shock to spare for his surprising vocabulary, had to agree with him.
The greasy smell of dead blood hit her like a bullet in the belly. She had to hold the doorframe to keep from fainting. She had seen the leavings of murderers before; and blood-muddied battlefields, and plague holes, and torture chambers, and execution sites. 13 Miller’s Court was the worst of all.
Jack Seward knelt in the middle of a ruin barely recognisable as a human being. He was still working, apron and shirtsleeves dyed red. His silver scalpel flickered in the firelight.
Mary Kelly’s room was cramped: a bed, a chair, a fireplace, and barely enough floor to walk around them. Jack’s operation had spread the girl across the bed and the floor, and up the walls to the height of three feet. The cheap muslin curtains were speckled with halfpenny-sized dots. There was a mirror, its dusty glass marked with bloody splashes. In the grate, a bundle of clothes burned, casting a red light that seared into Geneviève’s night-sensitive eyes.
Jack was not overly concerned with their intrusion.
‘Nearly done,’ he said, easing out something from a pie-shaped expanse that had been a face. ‘I have to be sure Lucy is dead. Van Helsing says her soul will not rest until she is truly dead.’
He was calm, not ranting. He performed his butchery with a surgeon’s precision. In his mind, there was purpose.
‘There,’ Jack said. ‘She is delivered. God is merciful.’
Charles had his pistol out and aimed. His hand was trembling. ‘Put down the knife and step away from her,’ he said.
Jack placed the knife on the bedspread and stood up, wiping his hands on an already-bloody patch of apron.
‘See, she is at peace,