Anno Dracula - Kim Newman [14]
‘Any rate, that’s where he comes from. He talks up an inferno, makes them all feel righteous and proper about shoving a stake through some trollop. He’s been in and out of here all year for fire-breathing. And drunk and disorderly, with the odd common assault tossed in.’
Jago was a wild-eyed fanatic but some of the crowd listened to him. A few years ago, he would have been preaching against the Jews, or Fenians, or the Heathen Chinee. Now, it was vampires.
‘Fire and the stake,’ Jago cried. ‘The unclean leeches, the cast-outs of Hell, the blood-bloated filth. All must perish by fire and the stake. All must be purified.’
The preacher had a few men soliciting donations in caps. They were rough-looking enough to blur the line between extortion and collection.
‘He’s not short of a few pennies,’ Thick commented.
‘Enough to get his bread-knife silver-plated?’
Thick had already thought of that. ‘Five Christian Crusaders claim he was preaching his little heart out to them just when Polly Nichols was being gutted. Same for Annie Chapman. And last night’s too, I’ll lay odds.’
‘Strange hours for a sermon?’
‘Between two and three in the morning, and five and six for the second job,’ Thick agreed. ‘Does seem a trifle too done up in pink string and sealing wax, doesn’t it? Still, we all have to be night-birds now.’
‘You probably stay up all night regularly. Would you want to listen to God and Glory at five o’clock?’
‘It’s darkest just before dawn, they say.’ Thick snorted, and added, ‘besides, I wouldn’t listen to John Jago at any hour of the day or night. Especially on a Sunday.’
Thick stepped out and mingled with the crowd, getting the feel of the situation. Geneviève, at a loose end, wondered whether she should be getting back to the Hall. The desk sergeant checked his watch and gave the order to turn out the station’s regulars. A group of shabby men and women were let out of the cells, marginally more sober than they had been when they were pulled in. They lined up to be officially set free. Geneviève recognised most of them: there were plenty – warm and vampire – who spent their nights shuffling between the holding cells, the Workhouse Infirmary and Toynbee Hall, in the constant search for a bed and a free feed.
‘Miss Dee,’ said a woman, ‘Miss Dee...’
A lot of people had trouble pronouncing ‘Dieudonné’, so she often used her initial. Like many in Whitechapel, she had more names than the usual.
‘Cathy,’ she said, acknowledging the new-born, ‘are you being well treated?’
‘Loverly, miss, loverly,’ she said, simpering at the desk sergeant, ‘it’s an ’ome from ’ome.’
Cathy Eddowes looked hardly better as a vampire than she’d done when warm. Gin and nights outdoors had raddled her; the red shine in her eyes and on her hair didn’t outweigh the mottled skin under her heavy powder. Like many on the streets, Cathy still exchanged her body for drink. Her customers’ blood was probably as alcohol-heavy as the gin which had been her warm ruin. The new-born primped her hair, arranging a red ribbon that kept her tight curls away from her wide face. There was a running sore on the back of her hand.
‘Let me look at that, Cathy.’
Geneviève had seen marks like these. New-borns had to be careful. They were stronger than the warm, but too much of their diet was tainted. Disease was still a danger; the Prince Consort’s Dark Kiss, at whatever remove, did something strange to diseases a person happened to carry over from warm life to their un-dead state.
‘Do you have many of these sores?’
Cathy shook her head but Geneviève knew she meant yes. A clear fluid was weeping from the red patch on the back of her hand. Damp marks on her tight bodice suggested more. She wore her scarf in an unnatural fashion, covering her neck and the upper part of her breasts. Geneviève peeled the wool away from several glistening sores and smelled the pungent discharge. Something was wrong, but Cathy Eddowes was superstitiously afraid of finding out what it was.
‘You must call in at the Hall tonight.