Anno Dracula - Kim Newman [140]
Mary Jane Kelly was truly dead. Geneviève had no doubt about that.
‘It’s over,’ Jack said. ‘We’ve beaten him. We’ve defeated the Count. The contagion cannot spread.’
Geneviève had nothing to say. Her stomach was still a tight fist. Jack seemed to notice her for the first time.
‘Lucy,’ he said, alarmed. He was seeing someone else, somewhere else. ‘Lucy, it was all for you...’
He bent to pick up his silver scalpel and Charles shot him in the shoulder. He spun around, fingers grasping air, and slammed against the mantel. He pressed his gloved hand to the wall and sank downwards, knees protruding as he tried to make his body shrink. Jack was huddled, holding his wound. The shot had gone completely through and torn the murder out of him.
Geneviève snatched the scalpel away from the bed. Its silver blade made her itch, so she shifted to hold it by the enamelled grip. It was such a small thing to have done so much hurt.
‘We have to get him out of here,’ Charles said. ‘A mob would tear him apart.’
Geneviève hauled Jack upright and between them they managed him into the courtyard. His clothes were tacky from the drying gore.
It was nearing morning, and Geneviève was suddenly tired. The cold air did not dispel the throbbing in her head. The image of 13 Miller’s Court was imprinted in her mind like a photograph upon paper. She would never, she thought, lose it.
Jack was easy to manipulate. He would walk with them to a police station, or to Hell.
56
LORD JACK
It had been dizzyingly hot inside Mary Jane Kelly’s room; the chill of the court was sobering. Once out of the charnel house, Beauregard realised that though the mystery was solved, he was faced with a quandary. The women were dead, Seward hopelessly mad. What justice would be served by turning him over to Lestrade? In whose interests was he to act now? Sir Charles Warren’s, by letting the police take credit for an arrest? The Prince Consort’s, by turning over another vanquished foe to the spikes outside the Palace?
‘He bit me,’ the Ripper said, remembering some trivial incident, ‘the madman bit me.’ Seward held out his gloved, swollen hand. Blood was pooled in the palm.
‘Vlad Tepes will make him immortal, just so he can torture him forever,’ Geneviève said.
Someone came out of the chandler’s shop and stood in the archway. Beauregard saw red eyes in the dark and made out the silhouette of a big man in a check ulster and a billycock hat. How much had this vampire witnessed? He stepped into the court.
‘Well done, sir. You’ve put an end to Jack the Ripper.’
It was Sergeant Dravot from the Diogenes Club.
‘All along, sir, there were two murderers, working together,’ said Dravot. ‘It should have been obvious.’
The world was spinning again, the cobbles beneath him falling away. Beauregard did not know where it would stop.
Dravot bent down and whipped a ragged blanket away from a human bundle that had been shoved into a corner. A dead white face stared up, lips drawn back in a last snarl.
‘It’s Godalming,’ Beauregard exclaimed.
‘Lord Godalming, sir,’ Dravot said. ‘He was in it with Dr Seward. They fell out last night.’
Beauregard could not make all the pieces fit. He knelt by the body. There was a large patch of black blood on his breast, soaking his shirt. In the patch was a ragged wound, over the heart.
‘How long have you known all this, Dravot?’
‘You caught the Rippers, sir. I’ve just been looking out for you. The cabal set me up as your guardian angel.’
Geneviève was standing apart from them, holding Jack Seward’s arm. Her face was shadowed.
‘And Jago? Was that you?’
Dravot shrugged. ‘Another matter, sir.’
Beauregard stood, pushing the cobbles with his cane, and brushed off his knees.
‘There’ll be a fearful scandal. Godalming was well-thought-of. He had a reputation as a coming man.’
‘His name will be entirely blackened, sir.’
‘And he was a vampire. That will cause a stir. The assumption was that the Ripper was warm.’
Dravot nodded.
‘I should think the cabal will be delighted,’ Beauregard continued.