Anno Dracula - Kim Newman [172]
During this exchange, a bell has rung in the hallway. A BUTLER, having answered the door, returns with a note for CHARLES. ARTHUR is interested. CHARLES reads and lets nothing on.
CHARLES
You’ll excuse me, Art.
FLORENCE’S HALLWAY. INT. NIGHT.
A COACHMAN waits. CHARLES puts on his cloak and hat, and draws a cane from the umbrella stand. PENELOPE comes to detain him.
PENELOPE (annoyed)
Charles, you’re not leaving so soon.
CHARLES
Sometimes my time is not my own. I’m sure Art, or Kate, will see you home.
CHARLES kisses her and tastes salt. He wipes the trace of blood off her cheek, smiles, and leaves with the COACHMAN.
PENELOPE (determined)
Charles Beauregard, things will be different once we are married.
ALLEY, WHITECHAPEL. EXT. NIGHT.
LULU lies dissected in a pool of fog that obscures her most hideous wounds. LESTRADE, a vampire, directs two CONSTABLES in examining the body. LESTRADE has rat-whiskers, a bowler hat and a sour expression. A peering mob is held back by policemen. CHARLES makes his way through.
CHARLES
Inspector Lestrade, of Scotland Yard.
LESTRADE
Mr Beauregard. It’s a bad business. (To the CONSTABLES) Let him look.
The CONSTABLES stand aside.
CHARLES (not flinching)
Like the others? Heart cut out?
LESTRADE
Neatly done with a silver scalpel. None of your wooden stake nonsense.
CHARLES
Who was she?
LESTRADE
Lulu Schön. A new-born vampire. German, we think. Common prostitute, like the others.
CHARLES
This is... what, the fourth?
LESTRADE
No one is sure. The sensation press have exhumed every unsolved East End killing of the past thirty years.
CHARLES
How many are you certain of?
LESTRADE
We’ll not even be certain of Schön until the inquest, though I’ll lay my pension on her. I make her the third, after Annie Chapman and Polly Nichols.
CHARLES
They were all, ah...
LESTRADE
Vampires, sir? Yes. Silver Knife is a vampire killer. Van Helsing would have been proud of him.
CHARLES (looking close at the remains)
This man hates. With a passion. The murders must be committed in a frenzy, yet there’s a coolness to the work. He kills out on the street in the open. He doesn’t just butcher, he dissects. And vampires are not easy to kill.
LESTRADE (holds up LULU’s clawed hand)
He surprises them, sir. Or they’d tear him apart.
CHARLES
Our Silver Knife is not just a simple lunatic, Inspector. He has a reason.
The CONSTABLES lift LULU, shifting the corpse into a horse-drawn wagon. The crowd hisses. CHARLES looks at the cobbles and is reflected in moonlit blood.
LESTRADE
He must be stopped before there’s general panic. The situation is unbalanced enough as it is. These killings upset people, warm and un-dead.
CHARLES
Indubitably. It sounds like an affair for your old associate, Mr Holmes.
LESTRADE
He is not at liberty to investigate, sir. He has differences with the current government.
CHARLES
That ass Lord Ruthven, the Prime Minister, has packed him off to those pens on the Sussex Downs. What does the Pall Mall Gazette call them? Concentration camps?
LESTRADE (uncomfortable)
Indeed. He’s in Devil’s Dyke.
CHARLES
Well, you’ll have to catch Silver Knife yourself. I’ll make my report and see if the Diogenes Club can make any contribution.
LESTRADE (gloomy)
All help welcome, sir.
CHARLES
No doubt. I’m going to root around a bit on my own, see if anything turns up.
LESTRADE (doubtful)
If you think that’s wise.
CHARLES (waving cane)
I can look after myself, Inspector. Her Majesty’s Service has taken me to tight spots before. I’ve faced the stranglers of Bombay and the man-killers of Kilimanjaro.
LESTRADE (after CHARLES has gone)
But you don’t know the women of Whitechapel, clever sir.
§ The producers wanted to keep the Ripper’s identity secret for the bulk of the film, making it a murder mystery. While writing the novel, I briefly considered the possibility of having Seward’s phonograph diary be fake – planted by the real Ripper (yes, it would have been Arthur) to frame his old friend. I didn