Anno Dracula - Kim Newman [39]
Abberline and Lestrade had questioned dozens but made no useful arrests. There were always rival protesters outside the police stations. Mediums like Lees and Carnacki had been called for. A number of consulting detectives – Martin Hewitt, Max Carrados, August Van Dusen – had prowled Whitechapel, hoping to turn up something. Even the venerable Hawkshaw had emerged from retirement. But with their acknowledged master in Devil’s Dyke, the enthusiasm of the detective community ebbed considerably, and no solutions were forthcoming. A lunatic named Cotford was apprehended creeping about in minstrel’s blackface, claiming to be a detective ‘in disguise’. He had been removed to Colney Hatch for examination. Insanity, Jack Seward said, could be an epidemic disease.
Geneviève found a shilling in her purse and slipped it into Lily’s blanket. The new-born murmured in her drowsiness but didn’t wake. As a hansom rumbled past, she glimpsed the profile of a dozing man inside, his hat swaying with the movements of the cab. Someone going home after a night in the fleshpots, she guessed. Then she recognised the passenger. It was Beauregard, the man she’d noticed at Lulu Schön’s inquest, the man from the Diogenes Club. According to Lestrade, his presence evidenced an interest from very high places. The Queen, young again, had shown public concern about ‘these ghastly murders’, but nothing had been heard from Prince Dracula, to whom Geneviève assumed the lives of a few streetwalkers, vampire or not, were of as much importance as those of beetles.
The cab trundled into the fog. Again she felt there was something out there, standing in the thick of it, watching her, waiting for a chance to move. The feeling passed.
Gradually, as she came to realise how powerless she was to affect the behaviour of this unknown maniac, she also sensed just how important the case had become. Everyone began their arguments by declaring that it was about more than just three butchered harlots. It was about Disraeli’s ‘two nations’, it was about the regrettable spread of vampirism among the lower classes, it was about the decline of public order, it was about the fragile equilibrium of the transformed kingdom. The murders were mere sparks, but Great Britain was a tinderbox.
She was spending a lot of time with whores – she’d been an outcast long enough to feel a certain kinship with them – and shared their fears. Tonight, nearing dawn, she’d found a girl in Mrs Warren’s house off Raven Row and bled her, out of need not pleasure. Warm Annie held her tenderly and let her suckle from the flesh of her throat as if she were a wet-nurse. Afterwards, Geneviève gave her a half-crown. It was too much, but she had to make the gesture. The only decoration in Warm Annie’s room was a cheap print of Vlad Tepes riding into battle. The only items of furniture were a wash-stand and a large bed, its sheets cleaned so many times they were as thin as paper, the mattress dyed with irregular brown patches. Brothels no longer had ornate mirrors.
After so many years, Geneviève should be used to her predator’s life, but the Prince Consort had turned everything topsy-turvy and she was ashamed again, not of what she must do to prolong her existence, but of the things vampirekind, those of the bloodline of Vlad Tepes, did around her. Warm Annie had been bitten several times. Eventually she would turn. Nobody’s get, she would have to find her own way, and doubtless end up as raddled as Cathy Eddowes, as truly dead as Polly Nichols, as beast-like as Carroty Nell. Her head was fuzzy from the gin her warm girl had drunk. That was why she had hallucinations. The whole city seemed sick.
13
STRANGE FITS OF PASSION
Dr Seward’s Diary (kept in phonograph)