Anno Dracula - Kim Newman [58]
‘Very fine, Hallward,’ he commented. ‘I do believe you’ve caught me. Godalming, look here, look at this expression. Is this not me?’
Godalming agreed with Ruthven. The Prime Minister was delighted.
‘You’re too much the new-born to have forgotten your own face, Godalming,’ Ruthven said, fingers at his own cheek. ‘When I was as barely-cool as you, I swore it would never happen. Ah, the resolutions of youth. Gone, gone, gone.’
From philosophy, Ruthven switched to natural science. ‘Actually, it is untrue that vampires lack a reflection. It is just that the reflection invariably does not reflect, as it were, what is out here in the world.’
Godalming, like every new-born, had stared at a shaving glass for a few hours, wondering. Some disappeared completely, while others saw an apparently empty suit of clothes. Godalming’s image was a black fudge like the photographs Ruthven had mentioned. The matter of mirrors was uniformly considered the most impenetrable of the mysteries of the un-dead.
‘Anyway, Godalming... Silver Knife? This beastly murderer. He preys only on our kind, does he not? Slits throats and stabs hearts?’
‘That is what they say.’
‘A fearless vampire killer, like your old associate Van Helsing?’
Godalming’s face burned; if still capable of blushing, he was doing so.
‘I’m sorry,’ the Prime Minister said with patent sincerity, ‘I did not intend to raise that matter. It must be painful for you.’
‘Things have changed, my lord.’
Ruthven fluttered his hand. ‘You lost your fiancée to this Van Helsing. Having suffered more at his hand than even Prince Dracula, you have been pardoned and forgiven your ignorance.’
Godalming remembered hammering at the stake, and Lucy’s hissing, blood-spitting death. A death that need never have been. Lucy would have been one of the first ladies of the court; like Wilhelmina Harker or the Prince Consort’s Carpathian mistresses. He would have lost her anyway.
‘You’ve cause to curse the Dutchman’s memory. For that reason, I wish you to represent my interests in the matter of Silver Knife.’
‘I don’t see what you mean.’
Ruthven was back at his podium, exactly in his former pose. Hallward’s quick fingers filled in detail on a large sketch.
‘The Palace has taken an interest. Our dear Queen is most upset. I have a personal note from Vicky. “This murderer is certainly not an Englishman,” she deduces, “and if he is, he is certainly not a gentleman.” Very astute.’
‘Whitechapel is a notorious nest of foreigners, my lord. The Queen may be right.’
Ruthven smiled ironically. ‘Rot, Godalming. We should all like to believe the English incapable of atrocious conduct, but such is not the case. Sir Francis Varney, after all, is an Englishman. The point is that our murderer is very choosy about his midnight surgical experiments.’
‘You think he’s a doctor?’
‘That’s hardly a fresh theory. It’s of no importance. No, the thing is that he is a vampire killer. An homicidal lunatic, almost certainly, but also a vampire killer. Given the delicacy of the situation, he is treading a knife-edge with the public. No matter how they may disapprove and cry “monster”, there is another view, a view which upholds the Silver Knife as an outlaw hero, a Robin Hood of the gutters.’
‘Surely no Englishman could believe so?’
‘Have you forgotten what it was like to be warm, Godalming? How did you feel when you were following Van Helsing about Kingstead Cemetery with hammer and stake?’
Godalming understood.
‘The best thing would be, and I am not commissioning such an act by any means, if our madman were to take his silver knife to some warm tart, and thus display an all-inclusive mania. If there is any sympathy for him, such a step would cause it to evaporate.’
‘Indeed so.’
‘But even this exalted office does not give me power over the minds of mad murderers. A pity.’
‘What would you have me do?’
‘Poke around, Godalming. We are late off the mark. Many interested parties have been tracking our man. Carpathians have been seen attending inquests and loitering in vile