Anno Dracula - Kim Newman [81]
‘But you don’t think he’s our murderer?’
Beauregard was mildly surprised to be so anticipated. ‘I do not. For one thing, he is reckoned a surgeon of genius.’
‘And Jack the Ripper knows his way about the insides of a body, but trawls through entrails with the finesse of a drunken pork butcher.’
‘Exactly.’
He was used to having to explain his reasoning. It was refreshing, if not a little alarming, to be with someone who could keep up with him.
‘Could he deliberately botch the job to throw off suspicion?’ she asked, then answering herself, ‘No, if Moreau were stark mad enough to murder for an experiment, he wouldn’t jeopardise his findings with intentional carelessness. If he were our Ripper, he’d abduct the victims and remove them to a private place where he could operate at his leisure.’
‘The girls were all killed where they were found.’
‘And swiftly, in a frenzy. No “scientific method”.’
The vampire bit her lip, and was for an instant the image of a serious sixteen-year-old in a dress made for an older and more frivolous sister. Then the ancient mind was back.
‘So Dr Jekyll is your suspect?’
‘He is a biological chemist, not an anatomist. I’m not at all up on the field, but I’ve been wrestling with his articles. He has some odd ideas. “On the Composition of Vampire Tissue” was his last piece.’
Geneviève considered the possibilities. ‘It’s hard to imagine, though. Next to Moreau, he seems so... so harmless. He reminds me of a clergyman. And he is old. I can’t picture him dashing about the streets by night, much less possessing the sheer strength the Ripper must have.’
‘But there’s something there.’
She thought a moment. ‘Yes, you’re right. There is something there. I don’t think Henry Jekyll is Jack the Ripper. But there is an indefinably peculiar quality about him.’
Beauregard was grimly pleased to have his suspicions confirmed.
‘He’ll bear watching.’
‘Charles, are you employing me as a bloodhound?’
‘I suppose I am. Do you mind?’
‘Woof woof,’ she said, giggling. When she laughed, her upper lip drew back ferociously from sharp teeth. ‘Remember not to trust me. I used to say the war would be over by winter.’
‘Which war?’
‘The Hundred Years’ War.’
‘Good guess.’
‘One year, I was right. By then, I didn’t care any more. I think I was in Spain.’
‘You were French originally. Why don’t you live there?’
‘France was English then. That was what they said the war was about.’
‘So you were on our side?’
‘Most definitely not. But it was a long time ago, and in another country, and that girl is long gone.’
‘Whitechapel is a strange place to find you.’
‘I’m not the only French girl in Whitechapel. Half the filles de joie on the streets call themselves “Fifi La Tour”.’
He laughed again.
‘Your family must have been French too, Monsieur Beauregard, and you reside in Cheyne Walk.’
‘It was good enough for Carlyle.’
‘I met Carlyle once. And many others. The great and the good, the mad and the bad. I used to fear someone would track me down by correlating all the mentions of me in memoirs through the ages. Track me down and destroy me. That used to be the worst that could happen. My friend Carmilla was tracked down and destroyed. She was a soppy girl, fearfully dependent on her warm lovers, but she didn’t deserve to be speared and beheaded, then left to float in a coffin full of her own blood. I suppose I don’t have to worry about that dread dark fate any more.’
‘What have you been doing all these years?’
She shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Running? Waiting? Trying to do the right thing? Am I a good person, do you think? Or a bad person?’
She did not expect an answer. Her mix of melancholy and bitter came out as amusing. He supposed being amusing was her way of coping. She must be as weighted with centuries as Jacob Marley was with chains.
‘Cheer up, old girl,’ he said. ‘Henry Jekyll thinks you’re perfect.’
‘Old girl?’
‘It’s just an expression.’
Geneviève hummed sadly. ‘It’s me exactly, isn’t it though? An old girl.’
What was it she made