The Best new Horror 4

by Stephen Jones

  She shook her head.

  “When they say ‘high places’, that’s where they mean. Important people are taking an interest in this case. And Beauregard is their catspaw.”

  The coroner had order again. A clerk had nipped out of the room and returned with six more constables, all new-borns, and they were lining the walls like a guard. The anarchists were brooding again, their purpose obviously to cause just enough trouble to be an irritant but not enough to get their names noted.

  “If I might be permitted to address the implied question raised by the gentleman in the second row,” Jekyll asked, eliciting a nod from the coroner, “a knowledge of the position of the major organs does not necessarily betoken medical education. If you are not interested in preserving life, a butcher can have out a pair of kidneys as neatly as a surgeon. You need only a steady hand and a sharp knife, and there are plenty of those in Whitechapel.”

  “Do you have an opinion as to the instrument used by the murderer?”

  “A blade of some sort, obviously. Silvered.”

  The word brought a collective gasp.

  “Steel or iron would not have done such damage,” Jekyll continued. “Vampire physiology is such that any wounds inflicted with ordinary weapons heal almost immediately. Tissue and bone regenerate, just as a lizard may grow a new tail. Silver has a counteractive effect on this process. Only a silver knife could do such permanent, fatal harm to a vampire.”

  Beauregard nodded. “You are familiar with the case of Mary Ann Nicholls?”

  Jekyll nodded.

  “Have you drawn any conclusions from a comparison of these two incidents?”

  “Indeed. These two killings were undoubtably the work of the same individual. A left-handed man of above average height, with more than normal physical strength . . .”

  “Mr Holmes would’ve been able to tell his mother’s maiden name from a fleck of cigar ash,” Lestrade muttered to Genevieve.

  “. . . I would add that, considering the case from an alienist’s point of view, it is my belief that the murderer is not himself a vampire.”

  The anarchist was on his feet, but the coroner’s extra constables were around him before he could even shout.

  Smiling to himself at his subjugation of the court, Baxter made a note of the last point and thanked Dr Jekyll.

  The man Beauregard, Genevieve noticed, was gone. The coroner began his elaborate summing-up of the situation, before delivering the verdict of “murder by person or persons unknown”, adding that the murderer of Lulu Schön was judged to be the same man who had murdered, one week earlier, Mary Ann Nicholls.

  Reporters began asking questions, all at once.

  IV

  Beauregard strolled in the fog, trying to digest the information he had gleaned from the inquest. He would have to make a full report later, and so he wanted the facts ordered in his mind.

  Somewhere nearby, a street organ ground into the night. The air was “Take a Pair of Crimson Eyes”, from Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Vampyres of Venice: or: A Maid, a Shade and a Blade. That seemed apt. The maid—so to speak—and the blade were obviously part of the case, and the shade was the murderer, obscured by fog and blood.

  Despite Dr Jekyll’s testimony, Beauregard had been toying with the notion that the crimes to date were the work of different men, ritual killings like thuggee stranglings, acts of revolt against the new masters. Such incidents were not uncommon. But these murders were different, the work of a madman not an insurrectionist. Of course, that would not prevent street-corner ranters like those who had interrupted the inquest from claiming these pathetic eviscerations as victories.

  A vampire whore in Flower and Dean Street offered to make him immortal for an ounce or two of his blood. He flipped her a copper coin, and went on his way. He wondered how long he would have the strength to resist. At thirty-five, he was already aware that he was slowing. At fifty, at sixty, would his resolve to stay warm seem ridiculous, perverse? Sinful, even? Was refusing vampirism the moral equivalent of suicide? His father had been fifty-eight when he died.

  Vampires needed the warm, to feed and succour them, to keep the country running through the days. There were already vampires—here in the East End, if not in the salons of Mayfair—starving as the poor always had done. How long before the “desperate measures” Lord Henry Wotton was always advocating in parliament—the penning-up of still more warm, not just criminals but any simply healthy specimens, to serve as cattle for the vampires of breeding who were essential to the governance of the country—were seriously considered. Stories crept back from Devil’s Dyke that made Beauregard’s heart turn to ice. Already the definition of “criminal” had extended to include too many good men and women who were simply unable to come to an accommodation with the new regime.

  It took him a while to find a cab. After dark, Whitechapel was coming to life. Public houses and music halls were lit up, people crammed inside, laughing and shouting. And the streets were busy. Traders were selling sheet music, phials of “human” blood, scissors, Royal souvenirs. Chestnuts roasted in a barrel-fire on Half Moon Street were sold to new-born and warm alike. Vampires did not need to eat, but apparently the habit was hard to lose. Crowds took note of his clothes and mainly kept out of his way. Beauregard was conscious of the watch in his waistcoat and the wallet in his inside breast pocket. There were nimble fingers all around, and sharp nailed claws. Blood was not all the new-borns wanted. He swung his cane purposefully, warding off evil.

  At length, he found a hansom and offered the cabbie three shillings to take him to Cheyne Walk, Chelsea. The man touched his whip to the brim of his bowler, and Beauregard slipped inside. The interior was upholstered in red, like the plush coffins displayed in the shops along Oxford Street. It seemed altogether too luxurious a conveyance for this quarter of the city, and Beauregard wondered whether it had brought a distinguished visitor or two from the West End, in search of amorous adventures. There were houses all over the district, catering to every taste. Women and boys, warm and vampire, were freely available for a few shillings. Drabs like Polly Nicholls and Lulu Schön could be had for coppers or a squirt of blood. It was possible that the murderer was not from Whitechapel, that he was just another toff pursuing his peculiar pleasures. In Whitechapel, they said, you could get anything, either by paying for it or taking it.

  His duties, in what they called the Great Game, had taken him to worse places. He had spent weeks as a one-eyed beggar in Afghanistan, dogging the movements of a Russian envoy suspected of stirring up the hill-tribes.

  During the Boer Rebellion, he had endeavoured to negotiate a treaty with the Amahagger, whose idea of an evening’s entertainment was baking the heads of captives in pots. And, for a month, he had been entertained in the perfumed dungeons of an imaginative Chinese mandarin. However, it had been something of a surprise to return, after years abroad in the discreet service of Her Majesty, to find London itself transformed into a city more strange, dangerous and bizarre than any in his experience. It was no longer the heart of Empire, just a sponge absorbing the blood of the Queen’s domain until it burst.

  The cab’s wheels rattled against the cobbles, lulling him like the soft crash of waves under a ship.

  While Beauregard had been away, the Prince Consort had taken London. He had wooed and won the Queen, persuading her to abandon her widow’s black, then he had introduced vampirism to the British Isles, and reshaped the greatest Empire on the globe to suit his own desires. Charles Beauregard still served his Queen. He had promised death would not interfere with his loyalty to her person, but when he had made that vow he had thought he meant his own death.

  The Prince Consort, who had taken for himself the additional title of Lord Protector, ruled Great Britain now, his get executing his wishes and whims. A vampire, Lord Ruthven, was Prime Minister, and another, Sir Francis Varney, Viceroy of India. An elite Carpathian guard, gussied up in comic opera uniforms, patrolled the grounds of Buckingham Palace, and caroused thro
ughout the West End like sacred terrors. The army, the navy, the diplomatic corps, the police and the Church of England all were in the Prince Consort’s thrall, new-borns promoted over the warm at every opportunity.

  While the business of the kingdom continued much as it always had done, there were other changes: people vanished from public and private life, camps such as Devil’s Dyke springing up in remote areas of the country, and the apparatus of a government—secret police, sudden arrests, casual executions—he associated not with the Queen but with the Tsars and Taiping. There were Republican bands playing Robin Hood in the wilds of Scotland and Ireland, and cross-waving curates were always trying to brand new-born provincial mayors with the mark of Cain.

  Something irritated him. He had grown used to trusting his occasional feelings of irritation. On several occasions, they had been the saving of his life.

  The cab was in the Commercial Road, heading East, not West. He could smell the docks. Beauregard resolved to see this out. It was an interesting development, and he had hopes that the cabbie did not merely intend to murder and rob him.

  He eased aside the catch in the head of his cane, and slid a few inches of shining steel out of the body of the stick. The sword would draw freely if he needed it. Still, it was only steel. He wondered whether silver might not have been wiser.

  At the Whitechapel Police Station, Lestrade introduced her to Inspector Abberline, who was in charge of the continuing murder investigation. Having handled the Nicholls case, without any notable results, he was now saddled with Lulu Schön, and any more yet to come. Jekyll’s testimony confirmed what Genevieve had already intuited. These horrors would not stop of their own accord. The man with the silver knife would keep at his work until he was caught or killed.

  Lestrade and Abberline went off together, to have a huddle. Abberline was warm, and elaborately—without realising it?—came up with other things to do with his hands whenever the possibility of pressing flesh with a vampire was raised. He lit his pipe and listened as Lestrade ticked off points on his fingers. Genevieve looked around the reception room, which was already busy.

  Outside the station, there were several groups of interested parties. A Christian Crusade band, flying the cross of St George, were supporting a preacher, who was calling down God’s Justice on vampirekind, upholding the Whitechapel Murderer as a true instrument of the Will of Christ. They were being heckled by a few professional insurrectionists, some of the crew she had seen at the inquest, and ridiculed by a knot of painted new-born women, who offered expensive kisses and changed lives. Genevieve understood that many new-borns paid to become some street tart’s get, seeking vampirism as a way out of their warmth.

  A sergeant was turning out some of the station’s regulars. Genevieve recognised most of them. There were plenty—warm and vampire—who spent their lives shuffling between the holding cells and Toynbee Hall, in the constant search for a bed and a free meal.

  “Miss Dee,” said a woman, recognising her, “Miss Dee . . .”

  “Cathy,” she said, acknowledging the new-born, “are you being well treated?”

  “Loverly, miss, loverly,” she said, simpering at the sergeant, “it’s an ’ome from ’ome.”

  Cathy Eddowes looked hardly better as a vampire than she must have done when warm. Gin and too many nights outdoors had raddled her, and the red shine in her eyes and on her hair didn’t outweigh the mottled skin under her heavy rouge. Like many in Whitechapel, Cathy still exchanged her body for drink. Her customers’ blood was probably as high in its alcohol content as the gin to which she used to be devoted.

  The new-born primped her hair, arranging a red ribbon that kept her tight curls away from her wide face. There was a running sore on the back of her hand.

  “Let me look at that, Cathy.”

  Genevieve had seen marks like these. New-borns had to be careful. They were stronger, more lasting than the warm. But too much of their diet was tainted. And disease was still a danger. The Dark Kiss did something strange—something Dr Jekyll would probably find of great interest—to any diseases a person happened to carry over from warm life to their undead state.

  “Do you have many of these sores?”

  Cathy shook her head, but Genevieve knew she meant yes.

  A clear fluid was weeping from the red patch on the back of the new-born’s hand, and there were damp marks on Cathy’s tight bodice, suggesting more patches. She wore her scarf in an unnatural fashion, covering her neck and upper breasts. Genevieve peeled the wool away, and smelled the pungent discharge that glistened on Cathy’s skin.

  Genevieve looked into the woman’s eyes, and saw fear. Cathy Eddowes knew something was wrong, but was superstitiously afraid of finding out what it was.

  “Cathy, you must call in at the Hall tonight. See Mr Druitt, or, better yet, Dr Seward. Something can be done for your condition. I promise you.”

  “I’ll be all right, love.”

  “Not unless you get some treatment, Cathy.”

  Cathy tried to laugh, and tottered out onto the streets. One of her boot heels was gone, so she had a music hall limp. She held up her head, wrapping her scarf around her like a duchess’s fur stole, and wiggled provocatively past the Christian Crusade speaker, slipping into the fog.

  “Dead in a year,” said the sergeant, a red-eyed new-born with a snoutlike protrusion in the centre of his face.

  “Not if I can help it.”

  VI

  The cab took him to Limehouse, somewhere near the Basin. It was not a part of the city he knew well, although he had been here in Her Majesty’s Service several times. The door was opened for him, and a pair of red eyes glittered in the dark beyond.

  “Sorry for the inconvenience, Beauregard,” purred a silky voice, male but not entirely masculine, “but I hope you’ll understand. It’s a sticky wicket . . .”

  Beauregard stepped down, and found himself in a yard off one of the warren of streets near the docks. There were people all around. The one who had spoken was an Englishman, a vampire with a good coat and soft hat, face in darkness. His posture was studied in its langour, he was an athlete at rest and Beauregard would not have liked to go four rounds with him. The others were Chinese, pig-tailed and bowed, hands in their sleeves. Most were warm, but the massive fellow by the cab-door was a new-born, naked to the waist to show off his dragon tattoos and his vampire indifference to the autumn chill.

  The Englishman stepped forward, and moonlight caught his youthful face. He had pretty eyelashes, like a woman’s, and Beauregard recognised him.

  “I saw you get six sixes from six balls in ’85,” he said. “Gentlemen and Players, the MCC.”

  The sportsman shrugged modestly. “You play what’s chucked at you. I always say.”

  Beauregard had heard the new-born’s name in the Diogenes Club, tentatively linked with a series of daring jewel robberies. He supposed the sportsman’s involvement in this evident kidnapping confirmed that he was indeed the author of those criminal feats.

  “This way,” said the amateur cracksman, indicating a wet stretch of stone wall. The new-born Chinese pressed a brick, and a section of the wall tilted upwards, forming a hatch-like door. “Duck down or you’ll bash your bean. Deuced small, these chinks.”

  Beauregard followed the new-born, who could see in the dark better than he, and was in turn followed by some of the Chinese. They went down a passageway that sloped sharply, and he realised they must be below street level. Everything was damp and glistening, suggesting these underground chambers must be close to the river.

  Doors were opened, and Beauregard was ushered into a dimly-lit drawing room, richly furnished. He noticed there were no windows, just chinoiserie screens. The centrepiece was a large desk, behind which sat an ancient Chinaman, his long, hard fingernails like knifepoints on his blotter. There were others in the room, in comfortable armchairs arranged in a half-circle about the desk.

  One man turned his head, red cigar-end making a Devil’s mask of his
face. He was a vampire, but the Chinaman was not.

  “Mr Beauregard,” began the Celestial, “so kind of you to join our wretched and unworthy selves.”

  “So kind of you to invite me.”

  The Chinaman clapped his hands, and nodded to a dead-faced servant, a Burmese.

  “Take our visitor’s hat, cloak and cane.”

  Beauregard was relieved of his burdens. When the Burmese was close enough, Beauregard observed the singular earring, and the ritual tattooing about his neck.

  “A Dacoit?” he inquired.

  “Very observant.”

  “I have some experience of the world of secret societies.”

  “Indeed you have, Mr Beauregard. Our paths have crossed three times; in Egypt, in the Kashmir, and in Shansi Province. You caused me some little inconvenience.”

  Beauregard realised to whom he was talking. “My apologies, doctor.”

  The Chinaman leaned forward, his face emerging into the light, his fingernails clacking as he brushed away Beauregard’s apologies. “Think nothing of it. Those were trivial matters, of no import beyond the ordinary.”

  They called this man the “Devil Doctor” or “the Lord of Strange Deaths”, and he was reputed to be one of the Council of Seven, the ruling body of the Si-Fan, a tong whose influence extended from China to all the quarters of the Earth.

  The amateur cracksman turned up the gaslight, and faces became clear, dark corners of the room were dispelled.

  “Business,” snorted a military-looking vampire, “time is money, remember . . .”

  “A thousand pardons, Colonel Moran. In the East, things are different. Here, we must bow to your Western ways, hurry and bustle, haste and industry.”

  The cigar-smoker stood up, unbending a lanky figure from which hung a frock coat marked around the pockets with chalk. The Colonel deferred to him, and stepped back, eyes falling. The smoker’s head oscillated from side to side like a lizard’s, eyeteeth protruding over his lower lip.

  “My associate is a businessman,” he explained between puffs, “our cricketing friend is a dilettante. Sikes is continuing his family business. I am a mathematician, but you, my dear doctor, are an artist.”