Anno Dracula

44

ON THE WATERFRONT

The body had washed up on Cuckold’s Point, at the curve of Limehouse Reach. It had taken three men to drag it out of the sucking mud and deposit it on the nearest wharf. Before Geneviève and Morrison arrived, someone took the trouble to lay the corpse out into a semblance of dignity, untangling the limbs and arranging the water- and dirt-clogged clothes. A length of sailcloth was draped over the dead man to protect the sensibilities of dock-workers and waterfront idlers who happened by.

He had already been identified by an inscription in his watch and, surprisingly, a cheque made out to his name. Nevertheless, they were formally to confirm the corpse’s identity. As the constable lifted the sailcloth, several on-lookers made exaggerated sounds of disgust. Morrison flinched and turned away. Druitt’s face had been eaten by the fish, exposing empty eye-sockets and a devil’s-grin of bare teeth, but she knew him by his hairline and chin.

‘It’s him,’ she said.

The constable dropped the cloth and thanked them. Morrison seconded her statement. A wagon was ready to receive the body.

‘I think he had family in Bournemouth,’ Morrison told the policeman. The constable took a dutiful note.

The Colonel had kept his word. Druitt’s pockets were stuffed with stones; no suicide note had been manufactured, but the inference was inescapable. Another unpunished murderer was at liberty: the police would mount no campaign against him, there would be no special investigators from the Diogenes Club. What was so extraordinary about the Ripper? Within fifty yards of the river, there would be a dozen as cruel, as profligate. The Whitechapel Murderer was presumably a madman; Moran and his kind had not even that excuse. Their murders were simply stock-in-trade.

With Druitt hoisted on to the wagon, the show was over. The idlers drifted off to the next spectacle and the policeman returned to his duties. She was left with Morrison, at the edge of the wharf. They walked towards Rotherhithe Street, a row of rope-merchants, public houses, sailors’ lodgings, shipping offices and bawdy houses. This was the Arabian Nights quarter of London, a bazaar in the thin fog. A hundred different languages mingled. It was a heavily Chinese district and the rustle of silks still touched her with dread.

At once, a veiled figure was in her way. A vampire in black pyjamas. She bowed an apology and her veil parted. Geneviève recognised the Chinese girl from the Old Jago, who had spoken for the Lord of Strange Deaths.

‘There will be reparation for this wrong;’ she said, ‘you have the word of my master.’

Then, the girl was gone.

‘What was that about?’ Morrison asked.

Geneviève shrugged. The girl had spoken in Mandarin. If Charles was to be credited, she could guarantee that Colonel Moran would not avoid the consequences of his actions. But if punished, it would not be for brutal murder but for unnecessary brutal murder.

The girl had disappeared into the crowds.

Geneviève did not intend to return immediately to the Hall. She wanted to seek out Charles, not so much for himself but to enquire after the condition of his unfortunate fiancée. Penelope Churchward, whom she had met once and hardly warmed to, was the latest of her concerns. With multitudes shovelled into the furnace, how many could she save? Not Druitt, certainly. Not Lily Mylett. Not Cathy Eddowes.

Morrison was talking to her, confiding in her. Having heard nothing, she begged his pardon.

‘It’s Dr Seward,’ he repeated himself. ‘I’m worried that he’s making a fool of himself with this Lucy of his.’

‘Lucy?’

‘That’s what she calls herself.’ Morrison was one of the rare individuals who had met Jack Seward’s mysterious lady-love, and he had not been impressed. ‘Personally, I think we’ve seen her before. Under another name and in shabbier clothes.’

‘Jack has always ridden himself too hard. Perhaps this amour is the cure for his habitual exhaustion.’

Morrison shook his head. He was finding it hard to express his exact thoughts.

‘Surely, you can have no social objection to this girl? I had thought those concerns well behind us,’ said Geneviève.

Morrison looked sheepish. Himself of modest birth, his work should have given him an understanding of the situations of even the meanest and most degraded.

‘There’s something wrong with Dr Seward,’ he insisted. ‘He is calm and even-tempered on the surface, more so than of late. But underneath he is losing his grasp. He forgets our names sometimes. He misremembers which year it is. I believe he is retreating to some Arcadian time, before the coming of the Prince Consort.’

Geneviève pondered the notion. Recently, she found Jack hard to read. He had never been as open to her as others – as Charles, for instance, or even Arthur Morrison – but in the past few weeks he had given away almost nothing, as if his mind were behind lead shutters as stout as the cabinet in which he locked his precious wax cylinders.

They stopped walking and she took Morrison’s hand. At the touch of his skin, tiny memories burst. She still had Charles’s blood in her; with it came fly-blown specks of faraway lands. She kept seeing a face in pain, which she assumed to be his late wife.

‘Arthur,’ she said, ‘madness is epidemic with us. It is everywhere, like evil. There is little we can do to ease the condition, so we must learn to live with it, to make it serve us. Love is always a species of insanity. If Jack can find some purpose in this spinning world, what harm can it do?’

‘Her name isn’t Lucy. I think it’s something Irish... Mary Jean, Mary Jane?’

‘Hardly proof of direst perfidy.’

‘She is a vampire.’ Morrison stopped, realising what he had said. Embarrassed, he tried to smooth over his prejudice. ‘I mean... you know...’

‘I appreciate that you are concerned,’ she told him, ‘and to an extent I share your misgivings. But I don’t see what we can honourably do.’

Morrison was plainly torn inside. ‘Still,’ he said, ‘something is wrong with Dr Seward. Something should be done. Something.’