Anno Dracula

53

JACK IN THE MACHINE

A warm matron sat at the desk in the foyer, devouring the latest Marie Corelli, Thelma. Beauregard understood that since her turning, the celebrated authoress’s prose had further deteriorated. Vampires were rarely creative, all energies diverted into the simple prolonging of life.

‘Where is Mademoiselle Dieudonné?’

‘She is filling in for the director, sir. She should be in Dr Seward’s office. Shall you be wanting to be announced?’

‘No need to bother, thank you.’

The matron frowned and mentally added another complaint to a list she was keeping of Things Wrong With That Vampire Girl. He was briefly surprised to be party to her clear and vinegary thoughts, but swept the passing distraction aside as he made his way to the director’s first floor office. The door was open. Geneviève was not surprised to see him. His heart skipped as he remembered her, close to him, body white, mouth red.

‘Charles,’ she said.

She stood by Seward’s desk, papers strewn about her. He found himself embarrassed. After what had passed between them, he did not quite know how to act in her presence. Should he kiss her? She was behind the desk, and the embrace would be awkward unless she made room for it. Looking about for a distraction, his attention was drawn to a device in a glass dust-case, an affair of brass boxes with a large trumpet-like attachment.

‘This is an Edison-Bell phonograph, is it not?’

‘Jack uses it for medical notes. He has a passion for tricks and toys.’

He turned. ‘Geneviève...’

She was near now. He had not heard her come out from behind the desk. She kissed him lightly on the lips and he felt her inside him again, a presence in his mind. He was weak in the legs. Loss of blood, he supposed.

‘It’s all right, Charles,’ she said, smiling. ‘I didn’t mean to bewitch you. The symptoms will recede in a week or two. Believe me, I have experience with your condition.’

‘Nunc scio quid sit Amor,’ he quoted from Virgil. At last I know what Love is like. He could not think along a straight line of reasoning. Butterfly insights fluttered in the back of his mind, never quite caught.

‘Charles, this might be important,’ she said. ‘It’s something Colonel Moran said, about the Ripper.’

By an effort of will, he concentrated on the pressing matter.

‘Why Whitechapel?’ she asked. ‘Why not Soho or Hyde Park or anywhere. Vampirism is not limited to this district, nor prostitution. The Ripper hunts here because it is most convenient, because he is here. Somewhere near...’

He understood at once. His weakness washed away.

‘I’ve just pulled out our records,’ she said, tapping one of the piles on the desk. ‘The victims were all brought in at one time or another.’

He remembered Moran’s reasoning.

‘It all comes back to Toynbee Hall by so many routes,’ he said. ‘Druitt and you work here, Stride was brought here, the killings are in a ring about the address. You say all the dead women were here...’

‘Yes, and in the last year or so. Could Moran have been right? Could it have been Druitt? There have been no more murders.’

Beauregard shook his head. ‘It’s not over yet.’

‘If only Jack were here.’

He made a fist. ‘We’d have the murderer then.’

‘No, I mean Jack Seward. He treated all the women. He might know if they had something in common.’

Geneviève’s words sank into his brain and lightning swarmed behind his eyes. Suddenly, he knew...

‘They had Seward in common.’

‘But...’

‘Jack Seward.’

She shook her head but he could tell she was seeing what he saw, coming quickly to a realisation. Together, their minds raced. He knew her thoughts and she knew his. They both remembered Elizabeth Stride grasping Seward’s ankle. She had been trying to tell them something. She had been reaching out to identify her murderer.

‘A doctor,’ she said. ‘They’d trust a doctor. That’s how he got close enough to them, even when the scare was in full flood...’

She was thinking back, a thousand tiny details leaping at her. Many small mysteries were solved. Things Seward had said, had done. Absences, attitudes. All were explained.

‘“Something is wrong with Dr Seward”, I was told,’ she said. ‘Damn me for a fool, damn me for not listening, damn me, damn me...’ She made fists against her forehead. ‘I’m supposed to see into men’s minds and hearts, and I even ignored Arthur Morrison. I’m the worst fool that ever lived.’

‘Are there diaries around here?’ Beauregard asked, trying to draw her out of her fit of self-recrimination. ‘Private records, notes, anything? These maniacs are often compelled to keep memorabilia.’

‘I’ve been through his files. They contain only the usual material.’

‘Locked drawers?’

‘Only the phonograph cabinet. The wax cylinders are delicate and have to be protected from dust.’

Beauregard took a good hold and wrenched the cover off the contraption. He pulled open the drawer of the stand. Its fragile lock splintered. The cylinders were ranked in tubes, with neatly inked labels.

‘Chapman,’ he read aloud, ‘Nichols, Schön, Stride/Eddowes, Kelly, Kelly, Kelly, Lucy...’

Geneviève was by him, delving deeper into the drawer. ‘And these... Lucy, Van Helsing, Renfield, Lucy’s Tomb.’

Everyone remembered Van Helsing; Beauregard even knew Renfield was the Prince Consort’s first disciple in London. But...

‘Kelly and Lucy. Who are they? Unknown victims?’

Geneviève was going again through the papers on the desk. She talked as she sorted. ‘Lucy, at a guess, was Lucy Westenra, Vlad Tepes’ first English get. Dr Van Helsing destroyed her, and Jack Seward was in with Van Helsing. He was always expecting the Carpathian Guards to come for him. It is almost as if he has been in hiding.’

Beauregard snapped his fingers. ‘Art was in that group, too. Lord Godalming. He’ll be able to fill in details. It comes to me now. Lucy Westenra. I met her once, when she was warm, at the Stokers’. She was part of that set.’

A pretty, silly-ish girl, not unlike a young Florence. All the men mooned around her. Pamela had not liked her, but Penelope, a child then, doted on the girl. He realised that his former fiancée styled her hair like Lucy’s. It made her look less like her cousin.

‘Jack loved her,’ Geneviève said. ‘That was what drew him in with the Van Helsing circle. What happened must have driven him out of his wits. I should have realised. He calls her Lucy.’

‘Her?’

‘His vampire mistress. It’s not her real name, but it’s what he calls her.’

Geneviève was sorting through the extended drawer of a stout filing cabinet, flicking past individual files with a nimble finger.

‘As for Kelly,’ she said, ‘we have lots of Kellys on our books. But only one who fits Jack’s requirements.’

She handed him a sheet of paper, the details of a patient’s treatment. Kelly, Mary Jane. 13 Miller’s Court.

Geneviève’s face was ash-grey.

‘That’s the name,’ she said. ‘Mary Jane Kelly.’