Anno Dracula

THE RETURN OF THE HANSOM CAB

'It's been nearly a month, Charles,' Genevieve ventured, 'since the "double event". Perhaps it's over?'

Beauregard shook his head. Her comment had jolted him from his thoughts. Penelope was much on his mind.

'No,' he said. 'Good things come to an end, bad things have to be stopped.'

'You're right, of course.'

It was after dark and they were in the Ten Bells. He was as familiar with Whitechapel as he had become with the other territories to which the Diogenes Club had dispatched him. He spent his days fitfully asleep in Chelsea; his nights in the East End, with Genevieve, hunting Jack the Ripper. And not catching him.

Everyone was starting to relax. The vigilante groups who roamed the streets two weeks ago, making mischief and abusing innocents, still wore their sashes and carried coshes, but they spent more time in pubs than in the fog. After a month of double- and triple-shifts, policemen were gradually being redistributed back to regular duties. It was not as if the Ripper did anything to reduce crime elsewhere in the city. Indeed, there had practically been open revolt within sight of Buckingham Palace.

Last night someone had dashed a tankard of pig's blood at the portrait of the Royal Family which hung behind the bar. Woodbridge, the landlord, had tossed the unpatriotic drunk out, but stains remained on the wall and the picture. The Prince Consort's face was distorted crimson.

There had been more trouble from the Crusade. With Jago in prison and most of his followers either under arrest or driven underground, Scotland Yard had assumed the movement would wither and die, but it was proving as stubborn as the original Christian martyrs. Thin red crosses were painted all over the city, invoking not simply Christ but also England. Beauregard heard whispers that the ravens had left the Tower of London the evening Graf Orlok took office, and the kingdom was considered fallen. If ever the country had an hour of direst need, this might well be considered it. There was a minor Arthurian revival, encouraged rather than suppressed by the Government's disapproval. The insurrectionists, hitherto exclusively of the socialist, anarchist or protestant persuasions, now numbered sundry British mystics and pagans among their ranks. Lord Ruthven had banned Tennyson, especially the Idylls of the King, and such formerly innocuous items as Bulwer-Lytton's King Arthur and William Morris's The Defence of Guenevere also adorned the index of prohibited works. With each proclamation, the nineteenth century edged closer to the fifteenth. Ruthven promised new uniforms for all servants of the Crown; Beauregard suspected the designs would emerge close to livery, with policemen in scuttle-helmets and tights, emblem-bearing tabards worn over leather jerkins.

Neither Genevieve  -  after all, a fifteenth-century girl  -  nor Beauregard drank. They just watched the others. Beside the squiffy vigilantes, the pub was full of women, either genuine prostitutes or police agents in disguise. That was one of several daft schemes that had gone from being laughed at to being implemented. If questioned, Abberline or Lestrade would throw up their hands and find something else to talk about. Just now, Scotland Yard's chief embarrassment was an Inspector Mackenzie, who had been present at and unable to prevent the assassination by dynamite of one of the Carpathian Guard and had subsequently, unsurprisingly, joined the growing list of mysterious disappearances. Disapproval poured from the fountainhead of the Palace and splashed upon the Prime Minister and the Cabinet, and then, with increasing force, down on to the lower levels of society, becoming an absolute torrent on the streets of Whitechapel.

There had been no sign of Genevieve's Chinese elder, so at least the rattling Beauregard had given the Devil Doctor's web had yielded a result. His assumption was that anything evil and oriental worked for the Lord of Strange Deaths. That was one of his few successes in this business, but he could scarcely be proud of it. He did not care to owe a favour to the Limehouse Ring above and beyond the connection already made with them.

In the ruling cabal of the Diogenes Club, there was talk of outright rebellion in India and the East. A reporter for the Civil and Military Gazette had tried to assassinate the Governor-General. Varney was as popular as Caligula with the indigenous population and his own troops and civil service. Many in her realm ceased to recognise the Queen as their rightful ruler, if only because they sensed that since her rebirth she had not truly worn the crown. Each week, more ambassadors withdrew from the Court of St James. The Turks, whose memories were longer than anyone had expected, clamoured for reparations from Vlad Tepes, with regard to crimes of war committed in the Prince Consort's warm life.

Beauregard tried to look at Genevieve without her noticing, without her penetrating his thoughts. In the light, she looked absurdly young. Would Penelope  -  whose skin was still baked, and who had to be fed like a baby with drips of goat blood  -  ever again be as fresh? Even if, as Dr Ravna assured him would be the case, she made a complete recovery, would she be her old self? Penelope was a vampire now and he did not recognise the mind that could be glimpsed in her occasional coherent moments. He had to be guarded with Genevieve too. It was hard to keep his thoughts in rein and impossible fully to trust any vampire.

'You're right,' she said. 'He's still out there. He hasn't given up.'

'Perhaps the Ripper's taken a holiday?'

'Or been distracted.'

'Some say he's a sea captain. He could be on a voyage.'

Genevieve thought hard, then shook her head. 'No. He's still here. I can sense it.'

'You sound like Lees, the psychical fellow.'

'It's part of what I am,' she explained. 'The Prince Consort shape-shifts but I can sense things. It's to do with our bloodlines. There's a fog around everything but I can feel the Ripper out there somewhere. He's not finished yet.'

'This place annoys me,' he said. 'Let's get out and see if we can do some good.'

As they stood, he helped arrange her cloak on her shoulders. Woodbridge's son whistled and Genevieve, as accomplished a flirt as Penelope when the mood took her, smiled at him over her shoulder. Her eyes sparkled strangely.

They had been patrolling like policemen, interviewing anyone with the remotest connection to the victims or their circles. Beauregard knew more about Catharine Eddowes or Lulu Sch?n than about members of his own family. Poring over the scraps of their lives made them more real to him. No longer names in police reports, they now seemed almost friends. The press referred to the victims as 'street-walkers of the lowest sort' and the Police Gazette always depicted them as bloodthirsty harridans who invited their fate. But, talking with Genevieve or Sergeant Thick or Georgie Woodbridge, they came alive as women, shiftless and pathetic perhaps, but still feeling individuals, undeserving of the harsh treatment they had suffered and were still suffering.

Occasionally, he would whisper the name of 'Liz Stride' to himself. No one else  -  most especially not Genevieve  -  raised the matter, but he knew he had finished the Ripper's work with her. He had put her out of her misery like a dog but perhaps a vampire would not wish to be so saved. The question of the age was: how much does a human being have to change before she is no longer human? Liz Stride? Penelope? Genevieve?

When not following one of the false leads that cropped up nightly in this case, they just wandered, hoping to come across a man with a big bag of knives and darkness in his heart. It was absurd, when he thought about it. But the routine had attractions. It kept him away from Caversham Street, where Penelope still struggled with unfamiliar ailments. He was still unsure of his obligations to her. Mrs Churchward had revealed unexpected backbone in nursing her new-born girl. Having lost a niece raised as a daughter, she was determined to do her best for her authentic offspring. Beauregard could not but feel that his involvement with the Churchward girls had not been remotely to their benefit.

'Don't blame yourself,' Genevieve said. He was almost used to her intrusions. 'It's Lord Godalming who should be horse-whipped with silver chains.'

Beauregard understood Godalming had turned Penelope, then left her to her own devices, whereupon she had blundered badly, exposing herself to the murderous sun and drinking tainted blood.

'To me, your noble friend seems an utter swine.'

Beauregard had not seen Godalming, who was very close with the Prime Minister, since. When this matter was concluded, he would take up his grievance with Arthur Holmwood. Genevieve told him the responsible, decent course was for the father-in-darkness to stay with his get and help the new-born cope with her turning. This was an age-old etiquette but Godalming had not felt honour-bound by it.

They pushed through the ornately glassed doors. Beauregard shivered in the cold but Genevieve just breezed through the icy fog as if it were light spring sunshine. He had constantly to remind himself this sharp girl was not human. They were in Commercial Street, near Toynbee Hall.

'I'd like to call in,' Genevieve said. 'Jack Seward has a new ladylove and has been neglecting his duties.'

'Careless fellow,' he observed.

'Not at all. He's just driven, obsessive. I'm glad he's found a distraction. He's been courting nervous collapse for years. He had a bad time of it when Vlad Tepes first came, I believe. It's not something he cares to talk about much. Especially not to me. But I have heard stories about him.'

Beauregard had heard a few rumours, too. From Lord Godalming, oddly enough, and from the Diogenes Club. His name had been linked with Abraham Van Helsing.

Down the street stood a four-wheeler, the horse funnelling steam from its nostrils. Beauregard recognised the driver. Above his scarf and below his cap were almond eyes.

'What is it?' Genevieve asked, noticing his sudden tension. She was still expecting the Chinese elder to pounce and rend her windpipe.

'Recent acquaintances,' he said.

The door drifted open, creating a swirl in the fog. Beauregard knew they were surrounded. The tramp huddled in the alleyway across the road, the idler hugging himself against the cold, the one he couldn't see in the shadows under the tobacconist's shop. Perhaps even the haughty vampire in clothes too good for her, parading past as if en route to an assignation. He thumbed the catch of his cane, but did not think he could take them all on. Genevieve could take care of herself, but it was unfair to involve her further.

He assumed he was about to be called on to give an explanation for the lack of progress. From the point of view of the Limehouse Ring, the situation deteriorated with every police raid and listing of 'emergency regulations'.

Someone leaned out of the carriage and beckoned them. Beauregard, with casual care, walked over.