Anno Dracula E-Book

Kim Newman

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Seitenzahl: 661

Beschreibung

It is 1888 and Queen Victoria has remarried, taking as her new consort Vlad Tepes, the Wallachian Prince infamously known as Count Dracula. Peppered with familiar characters from Victorian history and fiction, the novel tells the story of vampire Geneviève Dieudonné and Charles Beauregard of the Diogenes Club as they strive to solve the mystery of the Ripper murders. Anno Dracula is a rich and panoramic tale, combining horror, politics, mystery and romance to create a unique and compelling alternate history. Acclaimed novelist Kim Newman explores the darkest depths of a reinvented Victorian London. This brand-new edition of the bestselling novel contains unique bonus material, including a new afterword from Kim Newman, annotations, articles and alternate endings to the original novel.

Leseprobe

Praise for anno Dracula:

“Kim Newman’s Anno Dracula is back in print, and we must celebrate. It was the first mash-up of literature, history and vampires, and now, in a world in which vampires are everywhere, it’s still the best, and its bite is just as sharp. Compulsory reading, commentary, and mindgame: glorious.”

— Neil Gaiman

“Anno Dracula couldn’t be more fun if Bram Stoker had scripted it for Hammer. It’s a beautifully constructed Gothic epic that knocks almost every other vampire novel out for the count.”

— Christopher Fowler

“Bloody excellent. Kim Newman has exsanguinated the best of fact and fiction and created a vivid vampirous Victorian world uniquely his own. This clever, delicious extravaganza – Hammer Horror meets True (Blue) Blood – is just the tonic for the year of a Royal Wedding.” — Stephen Volk

“Anno Dracula is the smart, hip Year Zero of the vampire genre’s ongoing revolution.” — Paul McAuley

“A brilliantly witty parallel-world saga... builds sure-footedly to a bravura climax which entirely redefines ‘Victorian values’.”

— Daily Telegraph

“A tour de force which succeeds brilliantly.” — The Times

“A marvellous marriage of political satire, melodramatic intrigue, gothic horror and alternative history. Not to be missed.”

— The Independent

“The most comprehensive, brilliant, dazzlingly audacious vampire novel to date. ‘Ultimate’ seems an apt description... Anno Dracula is at once playful, horrific, intelligent and revelatory... Newman’s prose will remain gloriously unique.” — Locus

COMING SOON:

ANNO DRACULA: THE BLOODY RED BARON

ANNO DRACULA: DRACULA CHA CHA CHA

ANNO DRACULA: JOHNNY ALUCARD

ANNO DRACULA

ISBN: 9780857685339

Published by

Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

144 Southwark St

London

SE1 0UP

First edition: May 2011

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

Kim Newman asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

Copyright © 1992, 2011 by Kim Newman.

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A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

Printed and bound in the USA.

For Steve Jones, the Mammoth Bookkeeper of Vampires

Contents

1. In The Fog

2. Genevieve

3. The After-Dark

4. Commercial Street Blues

5. The Diogenes Club

6. Pandora’S Box

7. The Prime Minister

8. The Mystery Of The Hansom Cab

9. A Carpathian Quartet

10. Spiders In Their Webs

11. Matters Of No Importance

12. Dawn Of The Dead

13. Strange Fits Of Passion

14. Penny Stamps

15. The House In Cleveland Street

16. A Turning Point

17. Silver

18. Mr Vampire

19. The Poseur

20. New Grub Street

21. In Memoriam

22. Good-Bye, Little Yellow Bird

23. Headless Chickens

24. A Premature Post-Mortem

25. A Walk In Whitechapel

26. Musings And Mutilations

27. Dr Jekyll And Dr Moreau

28. Pamela

29. Mr Vampire II

30. The Penny Drops

31. The Raptures And Roses Of Vice

32. Grapes Of Wrath

33. The Dark Kiss

34. Confidences

35. A Dynamite Party

36. The Old Jago

37. Downing Street, Behind Closed Doors

38. New-Born

39. From Hell

40. The Return Of The Hansom Cab

41. Lucy Pays A Call

42. The Most Dangerous Game

43. Foxhole

44. On The Waterfront

45. Drink, Pretty Creature, Drink

46. Kaffir War

47. Love And Mr Beauregard

48. The Tower Of London

49. Mating Habits Of The Common Vampire

50. Vita Brevis

51. In The Heart Of Darkness

52. The Last Of Lucy

53. Jack In The Machine

54. Connective Tissue

55. Fucking Hell!

56. Lord Jack

57. The Home Life Of Our Own Dear Queen

Annotations

Acknowledgements

Afterword

Dig Deeper Into Anno Dracula

Alternate Anno Dracula

Extracts from Anno Dracula: The Movie

Drac The Ripper

Dead Travel Fast

About The Author

‘We Szekeleys have a right to be proud, for in our veins flows the blood of many brave races who fought as the lion fights, for lordship. Here, in the whirlpool of European races, the Ugric tribe bore down from Iceland and the fighting spirit which Thor and Wodin gave them, which their Berserkers displayed to such fell intent on the seaboards of Europe, ay, and of Asia and Africa too, till the peoples thought that the were-wolves themselves had come. Here, too, when they came, they fought the Huns, whose warlike fury had swept the earth like a living flame, till the dying peoples held that in their veins ran the blood of those old witches, who, expelled from Scythia had mated with the devils in the desert. Fools, fools! What devil or what witch was ever so great as Attila, whose blood is in these veins? Is it a wonder that we were a conquering race; that we were proud; that when the Magyar, the Lombard, the Avar, the Bulgar, or the Turk poured his thousands on our frontiers, we drove them back? Is it strange that when Arpad and his legions swept through the Hungarian fatherland, he found us here when he reached the frontier? And when the Hungarian flood swept eastward, the Szekeleys were claimed as kindred by the victorious Magyars, and to us for centuries was trusted the guarding of the frontier of Turkey-land; ay and more than that, endless duty of the frontier guard, for, as the Turks say, “water sleeps, and enemy is sleepless”. Who more gladly than we throughout the Four Nations received the “bloody sword”, or at its warlike call flocked quicker to the standard of the King? When was redeemed that great shame of my nation, the shame of Cassova, when the flags of the Wallach and the Magyar went down beneath the Crescent, who was it but one of my own race who as Voivode crossed the Danube and beat the Turk on his own ground? This was a Dracula indeed! Woe was it that his own unworthy brother, when he had fallen, sold his people to the Turk and brought the shame of slavery upon them!... Again, when, after the battle of Mohacs, we threw off the Hungarian yoke, we of the Dracula blood were amongst their leaders, for our spirit would not brook that we were not free. Ah, young sir, the Szekeleys – and the Dracula as their heart’s blood, their brains and their swords – can boast a record that mushroom growths like the Hapsburgs and the Romanoffs can never reach. The warlike days are over. Blood is too precious a thing in these days of dishonourable peace; and the glories of the great races are as a tale that is told.’

Count Dracula

‘I have studied, over and over again since they came into my hands, all the papers relating to this monster; and the more I have studied, the greater seems the necessity to utterly stamp him out. All through there are signs of his advance; not only of his power, but of his knowledge of it. As I learned, from the researches of my friend Arminius of Buda-Pesth, he was in life a most wonderful man. Soldier, statesman and alchemist – which latter was the highest development of the science-knowledge of his time. He had a mighty brain, a learning beyond compare, and a heart that knew no fear and no remorse. He dared even to attend the Scholomance, and there was no branch of knowledge of his time that he did not essay. Well, in him the brain powers survived the physical death; though it would seem that memory was not all complete. In some faculties of mind he has been, and is, only a child; but he is growing, and some things that were childish at the first are now of man’s stature. He is experimenting, and doing it well; and if it had not been that we have crossed his path he would be yet – he may yet be if we fail – the father or furtherer of a new order of beings, whose road must lead through Death, not Life.’

Dr Abraham Van Helsing

1

IN THE FOG

Dr Seward’s Diary (kept in phonograph)

17 SEPTEMBER.

Last night’s delivery was easier than the others. Much easier than last week’s. Perhaps, with practice and patience, everything becomes easier. If never easy. Never... easy.

I am sorry: it is difficult to maintain an orderly mind and this marvellous apparatus is unforgiving. I cannot ink over hasty words or tear loose a spoiled page. The cylinder revolves, the needle etches, and my ramblings are graven for all time in merciless wax. Marvellous apparatuses, like miracle cures, are beset with unpredictable side-effects. In the twentieth century, new means of setting down human thought may precipitate an avalanche of worthless digression. Brevis esse laboro, as Horace would have it. I know how to present a case history. This will be of interest to posterity. For now, I work in camera and secrete the cylinders with what remain of my earlier accounts. As the situation stands, my life and liberty would be endangered were these journals exposed to the public ear. One day, I should wish my motives and methods made known and clear.

Very well.

The subject: female, apparently in her twenties. Recently dead, I should say. Profession: obvious. Location: Chicksand Street. The Brick Lane end, opposite Flower & Dean Street. Time: shortly after five ante meridiem.

I had been wandering for upwards of an hour in fog as thick as spoiled milk. Fog is best for my night-work. The less one can see of what the city has become in this year, the better. Like many, I’ve taken to sleeping by day, working by night. Mostly, I doze; it seems years since the bliss of actual sleep. Hours of darkness are the hours of activity now. Of course, here in Whitechapel things were never much different.

There’s one of those cursed blue plaques in Chicksand Street; at 197, one of the Count’s bolt-holes. Here lay six of the earth-boxes to which he and Van Helsing attached such superstitious and, as it eventuated, entirely unwarranted importance. Lord Godalming was supposed to destroy them; but, as in so much else, my noble friend proved not equal to the task. I was under the plaque, unable to discern its wording, pondering our failures, when the dead girl solicited my attention.

‘Mister...’ she called. ‘Missssster...’

As I turned, she settled feathers away from her throat. Her neck and bosom showed mist-white. A living woman would have shook with the cold. She stood under a staircase leading to a first-floor doorway above which burned a red-shaded lantern. Behind her, bar-shadowed by the stairs, was another doorway, half-sunken below the level of the pavement. None of the windows in the building, nor in any close enough to see clearly, showed a light. We inhabited an island of visibility in a sea of murk.

I traversed the street, boots making yellow eddies in the low-lying fog. There was no one nearby. I heard people passing, but we were curtained. Soon, the first spikes of dawn would drive the last new-borns from the streets. The dead girl was up late by the standards of her kind. Dangerously late. Her need for money, for drink, must have been acute.

‘Such a handsome gentleman,’ she cooed, waving a hand in front of her, sharp nails shredding traces of fog.

I endeavoured to make out her face and was rewarded with an impression of thin prettiness. She angled her head slightly to regard me, a wing of jet-black hair falling away from a white cheek. There was interest in her black-red eyes, and hunger. Also, a species of half-aware amusement that borders contempt. The look is common among women, on the streets or off. When Lucy – Miss Westenra of Sainted Memory – refused my proposal, the spark of a similar expression inhabited her eyes.

‘... and so close to morning.’

She was not English. From her accent, I’d judge her German or Austrian by birth. The hint of a ‘ch’ in ‘chentleman’, a ‘close’ that verged upon ‘cloze’. The Prince Consort’s London, from Buckingham Palace to Buck’s Row, is the sinkhole of Europe, clogged with the ejecta of a double-dozen principalities.

‘Come on and kiss me, sir.’

I stood for a moment, simply looking. She was indeed a pretty thing, distinctive. Her shiny hair was cut short and lacquered in an almost Chinese style, sharp bangs like the cheek-guards of a Roman helmet. In the fog, her red lips appeared quite black. Like all of them, she smiled too easily, disclosing sharp pearl-chip teeth. A cloud of cheap scent hung around, sickly to cover the reek.

The streets are filthy, open sewers of vice. The dead are everywhere.

The girl laughed musically, the sound like something wrung from a mechanism, and beckoned me near, loosening further the ragged feathers about her shoulders. Her laugh reminded me again of Lucy. Lucy when she was alive, not the leech-thing we finished in Kingstead Cemetery. Three years ago, when only Van Helsing believed...

‘Won’t you give me a little kiss,’ she sang. ‘Just a little kiss.’

Her lips made a heart-shape. Her nails touched my cheek, then her fingertips. We were both cold; my face a mask of ice, her fingers needles pricking through frozen skin.

‘What brought you to this?’ I asked.

‘Good fortune and kind gentlemen.’

‘Am I a kind gentleman?’ I asked, gripping the scalpel in my trousers pocket.

‘Oh yes, one of the kindest. I can tell.’

I pressed the flat of the instrument against my thigh, feeling the chill of silver through good cloth.

‘I have some mistletoe,’ the dead girl said, detaching a sprig from her bodice. She held it above her.

‘A kiss?’ she asked. ‘Just a penny for a kiss.’

‘It is early for Christmas.’

‘There’s always time for a kiss.’

She shook her sprig, berries jiggling like silent bells. I placed a cold kiss on her red-black lips and took out my knife, holding it under my coat. I felt the blade’s keenness through my glove. Her cheek was cool against my face.

I learned from last week’s in Hanbury Street – Chapman, the newspapers say her name was, Annie or Anne – to do the business swiftly and precisely. Throat. Heart. Tripes. Then get the head off. That finishes the things. Clean silver and a clean conscience. Van Helsing, blinkered by folklore and symbolism, spoke always of the heart, but any of the major organs will do. The kidneys are easiest to reach.

I had made preparation carefully before venturing out. For half an hour I sat, allowing myself to become aware of the pain. Renfield is dead – truly dead – but the madman left his jaw-marks in my right hand. The semi-circle of deep indentations has scabbed over many times but never been right again. With Chapman, I was dull from the laudanum I take and not as precise as I should have been. Learning to cut left-handed has not helped. I missed the major artery and the thing had time to screech. I am afraid I lost control and became a butcher, when I should be a surgeon.

Last night’s went better. The girl clung as tenaciously to life, but there was an acceptance of my gift. She was relieved, at the last, to have her soul cleansed. Silver is hard to come by now. The coinage is gold or copper. I hoarded threepenny bits while the money was changing and sacrificed my mother’s dinner service. I’ve had the instruments since my Purfleet days. Now the blades are plated, a core of steel strength inside killing silver. This time I selected the postmortem scalpel. It is fitting, I think, to employ a tool intended for rooting around in corpses.

The dead girl invited me into her doorway and wriggled skirts up over slim white legs. I took the time to open her blouse. My fingers, hot with pain, fumbled.

‘Your hand?’

I held up the lumpily-gloved club and tried a smile. She kissed my locked knuckles and I slipped my other hand out from my coat, holding firmly the scalpel.

‘An old wound,’ I said. ‘It’s nothing.’

She smiled and I quickly drew my silver edge across her neck, pressing firmly with my thumb, cutting deep into pristine dead-flesh. Her eyes widened with shock – silver hurts – and she released a long sigh. Lines of thin blood trickled like rain on a window-pane, staining the skin over her collar-bones. A single tear of blood issued from the corner of her mouth.

‘Lucy,’ I said, remembering...

I held up the girl, my body shielding her from passersby, and slid the scalpel through her stays and into her heart. I felt her shudder and fall lifeless. But I know the dead can be resilient and took care to finish the job. I laid her in the well of the sunken doorway and completed the delivery. There was little blood in her; she must not have fed tonight. After cutting away her corset, easily ripping the cheap material, I exposed the punctured heart, detached the intestines from the mesentery, unravelled a yard of the colon, and removed the kidneys and part of the uterus. Then I enlarged the first incision. Having exposed the vertebrae, I worried the loose head back and forth until the neckbones parted.

2

GENEVIEVE

Noise reached into her darkness. Hammering. Insistent, repeated blows. Meat and bone against wood.

In her dreams, Geneviève had returned to the days of her girlhood in the France of the Spider King, la Pucelle and the monster Gilles. When warm, she had been the physician’s daughter not Chandagnac’s get. Before she turned, before the Dark Kiss...

Her tongue felt sleep-filmed teeth. The aftertang of her own blood was in her mouth, disgusting and mildly exciting.

In her dreams, the pounding was a mallet striking the end of a snapped-in-half quarterstaff. The English captain finished her father-in-darkness like a butterfly, pinning Chandagnac to the bloodied earth. One of the less memorable skirmishes of the Hundred Years’ War. Barbarous times she had hoped deservedly dead.

The hammering continued. She opened her eyes and tried to focus on the grubby glass of the skylight. The sun was not yet quite down. Dreams washed away in an instant and she was awake, as if a gallon of icy water were dashed into her face.

The hammering paused. ‘Mademoiselle Dieudonné,’ someone shouted. It was not the director – usually responsible for urgent calls that dragged her from sleep – but she recognised the voice. ‘Open up. Scotland Yard.’

She sat, sheet falling away. She slept on the floor in her underclothes, on a blanket laid over the rough planks.

‘There’s been another Silver Knife murder.’

She had been resting in her tiny office at Toynbee Hall. It was as safe a place as any to pass the few days each month when lassitude overcame her and she shared the sleep of the dead. Up high in the building, the room had only a tiny skylight and the door could be secured from the inside. It served, as coffins and crypts served for those of the Prince Consort’s bloodline.

She gave a placatory grunt and the hammering was not resumed. She cleared her throat. Her body, unused for days, creaked as she stretched. A cloud obscured the sun and the pain momentarily eased. She stood up in the dark and ran her hands over her hair. The cloud passed and her strength ebbed.

‘Mademoiselle?’

The hammering started again. The young were always impatient. She had once been the same.

She took a Chinese silk robe from a hook and drew it about herself. Not the dress etiquette recommended to entertain a gentleman caller, but it would have to do. Etiquette, so important a few short years ago, meant less and less. They were sleeping in earth-lined coffins in Mayfair, and hunting in packs on Pall Mall. This season, the correct form of address for an archbishop was hardly of major concern to anyone.

As she slid back the bolt, traces of her sleep-fog persisted. Outside the afternoon was dying; she would not be at her best until night was about her again. She pulled open her door. A stocky new-born stood in the corridor, long coat around him like a cloak, bowler hat shifting from hand to hand.

‘Surely, Lestrade, you are not of the kind that needs to be invited into any new dwelling?’ Geneviève enquired. ‘That would be very inconvenient for a man in your profession. Well, come in, come in...’

She admitted the Scotland Yard man. Jagged teeth stuck from his mouth, unconcealed by a half-grown moustache. When warm, he had been rat-faced; the sparse whiskers completed the resemblance. His ears were shifting, becoming high and pointed. Like most new-borns of the bloodline of the Prince Consort, he had not yet found his final form. He wore smoked glasses but crimson points behind the lenses suggested active eyes.

He set his hat down upon her desk.

‘Last night,’ he began, hurriedly, ‘in Chicksand Street. It was butchery.’

‘Last night?’

‘I’m sorry,’ he drew breath, making an allowance for her spell of rest. ‘It’s the seventeenth now. Of September.’

‘I’ve been asleep three days.’

Geneviève opened her wardrobe and considered the few clothes hanging inside. She hardly had costume for every occasion. It was unlikely, all considered, that she would in the near future be invited to a reception at the Palace. Her only remaining jewellery was her father’s tiny crucifix, and she rarely wore that for fear of upsetting some sensitive new-born with silly ideas.

‘I deemed it best to rouse you. Everyone is jittery. Feelings are running high.’

‘You were quite right,’ she said. She rubbed sleep-gum from her eyes. Even the last shards of sunlight, filtered through a grimy square of glass, were icicles jammed into her forehead.

‘When the sun is down,’ Lestrade was saying, ‘there’ll be pandemonium. It could be another Bloody Sunday. Some say Van Helsing has returned.’

‘The Prince Consort would love that.’

Lestrade shook his head. ‘It’s merely a rumour. Van Helsing is dead. His head remains on its spike.’

‘You’ve checked?’

‘The Palace is always under guard. The Prince Consort has his Carpathians about him. Our kind cannot be too careful. We have many enemies.’

‘Our kind?’

‘The un-dead.’

Geneviève almost laughed. ‘I am not your kind, Inspector. You are of the bloodline of Vlad Tepes, I am of the bloodline of Chandagnac. We are at best cousins.’

The detective shrugged and snorted at the same time. Bloodline meant little to the vampires of London, Geneviève knew. Even at a third, a tenth or a twentieth remove, they all had Vlad Tepes as father-in-darkness.

‘Who?’ she asked.

‘A new-born named Schön. Lulu. Common prostitute, like the others.’

‘This is... what, the fourth?’

‘No one is sure. The sensation press have exhumed every unsolved East End killing of the past thirty years to lay at the door of the Whitechapel Murderer.’

‘How many are the police certain of?’

Lestrade snorted. ‘We’ll not even be certain of Schön until the inquest, although I’ll stake my pension on her. I’ve come direct from the mortuary. The trade marks are unmistakable. Otherwise, Annie Chapman last week and Polly Nichols the week before. Opinions differ on a couple of others. Emma Smith, Martha Tabram.’

‘What do you think?’

Lestrade nibbled his lip. ‘Just the three. At least, the three we know of. Smith was set upon, robbed and impaled by roughs from the Jago. Violated, too. Typical rip-mob assault, nothing like our man’s work. And Tabram was warm. Silver Knife is only interested in us. In vampires.’

Geneviève understood.

‘This man hates,’ Lestrade continued, ‘hates with a passion. The murders must be committed in a frenzy, yet there’s a coolness to them. He kills out on the street in broad darkness. He doesn’t just butcher, he dissects. And vampires aren’t easy to kill. Our man is not a simple lunatic. He has a reason.’

Lestrade took the crimes personally. The Whitechapel Murderer cut deep. New-borns were jerked this way and that by misunderstanding, cringing from the crucifix because of a folk tale they half-knew.

‘Has the news travelled?’

‘Fast,’ the detective told her. ‘The evening editions carry the story. It’ll be all over London by now. There are those among the warm who do not love us, Mademoiselle. They’re rejoicing. When the new-borns come out, there could be a panic. I’ve suggested troops, but Warren is leery. After that business last year...’

She remembered. Alarmed in the aftermath of the Royal Wedding by increased public disorder, Sir Charles Warren, Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, had issued an edict against political meetings in Trafalgar Square. In defiance, warm insurrectionists, preaching against the Crown and the new government, gathered one November afternoon. William Morris and H.M. Hyndman of the Socialist Democratic Federation, with the support of Robert Cunningham-Grahame, the radical Member of Parliament, and Annie Besant, of the National Secular Society, argued for the declaration of a Republic. There was fierce, indeed violent, debate. Geneviève observed from the steps of the National Gallery. She was not the only vampire to consider aligning with the putative Republic. You did not have to be warm to take Vlad Tepes for a monster. Eleanor Marx, herself a new-born, and authoress with Dr Edward Aveling of The Vampire Question, made an impassioned speech calling for the abdication of Queen Victoria and the expulsion of the Prince Consort.

‘... I can’t say I blame him. Still, H Division isn’t equipped for riot. The Yard has sent me over to goose the local blokes, but we’ve got enough to do catching the murderer without having to fend off some scythe-and-stake mob.’

Geneviève wondered which way Sir Charles would jump. In November, the Commissioner, a soldier before he was a policeman and now a vampire before he was a soldier, had sent in the army. Even before a flustered magistrate could finish reading the Riot Act, a dragoon officer ordered his men, a mixture of vampires and the warm, to clear the Square. After that charge, the Prince Consort’s Own Carpathian Guards set about the crowd, doing more harm with teeth and claws than the dragoons had with fixed bayonets. There were a few fatalities and many injuries; subsequently, there were a few trials and many ‘disappearances’. November 13th, 1887, was remembered as ‘Bloody Sunday’. Geneviève spent a week in Guy’s Hospital, helping with the less seriously wounded. Many spat on her or refused to be ministered to by one of her kind. Were it not for the intervention of the Queen herself, still a calming influence on her adoring subjects, the Empire could have exploded like a barrel of gunpowder.

‘And what, pray, can I do,’ Geneviève asked, ‘to serve the purpose of the Prince Consort?’

Lestrade chewed his moustache, teeth glistening, flecks of froth on his lips.

‘You may be needed, Mademoiselle. The Hall will be overrun. Some don’t want to be out on the streets with the murderer about. Others are spreading panic and sedition, firing up vigilante mobs.’

‘I’m not Florence Nightingale.’

‘You have influence...’

‘I do, don’t I?’

‘I wish... I would humbly request... you would use your influence to calm the situation. Before disaster occurs. Before more are unnecessarily killed.’

Geneviève was not above enjoying a taste of power. She slipped off her robe, shocking the detective. Death and rebirth had not shaken out of him the prejudices of his time. Lestrade shrank behind his smoked glasses, as she swiftly dressed, fastening the seeming hundreds of small catches and buttons on her bottle-green skirt and jacket with neat movements of sharp-tipped fingers. It was as if the costume of her warm days, as intricate and cumbersome as a full suit of armour, had returned to plague her. As a new-born, she had, with relief, worn the simple tunics and trews made acceptable if not fashionable by the Maid of Orleans, vowing never again to be sewed into breath-stopping formal dress.

The Inspector was too pale to blush properly, but penny-sized patches appeared on his cheeks and he huffed involuntarily. Lestrade, like many new-borns, treated her as if she were the age of her face. She had been sixteen when Chandagnac gave her the Dark Kiss. She was older, by a decade or more, than Vlad Tepes. While he was a warm Christian Prince, nailing Turks’ turbans to their skulls and lowering his countrymen on to sharpened posts, she had been a new-born, learning the skills that now made her the longest-lived of her bloodline. With four and a half centuries behind her, it was hard not to be irritated when the fresh-risen dead, still barely cooled, patronised her.

‘Silver Knife must be found and stopped,’ Lestrade said. ‘Before he kills again.’

‘Indubitably,’ Geneviève agreed. ‘It sounds like an affair for your old associate, the consulting detective.’

She sensed, with the sharpened perceptions that told her night was falling, the chilling of the Inspector’s heart.

‘Mr Holmes is not at liberty to investigate, Mademoiselle. He has his differences with the current government.’

‘You mean he has been removed, like so many of our finest minds, to those pens on the Sussex Downs. What does the Pall Mall Gazette call them, concentration camps?’

‘I regret his lack of vision...’

‘Where is he? Devil’s Dyke?’

Lestrade nodded, almost ashamed. There was much of the man left inside. New-borns clung to their warm lives as if nothing had changed. How long would it be before they grew like the bitch vampires the Prince Consort had brought from the land beyond the forests, an appetite on legs, mindlessly preying?

Geneviève finished her cuffs and turned to Lestrade, arms slightly out. It was a habit born of lifetimes without mirrors, always seeking an opinion on her appearance. The detective gave grudging approval. Settling a hooded cloak about her shoulders, she left her room, Lestrade following.

In the corridor outside, gaslights were already lit. Beyond a row of windows, hanging fog purged itself of the last of the dying sun. One window was open, letting in cool air. Geneviève could taste life in it. She must feed soon, within two or three days. It was always that way after her rest.

‘The Schön inquest commences tomorrow night,’ Lestrade said, ‘at the Working Lads’ Institute. It might be best if you attended.’

‘Very well, but I must first talk with the director. Someone will have to take care of my duties for the duration.’

They were on the stairs. The building was coming to life. No matter how the Prince Consort changed London, Toynbee Hall – founded by the Reverend Samuel Barnett in the name of the late philanthropist Arnold Toynbee – was still required. The poor needed shelter, sustenance, medical attention, education. The new-borns, potentially immortal destitutes, were hardly better off than their warm brothers and sisters. For many, the East End settlements were the last recourse. Geneviève felt like Sisyphus, forever rolling a rock uphill, losing a yard for every foot gained.

On the first-floor landing sat a dark-haired little girl, a rag-doll in her lap. One of her arms was withered, leathery membranes bunched in folds beneath it, the drab dress cut away to allow freedom of movement. Lily smiled, teeth sharp but uneven.

‘Gené,’ Lily said, ‘look...’

Smiling she extended the spindly arm. It grew longer, more sinewy; the hairy grey-brown flap stretched.

‘I’ve been working on my wings. I’ll fly to the moon and back.’

Geneviève looked away and saw Lestrade similarly examining the ceiling. She turned back to Lily and knelt, stroking her arm. The thick skin felt wrong, as if the muscles beneath were pulling against each other. Neither the elbow nor the wrist locked properly. Vlad Tepes could shape-shift without effort, but new-borns of his bloodline could not carry off the trick. Which didn’t prevent them from trying.

‘I’ll bring you some cheese,’ Lily said, ‘as a present.’

Geneviève stroked Lily’s hair and stood. The director’s door was open. She entered, rapping a knuckle on the wood as she passed. The director was at his desk, going over a lecture time-table with Morrison, his secretary. The director was youngish and still warm, but his face was lined, his hair streaked grey. Many who’d lived through the changes were like him, older than their years. Lestrade followed her into the office. The director acknowledged the detective. Morrison, a quiet young man with an interest in literature and Japanese prints, stood back in the shadows.

‘Jack,’ she said, ‘Inspector Lestrade wishes me to attend an inquest tomorrow.’

‘There’s been another murder,’ the director said, making a statement not asking a question.

‘A new-born,’ said Lestrade. ‘In Chicksand Street.’

‘Lulu Schön,’ Geneviève put in.

‘Did we know her?’

‘Probably, but under some other name.’

‘Arthur can go through the files,’ the director said, looking at Lestrade but indicating Morrison. ‘You’ll want the details.’

‘Was she another street girl?’ Morrison asked.

‘Yes, of course,’ said Geneviève. The young man looked down.

‘I think we’ve had her here,’ he said. ‘One of Booth’s cast-offs.’

Morrison’s face screwed up as he mentioned the General’s name. The Salvation Army deemed the un-dead beyond redemption, worse than other drunkards. Although warm, Morrison did not share the prejudice.

The director’s fingers drummed his desk. He looked, as usual, as if the weight of the world had just unexpectedly settled on his shoulders.

‘Can you spare me?’

‘Druitt can take your rounds if he’s back from his cricketing jaunt. And Arthur can fill in once we’ve got the lecture schedules arranged. We weren’t, ah, expecting you for a night or two yet anyway.’

‘Thank you.’

‘That’s quite all right. Keep me informed. This is a dreadful business.’

Geneviève agreed. ‘I’ll see what I can do to pacify the natives. Lestrade is expecting an uprising.’

The policeman looked shifty and embarrassed. For a moment, Geneviève felt small, teasing the new-born. She was being unfair.

‘There may be something I can actually do. Talk to some of the new-born girls. Get them to take care, see if anyone knows anything.’

‘Very well, Geneviève. Good luck. Lestrade, good evening.’

‘Dr Seward,’ said the detective, putting on his hat, ‘good night.’

3

THE AFTER-DARK

Florence Stoker daintily tinkled her little bell, not to summon the maid but to call her parlour to attention. The ornament was aluminium, not silver. The clatter of tea-taking and conversation died. The company turned to play audience to their hostess.

‘An announcement is imminent,’ Florence declared, so delighted that the lilt of Clontarf, usually rigorously suppressed, insinuated itself into her tone.

Beauregard was suddenly a prisoner in himself. With Penelope on his arm he could hardly refuse the fence, but the situation was instantly different. For some months, he had teetered on the brink of a chasm. Now, screaming inside, he plunged towards the doubtless jagged rocks.

‘Penelope, Miss Churchward,’ Beauregard began, pausing then to clear his throat, ‘has done me the honour...’

Everyone in the parlour understood at once, but he still had to get the words out. He wished for another gulp of the pale tea Florence served in exquisite bowls, in the Chinese fashion.

Penelope, impatient, finished for him. ‘We’re to be married. In the Spring, next year.’

She slipped her slim hand about his own, gripping tight. When a child, her favourite expression had been ‘but I want it now.’ His face must be flushed scarlet. This was absurd. He hardly qualified as a swooning youth. He had been married before... Before Penelope, Pamela. The other Miss Churchward, the elder. That must cause remark.

‘Charles,’ said Arthur Holmwood, Lord Godalming, ‘congratulations.’

The vampire, smiling sharply, pumped his free hand. Beauregard assumed Godalming knew how bone-crushing was his un-dead grip.

His fiancée was detached from him and surrounded by ladies. Kate Reed, by virtue of her spectacles and unruly hair the perfect Penelope’s favourite confidante, helped her sit and fanned her with admiration. She chided her friend for keeping the secret from her. Penelope, honey over salt, told Kate not to be such a drip. Kate, one of those new women, wrote articles about bicycling for Tit-Bits, being currently much excited by something called a ‘pneumatic tyre’.

Penelope was fussed over as if she had announced an illness, or an expected baby. Pamela, never far from mind when Penelope was present, had died in childbirth, her huge eyes screwed tight with pain. In Jagadhri, seven years ago. The child, a boy, had not survived his mother by a week. Beauregard did not care to remember that he had had to be dissuaded from shooting dead the fool of a station doctor.

Florence was conferring with Bessie, her one remaining maid. Mrs Stoker dispatched the dark-eyed girl on a private mission.

Whistler, the grinning American painter, elbowed aside Godalming, and playfully thumped Beauregard’s arm.

‘There’s no hope for you, Charlie,’ he said, stabbing the air in front of Beauregard’s face with a fat cigar. ‘Another good man fallen to the enemy.’

Beauregard successfully sustained a smile. He had not intended to announce his engagement to Mrs Stoker’s after-dark gathering. Since his return to London, he had been less frequently a guest at the get-togethers. Florence’s position as a hostess to the fashionable and noted remained secure, though the question of her vanished husband hovered about always. No one had the courage or the cruelty to enquire after Bram, who was rumoured to have been removed to Devil’s Dyke after an altercation with the Lord Chamberlain on a point of official censorship. Only the distinguished intervention of Henry Irving, Stoker’s employer, prevented Bram’s head from joining that of his friend Van Helsing outside the Palace. Lured by Penelope to this much-reduced gathering, Beauregard noted other absences. No vampires were present, aside from Godalming. Many of Florence’s former guests – notably Irving and his leading lady, the incomparable Ellen Terry – had turned. Presumably others did not wish to associate even with the rumour of Republican sentiments, though the hostess, who encouraged debate at her after-darks, often made mention of her lack of interest in politics. Florence – whose tireless struggle to surround herself with men far more brilliant and women marginally less pretty than herself Beauregard had to admit he found faintly irritating – entertained no question about the right of the Queen to rule, no more than she would query the right of the earth to revolve around the sun.

Bessie returned with a dusty bottle of champagne. Everyone discreetly set down their tea-bowls and saucers. Florence gave the maid a tiny key and the girl opened a cabinet, disclosing a small forest of glasses.

‘There must be a toast,’ Florence insisted, ‘to Charles and Penelope.’

Penelope was by his side again, holding fast his hand, showing him off.

The bottle was passed to Florence. She regarded it as if uncertain which end could be opened. She would normally have a butler to perform uncorking duties. Momentarily, she was lost. Godalming stepped in, moving with a quicksilver grace combining speed with apparent languor, and took the bottle. He was not the first vampire Beauregard had seen, but he was the most perceptibly changed since his turn. Most new-borns fumbled with their limitations and capabilities, but His Lordship, with the poise of generations of breeding, had adapted perfectly.

‘Allow me,’ he said, draping a napkin over his arm like a waiter.

‘Thank you, Art,’ Florence babbled, ‘I’m so feeble...’

He flashed a one-sided smile, baring a long eye-tooth, and dug a fingernail into the cork, then flipped it out of the bottleneck as if tossing a coin. Champagne gushed and Godalming filled the glasses Florence held beneath the bottle. His Lordship accepted mild applause with a handsome grin. For a dead man, Godalming practically burst with life. Every woman in the room was fixated upon the vampire. Not entirely excluding Penelope, he could not help but notice.

His fiancée did not much resemble her cousin. Except sometimes, when, catching him unaware, she would produce some phrase of Pamela’s or make a trivial gesture that exactly duplicated a mannerism of his late wife’s. Of course, there were also the Churchward mouth and those eyes. When he first married, eleven years previously, Penelope had been nine. He recollected a somewhat nasty child in a pinafore and sailor hat, deftly manipulating her family so the household revolved around her axis. He remembered sitting on the terrace with Pamela, and watching little Penny taunt the gardener’s boy to tears. His bride-to-be still had a sharp tongue sheathed in her velvet mouth.

Glasses were distributed. Penelope managed to accept hers without for a moment leaving go of his hand. She had her prize and would not let it escape.

The toast fell, of course, to Godalming. He raised his glass, bubbles catching the light, and said, ‘for me this is a sad moment, as I experience a loss. I’ve been beaten out again, by my good friend Charles Beauregard. I shall never recover, but I acknowledge Charles as the better man. I trust he will serve my dearest Penny as a good husband should.’

Beauregard, cynosure of all eyes, experienced discomfort. He did not like to be looked at. In his profession, it was unwise to attract notice of any kind.

‘To the beautiful Penelope,’ Godalming toasted, ‘and the admirable Charles...’

‘Penelope and Charles,’ came the echo.

Penelope giggled like a cat as the bubbles tickled her nose, and Beauregard took an unexpectedly healthy swig. Everyone drank except Godalming, who set his glass down untouched on the tray.

‘I am so sorry,’ Florence said, ‘I was forgetting myself.’

The hostess summoned Bessie again.

‘Lord Godalming does not drink champagne,’ she explained to the girl. Bessie understood and unbuttoned her blouse at the wrist.

‘Thank you, Bessie,’ Godalming said. He took her hand as if to kiss it, then turned it over as if to read her palm.

Beauregard could not help but feel slightly sickened, but no one else even made mention of the matter. He wondered how many were assuming a pose of indifference, and how many were genuinely accustomed to the habits of the thing Arthur Holmwood had become.

‘Penelope, Charles,’ Godalming said, ‘I drink to you...’

Opening his mouth wide on jaw-hinges like a cobra’s, Godalming fastened on to Bessie’s wrist, lightly puncturing the skin with his pointed incisors. Godalming licked away a trickle of blood. The company were fascinated. Penelope shrank closer to Beauregard’s side. She pressed her cheek to his shoulder but did not look away from Godalming and the maid. Either she was affecting cool or the vampire’s feeding did not bother her. As Godalming lapped, Bessie swayed unsteadily on her ankles. Her eyes fluttered with something between pain and pleasure. Finally, the maid quietly fainted and Godalming, letting her wrist go, caught her deftly like a devoted Don Juan, holding her upright.

‘I have this effect on women,’ he said, teeth blood-rimmed, ‘it is most inconvenient.’

He found a divan and deposited the unconscious Bessie on it. The girl’s wound did not bleed. Godalming did not appear to have taken much from her. Beauregard thought she must have been bled before to take it so calmly. Florence, who had so easily offered Godalming the hospitality of her maid, sat beside Bessie and bound a handkerchief around her wrist. She performed the operation as if tying a ribbon to a horse, with kindness but no especial concern.

For a moment, Beauregard was dizzy.

‘What is it, dear-heart,’ Penelope asked, arm sliding around him.

‘The champagne,’ he lied.

‘Will we always have champagne?’

‘As long as it is what you wish to drink.’

‘You’re so good to me, Charles.’

‘Perhaps.’

Florence, her nursing done, was swarming around them again.

‘Now, now,’ she said, ‘there’ll be plenty of time for that after the wedding. In the meantime, you must be unselfish and share yourselves with the rest of us.’

‘Indeed,’ said Godalming. ‘For a start, I must claim my right as the vanquished sir knight.’

Beauregard was puzzled. Godalming had blotted the blood from his lips with a handkerchief, but his mouth still shone, and there was a pinkish tinge to his upper teeth.

‘A kiss,’ Godalming explained, taking Penelope’s hands in his own, ‘I claim a kiss from the bride.’

Beauregard’s hand, fortunately out of Godalming’s view, made a fist, as if grasping the handle of his sword-stick. He sensed danger, as surely as in the Natal when a black mamba, the deadliest reptile on earth, was close by his unprotected leg. A discreet cut with a blade had separated the snake’s venomous head from the remainder of its length before harm could come to him. Then he had good cause to be thankful for his nerves; now, he told himself he was overreacting.

Godalming drew Penelope close and she turned her cheek to his mouth. For a long second, he pressed his lips to her face. Then, he released her.

The others, men and women, gathered around, offering more kisses. Penelope was almost swamped with adoration. She wore it well. He had never seen her prettier, or more like Pamela.

‘Charles,’ said Kate Reed, approaching him, ‘you know... um, congratulations... that sort of thing. Excellent news.’

The poor girl was blushing scarlet, forehead completely damp.

‘Katie, thank you.’

He kissed her cheek, and she said ‘gosh’.

Half-grinning, she indicated Penelope. ‘Must go, Charles. Penny wants...’

She was summoned over to examine the marvellous ring upon Penelope’s dainty finger.

Beauregard and Godalming were by the window, apart from the group. Outside, the moon was up, a faint glow above the fog. Beauregard could see the railings of the Stoker house, but little else. His own home was further down Cheyne Walk; a swirling yellow wall obscured it as if it no longer existed.

‘Sincerely, Charles,’ Godalming said, ‘my congratulations. You and Penny must be happy. It is an order.’

‘Art, thank you.’

‘We need more like you,’ the vampire said. ‘You must turn soon. Things are just getting exciting.’

This had been raised before. Beauregard held back.

‘And Penny too,’ Godalming insisted. ‘She is lovely. Loveliness should not be permitted to fade. That would be criminal.’

‘We shall think about it.’

‘Do not think too long. The years fly.’

Beauregard wished he had a drink stronger than champagne. Close to Godalming, he could almost taste the new-born’s breath. It was untrue that vampires exhaled a stinking cloud. But there was something in the air, at once sweet and sharp. And in the centres of Godalming’s eyes, red points sometimes appeared like tiny drops of blood.

‘Penelope would like a family.’ Vampires, Beauregard knew, could not give birth in the conventional manner.

‘Children?’ Godalming said, fixing his gaze on Beauregard. ‘If you can live forever, surely children are superfluous to requirements.’

Beauregard was uncomfortable now. In truth, he was unsure about a family. His profession was uncertain, and after what had happened with Pamela...

He was tired in his head, as if Godalming were leeching his vitality. Some vampires could take sustenance without drinking blood, absorbing the energies of others through psychical osmosis.

‘We need men of your sort, Charles. We have an opportunity to make the country strong. Your skills will be needed.’

If Lord Godalming had an idea of the skills he had developed in the service of the Crown, Beauregard supposed the vampire would be surprised. Since India, he had been in Shanghai, at the International Settlement, and in Egypt, working under Lord Cromer. The new-born laid a hand upon his arm, and gripped almost fiercely. He could hardly feel his own fingers.

‘There will never be slaves in Britain,’ Godalming continued, ‘but those who stay warm will naturally serve us, as the excellent Bessie has just served me. Have a care, lest you wind up the equivalent of some damned regimental water-bearer.’

‘In India, I knew a water-bearer who was a better man than most.’

Florence came to his rescue, and guided them back into the mainstream. Whistler was recounting the latest instalment of his continuing feud with John Ruskin, savagely lampooning the critic. Grateful to be eclipsed, Beauregard stood near a wall and watched the painter perform. Whistler, accustomed to being the ‘star’ of Florence’s after-darks, was obviously happy the distraction of Beauregard’s announcement had passed. Penelope was lost somewhere in the crowd.

He had cause to wonder again whether he had selected a proper path, or even if the decision had been his own to take. He was the victim of a conspiracy to entrap him in the webs of femininity, orchestrated between China tea and lace doilies. The London to which he had returned in May differed vastly from that he had left three years ago. A patriotic painting hung above the mantel: Victoria, plump and young again, and her fiercely moustachioed, red-eyed consort. The unknown artist posed no threat to Whistler’s pre-eminence. Charles Beauregard served his Queen; he supposed he must also serve her husband.

The doorbell rang just as Whistler made an amusing speculation, perhaps unsuited to predominantly feminine company, regarding the long-ago annulment of his hated enemy’s marriage. Irritated at the interruption, the painter resumed his flow as Florence, herself irritated because Bessie was unavailable for the menial task, hurried off to answer her door.

Beauregard noticed Penelope sitting near the front, laughing prettily as she pretended to understand Whistler’s insinuations. Godalming stood behind her chair, wrists crossed under his evening coat in the small of his back, the sharp points of his fingers dimpling out the cloth. Arthur Holmwood was no longer the man Beauregard had known when he left England. There had been a scandal, shortly before his turning. Like Bram Stoker, Godalming had sided with the wrong lot when the Prince Consort first came to London. Now he had to prove his loyalty to the new regime.

‘Charles,’ Florence said, quietly enough not to interrupt Whistler further. ‘There is a man for you. From your club.’

She gave him a calling card. It bore the name of no individual, just the simple words. THE DIOGENES CLUB.

‘This is in the nature of a summons,’ he explained. ‘Make my apologies to Penelope.’

‘Charles...?’

He was in the hallway, Florence following close behind. He took his own cloak, hat and cane. Bessie would not be up to her duties for a while yet. He hoped, for the sake of Florence’s dignity, the maid would be available to see to the guests when the time came for their departure.

‘I’m sure Art will see Penelope home,’ he said, instantly regretting the suggestion. ‘Or Miss Reed.’

‘Is this serious? I’m sure you don’t have to leave so soon...’

The messenger, a close-mouthed fellow, waited out in the street, a carriage at the kerb beside him.

‘My time is not always my own, Florence.’ He kissed her hand. ‘I thank you for your courtesy and kindness.’

He left the Stoker house, stepped across the pavement, and climbed up into the carriage. The messenger, who had been holding the nearside door open, joined him. The driver knew their intended destination, and immediately set off. Beauregard saw Florence closing her door against the cold. The fog thickened and he looked away from the house, settling in to the steady motion of the carriage. The messenger said nothing. Although a summons from the Diogenes Club could mean no good news, Beauregard was relieved to be out of Florence’s parlour and away from the company.

4

COMMERCIAL STREET BLUES

At Commercial Street Police Station, Lestrade introduced her to Frederick Abberline. At the sufferance of Assistant Commissioner Dr Robert Anderson and Chief Inspector Donald Swanson, Inspector Abberline had charge of the continuing investigation. Having pursued the Polly Nichols and Annie Chapman cases with his customary tenacity but without notable results, the warm detective was now saddled with Lulu Schön, and any yet to come.

‘If I can help in any way,’ Geneviève offered.

‘Listen to her, Fred,’ Lestrade said, ‘she’s wise to the ways.’

Abberline, obviously unimpressed, knew it was politic to be polite. Like Geneviève, he could not see why Lestrade wanted her dogging the case.

‘Think of her as an expert,’ Lestrade said. ‘She knows vampires. And this case comes down to vampires.’

The inspector waved the offer aside, but one of the several sergeants in the room – William Thick, whom they called ‘Johnny Upright’ – nodded agreement. He had interviewed Geneviève after the first murder, and seemed as fair and smart as his reputation would have him, even if his taste in suits did run to lamentable checks.

‘Silver Knife is definitely a vampire-slayer,’ Thick put in. ‘Not some rip-merchant killing to cover theft.’

‘We don’t know that,’ Abberline snapped, ‘and I don’t want to read it in the Police Gazette.’

Thick kept quiet, satisfied that he was right. In their interview, the sergeant admitted his personal belief was that Silver Knife imagined he had been wronged – or, more likely, actually had been wronged – by Vlad Tepes’s get. Geneviève, expert enough to know the capabilities of her kind, agreed, but knew the description fit so many in London that it would be fruitless to extrapolate a list of suspects from the theory.

‘I believe Sergeant Thick is right,’ she told the policemen.

Lestrade assented, but Abberline turned away to give an order to his own pet sergeant, George Godley. Geneviève smiled at Thick and saw him shiver. Like most of the warm, he knew even less about bloodline, about the infinite varieties and gradations of vampire, than the Prince Consort’s glut of new-borns. Thick looked at her and saw a vampire... just like the bloodsucker who had turned his daughter, violated his wife, taken his promotion, killed his friend. She didn’t know his history but supposed his theory formed by personal experience, that he guessed the murderer’s motive because he could understand it.

Abberline had spent the day interrogating the constables who were first at the scene of the murder, then going over the ground himself. He had not immediately discovered anything of any relevance and was even holding off on committing to a statement that Schön was indeed another victim of the so-called Whitechapel Murderer. On the short walk from Toynbee Hall, they had heard newsboys shouting about Silver Knife; but the official flannel was that only Chapman and Nichols were demonstrably dead by the same hand. Various other unsolved cases – Schön now joining Tabram, Smith and sundry others – linked in the press could conceivably be entirely separate crimes. Silver Knife hardly held the patent on homicide, even in the immediate locality.

Lestrade and Abberline went off to have a huddle. Abberline – without realising it? – elaborately came up with other things to do with his hands whenever the possibility of pressing flesh with a vampire was raised. He lit a pipe and listened as Lestrade ticked off points on his fingers. A jurisdictional dispute was in the offing between Abberline, head of H Division CID, and Lestrade. The Scotland Yard interloper was assumed to be one of Dr Anderson’s spies, dispatched by Swanson to check up on the detectives in the field, ready to swoop in whenever glory was to be claimed but anonymous if results were lacking. Anderson, Swanson and Lestrade were the Irishman, the Scotsman and the Englishman of the music hall stories, and had been pictured as such by Weedon Grossmith in Punch, traipsing over a murder site and obliterating clues to the annoyance of a local copper who somewhat resembled Fred Abberline. Geneviève wondered if she, hardly the epitome of the French girl from the same stories, fitted into the scheme. Did Lestrade intend her for a lever?

She looked about the already busy reception room. The doors pushed open constantly, admitting foggy draughts, and banged shut. Outside were several groups of interested parties. A Salvation Army band, flying the Cross of St George, supported a Christian Crusade preacher who called down God’s Justice on vampirekind, upholding Silver Knife as a true instrument of the Will of Christ. The Speakers’ Corner Torquemada was heckled by a few professional insurrectionists, ragged-trousered longhairs of various socialist or Republican stripes, and ridiculed by a knot of painted vampire women, who offered expensive kisses and a quick turning. Many new-borns paid to become some street tart’s get, purchasing immortality for as little as a shilling.

‘Who’s the reverend gentleman?’ Geneviève asked Thick.

The sergeant glanced out at the mob and groaned. ‘A bloody nuisance, Miss. Name of John Jago, so he says.’

The Jago was a notorious slum at the upper end of Brick Lane, a criminal jungle of tiny courts and overpopulated rooms. It was undoubtedly the worst rookery in the East End.

‘Any rate, that’s where he comes from. He talks up an inferno, makes them all feel righteous and proper about shoving a stake through some trollop. He’s been in and out of here all year for fire-breathing. And drunk and disorderly, with the odd common assault tossed in.’

Jago was a wild-eyed fanatic but some of the crowd listened to him. A few years ago, he would have been preaching against the Jews, or Fenians, or the Heathen Chinee. Now, it was vampires.

‘Fire and the stake,’ Jago cried. ‘The unclean leeches, the cast-outs of Hell, the blood-bloated filth. All must perish by fire and the stake. All must be purified.’

The preacher had a few men soliciting donations in caps. They were rough-looking enough to blur the line between extortion and collection.

‘He’s not short of a few pennies,’ Thick commented.

‘Enough to get his bread-knife silver-plated?’

Thick had already thought of that. ‘Five Christian Crusaders claim he was preaching his little heart out to them just when Polly Nichols was being gutted. Same for Annie Chapman. And last night’s too, I’ll lay odds.’

‘Strange hours for a sermon?’

‘Between two and three in the morning, and five and six for the second job,’ Thick agreed. ‘Does seem a trifle too done up in pink string and sealing wax, doesn’t it? Still, we all have to be night-birds now.’

‘You probably stay up all night regularly. Would you want to listen to God and Glory at five o’clock?’

‘It’s darkest just before dawn, they say.’ Thick snorted, and added, ‘besides, I wouldn’t listen to John Jago at any hour of the day or night. Especially on a Sunday.’