Anno Dracula (Anno Dracula #1)

Anno Dracula (Anno Dracula #1) Page 6

PANDORA'S BOX

'What's to be done?' shouted a new-born in a peaked cap. 'What's to stop this fiend slaughtering more of our women?'

Coroner Wynne Baxter angrily tried to keep control of the inquest. A pompous, middle-aged politician, Genevieve understood him to be unpopular. Unlike a High Court judge, he had no gavel and so was forced to slap his wooden desk with an open hand.

'Any further interruptions of this nature,' Baxter said, glaring, 'and I shall be forced to clear the public from the room.'

The surly rough, who must have looked hungry even when warm, slouched back to his bench. He was surrounded by a similar crew. She knew the type: long scarves, ragged coats, pockets distended by books, heavy boots and thin beards. Whitechapel had all manner of Republican, anarchist, socialist and insurrectionist factions.

'Thank you,' said the coroner ironically, rearranging his notes. The troublemaker bared his fangs and muttered. New-borns disliked situations where someone warm had the authority. But a lifetime of cringing when officials frowned left habits.

This was the second day of the inquest. Yesterday, Genevieve had sat at the back of the Hall while sundry witnesses gave testimony relating to Lulu Sch?n's origins and movements. She had been out of the ordinary among East End streetwalkers. Countess Geschwitz, a mannish vampire who claimed to have come from Germany with the girl, blurted out something of Lulu's history: a procession of acquired names, dubious associations and dead husbands. If born with a real name, no one knew it. According to a telegraph from Berlin, the German police still wanted to talk to her in connection with the shooting of one of her more recent husbands. All the witnesses  -  including Geschwitz, who had turned her  -  were transparently in love with Lulu, or at least desired her beyond all reason. Evidently the new-born could have been one of les Grandes Horizontales of Europe, but foolishness and ill fortune had reduced her to fourpenny knee-tremblers in London's meaner streets and finally delivered her to the sharp mercies of Silver Knife.

Throughout the testimony, Lestrade muttered about opening up Pandora's Box. It was almost certain the only connection between the Whitechapel Murderer and his victims came at the point of their deaths, but the police investigation could not afford to overlook the possibility that these were pre-meditated killings of specific women. Back in Commercial Street, Abberline, Thick and the others were assembling and cross-referencing biographies, more exhaustively detailed than any life of a great statesman, of Nichols, Chapman and Sch?n. If any connection could be established between the women, beyond the fact that they were all vampire prostitutes, then that might lead to their killer.

As the inquest, commenced in the early afternoon, proceeded into the evening, Baxter had turned his attention to Sch?n's doings on the night of her death. Geschwitz, face red from a recent feeding, said Lulu had left their attic some time between three and four in the morning. The body had been discovered by Constable George Neve, walking his beat shortly after six. After finishing Lulu, presumably in plain sight on Chicksand Street, the murderer had dumped her on the doorstep of a basement flat. A family of Polish Jews, of whom only the littlest child could speak anything approaching English, had been inside. They all stated, as translated by the tiny girl after a Yiddish babel of argument, not to have heard anything until Constable Neve roused them by practically battering down their door. Rebecca Kosminksi, the self-assured spokeswoman, was the only vampire in the family. Genevieve had seen her kind before; Melissa d'Acques, who had turned Chandagnac, was one. Rebecca might live to become the all-powerful matriarch of her extended clan, but she would never grow up.

Lestrade fidgeted throughout, describing it cruelly as 'comedy relief '. He would rather have been out combing the crime scene than sitting on a hardwood bench made for the tough bottoms and short legs of twelve-year-olds, but he could not get in Fred Abberline's way too often. He gloomily told Genevieve that Baxter was known for the length of his inquests. The coroner's approach was characterised by an obsessive, not to say tedious, insistence on dragging out irrelevant details and the flamboyant off-handedness of his summings-up. In his closing remarks on Anne Chapman, Baxter had invented the theory, on the basis of gossip overheard at the Middlesex Hospital, that an American doctor was either the murderer or the employer of the murderer. The unknown doctor, researching the physiognomy of the un-dead, was rumoured to have offered twenty guineas for a fresh vampire heart. There had been a brief flurry of activity as Abberline tried to locate the foreigner, but it turned out vampire hearts, mainly somewhat damaged, could be unethically purchased from mortuaries for as little as sixpence.

Baxter had adjourned before midnight, and reconvened the inquest this morning. Now evidence from the post-mortem was available, and today's business mainly concerned a succession of medical men, all of whom had crammed themselves into Whitechapel Workhouse Infirmary Mortuary to examine the mortal remains of Lulu Sch?n.

First came Dr George Bagster Phillips, the H Division Police Surgeon  -  well known at Toynbee Hall  -  who had done the preliminary examination of the body in Chicksand Street and performed the more detailed post-mortem. It boiled down to the simple facts that Lulu Sch?n had been heart-stabbed, disembowelled and decapitated. It took much desk-banging to quieten the outrage that followed these not unexpected revelations.

By law, inquests had to be held in public places and be open to the press. From the several appearances Genevieve had made as a witness in connection with the deaths of paupers in Toynbee Hall beds, she knew the only audience was usually a bored stringer from the Central News Agency, with the occasional friend or relation of the deceased. But the lecture hall was even more thickly populated today than it had been yesterday, the benches as heavily burdened as if Con Donovan were on the stage, rematching with Monk for the Featherweight Title. Aside from the reporters hogging the front row, Genevieve noticed a gaggle of haggard mainly un-dead women in colourful dresses, a scattering of well-dressed men, some of Lestrade's uniformed juniors, and a sprinkling of sensation-seekers, clergymen and social reformers.

In the centre of the room, spaces all around unoccupied despite the surplus of attendees, sat a long-haired vampire warrior. Not a new-born, he wore the uniform, including a steel breastplate, of the Prince Consort's Own Carpathian Guard, augmented by a tasselled fez. His face was withered white parchment but his eyes, blood-red marbles set in the dead waste of skin, constantly twitched.

'Do you know who that is?' Lestrade asked.

Genevieve did. 'Kostaki, one of Vlad Tepes's hangers-on.'

'That sort gives me the creeps,' commented the new-born detective. 'The elders.'

Genevieve almost laughed. Kostaki was younger than she. His presence was almost certainly not due to mere curiosity. The Palace was taking an interest in Silver Knife.

'People die every night in Whitechapel, in ways Vlad Tepes couldn't devise, or live lives worse than any death,' Genevieve said, 'yet from one year's end to the next, London pretends we're as remote as Borneo. But give them a handful of gory murders and you can't move for sightseers and prurient philanthropists.'

'Maybe some good will come of it,' Lestrade commented.

Dr Bagster Phillips was thanked and dismissed, and Baxter called for Henry Jekyll, M.D., D.CL., LL.D., F.R.S., etc. A dignified, smooth-faced man of fifty, obviously once handsome, approached the lectern and took the oath.

'Whenever a vampire's killed,' Lestrade explained, 'Jekyll comes creeping round. Something rum about him, if you get my drift...'

The scientific researcher, who first gave a detailed and anatomically precise description of the atrocities, was warm only in the sense that he was not a vampire. Dr Jekyll was self-controlled to a point that suggested a disturbing lack of empathy with the human subject of the inquest, but Genevieve listened with interest  -  certainly more than that expressed by the yawning reporters in the front row  -  to the comments Baxter solicited from him.

'We have not learned enough about the precise changes in the human metabolism that accompany the so-called "turn" from normal life to the un-dead state. Precise information is hard to come by, and superstition hangs like a London fog over the subject. My studies have been checked by official indifference, even hostility. We could all benefit from research. Perhaps the divisions which lead to tragic incidents like the death of this girl could then be erased from our society.'

The anarchists were grumbling again. Without divisions, their cause would have no purpose.

'Too much of what we believe about vampirism is sheer folklore,' Dr Jekyll continued. 'The stake through the heart, the silver scythe. The vampire corpus is remarkably resilient, but any major breach of the vital organs seems to produce true death, as here.'

Baxter hummed and questioned the doctor. 'So the murderer has not, in your opinion, followed what we might deem the standard superstitious practice of the vampire killer?'

'Indeed. I should like to put certain facts into the record, if only to provide a definitive contradiction of irresponsible journalism.'

Some of the reporters hooted quietly. A lightning sketch artist sitting in directly in front of Genevieve was deftly portraying Dr Jekyll for reproduction in the illustrated press. He pencilled in some dark shadows under the witness's eyes to make him look more untrustworthy.

'As with Nichols and Chapman, Sch?n was not penetrated with a wooden stake or paling. Her mouth was not stuffed with cloves of garlic, or fragments of communion wafer, or pages torn from a sacred text. No crucifix or cruciform object was found on or near the body. The dampness of her skirts and the residue of water on her face were almost certainly condensation from the fog. It is highly unlikely that the body was sprinkled with holy water.'

The artist, probably the man from the Police Gazette, drew in heavy eyebrows and tried to make Dr Jekyll's thick but immaculately combed hair look shaggy. He went too far in distorting his subject and, tutting at his overenthusiasm, tore the sheet off his pad, crumpled it into his pocket, and began afresh.

Baxter jotted down some notes, and resumed his questioning. 'Would you venture that the murderer was familiar with the workings of the human body, whether of a vampire or not?'

'Yes, coroner. The extent of the injuries betokens a certain frenzy of enthusiasm, but the actual wounds  -  one might almost say incisions  -  have been wrought with some skill.'

'Silver Knife's a bleedin' doctor,' shouted the chief anarchist.

The court again exploded into uproar. The anarchists, about half-and-half warm and new-borns, stamped their feet and yelled, while others talked loudly among themselves. Kostaki looked around and silenced a pair of clergymen with a cold glare. Baxter hurt his hand hitting his desk.

Genevieve noticed a man standing at the back of the courtroom observing the clamour with cool interest. Well-dressed, with a cloak and top hat, he might have been a sensation-seeker but for a certain air of purpose. He was not a vampire, but  -  unlike the coroner, or even Dr Henry Jekyll  -  he showed no signs of being disturbed to be among so many of the un-dead. He leant on a black cane.

'Who is that?' she asked Lestrade.

'Charles Beauregard,' the new-born detective said, curling a lip. 'Have you heard of the Diogenes Club?'

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.'

'A striking man.'

'If you say so, mademoiselle.'

The coroner had restored order again. A clerk had nipped out of the room and returned with six more constables, all new-borns. They lined the walls like an honour guard. The anarchists were brooding again, their purpose obviously to cause 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,' Dr Jekyll asked, eliciting a nod from Baxter, 'a knowledge of the position of the major organs does not necessarily betoken a medical education. If you are disinterested 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 both 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,' Dr Jekyll continued. 'Vampire physiology is such that 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 silver could do such permanent, fatal harm to a vampire. In this instance, the popular imagination, which has tagged the murderer as "Silver Knife", has almost certainly got its facts straight.'

'You are familiar with the cases of Mary Ann Nichols and Eliza Anne Chapman?' asked Baxter.

Dr Jekyll nodded. 'Yes.'

'Have you drawn any conclusions from a comparison of these incidents?'

'Indeed. These three killings are indubitably 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.

'... 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.

Genevieve noticed that the man she had asked Lestrade about was gone. She wondered if Beauregard noticed her as she had noticed him. From her side, a connection had been made. She was either having one of her 'insights' or had gone too long without feeding. No, she was certain. The man from the Diogenes Club  -  whatever that really was  -  was materially involved in the affairs of the Whitechapel Murderer, but she could not guess in what capacity.

The coroner began his elaborate summing-up, delivering the verdict of 'wilful murder by person or persons unknown', adding that the killer of Lulu Sch?n was judged to be the same man who had murdered, on 31st of August, Mary Ann Nichols, and, on 8th of September, Eliza Anne Chapman.