Dravot slipped into a side-street. Godalming thought the Sergeant had been alerted by the commotion.
‘Art, why...?’
Seward was near hysteria. Godalming shoved him away, and hissed. He must be rid of this nuisance. The doctor fell back against a lamp-post, appalled and shocked.
‘Leave me be, Jack.’
The doctor shook, old fears returning. Godalming heard the rapid clip of Marie Jeanette’s boots as she ran towards them. Good. The whore would distract Seward. He turned away and followed Dravot. The Sergeant had doubled back away from the Jago, walking around the market towards Aldgate. Damn. It was in the open now. Godalming would have to outpace the new-born and bring him down. He had a revolver loaded with silver. He needed Dravot alive but he was ready to cripple the Sergeant to bring him in. The more he was hurt, the keener he would be to expose his confederates. Dravot was the key. If he could be turned properly, the future was laid out to Godalming’s advantage. He was sure of his own faculties, of his strength. His curved fangs were comfortable in the grooves they had worked inside his mouth. He no longer chewed himself.
Through the warren-like maze of streets around the market, Godalming hunted Sergeant Danny Dravot. Even when the quarry got out of his sight, he seemed to leave a glowing trail in the fog. Godalming could hear the distinctive quality of his boot-steps streets away. This could be dangerous. The Sergeant had shown consummate cool in his assassination of Inspector Mackenzie. Remembering Kate Reed, he checked his confidence. He would not be brought low by overestimating his own powers.
Cautiously, he followed Dravot. They were past the market now and straggling back towards Commercial Street. Godalming rounded a corner into Dorset Street and could not see the Sergeant. Off this road was a series of tiny residential courts. The fox must have slipped into one of them. The fog eddied by an arched opening. Godalming was sure he had his man cornered. The only other egress from the court would be through one of the dwellings.
Whistling again, light-headed with incipient victory, he strolled towards the court. His step was nimble and he was ready for a great test of his strength. First, he would batter the new-born with his fists, pulling out the revolver only to settle the matter at the end. It was important that he prove his dominance over the lesser vampire.
A couple appeared at the end of Dorset Street, moving towards him. It was Seward and his whore. They did not matter. It would be useful to have witnesses to this business. Jack Seward would serve the cause of Arthur Holmwood after all.
‘Jack,’ he said, ‘I have a criminal trapped. Stay by this court and summon a constable if one happens to pass.’
‘A criminal,’ exclaimed Marie Jeanette. ‘Faith, in Miller’s Court?’
‘A desperate man,’ he told them. ‘I am an agent of the Prime Minister, on urgent official business.’
Seward’s face was dark. Marie Jeanette could not keep up with the developments.
‘I live in Miller’s Court,’ the whore said.
‘Who is the man?’ Seward asked.
Godalming was peering into the fog. He thought he could see the Sergeant, standing in the courtyard, awaiting him.
‘What has he done?’
Godalming knew what would most impress these fools. ‘He’s the Ripper.’
Marie Jeanette gasped and held her hand to her mouth. Seward looked as if he had been stomach- punched.
‘Lucy,’ he said, a hand inside his coat, ‘stand back.’
A chink appeared in Godalming’s confidence. Dravot dared him to enter Miller’s Court. Seward and Marie Jeanette were pestering fleas and should be brushed off. He had a destiny to fulfil. But something tiny was wrong.
‘You called her Lucy,’ he said. ‘Her name isn’t Lucy.’
He turned to Seward, who pressed close against him, arm moving fast. Godalming felt a silver shock in his chest. Something sharp was stuck into him, sliding swiftly and smoothly between his ribs.
‘And that man in there,’ Seward said, nodding into the courtyard...
Great pain spread through Godalming’s chest. He was packed in ice, but a white-hot needle transfixed him. His vision blurred, his hearing was a fuzzy jangle, all senses were stripped from him.
‘... his name isn’t Jack.’
51
IN THE HEART OF DARKNESS
Midnight was hours past. She sat in Jack’s chair, contemplating the disarray of papers crawling over his desk. On her return, Morrison had recounted five separate crises that had arisen since her departure yesterday afternoon. As tactfully as possible, the young man accused her of neglecting her duties, as of late had the director. The shot had gone home. Something would have to be done soon. Jack was off with his vampire minx, and Genevieve had hardly been any better, with Charles.
The purpose of the Hall was changing. Lecture schedules had fallen into disrepair with Druitt’s death. The institution’s primary educational purpose was collapsing. In the meantime, with the Infirmary worked ragged, the Hall was taking more and more of the medical slack. Lecture halls were becoming wards. Jack, when he could be distracted from his own interests, authorised the engaging of more medical staff. The immediate problem was sparing enough qualified people for a board of interview. And, as ever, money was in short supply. Those who had been generous in the past seemed to be finding other interests. Or turning. Vampires were notoriously uncharitable.
She was torn between the fast-fading elation of her last feeding and the thousand gnat-bite problems of Toynbee Hall. Recently there had been too many strands to her life, too many demands on her time. Important matters were neglected.
She stood up and wandered about the room. One wall was lined with Jack’s medical books and files. In its corner, under a glass case, was his prized phonograph. As Acting Director, this office should be her home. But she had been haring off to the Old Jago, to Chelsea. Now, she wondered whether she had been hunting Jack the Ripper or Charles Beauregard.
She found herself standing by the tiny window that looked out on to Commercial Street. The fog was thick tonight, a street-level sea of churning yellow that lapped at the buildings. For the warm, the November cold would be as sharp as a razor. Or a scalpel.
The Ripper had not murdered since the last weekend of September. She dared hope he had vanished for good. Perhaps Colonel Moran had been right, perhaps Montague Druitt had been the Silver Knife? No. That was impossible. And yet Moran had said something that night which ticked away in the back of her mind.
Opposite the Hall, wrapped in a black cloak, stood a man, fog swirling around and above him. He seemed to be wrestling with some inner question, just as she was. It was Charles.
Moran had said the Hall was in the centre of a pattern, a pattern dotted on to the map by the murders.
Charles crossed the road with a sudden resolve, the fog parting for him.
52
THE LAST OF LUCY
She was who-the-bloody-ever she wanted to be. Whoever
John sat by her bedside. She was telling him again how she’d been turned. Of the night on the heath when his precious Lucy had given the Dark Kiss. Now she told the story as if she were Lucy, and Mary Jane some other person, some worthless whore...
‘I was so cold, John, so hungry, so
