King of Vampires, he had wooed and won Victoria, persuading her to abandon her widow’s black. Then he had reshaped the greatest Empire on the globe to suit his tastes. Beauregard had vowed death would not interfere with his loyalty to the Queen’s person, but he had thought he meant his own death.
The carpeted stairs did not creak. The thick walls admitted no noise from the bustling city without. Venturing into the Diogenes Club was like sampling deafness.
The Prince Consort, who had taken for himself the additional title of Lord Protector, ruled Great Britain now, his get executing his wishes and whims. An elite Carpathian Guard patrolled the grounds of Buckingham Palace and caroused throughout the West End like sacred terrors. The army, the navy, the diplomatic corps, the police and the church were all in Dracula’s thrall, new-borns promoted over the warm at every opportunity. While much continued as always, there were changes: people vanished from public and private life, camps such as Devil’s Dyke springing up in remote areas of the country, and the apparatus of a government – secret police, sudden arrests, casual executions – he associated not with the Queen but with Tsars and Shahs. There were Republican bands playing Robin Hood in the wilds of Scotland and Ireland, and cross-waving curates were always trying to brand new-born provincial mayors with the mark of Cain.
On the top landing was a man with a military moustache and a neck the thickness of his head, even in civvies the absolute image of a sergeant-major. Beauregard passed inspection and the guard opened the familiar green door, stepping aside to allow the clubman to enter. He was inside the suite sometimes referred to as ‘the Star Chamber’ before a realisation sank in: Sergeant Dravot, the man on guard, was a vampire, the first he had seen within the walls of the Diogenes Club. For a horrid, sinking moment, he assumed his eyes would get used to the gloom within the Star Chamber and alight upon five bloated leeches, sharp-fanged horrors ruddy with stolen blood. If the ruling cabal of the Diogenes Club had fallen, the long reign of the living would genuinely be at an end.
‘Beauregard,’ came a voice, normally pitched but sounding, even after only a minute in the silence of the Club, like a thunderclap from God. His moment of fear passed, replaced by a mild puzzlement. There were no vampires in the room, but things were changed.
‘Mr Chairman,’ he acknowledged.
It was convention not to address any of the cabal by name or title in their suite, but Beauregard knew he faced Sir Mandeville Messervy, a supposedly retired admiral who had made his name in the suppression, twenty years earlier, of the Slave Trade in the Indian Ocean. Also present were Mycroft, an enormously corpulent gentleman who had been chairman on Beauregard’s last visit, and Waverly, an avuncular figure Beauregard understood to be personally responsible for the downfall of Colonel Ahmad Arabi and the occupation of Cairo in 1882. There were two empty seats at the round table.
‘Alas, you find us depleted. There have, as you know, been changes. The Diogenes Club is not what it was.’
‘A cigarette?’ offered Waverly, producing a silverwork case and offering it.
Beauregard declined but Waverly tossed him the case anyway. He was fast enough to catch it and return it. Waverly smiled as he slipped the case into his breast pocket.
‘Cold silver,’ he explained.
‘There was no need for that,’ said Messervy. ‘I apologise. Still, it was an effective demonstration.’
‘I am not a vampire,’ Beauregard said, showing his unburned fingers. ‘That much should be obvious.’
‘They’re tricky, Beauregard,’ said Waverly.
‘You have one outside, you know.’
‘Dravot is a special case.’
Formerly, Beauregard had considered the ruling cabal of the Diogenes Club impregnable, the ever-beating lion-heart of Britannia. Now, not for the first time since his return from abroad, he was forced to realise how radically the country was altered.
‘That was a fine piece of work in Shanghai, Beauregard,’ the chairman commented. ‘Very deft. As we have come to expect of you.’
‘Thank you, Mr Chairman.’
‘It will be some years, I believe, before we hear again of those yellow devils in the Si-Fan.’
‘I wish I shared your confidence.’
Messervy nodded sagely. The criminal
Waverly had a small pile of folders in front of him. ‘You’re a well-travelled man,’ he said. ‘Afghanistan, Mexico, the Transvaal.’
Beauregard agreed, wondering where he was being led.
‘You’ve been of great service to the Crown in many situations. But now we need you closer to home. Very close.’
Mycroft, who might have been sleeping with his eyes open for all the attention he seemed to pay, now leaned forwards. The current chairman was obviously so used to deferring to his colleague that he sat back and allowed him to take over.
‘Beauregard,’ said Mycroft, ‘have you heard of the murders in Whitechapel? The so-called Silver Knife killings?’
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 Schon’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
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 Schon. 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
