‘I don’t believe I fully understand.’
‘Let me illustrate. In New Mexico, ten years ago, a new-born ran riot, killing without thought. A warm man, Patrick Garrett, loaded a shotgun with sixteen silver dollars and peppered his heart with razor-shards. The new-born was Henry Antrim or William Bonney, a cretin leech who deserved his fate. Soon after, stories began to circulate. Dime novels elaborated upon his youth and romantic appeal. Billy the Kid, they call him now, Billy Blood. Squalid murder and pathetic crime are forgotten and the American West has a a range-riding vampire demi-god. You can read in the penny press how he rescued fair maidens and was rewarded with their freely-bestowed favours, how he stood up for poor farmers against cattle kings, how he only became a killer to avenge the death of his father-in-darkness. It’s all bunkum, Godalming, all a pretty lie for the newspapers. Billy Bonney was so low he’d bleed his own horse, but now he is a true hero. That will not happen in this case. When Silver Knife is hoisted to the stake, I want a dead madman not an unkillable legend.’
Godalming understood.
‘Warren and the others merely wish to finish Silver Knife for 1888. I want you to make sure he is destroyed for all time.’
20
NEW GRUB STREET
September was nearly done. It was the morning of the 28th. Silver Knife had not murdered since Lulu Schön, on the 17th. Of course, Whitechapel was now so crowded with policemen and reporters that the killer might be overcome with shyness. Unless, as some had theorised, he was a policeman or a reporter.
With the sun up, the streets were sparsely populated. The fog had blown away for the moment, giving him a cold, clear look at the place that had become his second home. Beauregard had to admit he did not much care for it, by day or night. After another fruitless shift with resentful detectives, he was tired to the point of exhaustion. Professional feeling was that the trail was cooling fast. The murderer might have succumbed to his own mania and turned his knife against himself. Or simply hopped on a steamer for America or Australia. Soon, everywhere in the world you could go, there would be vampires.
‘Maybe he’s just stopped,’ Sergeant Thick had suggested. ‘They do sometimes. He could spend the rest of his life sniggering every time he passes a copper. Maybe he doesn’t get his jollies with the knife, maybe the thing is that he wants to have a secret all to himself.’
That had not sounded right to Beauregard. From the autopsies, he believed Silver Knife got his jollies cutting up vampire women. Although the victims were not conventionally violated, it was obvious the crimes were sexual in nature. Privately, Dr Phillips, the H Division Police Surgeon, theorised that the murderer might practice the sin of Onan at the site of his crimes. Little connected with this case was not utterly repulsive to decent sensibilities.
‘Mr Beauregard,’ a female voice interrupted his thoughts. ‘Charles?’
A young person with a black bonnet and smoked glasses crossed the street to talk to him. Although it was not raining, she had up a black umbrella, shading her face. The wind caught and it tilted, swinging back the shadow.
‘Why, it’s Miss Reed,’ Beauregard exclaimed, surprised. ‘Kate?’
The girl smiled to be remembered.
‘What brings you to these unsavoury parts?’
‘Journalism, Charles. Remember, I scribble.’
‘Of course. Your essay on the consequences of the match-girl strike in Our Corner was exemplary. Radical, of course, but exceedingly fair.’
‘That is probably the first and only time the expression “exceedingly fair” will be used in connection with me, but I thank you for the compliment.’
‘You underrate yourself, Miss Reed.’
‘Perhaps,’ she mused, before proceeding to her current business. ‘I’m looking for Uncle Diarmid. Have you seen him?’
Beauregard knew Kate’s uncle was one of the head men at the Central News Agency. The police thought highly of him, rating him one of the few scrupulous pressmen on the crime circuit.
‘Not recently. Is he here? On a story?’
‘The story. Silver Knife.’
Kate was fidgety, holding close a mannish document folder which seemed to have some totemic value. Her umbrella was larger than she could easily manage.
‘There’s something different about you, Miss Reed. Have you perhaps changed the style of your hair?’
‘No, Mr Beauregard.’
‘Odd. I could have sworn...’
‘Maybe you haven’t seen me since I turned.’
It hit him at once that she was nosferatu. ‘I beg your pardon.’
She shrugged. ‘That’s all right. A lot of the girls are turning, you know. My – what do they call them? – father-in-darkness has many get. He is Mr Frank Harris, the editor.’
‘I have heard of him. He is a friend of Florence Stoker’s, isn’t he?’
‘He used to be, I think.’
Her patron, famous for championing people then breaking with them, was notoriously profligate with his affections. Kate was a direct young woman; Beauregard could see why she might appeal to Mr Frank Harris, the editor.
She must have some important mission to venture out by day, even heavily shrouded from the sun, so soon after turning.
‘There is a café nearby where the reporters gather. It’s not quite the place for an unaccompanied young lady, but...’
‘Then, Mr Beauregard, you must accompany me, for I have something Uncle Diarmid must see immediately. I hope you do not think me forward or presumptuous. I would not ask if it were not important.’
Kate Reed had always been pale and thin. The turn actually made her complexion seem healthier. Beauregard felt the force of her will, and was not inclined to resist.
‘Very well, Miss Reed. This way...’
‘Call me Kate. Charles.’
‘Of course. Kate.’
‘How is Penny? I have not seen her since...’
‘I’m rather afraid that neither have I. My guess is that she is in something of a pet.’
‘Not the first time.’
Beauregard frowned.
‘Oh, I am sorry, Charles. I didn’t mean to say that. I can be a fearful twit at times.’
She made him smile.
‘Here,’ he said.
The Café de Paris was on Commercial Street, near the police station. A pie-and-eels-and-pitchers-of-tea establishment, formerly catering to market porters and police constables, it was now full of men with curly moustaches and check suits, arguing about bylines and headlines. The reason the place was such a hit with the press was that the proprietor had installed one of the new telephone devices. He allowed reporters, for a penny a time, to place calls to their head offices, even to the extent of dictating stories over the wire.
‘Welcome to futurity,’ he said, holding open the door for Kate.
She saw what he meant. ‘Oh, how wonderful.’
An angry little American in a rumpled white suit and a straw hat from the last decade was holding the mouth- and ear-pieces of the apparatus, and yelling at an unseen editor.
‘I’m telling you,’ he shouted, loud enough to render the miracle of modern science superfluous, ‘I’ve a dozen witnesses who swear the Silver Knife is a were-wolf.’
The man at the other end shouted, giving the exasperated reporter a chance to draw breath. ‘Anthony,’ he said, ‘this is news. We work for a newspaper, we are supposed to print news!’
The reporter wrestled with the device, shutting off the call, and passed it on to the next man, a startled new-born, in the queue for the device.
‘Over to you, LeQueux,’ the American said. ‘Better luck with your runaway steam-driven automaton theory.’