‘Thank you, ever so, missy. Thank you. Any time, you’re welcome to my girls. Any time.’
Penelope left the woman in Cadogan Square and walked off in the fog, a newfound vitality electrifying her. She was stronger inside than she had ever been...
... she knew her way in the fog. The Churchward house was only a short distance away, in Caversham Street. As she walked, it was as if only she of all the city knew where she was going. She could have found home with her eyes closed.
With the child’s blood in her, she was light-headed. She had not often had more than a single glass of wine with dinner, but she recognised her current state as akin to intoxication. Once, she and Kate and another girl had emptied four bottles from her late father’s prized cellar. Only Kate had not been sick afterwards and she had been infuriatingly superior about it. This was like that, but without the roiling in her stomach.
Occasionally, people would sense her coming and get out of her way. Nobody even stared or passed comment on her unusual dress. Men had kept the convenience of their clothing to themselves. She felt somewhat piratical, like Anne Bonney. Even Pam, she was sure, had never known anything as exhilarating as this. At last, she outshone her cousin.
The fog thinned, and her cloak hung heavy on her shoulders. She stopped, and found herself dizzy. Had the girl carried any disease? She clung to a lamp-post like a drunken toff. The fog was just wispy strands. A breeze was blowing from the river. She could taste the Thames on the wind. The world seemed to spin as the early fog dissipated. In the sky, a merciless ball of fire expanded, reaching out light-tendrils. She threw a hand over her face and felt her skin burning. It was as if a great magnifying glass were suspended in the air, concentrating the sun’s rays on her as a boy directs a killing beam at an ant.
Her hand hurt. It was an angry lobster-red. The skin itched fearfully and split in one place. A curl of steamy smoke emerged from the crack. Pushing away from the lamp-post, she ran over uncertain ground, her cloak streaming behind her. The air dragged at her ankles like swamp-water. She was coughing, spitting up blood. She had glutted herself overmuch, and was paying for her greed.
Sun lay heavy on the streets, bleaching everything around to a shining bone-white. Even if she shut her eyes fast, an agony of light burst into her brain. She thought she would never reach Caversham Street and safety. She would stumble and fall in the road, and resolve into a smoking woman-shape of dust under the crumpled fan of Art’s cape.
Her face was taut, as if it had shrunken on to her skull. She should never have ventured out into the sun on her first day as a new-born. Kate had told her. Someone got in her way and she bowled him over. She was still strong and swift. She bent double as she ran, the blast of the sun on her back, heating her body through several layers of cloth. Her lips were drawn away from her teeth, stiff and shrivelled. Every step hurt, as if she were skipping through a forest of razors. This was not what she had expected...
... a homing instinct brought her to her street, to her own front door. She fumbled with the bell-pull and hooked one foot under the boot-scraper to prevent herself from falling backwards. Unless admitted into the cool shade at once, she would die. She leaned against her door and banged with the heel of her hand.
‘Mother, mother,’ she croaked. She sounded like an old crone.
The door was opened and she fell into the arms of Mrs Yeovil, their housekeeper. The servant did not recognise Penelope, and tried to push her back out into the cruel day.
‘No,’ her mother said. ‘It’s Penny. Look...’
Mrs Yeovil’s eyes grew wide; in their horror, Penelope saw her reflection more surely than she ever had in any mirror.
‘Lord bless us,’ the servant said.
Mother and Mrs Yeovil helped her into the hallway and the door was slammed shut. Pain still streamed through the stained-glass fanlight, but the worst of the sun was kept out. She lolled in the embrace of the two women. There was another person in the hallway, standing at the door of the withdrawing room.
‘Penelope? My Lord, Penelope!’ It was Charles. ‘She’s turned, Mrs Churchward,’ he said.
For a moment, she remembered what it was all about, what it had all been for. She tried to tell him, but only a hiss came out.
‘Don’t try to talk, dear,’ her mother said. ‘It’ll be all right.’
‘Get her somewhere dark,’ Charles said.
‘The cellar?’
‘Yes, the cellar.’
He pulled open the door under the stairs and the women carried her down into her father’s wine cellar. There was no light at all and she was suddenly cool all over. The burning stopped. She still hurt but she no longer felt on the point of exploding.
‘Oh, Penny, my poor dear,’ her mother said, laying a hand on her brow. ‘You look so...’
The sentence trailed off and they laid her out on cold but clean flagstones. She tried to sit up, to spit a curse at Charles.
‘Rest,’ he said.
They forced her back and she shut her eyes. Inside her head, the dark was red and teeming.
39
FROM HELL
Dr Seward’s Diary (kept in phonograph)
17 OCTOBER
I am keeping Mary Kelly. She is so like Lucy, so like what Lucy became. I have paid her rent up to the end of the month. I visit her when work permits and we indulge in our peculiar exchange of fluids. There are distractions but I do my best to set them aside.
George Lusk, chairman of the Vigilance Committee, came to see me at the Hall yesterday. He had been sent half a kidney with a note headed ‘From Hell’, claiming the enclosure was from one of the dead women, presumably Eddowes. ‘Tother piece I fried and ate, it was very nise.’ With a horrid irony, he thought first to bring the grisly trophy to me, believing the meat from a calf or a dog and himself the victim of a jape. ‘Jack the Ripper’ jokes are an epidemic, and since Lusk had a letter about the murders published in The Times, he has fallen victim to not a few. With Lestrade and Lusk looking over my shoulder, I prodded and poked the kidney. The organ was certainly human and had been preserved in alcohol. I told Lusk the prank most likely the work of a medical student. From my days at Bart’s, I recall fools who became devoted to such infantile and macabre practices. I cannot walk down Harley Street without remembering which society doctor once decamped from his lodgings leaving a dismembered torso to be discovered in his bed by the landlady. One oddity I observed was that the kidney almost certainly did come from a vampire. It displayed an advanced state of that distinctive species of liquid decay that comes upon the vampire after true death. I was not called upon to explain my familiarity with the innards of the un-dead.
Lestrade concurred, and Lusk, who is I understand quite a nuisance, was placated. Lestrade tells me the investigation is constantly muddied by similar false leads, as if Jack the Ripper were supported by a society of merry fellows intent on providing him with a protective fog of confusion. I have thought myself that I was not without friends, that some unknown power watched over my interests. Nevertheless I believe I have played out, for the time being, my string. The ‘double event’ – hideous expression, courtesy of that bothersome letter-writer – has unnerved me, and I shall suspend my night-work. It is still necessary but it has become too dangerous. The police are against me and there are vampires everywhere. It is my hope that others will take up my task. The day after John Jago was wounded, a vampire fop was killed in Soho, a stake through his heart and crusader cross carved in his forehead. The Pall Mall Gazette ran an editorial suggesting that the Whitechapel Murderer had gone West.