‘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 Geneviève 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 men wanted her to be. Mary Jane Kelly. Marie Jeanette. Uncle Henry’s niece. Miss Lucy. She’d be Ellen Terry if it helped.
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 new...’
It was easy to know how Lucy had felt. They had both been gripped by the same soul-deep panic upon awakening from death-sleep. The same desperate, bottomless thirst. Only Lucy awoke in a crypt, respectfully laid out and mourned for. Mary Jane was on a cart, minutes away from a lime pit, jumbled in among other unclaimed bodies.
‘She was just an Irish whore. Of no importance, John. But she was warm, plump, alive. Blood pounding in her sweet neck.’
He was listening, head bobbing. She supposed he was mad. But he was a gentleman. And he was good to her, good for her. Earlier, with the strange toff, he had protected her. That madman, with his talk of Jack the Ripper, had threatened her, and John Seward fought him off. She’d not expected him to be so valiant in her defence.
‘The children hadn’t been enough, John. My thirst was terrible, eating me inside.’
Mary Jane had been confused by the new desires. It had taken her weeks to adjust. That time was like a dream now. She was losing Mary Jane’s memories. She was Lucy.
With his doctor’s hand, John smoothed her shift over her breast. He was the image of the considerate lover. She’d seen him from another side earlier. When he cut down the toff with a knife. His face had been different when he stabbed. John told her she was avenged, and she knew he meant Lucy. The toff had destroyed Lucy. But with his death, that part of the story was washed from John’s mind. Perhaps it would come to her as she became more Lucy and less Mary Jane. As Lucy’s memories seeped into her mind, Mary Jane slowly sank into a dark sea.
Mary Jane had not mattered at all and she should be glad to see her so drowned. In the cold, dark depths, it would be easy for Mary Jane to fall asleep and wake up entirely as Lucy.
But, her heart caught...
It was hard to keep pace as things changed but it was important to make the effort. John was her best hope for escape from this poor room, from these mean streets. Eventually, she’d have him keep her in a house in the better part of the city. She’d have fine clothes and servants. And well-spoken children with pure, sweet blood.
She was sure the toff deserved to die. He’d been mad. There’d been no one hiding in Miller’s Court, waiting for him. Danny Dravot was not the Ripper. He was just another old soldier, full of lies about heathens he’d slaughtered and brown wenches he’d bedded.
As Lucy, she remembered Mary Jane fearfully clutching her throat. Lucy slipped out from between the crypts.
‘I needed her, John,’ she continued. ‘I needed her blood.’
He sat by her bed, reserved and doctorly. Later, she’d pleasure him. And she’d drink from him. Each time she drank, she became less Mary Jane and more Lucy. It must be something in John’s blood.
‘The need was an ache, an ache such as I’d never known, gnawing at my stomach, filling my poor brain with a red fever...’
Since her rebirth, the mirror in her room was useless to her. No one ever bothered to sketch her picture, so it was easy to forget her own face. John had shown her pictures of Lucy, looking like a little girl dressed up in her mother’s clothes. Whenever she imagined her face, she saw only Lucy.
‘I beckoned her from the path,’ she said, leaning over from the pile of pillows on the bed, her face close to his. ‘I sang under my breath, and I waved to her. I wished her to me, and she came...’
She stroked his cheek and laid her head against his chest. The tune came to her, and the words. ‘It Was Only a Violet I Plucked from My Mother’s Grave’. John held his breath, sweating a little. His every fibre was held tense. Her thirst for him rose as she retold the story.
‘There were red eyes before me, and a voice calling. I left the path, and she was waiting. It was a cold, cold night but she wore only a white shift. Her skin was white in the moonlight. Her...’