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PANDORA&039;S BOX
&039;What&039;s to be done?&039; shouted a new-born in a peaked cap &039;What&039;s to stop this fiend slaughtering rily tried to keep control of the inquest A poed politician, Genevieve understood hiavel and so was forced to slap his wooden desk with an open hand
&039;Any further interruptions of this nature,&039; Baxter said, glaring, &039;and I shall be forced to clear the public frory even arm, slouched back to his bench He was surrounded by a sied coats, pockets distended by books, heavy boots and thin beards Whitechapel had all manner of Republican, anarchist, socialist and insurrectionist factions
&039;Thank you,&039; said the coroner ironically, rearranging his notes The troubles and muttered New-borns disliked situations where so 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 testiins andEast End streetwalkers Countess Geschwitz, a mannish vairl, blurted out so of Lulu&039;s history: a procession of acquired names, dubious associations and dead husbands If born with a real naraph 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 les Grandes Horizontales of Europe, but foolishness and ill fortune had reduced her to fourpenny knee-tremblers in London&039;s meaner streets and finally delivered her to the sharp hout the testi up Pandora&039;s Box It was almost certain the only connection between the Whitechapel Murderer and his victiation could not afford to overlook the possibility that these were pre-s of specific women Back in Commercial Street, Abberline, Thick and the others were asseraphies, reat statesman, of Nichols, Chapman and Sch?n If any connection could be established between the women, beyond the fact that they were all vaht lead to their killer
As the inquest, co, Baxter had turned his attention to Sch?n&039;s doings on the night of her death Geschwitz, face red fro, said Lulu had left their attic so The body had been discovered by Constable George Neve, walking his beat shortly after six After finishing Lulu, presuht on Chicksand Street, the murderer had dumped her on the doorstep of a basement flat A family of Polish Jews, of wholish, had been inside They all stated, as translated by the tiny girl after a Yiddish babel of argu until Constable Neve roused the down their door Rebecca Kosminksi, the self-assured spokeswoman, was the only vampire in the family Genevieve had seen her kind before; Melissa d&039;Acques, who had turned Chandagnac, was one Rebecca ht live to become the all-powerful row up
Lestrade fidgeted throughout, describing it cruelly as &039;co the crih bottoet in Fred Abberline&039;s way too often He glooth of his inquests The coroner&039;s approach was characterised by an obsessive, not to say tedious, insistence on dragging out irrelevant details and the fla remarks on Anne Chapossip overheard at the Middlesex Hospital, that an American doctor was either the murderer or the e the physiognouineas for a fresh vampire heart There had been a brief flurry of activity as Abberline tried to locate the foreigner, but it turned out vaed, could be unethically purchased from mortuaries for as little as sixpence
Baxter had adjourned beforeNow evidence from the post-mortem was available, and today&039;s business mainly concerned a succession of medical men, all of whom had crammed themselves into Whitechapel Workhouse Infirmary Mortuary to exae Bagster Phillips, the H Division Police Surgeon - well known at Toynbee Hall - who had done the preliminary examination of the body in Chicksand Street and performed the more detailed post-mortem It boiled down to the simple facts that Lulu Sch?n had been heart-stabbed, dise to quieten the outrage that followed these not unexpected revelations
By law, inquests had to be held in public places and be open to the press From the several appearances Genevieve had made as a witness in connection with the deaths of paupers in Toynbee Hall beds, she knew the only audience was usually a bored stringer froency, with the occasional friend or relation of the deceased But the lecture hall was even more thickly populated today than it had been yesterday, the benches as heavily burdened as if Con Donovan were on the stage, reht Title Aside frogle of haggardof well-dressed men, so of sensation-seekers, clergymen and social reformers
In the centre of the room, spaces all around unoccupied despite the surplus of attendees, sat a long-haired va a steel breastplate, of the Prince Consort&039;s Own Carpathian Guard, augmented by a tasselled fez His face ithered white parchment but his eyes, blood-red marbles set in the dead waste of skin, constantly twitched
&039;Do you knoho that is?&039; Lestrade asked
Genevieve did &039;Kostaki, one of Vlad Tepes&039;s hangers-on&039;
&039;That sort gives me the creeps,&039; commented the new-born detective &039;The elders&039;
Genevieve aler than she His presence was almost certainly not due toan interest in Silver Knife
&039;People die every night in Whitechapel, in ways Vlad Tepes couldn&039;t devise, or live lives worse than any death,&039; Genevieve said, &039;yet from one year&039;s end to the next, London pretends we&039;re as reory htseers and prurient philanthropists&039;
&039;Maybe soster Phillips was thanked and dismissed, and Baxter called for Henry Jekyll, MD, DCL, LLD, FRS, etc A dignified, smooth-faced man of fifty, obviously once handsome, approached the lectern and took the oath
&039;Whenever a vampire&039;s killed,&039; Lestrade explained, &039;Jekyll coet ave a detailed and anatomically precise description of the atrocities, arm only in the sense that he was not a vaested a disturbing lack of empathy with the human subject of the inquest, but Genevieve listened with interest - certainlyreporters in the front row - to the comments Baxter solicited froh about the precise changes in the human metabolism that accompany the so-called "turn" from normal life to the un-dead state Precise infors like a London fog over the subject My studies have been checked by official indifference, even hostility We could all benefit froic incidents like the death of this girl could then be erased froain Without divisions, their cause would have no purpose
&039;Too much of e believe about vampirism is sheer folklore,&039; Dr Jekyll continued &039;The stake through the heart, the silver scythe The vampire corpus is reans seems to produce true death, as here&039;
Baxter hummed and questioned the doctor &039;So the ht deem the standard superstitious practice of the vampire killer?&039;
&039;Indeed I should like to put certain facts into the record, if only to provide a definitive contradiction of irresponsible journalis sketch artist sitting in directly in front of Genevieve was deftly portraying Dr Jekyll for reproduction in the illustrated press He pencilled in some dark shadows under the witness&039;s eyes to make him look more untrustworthy
&039;As with Nichols and Chap Her es torn from a sacred text No crucifix or cruciform object was found on or near the body The dampness of her skirts and the residue of water on her face were alhly unlikely that the body was sprinkled with holy water&039;
The artist, probably the man from the Police Gazette, drew in heavy eyebrows and tried to make Dr Jekyll&039;s thick but iy He went too far in distorting his subject and, tutting at his overenthusiasm, tore the sheet off his pad, cruan afresh