Shadows of the Silver Screen (5 page)

“Run!”

They fled, their footsteps clattering down the hall as behind them the man let fly a volley of unintelligible curses. Alfie barged the front door open, Penelope hurrying close behind, not allowing the swish of her long skirt to slow her for a second. Outside on the street, the sun beat down, the few passers-by walking at a stately pace, but Penny and Alfie didn’t stop running until they reached the Charing Cross Road.

Panting, Alfie turned towards Penny, a wry smile curling the corners of his lips.

“I think you’ve found out all you needed to know about the person who sent that letter,” he told her through halting breaths. “The man’s a maniac.”

Still trying to catch her own breath, Penelope nodded her head. She couldn’t shake the image of the razor blade glinting in the Frenchman’s hand. Despite the warmth of the day, Penny shivered. They’d been lucky to get out of there alive.

She glanced at her watch, the time nearing a quarter to two. This was a mystery that would have to wait for another day.

“Let’s get back to
The Penny Dreadful,
” she said decisively, sweeping back her dishevelled hair into a semblance of style. “We’ve got a magazine to publish.”

VIII

 

Penelope stared at the cover proof laid out on her desk, the artwork for the August edition finally in place. Beneath the familiar masthead of
The Penny Dreadful
, its gothic letters emblazoned in red, the figure of a man blundered through the heart of a forest. He was dressed in his nightclothes, the unfastened belt from his checked dressing gown trailing in the leaves whilst he raised his arm to ward off the flailing branches that scratched at his face. Across the bottom of the cover, the contents line proclaimed:

 

Featuring

“A GREEN DREAM OF DEATH”

by Montgomery Flinch

and thirteen more tales of terror

 

Penny leaned closer to inspect the illustration. With his dark whiskers and close-clipped beard, the man in the picture reminded her of the mysterious Frenchman. It had been over a week now since she and Alfie had fled from the boarding house on New Lisle Street, his angry curses echoing in their ears. Any thoughts of returning there had been stymied by her memory of the glinting razor blade.

But this hadn’t stopped Penny from investigating the mystery further. The letter had spoken of a stolen invention, so her first port of call had been to the elegant buildings of the Patent Office, just off Chancery Lane. Here she had searched in vain for any patent application for the Véritéscope, but the clerks could find no record of this. It had been the same story when she had checked the lists of registered companies, with no records filed for the fledgling Alchemical Moving Picture Company. And of Mr Gold himself, they had heard no word apart from a counter-signed copy of the contract returned by post a few days ago.

Penny tapped her fingers against the desk. So far everywhere that she had looked to try to find out more about Gold and his curious invention she had only turned up blank pages. There was something that she was missing here…

Her musings were interrupted by the rattle of the door handle. Penny looked up from the cover proof to see the front door of the office flung open with a theatrical flourish. With the sunlight streaming in behind him, Monty bounded into the office, his voice booming out in greeting.

“What a glorious day it is today!” he proclaimed, a broad smile lighting up his face. “The London streets look almost elegant in the sunshine. It is a pity I have to bid them goodbye.”

Monty was dressed in a striped flannel blazer with smartly pressed trousers cut from the same cloth. Beneath this blazer, Monty’s shirt was unbuttoned at the neck, his summertime ensemble completed by a straw boater set at a jaunty angle. He looked as though he was dressed for a seafront promenade rather than the streets of the city.

“Are you off on your holidays, Monty?” Alfie asked, looking up from the layouts Mr Wigram had just placed on his desk. Next to him, the lawyer’s frown deepened as his stern gaze took in Monty’s garb.

“I don’t think we’ve agreed any period of leave for you, Mr Maples,” Wigram began. “If you remember, you need to be available at a moment’s notice for when the Alchemical Moving Picture Company begin their filming of
The Daughter of Darkness.”

“Don’t worry,” Monty replied with a grin. “I’m ready to go. My case is packed, I have the script and the hansom cab outside is waiting to take me to the station. I just came to wish you all a fond farewell.”

He raised his straw boater in a valedictory salute, but before he could turn to the door, Penny was already on her feet.

“What do you mean?” she demanded, a note of indignation rising in her voice. “I haven’t seen any film script yet.”

Nonplussed, Monty plucked a letter from his blazer pocket and handed it to Penelope.

“It arrived earlier this week,” he told her. “When we met with Mr Gold, he took the liberty of asking me for the address of my club so that we could stay in touch.”

Casting her eyes over the letter, Penny felt her sense of fury start to grow.

Seeing the storm clouds start to gather across Penny’s brow, Monty reached out to rest a conciliatory hand on her shoulder.

“You have no need to worry, my dear,” he reassured her. “I’ve read it from cover to cover. The script is sensational. Some might say it even improves on your tale.”

With a glowering look, Penny shook Monty’s hand from her shoulder. She turned towards her guardian, who was watching the scene with a shrewd eye.

“Can he even do this?” she demanded. “The agreement we signed was supposed to give me final approval of the script!”

Wigram shook his head with a sigh.

“The agreement gives
Montgomery Flinch
the final say,” the lawyer corrected her. “We can hardly blame Mr Gold for not knowing exactly who that is.”

Fuming at her own carelessness, Penny turned back towards Monty, who had started to edge towards the door.

“And where do you think you’re going?” she asked pointedly.

“My hansom cab is waiting,” Monty protested. “I need to get to Paddington Station by three. I have a train to catch.”

Behind her pale green eyes, Penelope’s thoughts raced. There was only one way that she’d get to the bottom of this mystery. “Tell the cab driver he’ll have to wait a little longer,” she told Monty. “First, I need to pack. I’m coming with you.”

The carriage bounced along the rutted track, Penny clinging to the rail of the trap as the driver sat on the box seat in front of them, his hands gripping the horses’ reins. Next to her, Monty was slowly turning a bilious shade of green as the cab lurched forward again. His straw boater had been blown from his head several miles back, lost to the winds whipping in from the moor.

The evening sun lurked just above the horizon, throwing long shadows across the heather-strewn wilderness. Scattered stumps of stone dotted the vast landscape, ancient reminders of those who had walked here thousands of years before. The carriage was climbing towards one of these cairns, a windswept huddle of rocks stark against the skyline. Above this outcrop, a buzzard wheeled, searching for its prey as the light started to fade.

Penelope shivered. She could scarce believe that only a few hours before she had been sat behind her desk at
The Penny Dreadful
. Now, as the forbidding moor stretched in every direction she could see, civilisation seemed a long way away.

It had taken all of her powers of persuasion to convince Mr Wigram that she should accompany Monty on this trip. At first, her guardian had been adamant that with
The Penny Dreadful
due to go to press in less than a week’s time, and Monty a far from reliable chaperone, it was out of the question. However, as Penny artfully employed her wiles, reminding him of the damage that Monty could wreak to Montgomery Flinch’s reputation without someone to keep him in line, her guardian had finally relented. He had immediately despatched a telegraph to Mr Gold informing him that Montgomery Flinch’s niece would be accompanying her uncle on his visit to the film set. Then, with his features set in their sternest expression, the elderly lawyer had reminded Monty exactly what his responsibilities were.

As the actor chafed at Wigram’s strict instructions, Penelope had turned towards Alfie, who met her gaze with an envious stare. “I don’t suppose I can come with you?” he had asked, but Penny could only shake her head in reply. “I wish that you could,” she had told him, her mind still uneasy at this rapid turn of events. “There’s something not quite right about all this. I need to keep a close eye on Mr Gold and this strange invention of his. Don’t worry, I’ll send word as soon as I find out more.”

Dashing to the hansom cab, Penelope and Monty had made it to Paddington Station with only seconds to spare, boarding the last express train to Plymouth. Settling into the seats of their first-class carriage, Monty had begun to regale Penny with his tales of theatrical life, whilst she had leafed through the pages of the film script. As she read, her anger grew as she saw the countless alterations Gold had made to her story. The names of people and places had been changed, scenes cut and rearranged, even her heroine hadn’t escaped unscathed. According to the script, Alice Fotheringay was now named Amelia Eversholt, her father had changed from an earl to a lord and their home was Eversholt Manor. Penelope fumed. How dare Gold take such liberties?

With a frown lining her brow, Penny had continued to turn the pages of the script as through the window the London sprawl gave way to views of rolling hills, the afternoon slowly slipping away as the train arrowed westwards. She felt as though she was reading
The Daughter of Darkness
through a warped looking-glass, every detail of her tale strangely twisted until the story that stared back at her was no longer her own. The centrepiece of her plot, where Oliver rescued Alice from the moors, presenting her with a strange stone unearthed from the depths of her father’s mine to guide her home, had now been replaced with a scene where Amelia gave the boy a gift of a precious jewel in thanks for her safe return. It made no sense. Why would Gold make such a change to her story? Soon Monty’s snores filled the carriage, but Penelope read on, fuelled by a quiet fury, only looking up from the last page of the script as the train pulled into Plymouth station.

There, a railway porter had hefted her
hastily-packed
case across the platform as they changed trains to a smaller branch line. Staring from the window, Penny had watched as the rolling green slopes of the landscape grew bleaker and wilder, the train twisting and rising as it skirted the moor before finally coming to a halt at a small wayside station at the end of the line. Waiting for them there had been this lone horse-drawn carriage, the taciturn driver sent by Mr Gold to transport them on the last leg of their journey.

Seated next to Penny on the swaying trap, Monty’s exuberance had now worn away to weariness. As the carriage neared the rise, he stared out across the melancholy expanse of moorland, its bracken and bramble gleaming in the light of the sinking sun.

“Are we there yet?” he moaned.

The rattle of the wheels died away as the carriage crested the rise. Penelope gasped as she looked down into the valley below. The track wound down a russet-red slope, tracing the path of a stream that sprang from behind a grey boulder, but where before only ancient stones had broken the landscape, there now stood the shapes of buildings.