Twelve Minutes to Midnight (5 page)

VII

“I’m afraid that Montgomery Flinch isn’t here, Mr Barrett,” Penelope replied as she held the door ajar, her face fixed in an apologetic smile. “He is currently secluded in his country manor working on his next fiction serial. I don’t think that he will be able to give an interview to your newspaper or indeed any newspaper – exclusive or otherwise.”

On the doorstep, the young journalist peered suspiciously past Penelope’s shoulder, his gaze trying to penetrate the gloom of
The Penny Dreadful’s
office. Inside, two dying gas lamps hung from the ceiling, their fading glow illuminating stacks of magazines and paper proofs piled across desks as the scant December sunlight slowly began to creep in through the office’s high windows. At the far desk, the silvery thatch of Penelope’s guardian, William Wigram, was bent over a ledger of accounts. The elderly lawyer looked up, raising his eyebrows questioningly 
as Penelope stepped in front of the journalist, blocking his inquisitive stare.

“And I don’t suppose you could tell me where Mr Flinch’s country manor can be found?” the journalist asked, scratching doubtfully at his moustache.

Penelope shook her head.

“Mr Flinch is a very private individual,” she replied, her cheeks colouring at the thought of revealing such a confidence. “I’m really not at liberty to share his address with passing journalists. He likes to keep the location of his home a secret.”

“Seems a lot of things about Montgomery Flinch are secret,” the journalist sniffed. “Where he lives, where he was born, where he came from – his readers have a right to know.” He peered at Penelope intently. “Anyone would think he had something to hide.”

Penny shifted uncomfortably under the journalist’s gaze.

“Is that all, Mr Barrett?”

Blowing out his cheeks, the journalist slowly nodded his head.

“For now, but when you next see Montgomery Flinch, please give him this.” He handed Penelope his card. “Tell him the
Pall Mall Gazette
would very much like the courtesy of speaking to him to check a few facts, else we might have to run a less than flattering story.” 

Penelope looked down at the card in her hand.

Pulling the collar of his coat tight against the early morning chill, the journalist turned and headed down the stone steps. As he reached the bottom, he glanced back up at Penelope.

“By the way, it was a clever trick you pulled the other night at the theatre,” he said begrudgingly. “Speaking up for Flinch like that – you had everybody fooled. I wonder what they would have said, though, if they knew he was your uncle.”

Penny’s smile cracked. The lies she had spun to bring Montgomery Flinch to life now had her trapped in their web.

“That’s ridiculous,” she spluttered. “Who told you that?”

Barrett tapped the side of his nose conspiratorially.

“A good journalist never reveals his sources,” he replied, a wry smile creeping across his face. “But when the bestselling author in Britain pays a visit to Bedlam, well, let’s just say people start to talk.” He tipped his hat as he turned away. 
“Goodbye, Miss Tredwell.”

Penelope stood frozen for a second, her knuckles whitening around the door handle. Then she slammed the door shut on Barrett’s departing figure, a scowl splitting her own face in reply.

“Problem?” her guardian asked as Penelope stomped across the office and flung herself into the chair behind her desk.

Penny shook her head in defiance as she reached for a fresh sheet of foolscap paper.

“Only that journalist from the
Gazette,
he’s still digging around for tittle-tattle about Montgomery Flinch. It’s nothing that a warning letter to his editor won’t solve.”

Wigram’s forehead creased into its habitual frown, his hooded eyes narrowing as he watched Penelope start to draft her letter.

“I really don’t think you should rise to the provocations of the gutter press.” He sighed. “I did warn you that giving Montgomery Flinch a more public profile might draw some unwelcome attention.”

Penny looked up from her letter, her fountain pen poised in mid-flow above the paper.

“But we had to do something. Since we published Flinch’s first story in
The Penny Dreadful
, the other magazines have been scrambling to keep up with our sales – sending their authors on publicity tours, public readings, 
even signing sessions. We couldn’t risk the public forgetting about Montgomery Flinch.”

“I don’t think there’s any chance of that,” her guardian replied with a droll half-smile. “Have you seen the latest sales figures for the December editions?”

He pushed the ledger he had been studying across to Penny’s desk. Setting her letter to one side, she picked up the ledger, her eyes quickly scanning across the rows of titles and figures.

“
Pearson’s Magazine
– 200,000 copies sold to date,
The Boy’s Own Paper
– 250,000,
The Strand
– 350,000 – and that’s with the latest Conan Doyle story.” Penny paused, her eyes flashing in a double take across the page. “
The Penny Dreadful
– 750,000 copies. That’s three quarters of a million!”

“And there’s still ten days to go before Christmas,” Wigram replied. “When the sales from the provinces are added in, we could be looking at our first million-seller. We’ve gone to a seventeenth print run already.”

A disbelieving grin spread across Penny’s face, her green eyes sparkling with pleasure.
The Penny Dreadful
in a million homes! When she’d first taken over the magazine after her father’s death, her only wish had been to keep his memory alive in its pages, a tribute to his unfulfilled dreams of literary stardom. But ever since she’d taken on the pen name of Montgomery Flinch and started 
filling the pages of
The Penny Dreadful
with her stories, the magazine had become a bestseller. If only her father were still here to see what she’d done.

“Don’t you see,” she said triumphantly, all thoughts of Barrett’s prying flying out of her mind, “that shows that we were right. Montgomery Flinch’s first public appearance has pushed sales through the roof. If we can capitalise on this publicity for the next edition of
The Penny Dreadful
, then the sky’s the limit.”

Her guardian looked at Penelope doubtfully, lines of worry still creasing his forehead.

“Hmm,” he mused. “Just remember that all publicity isn’t necessarily good publicity.”

Behind them, the door handle rattled and Penelope spun round in her chair.

“I’ve told you, Mr Barrett, Montgomery Flinch is not here,” she yelled. “There will be no interviews today!”

The door slowly opened and two nervously blinking eyes topped by a scruffy mop of blond hair peered around the frame.

“Alfie!”

At Penelope’s relieved greeting, the lanky figure of the printer’s assistant emerged from behind the door frame.

“Morning, Penny, morning, Mr Wigram.”

Closing the door behind him with a click, Alfie stepped towards Penelope’s desk, brandishing a 
copy of
The Times
in his hand.

“I thought you’d want to see this,” he told her. “Monty’s made it into the papers.”

He laid out the newspaper on the desk in front of Penelope. Quickly turning past the first few pages, he pointed to a headline halfway down one of the dense columns of text on page five.

“Look.”

Penelope’s heart lurched in her chest as she saw the headline, but as she began to read her nerves slowly began to settle.

MASTER OF THE MACABRE FINALLY UNMASKED 

At the Lyceum Theatre earlier this week, one of the rising stars of London’s literary scene finally made his first public appearance. Mr Montgomery Flinch cut a dashing figure as he took to the stage to give a reading of his very latest tale of terror before its exclusive publication in the December edition of
The Penny Dreadful
. Such was the excitement at this unprecedented event and so numerous was the throng assembled at the doors of the theatre that hundreds were turned away before the “reading” could commence. Mr Flinch’s astonishing rise to fame and his phenomenal success has convinced many of his literary genius, but until now the man himself has been an enigma. However, his performance on Tuesday evening confirmed his 
standing as potentially the greatest writer of his age.
   Without the aid of artificial amplification, he held the huge auditorium spellbound as he recounted his Christmas chronicle of dread, contriving by the modulations of his voice and facial gesticulations to make the characters rise as phantoms before the imagination of his audience. Truly marvellous was the state of suspense created as Mr Flinch approached the final moments of his story of supernatural betrayal and revenge. So minutely, indeed, were the increasing fear and the gradual advance of death represented by mere force of voice and facial expression that at the close of his tale, several listeners fainted dead away. If this performance is the herald of others to come, Mr Montgomery Flinch will surely take his place in the coming century as one of the titans of English literature.

“Not bad, eh?” said Alfie, as Penelope looked up in amazement from the newspaper. “And the reviews in the rest of the papers all say the same. Monty’s reading has caused quite a stir – people can’t wait for the next performance. I reckon you could sell out another ten nights in London alone before the New Year.”

Penelope’s pale green eyes momentarily glittered at the thought of the sales yet more readings by Montgomery Flinch could bring, but then she winced as she remembered the whereabouts of her leading man. Since the incident at Bedlam, 
Monty had retreated to his club, drinking away his earnings and keeping a safe distance from Penelope’s anger at his cowardly conduct. She shook her head.

“No more performances this year,” she said flatly. “We still need to keep a sense of mystery around Montgomery Flinch.”

She folded the newspaper in two to hand it back to Alfie, trying to ignore the disappointment on his face, but as she did she noticed another news headline tucked away at the bottom of the page.

Penny’s hand froze in mid-air as she quickly read the brief report, the text of it only a single sentence long.

She’d tried to put the mysterious events at Bedlam out of her mind, throwing herself into her preparations for writing Montgomery Flinch’s next story for the January edition of
The Penny Dreadful
– a suitably sinister tale to greet the new century – but the baffling mystery hidden behind 
the doors of the asylum still gnawed away at her, and now seeing this headline she was determined to find the answer.

She stood up from her desk.

“I’m going out,” Penny told her guardian as she reached for her cloak hanging from the stand behind her.

Wigram looked up in surprise.

“And the new story?” he asked her, his gaze pointedly turning towards the pile of blank pages stacked beside her typewriter.

Drawing her cloak around her shoulders, Penelope swept her long hair back from her face. “I need to do some more research. In fact,” she said, turning towards Alfie, who was running his expert eye over the latest set of printer’s proofs on her desk, “I could do with some help with this, Alfie – if you could spare a few hours.”

Alfie grimaced at the thought of spending his half-day holiday holed up in some dusty library.

“I was thinking of going to see the Hotspurs at White Hart Lane this afternoon,” he replied, but looking up from the proofs he saw a devil-
may-care
smile flash across Penny’s face – a look that held out the promise of adventure. He swiftly nodded his assent. “But I can go along to the football next week. I’ll come and help you.”