Twelve Minutes to Midnight (18 page)

XXVIII

Monty held a cold flannel to his head, his bloodshot eyes staring out into the dawn’s grey light.

“It’s my worst New Year’s Eve hangover ever,” he groaned as Alfie placed a glass of Barber’s Patented Reviving Cure on the desk in front of him. Monty eyed the colourless liquid with disdain. “And I didn’t even have a drink!”

At the desk beside him, Mr Wigram shared Monty’s deathly pallor, but the lawyer’s haggard face creased in a frown as Monty let out another theatrical groan.

“We are all feeling the effects of last night’s endeavours, Mr Maples,” he replied caustically. “Although if Penelope hadn’t told us exactly what had happened, I would have believed the whole thing one of those remarkable dreams that dissolve into mist upon waking. But I kindly suggest that you manage to bear your imagined sufferings a little less noisily.”

Alfie grinned as Monty bristled in indignation.

“Here’s something to cheer about,” he announced, quickly filling the silence before Monty had a chance to reply. Alfie plucked a rolled-up newspaper from his pocket and unfurled it on the desk in front of Penelope. “Look at page seven under News in Brief.”

Beneath the newspaper banner and the dateline reading Monday 1 January 1900, the headline proclaimed in large black letters:

That morning, all across the city, the spellbound readers had woken too. Rubbing the sleep from their eyes, the strange visions they had seen of the world still to come had slowly faded away until only fragments remained, like some
half-forgotten
dream. As maids cleared the magazines from bedside tables, their stories of the new century had ended up in wastepaper baskets or torn into strips as kindling for the fire. The only power now left in their pages a guttering flame to ward off the winter chill.

Penny flicked through the newspaper until she found page seven, her eyes scanning across the rows of columns before spotting the brief article at the top of the page. With a satisfied smile, she read the story aloud.

“Lady Cambridge, who had been feared dead
in the recent fire which destroyed her home, was found alive in dramatic circumstances last night. She was discovered at the British Museum of Natural History suffering from a severe bout of amnesia. Doctors believe that this condition was caused by a bite from an exotic spider. Lady Cambridge is now recuperating in a private hospital.”

Alfie’s grin widened.

“Yes, Bedlam,” he added.

Penelope nodded. The avalanche of spider bites that had rained down on her had sent Lady Cambridge into the arms of madness. As the strange scenes at the museum had come to a close, Penny had watched as Lady Cambridge’s straitjacketed body was wheeled away by a team of white-coated orderlies, her wild-eyed ravings revealing a mind unhinged by nightmares. The cell next to her mother’s was waiting for her at the asylum.

“And that journalist,” Alfie asked. “He still can’t remember a thing?”

“You saw for yourself,” Penny replied. “Mr Barrett didn’t know what on earth he was doing there in the museum. He couldn’t remember a thing from the moment he clocked off from the
Gazette
on New Year’s Eve.” She let out a deep sigh of relief. “He couldn’t even remember my name – let alone believe that I was Montgomery Flinch.”

At this news, Monty let out his own low moan of relief.

“So my job is safe then?”

Penny glanced up at Monty. The actor’s face was set in a piteous expression, but a faint glimmer of hope shone in his eyes.

“Mr Wigram,” said Penny, turning towards her guardian. “Could you write Monty a cheque for the next instalment of his fee?”

Monty’s mournful features dissolved into a broad smile.

“Thank you,” he cried, raising his glass in salute. “I won’t disappoint you.”

He drained the glass in triumph but then suddenly grimaced as the bitter taste of the cure trickled down his throat.

“I know you won’t,” Penny replied sternly. “This is an advance on expenses to cover a January tour of the provinces – promotion for Montgomery Flinch’s first story of the twentieth century in the next edition of
The Penny Dreadful
.” She reached for a fresh sheet of foolscap paper and picked up her pen. “Just as soon as I have written it.”

Alfie scratched his head.

“What about that story you wrote at the museum?” he asked.

Penelope quickly shook her head, her eyes darting involuntarily to the locked drawer in her desk. There in the darkness, the stacked pages
filled with her fevered handwriting were filed away – a rainy day insurance policy perhaps against writer’s block.

“I must have mislaid it in all the confusion,” she replied with a rueful smile. “Never mind, it’s probably for the best. I think there are some things that are best left to our imaginations.”