Twelve Minutes to Midnight (2 page)

II

“I hired you to give a reading of Montgomery Flinch’s latest story, not to start answering questions from every Tom, Dick and Harry in the theatre!”

The girl’s emerald eyes blazed angrily as she jabbed her finger at the author, who cowered in his chair, gulping his drink down greedily as though he hoped he could disappear into the bottom of the glass.

“And why on earth did you say that your success was down to luck? This is the very first glimpse the world has of the legendary Montgomery Flinch, a man shrouded in mystery whose every printed word is dissected by the critics, and you make him sound like some Grub Street hack!”

“But Penelope,” the man interrupted, “that pinstriped fiend with the notebook, I thought he knew—”

“He knows nothing,” the girl snapped. She drew herself up as tall as her thirteen years 
would allow. “That journalist has been sniffing around the offices of
The Penny Dreadful
for weeks now, trying to wheedle an interview with the elusive Montgomery Flinch, but I’ve always managed to keep him at bay. That’s the reason I hired you, Mr Maples, to give a carefully
stage-managed
appearance from Montgomery Flinch to promote the Christmas edition of
The Penny Dreadful
, keep the reading public happy and get the press off our backs.”

Penelope shook her head as she watched the actor refill his glass, the crystal decanter now half-empty.

“If I hadn’t jumped in when I did, Lord knows what you’d have said next. Your résumé stated that you were the finest actor not currently employed on the London stage, an extraordinary performer who can bring a whole cast of characters alive.” She fished a tattered piece of paper out of her purse. “And I quote, ‘With his superb command of the stage, Monty Maples gives you an entire theatrical company under one hat.’” The young girl snapped her purse shut with a frown. “But if the chaotic end to tonight’s performance is anything to go by, I may have to rethink our arrangement.”

Monty Maples seemed to shrink in his chair like a scolded puppy.

“You didn’t like my performance?”

Penelope pursed her lips, the fire that had 
blazed in her eyes since she’d entered the dressing room slowly fading as she met the actor’s gaze. Monty’s eyes blinked owlishly as if he was about to cry.

“I didn’t say I didn’t like your performance,” she replied, her voice softening. “It’s just that when you go off script like that… We need to improvise more – make sure you’re ready for every eventuality. It’s important that nobody has any doubt that you really are Montgomery Flinch.”

Monty took another sip from his glass, lowering his gaze beneath his bristling eyebrows, but a trace of self-pity lingered in his eyes.

“The reading of the story itself,” Penelope continued, “that was rather good.”

The actor sprang forward in his chair, dregs of amber liquid spilling from his glass.

“Did you see how I had them in the palm of my hand?” he declared, his face gripped by passion as his voice boomed out with the same force as it had on the stage. “Did you hear the squeals when I described how he dragged the doctor’s body into the depths of the moor, the blood falling from his fingers like flakes of crimson snow?”

Penelope nodded, a small smile creeping across her lips. “I knew that scene would get them when I wrote it,” she admitted.

“Oh, and it did,” Monty proclaimed, beaming magnanimously. “And what an ending, I swear I 
could hear the tread of a mouse as the audience waited for me to read the very last lines.”

Penelope blushed, a crimson stain creeping up her cheeks.

“They did seem to like it, didn’t they?”

“Like it?” Monty boomed. “They were absolutely petrified! Why I’ve never known such a reaction since my performance of the Scottish—”

A knock at the dressing-room door cut Monty’s sentence short. The two of them looked at each other, a momentary flash of panic passing in front of their eyes. There was a second loud knock, followed by two quieter raps and then the final thud of a fist against the door.

Penelope’s slender shoulders sagged with relief and she quickly turned to open the door. Outside, a tall, silver-haired man dressed in a grey worsted twill coat stood waiting with his top hat carried under his arm. He peered down at her with a hawkish stare.

“Miss Tredwell.” The elderly man gave a curt nod of greeting as he stepped into the cramped dressing room. “Mr Maples.”

At his appearance, Monty quickly straightened in his seat, pushing his now empty glass behind a vase of flowers on his dressing-room table. Behind the silver-haired gentleman, a
scruffy-looking
boy, his white shirt splattered with a web of ink stains, staggered into the room, carrying a stack of what looked like large paperback books 
in his arms. He spilled these on to the
dressing-room
table before turning to Penelope with a broad grin of greeting.

“Here you are, Penny – hot off the presses!”

“Thanks, Alfie,” Penelope replied with a smile as she stepped forward to inspect the latest edition of
The Penny Dreadful
.

Pulling off his cap to reveal a tousled mop of blond hair, Alfie turned to Monty, who was now perched pensively in his chair.

“And your performance tonight, Mr Maples…” He whistled. “What a show-stopper! I thought some of those old dears in there were going to keel right over when you read the part where the doctor was pushed into the cider press.”

Monty’s reddening face broke into a relieved smile.

“Why thank you, dear boy,” he replied graciously. He flicked his hair from his face, the self-conscious gesture reflected in the
brightly-lit
mirror. “It was like capturing lightning in a bottle. I knew that if I could just convey the power of Flinch’s words then—”

“Ah, yes,” the bloodless tones of the
silver-haired
man cut across Monty’s self-regarding bluster, “if we could first discuss your performance tonight, Mr Maples?”

Monty glanced up fearfully, the smile quickly fading from his face.

“I don’t believe that Miss Tredwell’s 
unscheduled appearance onstage tonight was at all to our benefit,” the man continued, his forehead creasing so that his face resembled that of a benevolent troll. “In fact, as her lawyer and guardian, I would assert that the further she stays away from the limelight, the less likely the chances of Montgomery Flinch’s real identity ever being unmasked.”

“Don’t worry, William.” Penelope placed her hand on her guardian’s arm. “Monty and I have discussed things. Teething problems aside, this was a good start to Montgomery Flinch’s life in the public gaze.”

Monty nodded eagerly.

“I will polish my lines, Mr Wigram,” he reassured the man. “Practise countless improvisations. Montgomery Flinch may be the most challenging role of my career, but I assure you I’ll give my finest ever performance.” He met the gaze of the silver-haired man, who was still looking at him askance. “But if I could just trouble you now for my fee.”

The lawyer’s frown deepened for a moment, then he reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and drew out a crisp white envelope. He placed the envelope in Monty’s outstretched hand. The actor eagerly tore it open and then blew out his cheeks as he read the figure written on the cheque.

“That will do nicely,” he said, placing the 
cheque inside his own jacket and then tapping the pocket with a smile.

“Remember,” Mr Wigram cautioned, “this is an opening instalment. As you continue to discharge your duties in the role of Montgomery Flinch, further payments will be made.”

“A toast!” Monty cried with delight as he turned back to his dressing-room table, reaching again for the decanter. “To the continued success of Montgomery Flinch.”

Penelope reached out with swift fingers and spirited the bottle away before Monty could pour another drop in his glass.

“I think that success will be best assured if you go easy on the toasts,” she reminded him with a stern stare.

Chastened, Monty nodded his head with an apologetic mumble. Behind him, Alfie failed to hide the smirk on his face as he took a sip from one of Monty’s discarded glasses, before grimacing in sudden disgust.

Penelope turned back to her guardian.

“Is everything well at the office?” she asked.

After
The Penny Dreadful
had been bequeathed to her by her late father, following his sad passing alongside her mother in the North-West Frontier Uprising in British India, Penny had
single-handedly
acted as the magazine’s editor, lead author and publisher, hiding her true identity behind countless pseudonyms. 

“Everything is fine,” Wigram nodded in reply. “The final galley proofs were signed off by the printer this afternoon. By tomorrow morning, every bookshop and newsstand in London will have the latest edition of
The Penny Dreadful
on display and by early tomorrow evening, it will have reached the provinces. The sales forecasts are very strong, especially now that Montgomery Flinch is promoting his work.”

The lawyer reached again into his jacket pocket, a new frown creasing his forehead.

“There was one item of correspondence that arrived today that I thought you should see though. A most unusual letter addressed to Montgomery Flinch from one of his many devoted readers.”

Penny sighed. Ever since Flinch’s tales of supernatural terror had started appearing in the pages of
The Penny Dreadful
, a cavalcade of cranks, crackpots and charlatans had filled her letter box with outlandish letters and telegrams. Just because Montgomery Flinch’s stories told of strange and preternatural happenings beyond the mortal knowledge of man, these letter writers believed that Montgomery Flinch could help them to solve the unearthly mysteries that afflicted them.

She took the letter from her guardian’s hand with a weary shake of her head. This would be from yet another half-crazed reader who 
thought that Flinch could swoop down like Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes and solve whatever unfathomable enigma was contained within the envelope. The postmark showed it had been sent from St George’s Fields the previous evening, but as she slipped the embossed paper from the already open envelope, she was surprised to see the official crest of the Bethlem Royal Hospital on the letterhead.

Bethlem, or Bedlam as it was better known on the streets of the city, was the notorious lunatic asylum which housed London’s mad; the ramshackle hospital south of the Thames overflowing with the tragic human waste of those who had lost their minds. As she began to read, Penny raised her eyebrows in bewilderment. Perhaps some of Flinch’s readers weren’t
half-crazed
at all. 

As Penelope finished reading the letter, her fingers twitched. The beginning of a story started to take shape in her mind. This letter held the promise of a mystery, an astounding tale for Montgomery Flinch to craft. A gothic horror set amid the barred cells of Bedlam, its corridors echoing with ghostly wails; the perfect story for the next issue of
The Penny Dreadful
. And here was the very excuse she needed to see the place for herself. An excited smile slowly spread across her face.

Unaware of this development, Monty rose from his chair. Grabbing his top hat and coat from where they were draped across a mannequin, he turned towards the dressing-room door.

“My friends, I must bid you farewell,” he said, raising his hat with a valedictory wave. “The evening is still young and I can hear the sound of my club calling.”

“Not so fast, Monty.”

Penelope’s voice stopped the actor in his tracks.

“I’m afraid your evening’s work isn’t yet 
complete,” she said with an apologetic grin. “Montgomery Flinch and I have an urgent appointment tonight at Bedlam.”

III

“I don’t know why you had to drag me here,” Monty hissed, shivering in his rain-splattered coat as he stood waiting with Penelope outside the physician superintendent’s office. The shadows thrown by the lamps fixed to the wood-panelled walls danced across the actor’s worried face.

Penelope shook her head.

“Dr Morris is expecting to meet Montgomery Flinch himself – the only man who can unravel whatever strange story is unfolding here. Now stick to the script and remember what we agreed,” she replied in a hurried whisper.

They had arrived at Bedlam just after 11 p.m., the hospital suddenly looming in front of them out of the fog and drizzle. Above the entrance, its high dome and six-columned portico were wreathed in pale shrouds of mist, whilst the wings of the hospital stretched out on either side, countless rows of pitch-black windows staring out into the night like empty eyes. As they left 
their hansom cab and scurried inside the hospital, Penny almost thought she could hear the low moans of the patients incarcerated there, carried on the chill wind that whipped across St George’s Fields.

When the orderly manning the entrance had heard the name Montgomery Flinch, he immediately scuttled away to rouse Dr Morris, although not before pulling out a well-worn copy of
The Penny Dreadful
from under his desk and proffering it to Monty with a pen for him to sign. Raising an eyebrow, Monty had scrawled the name Montgomery Flinch across the magazine’s cover, and, with a gasp of excitement, the young orderly had disappeared into the depths of the hospital clutching his literary prize. Now Penny and Monty stood awaiting the physician’s arrival.

“Mr Flinch!”

The office door swung open to reveal a small, stout man of about fifty years, thinning strands of pale white hair pulled across his balding head. Two restless grey eyes gleamed brightly behind gold-rimmed glasses as the doctor stepped forward to seize Monty’s hand.

“You came,” Dr Morris cried, shaking Monty’s hand in gratitude as though he was afraid to let him go. His clothes were dishevelled as though he had slept in them, and his round plump face was seamed with lines of trouble. “When I sent you the letter, I didn’t dare to hope…” 

“I must admit I found your letter intriguing, Dr Morris,” Monty replied, his commanding tone steadying the doctor as he sought to extricate his hand from his grasp, “although somewhat mysterious. What exactly are these sinister events to which you refer?”

“The madness,” the doctor replied, his voice dropping to a dolorous whisper, “it’s spreading.”

His eyes darted past Monty and, for the first time, caught sight of Penelope standing patiently behind the actor’s broad frame. He shrank back towards his office with a yelp of alarm.

“Mr Flinch, I expected you to come alone,” Dr Morris cried, “not bring a child! This matter is really not suitable for a young girl’s sensibilities.”

Monty brushed the doctor’s protest away with a dismissive wave of his hand.

“Dr Morris, this is my niece, Miss Penelope Tredwell,” he replied. “She has read every single story that I have written and never once fainted in a swoon or turned a hair at even my most gruesome scene. She has an enlightened mind and a strong constitution and I absolutely insist that she stays by my side if I am to help you with this matter.”

The doctor stood frozen, his face aghast at the thought of a mere child learning the sinister secret he was hiding. Forcing a reluctant nod from his head, he stepped forward again and shook Penelope’s hand. His sausage-like fingers 
were cold and clammy against her skin. Then he quickly ushered the two of them into his office, and closed the door behind them with a slam.

As the doctor scurried behind his desk, the ornate lamp resting there throwing out a dim circle of light, Penny quickly glanced about the room. The walls were lined with high bookcases filled with leather-bound volumes – medical textbooks, annual reports, ledgers and accounts – and as she sank into the stiff-backed chair next to Monty, the two of them facing the doctor across his desk, she saw with a faint tingle of satisfaction, the collected volumes of
The Penny Dreadful
taking pride of place on the bookshelf directly behind the doctor’s balding head.

“So, Dr Morris,” Monty began as he settled into his chair, “what do you mean when you say the madness is spreading? This
is
an asylum, isn’t it? I would have thought that was an occupational hazard?”

The doctor’s eyebrows furrowed, but if he recognised the barb in Monty’s question he didn’t show it.

“The Royal Bethlem Hospital understands and can treat the many forms of conventional madness,” Dr Morris replied, the words rolling from his downturned mouth. “The catatonics, the paranoiacs, the depressives and the manics – all find a restorative regime in place for them here at the hospital.” 

Penelope raised a suspicious eyebrow. The notorious legend of the cruelty of Bedlam with its deranged inmates kept in chains still ran strong. “You mean the leeches and the bleeding?” she asked with a wry smile.

Glancing towards her, Dr Morris frowned.

“Such outmoded practices ceased decades ago,” he replied curtly. “This is a modern hospital. Patients today receive the very latest medical therapies and treatment. Until the recent unsettling events, the recovery rate for our patients was nearing as high as twenty per cent.”

“What recent events?”

Ignoring Penelope’s question, the doctor turned dismissively away before addressing his answer to Monty alone.

“Of late, a dark cloud has fallen over the hospital,” he revealed, “a terrible affliction that has every patient in its grasp. This is no ordinary madness. If I wasn’t a man of science, Mr Flinch, I would say it was the work of the Devil himself.”

Monty leaned forward in his chair, his hands gripping the armrests as a sticky bead of sweat ran down his forehead.

“Pray continue,” he said, a faint tremor evident in his voice, as beside him Penelope silently fumed.

“It started six months ago,” the doctor replied. “On a regular ward round late at night in the men’s wing, one of our nurses observed 
a sleeping patient suddenly rise from his bed and, in a catatonic trance, start writing across the wall of his cell. The man wrote for nearly an hour, scribing with a broken piece of chalk as he covered the wall with words, before finally returning to his bed, seemingly unaware of what he had just done.”

“At the end of her shift, the nurse made her report and at first, we just added this to the patient’s list of symptoms,” the doctor explained. “Yet another condition for us to treat.”

He pushed his glasses back up his nose.

“But the very next night, the man rose from his bed again, and this time the patients in the adjoining cells rose with him. Three patients entering the same trancelike condition at almost exactly the same time – twelve minutes to midnight. All three of them wrote with whatever they could find to hand, scribbling frantically across discarded papers, books, even your own magazine, Mr Flinch.”

Dr Morris fixed Monty with a leaden stare, his grey eyes haunted behind the spectacle glass.

“Since then, this madness has spread through the hospital like wildfire. Each night, starting at twelve minutes to midnight, more and more patients begin to rise from their beds, all succumbing to this insatiable urge to write. And when they wake the next morning, none of them has any memory of their actions.” 

Penny’s fingers worried at a loose thread on her dress. The events the doctor was describing seemed more incredible than even the most outlandish tale she’d ever coaxed from the pen of Montgomery Flinch.

“We tried removing paper and writing implements from the cells,” the doctor continued, wringing his own hands in despair, “but to no avail. The afflicted still woke and wrote with bloodied fingers against the stones of their cells.” The doctor’s brow glistened with perspiration in the lamplight. “Every day, the patients seem more agitated. Medicine holds no help for them now. Our trusted therapies and treatments no longer have any effect. My only hope, Mr Flinch, is that your uncanny mind can find the cure for this malady.”

Penny couldn’t hold her silence any longer, couldn’t stop herself from blurting out the one question that just had to be asked.

“What do they write?”

Taken aback by her temerity, Dr Morris gave Penelope a cold stare over his gold-rimmed glasses.

“The ravings of madmen,” he replied briskly. “Delirious imaginings, preposterous visions – no logic or reason in anything that they write at all. Anyway, you can see for yourself.” He glanced up at the clock on the wall of his office. Its minute hand pointed to twenty to the hour, as the hour 
hand neared twelve. “It’s nearly time.”

Rising from his desk, Dr Morris gestured for them to follow him. Turning left as they exited his office, the doctor quickly led them towards a gloomy stairwell.

“The basement is where we keep our most troubled patients,” he explained, wheezing slightly as he hurried down the single flight of stairs, a gas lamp fixed to the wall spluttering as they descended, before regaining its yellow glow. “Although, of late, it seems as though the entire hospital is filled with agitation and despair.”

At the bottom of the stairwell, Penny saw a long corridor stretching out in front of them, a dim light suffusing the gloom. The doors of the patient’s cells were spaced at regular intervals to the left and to the right, and at the head of the corridor, slumped on a straight-backed chair, an unshaven guard sat dozing, his broad chest slowly rising and falling as Dr Morris stood crossly in front of him.

The doctor coughed to clear his throat, waking the night orderly from his slumber with a sudden start. The man’s bulldog face twisted into a snarl, barely suppressing his rage at being woken. Beneath his left eye, Penelope noticed the broad weal from an old scar slashed across his cheek. Glancing up at the doctor, the dishevelled orderly muttered a half-hearted apology as he rose from his chair, a ring of keys clanking around his waist. 

“If you could unlock Fitzgerald’s cell,” Dr Morris ordered the guard, his frosty tones expressing his displeasure.

Glancing suspiciously at Monty and Penelope as they stood waiting behind the doctor, the night orderly selected a key from his chain and crossed the corridor to a door on his right. Bending his broad shoulders, he unlocked the cell and swung the door open. Hurrying forward, Dr Morris gestured for Monty and Penelope to follow him as he stepped inside the cell.

Monty turned to Penny, a nervous twitch flickering across his fearful face.

“This wasn’t what I agreed to,” he hissed. “There could be a maniac in there and he expects us to walk right in.”

“Pull yourself together,” Penny replied, her voice low and calm. “You’re supposed to be Montgomery Flinch, Master of the Macabre, not some lily-livered milksop.”

“The cell is currently empty,” Dr Morris’s voice floated out into the corridor, “but you’ll be able to see the evidence clearly here, Mr Flinch.”

The orderly stood waiting by the cell door, a surly expression fixed to his disfigured face as he watched them both intently. Squaring his shoulders, Monty stepped forward with Penny close beside him.

As he strode into the cell, Monty held his handkerchief to his face, as though to protect 
himself from whatever maddening vapours might be lurking there. Next to him, Penelope gasped in amazement as she took in the sight that awaited them.

A single bed, chair and small table were the only items of furniture in the cell, but its whitewashed walls were covered entirely in words. Scrawled chalk marks, whirls of black ink, even marks etched in what looked like blood; an avalanche of language exploding across the walls of the cell. Penny stepped further into the room, the single light fixed to the ceiling throwing her shadow across the scene.

“Fitzgerald passed away two nights ago,” Dr Morris revealed. “He was one of the first patients to be afflicted and his mania overwhelmed him in the end. This isn’t all that he wrote – there are endless stacks of paper, scraps of his clothing, even carvings on his bedpan – all filled with the same madness that is written across these walls.”

Penelope stepped closer, inspecting the wall and trying to decipher the words written there.

Penny shivered, the unsettling beauty of the words chilling her blood. She’d expected to read the half-formed rantings of a mind touched by madness, but she sensed some deeper secret was buried beneath these unfathomable words. The strange visions they conjured crept into her mind.

“Quick,” the rasp of Dr Morris’s voice interrupted her troubled thoughts, “it’s nearly twelve minutes to midnight.”

He ushered Monty back out into the corridor, Penelope following close behind. Opening up the shutters of the viewing window into the next cell, the doctor motioned for them to watch. Lifting herself up on her tiptoes, Penny peered inside. In the darkened room, a patient lay sleeping, his face just visible in the half-light spilling from the window as his body slumbered, shrouded in a sheet. The doctor glanced down at his fob watch as the second hand approached the twelve.