Shadows of the Silver Screen

by Christopher Edge

  But the memory of that silvery light spilling from the Véritéscope still lingered in her mind. Penny remembered the curious sensation that had crept up her spine as its shadows danced across the makeshift screen, mesmerising her with their sway. She had to find out how Gold’s invention had cast such a spell.

  “I take on board your concerns,” Penelope said, her voice softening as it did whenever she tried to wheedle a favour, “but I don’t think they should prevent us from agreeing to this venture. Monty has set his heart on taking a starring role in the production and we wouldn’t want to disappoint our leading man. We can ill afford any more of his theatrical flounces that might give the game away.”

  Wigram raised a sceptical eyebrow.

  “Be that as it may, Penelope, I still think we should press for changes to the contract. As it stands the only clause we requested that has made it through unscathed is the one guaranteeing Montgomery Flinch final approval of the script.”

  Shaking her head, Penny picked up the pen that was resting next to the sheaf of legal papers.

  “That’s the only one that really matters,” she replied.

  Turning the pages of the contract, she reached the final page where the space for a signature was set. With a flourish, she penned the name that was renowned across the literary world, the most famous author in Britain: Montgomery Flinch.

  “We have to give Mr Gold his chance to bring this story to the screen.”

  With a tut, Wigram gathered up the agreement, shaking his head at Penelope’s impetuousness.

  “It’s your story,” he replied, “but a contract like this is not one to be entered into lightly. The spectacle of the screening was impressive, I grant you, but I really think we should find out more about the Alchemical Moving Picture Company. Are we even certain they have the resources to bring this film to fruition?”

  He beckoned for Alfie, who had been watching their exchange from over the proofs of the magazine’s latest edition. The printer’s assistant bounded over with an eager smile on his face, his excitement obvious at the prospect of The Penny Dreadful joining the glamorous world of the cinematograph.

  “I’d like you to deliver this contract,” Wigram instructed him, placing the paperwork in Alfie’s hand, “to the offices of the Alchemical Moving Picture Company, 22 Cecil Court, Covent Garden. Inform Mr Gold that we will require a counter-signed copy of the agreement by return of post.”

  As Alfie nodded his head, Penny rose to her feet.

  “I’m coming with you,” she said.

  As Penelope reached for her parasol, her guardian turned to stare at her quizzically.

  “Don’t worry, William, I won’t be making any revisions to the contract behind your back,” she reassured him. “I just thought another visit to the home of the Alchemical Moving Picture Company might give me the chance to find out more about Mr Gold’s bone fides. As you say, it’s best to make sure that he has the means to make this film before we hand over the contract.”

  Unfurling her parasol in anticipation of the sunshine outside, she stepped towards the door.

  “Come on, Alfie,” she said, tossing her hair back with a swish that would grace any moving-picture show. “Let’s go to Flicker Alley.”

  “So the new-fangled camera that this Gold feller’s invented actually works, then?” Alfie asked as they squeezed past the mounds of cinematographic equipment littering the hall. “You could see the pictures moving as well as hearing the sounds?”

  Penny nodded as she stepped over a crate filled with film reels, the titles of the humdrum scenes contained within chalked on the tins: Feeding the Pigeons, Hanging out the Clothes, The Arrival of a Train. Brushing past a broken-down projector, its innards spilling out, she led Alfie towards the staircase. Behind them, the landlady’s suspicious gaze followed their path, still uneasy at this constant stream of shady characters and theatrical types her newest tenants were bringing to her door.

  “It was like nothing I had ever seen before,” Penny told Alfie, as the two of them began to climb the stairs. She struggled to find the words that could convey the strange spell the film had cast on her. “It seemed so much more real than that flickering picture show we saw at the fair. It was as though I was looking through a window into another world.”

  A broad grin broke across Alfie’s face.

  “It sounds like The Daughter of Darkness will put A Phantasmagoria of Fear to shame, then,” he declared. “They’ll be queuing all the way up Oxford Street to see it.”

  Reaching the top of the stairs, they started down the gloom-ridden corridor. Alfie peered through the frosted panes of each door that they passed. He turned towards Penelope as they reached the office of the Alchemical Moving Picture Company.

  “Do you think you can wangle me a look at it?” he asked, with a wistful look in his eyes. “I’d love to see a talking-picture show.”

  Penny paused, her hand poised ready to knock. She hadn’t admitted to Alfie that this was the real reason she’d come here today; the chance to see that magical light spring forth from the Véritéscope again. All she needed to do was persuade Mr Gold to show off his invention and, with the signed contract in her pocket, she didn’t think that would be too much of a problem.

  “I’ll do my best,” she replied with a smile.

  Through the frosted glass, the faint glow of gaslight could be seen, but Penny noted that this time there were no raised voices to accompany their arrival. She rapped politely on the door and then heard the answering scrape of a chair being pushed back. The sound of timid footsteps scurried towards the door and then, with a squeak, it was pulled open a crack to reveal the anxious face of Miss Mottram, Gold’s faithful secretary.

  She blinked as she peered into the gloom, seeing first Penelope and then Alfie standing by her shoulder. An audible sigh of relief escaped from her lips.

  “It’s Mr Flinch’s niece, isn’t it – Miss Tredwell?” Miss Mottram ventured, craning her head to see if anyone else was lurking there in the shadows. “But I don’t believe I’ve met your companion.”

  “This is Mr Alfred Albarn,” Penny replied with a twinkling smile. “He’s one of my uncle’s legal advisors at The Penny Dreadful.”

  Behind her, she heard a snort of laughter which Alfie immediately tried to disguise by clearing his throat.

  “Pleased to meet you,” he spluttered, offering Miss Mottram his ink-stained hand. “I’ve come straight from the offices of The Penny Dreadful with instructions from Mr Flinch himself. May we come in?”

  A flustered look came over the secretary’s face, but the power of Montgomery Flinch’s name won through.

  “Please do,” she replied and, pulling open the door, she ushered them inside.

  The office was just as Penelope remembered it. The peeling posters pasted to the walls, the stiff-backed chair behind the secretary’s desk, its surface piled high with letters and papers, the stale odour of gas hanging in the air like a cloud. But the leather upholstery of the armchair in the corner of the room sat empty. There was no sign of Edward Gold.

  “Is Mr Gold here today?” she asked as Miss Mottram closed the door with a click. The secretary turned and shook her head.

  “I’m afraid Mr Gold is away this week, scouting locations,” she replied, her fingers worrying at a loose thread on the sleeve of her blouse. “I don’t expect him back until Monday at the earliest. Was it a pressing matter you needed to discuss with him?”

  Penelope couldn’t hide the disappointment that fell across her face. She stuttered as she tried to find the words that would unlock the door to the screening room.

  “I – we – I mean, my uncle wanted me to take another look at the scene from The Daughter of Darkness,” Penny replied. She fixed a beguiling smile to her face. “Would that be possible?”

  Miss Mottram frowned.

  “I’m sorry but Mr Gold has taken the Véritéscope with him on location. The camera and projector are one of a kind. There’s no way of screening the cinematog
raph reel for you without it. Please give my apologies to your uncle.”

  Penelope sighed. There would be no chance today to delve deeper into the mystery of the Véritéscope’s mesmeric power. With a tight smile of understanding, she rested her hand on the secretary’s desk whilst Alfie reached into his jacket pocket to draw out the contract.

  “Mr Flinch also tasked me to deliver this,” he began.

  As Alfie spoke, Penelope let her gaze drift over the chaos of the secretary’s desk. Amidst the invoices for film stock, lighting hire and demands for unpaid bills, a handwritten letter caught her eye, its spidery scrawl written in a foreign hand.

  Vous avez volé mon invention, assassiné mes rêves, et trahi l’amitié que nous entretenions. Vos actes vous exposent comme vrai charlatan. Ces menaces vides que vous avez lancées contre moi ne m’effraient pas; au contraire, c’est vous qui ne comprenez pas les dangers auxquels vous vous exposez…

  Penelope’s schoolgirl French was rudimentary at best, the lessons she’d spent with her governess had mostly seen her reading aloud from Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw whilst her teacher listened aghast to the gothic tale. However, she recognised a few words of vocabulary from her barely thumbed French dictionary:

  Stolen… Murdered… Betrayed…

  One word in particular jumped out at her from the page, its meaning needing no translation:

  Invention…

  Her thoughts immediately returned to the Véritéscope. What manner of nefarious goings on was being suggested here? Her curiosity piqued, Penelope leaned forward to take a closer look at the letter. At the top of the page was an address: No. 5, Leicester House, New Lisle Street, Soho, but before Penny could attempt to translate any further, a shrill squeak of excitement turned her head.

  Miss Mottram was clutching the signed contract, her eyes sparkling with delight.

  “This is fantastic news,” she trilled. “As soon as I read Mr Flinch’s story, I felt as though I was born to play the part of the daughter of darkness.”

  Penelope stared at her, askance. Although she had seen the scene with her own eyes, Penny still struggled to square the shy figure of the secretary with the frosty heroine she had conjured on the screen.

  “So Mr Gold is going to cast you in the picture?”

  Turning towards Penny, Miss Mottram blushed.

  “Oh yes,” she replied with a timid smile. “Edward has told me he’s going to make me a star.”

  VII

  “Where are we going?” Alfie asked as Penelope turned left off the Charing Cross Road. The sun was still high in the sky, but on this side street, the buildings gave them some welcome shade. “This isn’t the way back to the office. If I don’t get those printer’s proofs checked this afternoon, Mr Wigram will have my guts for garters.”

  “Don’t worry,” Penny replied, her long skirt swishing as she strode confidently on. “We’re just taking a little detour. There’s something I want to find out.”

  Intrigued, Alfie hurried to keep up. All thoughts of the work waiting for him back at The Penny Dreadful quickly faded away as the tone of Penny’s voice held out the prospect of adventure.

  The street was lined with shop fronts, much more modest in character than those of the Charing Cross Road. From their open doorways came the mingling smells of fruit and fresh pastries, the sound of tinkling bells and the thud of a butcher’s knife. But what caught Penelope’s eye were the signs written across each shop front: Charcuterie Parisienne, Libraire Cosmopolite, Blanchisserie Francaise…

  It was as though she had stepped on to the streets of Paris rather than the London she knew. As Penny gazed up at the signs, she felt someone barge into her, sending her stumbling forward.

  “Here, look where you’re going!” Alfie cried out.

  “Ah, je suis désolé, mademoiselle.”

  A young man in a waiter’s uniform held out his hands in apology as he stooped to Penelope’s aid. His hands were sticky with sweat as he helped Penny to her feet, his gallic brow set in an anxious frown.

  “I’m fine,” Penny replied, smoothing the creases from her clothes as Alfie looked on with a glower.

  With a swift nod of thanks and a glance at his watch, the man hurried on his way, late for his shift at one of the myriad restaurants that lined these Soho streets. As Penny watched the waiter depart, weaving his way through the passing pedestrians, Alfie turned towards her with a questioning look.

  “So, what exactly is it you want to find out in Little France?”

  That was the name given to this part of London. Le Petit France – the Soho streets where thousands of French men and women who had travelled across the Channel in search of better lives had settled. Here, the shops, restaurants and even the dancing clubs all had a distinctly Continental style. Some said you could walk the length of Little France without ever hearing an English voice.

  As Penny turned on to New Lisle Street, she tried to get her thoughts in order. How could she explain to Alfie the hunch that had brought her here?

  “I caught a glimpse of a letter at the film company’s office,” she began. “It was written in French, but I think it was about Mr Gold’s Véritéscope. It seemed to be accusing the filmmaker of several terrible crimes and I want to make sure that these claims are unfounded.”

  “And how are we going to do that?” Alfie asked as Penny glanced up at the building they were approaching. Beneath a brick parapet, its broken and boarded-up windows gave the grand house a dilapidated air, whilst the inscription on the founding stone above the entrance read:

  LEICESTER HOUSE

  NEW LISLE STREET

  MDCCXCI

  The front door of the building was slightly ajar, a handwritten sign fixed to the peeling green paint stated: Rooms to Let.

  “By visiting the person who wrote the letter,” Penelope replied.

  Lining the pavement outside the run-down boarding house was the usual assortment of idlers: scruffy young men in their shirtsleeves who eyed Penny and Alfie suspiciously as they approached the door. One of the men, an ugly-faced fellow with a roguish moustache, muttered something to his companions as Penelope passed, his words greeted by a chorus of guffaws.

  As Alfie stepped protectively by her side, Penny kept her head held high, unswayed by the men’s intimidating manner. She was determined to follow her hunch wherever this would take her. Coming to a halt outside the entrance, she peered through the gap where the door had been left ajar.

  Inside, she could see a gloomy hallway with rooms branching off to the left and to the right, and beyond these a narrow staircase reached up to the next floor. The pattern of the floor tiles had long been worn away by muddy shoes, whilst the dingy walls were redolent of tobacco, the faded wallpaper dating from at least the century before. There was no sign of anybody at all.

  Emboldened by this, Penelope pushed open the door and, with a nod towards Alfie, led him inside. As she stepped over the threshold, Penny wrinkled her nose with disdain. The boarding-house smell was even stronger now: a heady brew of cigarette smoke, bad breath and sewers.

  “I don’t reckon much to this feller’s lodgings,” Alfie said, puckering his face in distaste. “Are you sure this is the right place?”

  Penny nodded.

  “Room number five,” she replied. “That’s what the letter said.”

  They walked down the hall, the soles of their shoes sticking to the grubby tiles. Outside in the street they’d left behind a hot summer’s day, but here in the gloom Penny almost felt a chill. The doors to each of the rooms that they passed were almost alike, the same peeling white paint and scuffed door handles; the only difference being the room numbers screwed into place.

  Penelope stopped in front of a door bearing a crooked number five. As she raised her hand to knock, a sober thought finally caught up with her. Who was she going to find behind this door? The mysterious workings of the Véritéscope intrigued her and her glimpse of the letter had held out the tantalising prospect of finding out more a
bout this strange invention. But the letter had mentioned murder too. Could there be a killer waiting on the other side?

  There was only one way to find out. Taking a deep breath, Penny rapped smartly on the door. Her knock echoed in the corridor, but no answering sound came from within.

  Alfie fidgeted impatiently by her side. The adventure he had hoped for was turning out to be rather a disappointment; hanging around in a shabby boarding house was a far cry from tailing crooked Bedlam guards. As the seconds wore on without any answer, he turned to Penny with a sigh.

  “Whoever wrote that letter’s not here,” he said. “Come on, let’s get back to The Penny Dreadful before Mr Wigram sends out a search party.”

  Penny frowned. The mystery that had brought her here still nagged away at her brain. If she could just take a look inside this room, then maybe she could find some answers. Her fingers closed around the door handle.

  Watching, Alfie hissed in alarm.

  “Penny!”

  Turning the handle, the door opened with a creak to reveal an empty room. With a daring grin, Penny glanced across at Alfie.

  “I’ll only be a minute,” she told him. “I just need to find out who sent that letter.”

  Before he could utter a word of protest, Penelope crept over the threshold and into the room. With an anguished expression on his face, Alfie glanced down the hallway to check that the coast was still clear, then quickly followed Penny inside. As the door closed behind them with a click, Penny took stock of her surroundings.

  The only source of light came from a small window on the far wall, the sunlight outside veiled by dark calico curtains. The same florid wallpaper that adorned the hallway had spread like a fungus into this room, whilst the carpet underfoot was threadbare and stained. The few furnishings there were had seen better days: a sagging mattress resting on an iron-framed bedstead, a half-round table, a chest and a chair.