Shadows of the Silver Screen (13 page)

XXI

 

“We used to be partners, you see,” Jacques explained, lifting his hand to gesture around the shabby interior of the sideshow booth. “Eddie took me under his wing when I first came looking for work on the fair.”

He rested his hand again on the boxlike device fixed to the tripod.

“All I had then was this camera – my father’s invention – but when Eddie saw the pictures I could take, he said we would make our fortune together.”

“Your father?” Alfie asked.

“
Oui
,” Jacques replied. “My father was Louis Le Prince. In France he had studied biology, chemistry, painting and photography: the science and the art of life. When he came to this country, he met my mother and, after my brother and I were born, he found work as a portrait photographer, but then one day he made the discovery that would change all our lives. When developing a family portrait in his darkroom, my father noticed on one plate of film a shadowy figure lurking at the back of the picture, where no actual figure had stood. On looking more closely, he saw that this was his own father – my grandfather – who had died some ten years before.”

The photographer paused for a moment to push his glasses back up his nose.

“At first my father endeavoured to capture this ghostly presence again, taking countless photographs without success. Then he made the momentous decision to harness the power of science to solve this great mystery. He sought to invent a camera that could peer beyond this mortal realm with every click of the shutter and photograph the spirits of the dead. My father toiled for years, investigating the alchemy of light and sound, experimenting with different lenses and chemical processes before he invented this prototype camera which could capture these ghosts on film.”

Alfie listened intently, trying to follow Le Prince’s explanation, but in truth struggling to believe a fraction of what he said. Since the camera had been invented, countless charlatans had claimed that they could photograph the dead, but each and every one had been exposed as a fraud. Was Le Prince just another of these fly-by-night con artists trying to swindle grieving widows out of their life savings?

“But my father’s invention was greeted with derision,” Jacques continued, his words echoing Alfie’s own doubts. “His friends and colleagues refused to believe that the spirit photographs he produced were more than mere trickery. Broken-hearted, my father returned to his workshop, vowing that this time he would create a camera that would make the world believe the wonders that he’d seen. After countless more months of experimentation, he made yet another breakthrough: a camera that could take a flurry of photographs every second – the first moving pictures the world had ever seen, long before Lumière and Edison invented their cinematographic devices. Unlike my father’s first prototype, this moving picture machine could not glimpse the afterlife, but the sights that it showed made everyone who saw it weep with astonishment. The magic of reality captured forever on a reel of film. He shot countless sequences – street scenes and city life – even a film of my brother and I playing in the garden.”

A slight dampness appeared in the corners of the Frenchman’s eyes, his voice cracking slightly as he continued to speak.

“My father saw that this new invention could make him his fortune and planned to travel to America to patent his machine and demonstrate its wonders to the public at last. He sent my mother and brother ahead, whilst I stayed behind with the intention of following them all as soon as I had completed my studies. However before my father departed for America, he travelled to France to visit my uncle there and, somewhere on his return, the terrible fate befell him that tore my family apart.”

The photographer’s voice had dropped to a whisper, the words almost too painful to utter.

“My father never stepped off the train in Paris – he simply disappeared. The police called it suicide, but I know that he would never have deserted us, not on the eve of his dream coming true. They never found his body and all his possessions, including his cinematographic invention, were lost too.” Jacques glanced up to meet Alfie’s gaze, a reluctant tear running down his cheek. “That was ten years ago now. My mother and brother were stranded on the other side of the ocean, whilst all I had left of my father was this first prototype camera. No money, no family, no home. I was lost.”

Alfie shifted uncomfortably as Jacques unburdened himself of a decade of grief. His tale sounded more like a plot from the pages of
The Penny Dreadful
with its stories of ghosts and strange disappearance. A worry itched at the back of his brain. What exactly was Penny caught up in here?

As if sensing his unease, Jacques now began to explain how the partnership of Gold & Prince Pictures had come to be.

“As many who fall on hard times do, I drifted to the fair, hoping to lose myself in its maelstrom. I had the vaguest notion of offering my services as a fairground photographer, and when Eddie took an interest in my talents, I thought I had found a true friend. When he saw the pictures I could take with my father’s still camera, Eddie threw his flea circus out into the fields and transformed his sideshow booth into Gold & Prince Pictures – spirit photographers extraordinaire.”

Jacques ran his fingers through his
close-cropped
hair.

“I promised myself that as soon as I had saved enough money I would travel to America to be with my family again, but somehow with Eddie in charge, there was never enough.” He let out a bitter laugh. “I trusted him then – fool that I was.”

Alfie tapped his foot impatiently, small clouds of sawdust rising from the floor. He couldn’t wait any longer.

“But what about the Véritéscope?”

In response to this question, a bitter smile played across Jacques’s lips.

“Eddie started to worry that my portraits of the afterlife were losing their appeal,” he replied. “As he stood outside the booth he saw the crowds queuing for the newfangled cinematograph shows: the Bioscope booths and Phantasmagoria. I tried to reassure him, told him that these moving picture shows were pale imitations of my father’s last and greatest invention, but this only seemed to enrage him. Eddie called me a liar and challenged me to prove what I said. He said that if my father’s machine had been as great as I claimed, then it would make me enough money to buy a thousand tickets to America. All I had to do was invent it again.”

The photographer’s eyes narrowed behind his half-moon glasses.

“I couldn’t let such an insult go unanswered. Burying myself in the darkroom at the back of this booth, I set about trying to recreate my father’s last invention. By building a brand new camera, even improving on my father’s design, I would show Eddie Gold the truth of my words. First, through a wearying process of trial and error, I discovered a way to replicate the chemical composition of the film from my father’s still camera. Transferring this to a cinematograph reel, I found that by modifying the mechanisms of a conventional camera I could increase the frame rate by a thousandfold, producing flawless moving pictures, whilst the addition of chromatic filters and magnetic recording apparatus enabled the capture of colour and sound as well. But that wasn’t all. Turning the camera’s winder for the very first time, I made the most marvellous discovery.”

Jacques’s hands traced strange patterns in the air as if reliving this moment again.

“As I looked through the viewfinder on to the scene of the bustling fair, I saw a miraculous sight. Strange shadowy figures flitted amongst the crowds; ghosts stalking the footsteps of those who still lived. With this invention, I had finally solved the riddle of death. I could see the souls of the departed separated from the living by the merest of vibrations; their ethereal forms existing beyond the spectrum of light visible to the naked eye, but captured by the lens of my machine. I glimpsed the face of Evangeline, a trapeze artist who had died in a fall a mere few months before, and as she looked into the camera lens I knew she could see me too. Emboldened, I tried to speak to her, but although her lips moved in reply, I could not hear her words, and when the reel of film ran out, her shadow disappeared as though it had never been there.”

His eyes gleamed brightly behind his
gold-rimmed
glasses.

“Every night I repeated this experiment, turning my camera towards all the corners of the fair and then watching as the ghosts of the past wandered like shadows through its frame: the freaks and the mountebanks, bare-knuckle fighters and long-forgotten clowns. I saw Evangeline again, her shadowy figure growing more distinct each time the camera fixed her in its gaze, but when I saw this, a strange sense of dread stirred in me too. When I watched these moving pictures, I began to believe that this camera’s power was beyond even that imagined by my father. As well as preserving the glimpses of these spirits, I grew to suspect it could also bring them back. With the revelation of this fearful truth, I christened my invention the Véritéscope.”

Jacques paused for a moment as if relieving a painful memory.

“Wishing to share my concerns, I gave Eddie a demonstration of the camera’s strange power, explaining to him the fears that I had. Eddie convinced me we should set up a new business – the Alchemical Moving Picture Company – to investigate this phenomenon further. I signed the contract he prepared, thinking this vestige of respectability would help us to consult the finest scientific minds in the country, but realising too late that Eddie had his own plans.” Jacques shook his head. “When I learned what he wished to do, I tried to persuade him of its folly, but the contract that Eddie had tricked me into signing gave him possession of everything. He took the Véritéscope from under my nose, leaving me here and setting up his own office in the heart of Cecil Court. When I followed him there to demand my camera back, Eddie threatened me with the full force of the law. With his underhand trick, he had stolen my invention and I couldn’t do a thing.”

His story at an end, Jacques cast Alfie a quizzical glance.

“How have you heard of the Véritéscope anyway?” he asked. “Are you a journalist?”

“No,” Alfie replied. “I work for
The Penny Dreadful
. Edward Gold is using the camera to make a film of one of Montgomery Flinch’s tales of terror.”

Jacques Le Prince suddenly paled. “What is it about?”

“Oh, just one of Montgomery Flinch’s usual tales of murder, betrayal and revenge,” Alfie replied, slightly mystified. “Mr Flinch and his niece are down in Devon now watching Gold bring the story of
The Daughter of Darkness
to life.”

“
Mon Dieu!
” Jacques cried out, his eyes widening with fear. “After all my warnings, he still persists with this madcap scheme.” The photographer sprang forward and seized hold of Alfie’s shoulders. “We have to stop him before it is too late!”

Wigram peered over his glasses, his sharp eyes scrutinising both Alfie and Jacques as they stood in front of his desk. The rest of
The Penny Dreadful
’s office lay in darkness, the shadowy clock on the wall now nearing midnight. From above the lawyer’s desk, the amber glow of the single gas lamp still lit was reflected in Le Prince’s spectacles, the photographer’s eyes behind these impatient as he awaited Wigram’s reply.

“I am sorry to hear of your own misfortune, Mr Le Prince,” the lawyer began, “and these revelations about Edward Gold’s conduct do cause me some concern, but I have absolutely no authority to stop the production of
The Daughter of Darkness.
Montgomery Flinch has signed a contract giving the Alchemical Moving Picture Company the exclusive rights to create this film, and he is in Stoke Eversholt as we speak, supervising the adaptation of his tale.”

Leaning forward, Jacques banged his fist down on the desk with a growl.

“Then we must go there too,” he answered, barely able to keep his emotions in check. “Do you not understand what I am telling you? You cannot allow this film to be made. It is too dangerous!”

Wigram’s brow furrowed in reply, a flicker of distaste creeping across his countenance at the Frenchman’s show of emotion.

“I understand that perfectly, Mr Le Prince,” he said. “You have told me nothing else since you arrived here with Alfie at nearly midnight, although I’m still at a loss to know exactly why. How on earth could a film of
The Daughter of Darkness
possibly be dangerous?”

As amber shadows danced across his face, Jacques frowned in reply.

“I have told you, Monsieur Wigram,” he said, failing to keep the frustration from his voice. “This story is not what it seems. I have heard Eddie speak of Stoke Eversholt before – it is the place where he was born and the setting for the injustice that scarred his young life. His family worked down Lord Eversholt’s copper mine; the aristocrat who owned the land on which Stoke Eversholt stands.” Jacques sniffed. “If only you English had followed France’s example and rid yourself of such vermin. Anyway, one night when he neared fifteen, Eddie was out poaching rabbits when he found Lord Eversholt’s daughter, Amelia, lost on the moor. He guided her safely home and, as a token of her gratitude, Amelia gave him a gift of a precious stone; a family heirloom. However, when Lord Eversholt discovered this, he flew into a rage, accusing Eddie of theft and beating him to within an inch of his life; then when Amelia cried out in protest he took his whip to her as well. Banished from Stoke Eversholt, Eddie fled to London, eventually finding his way to the fair, whilst the next that he heard of Amelia was when his family sent word that she had passed away, only weeks after he had left. Consumption they said, but Eddie knew the truth.”