Mrs Midnight and Other Stories (2 page)

I flashed my torch towards the figure and saw at once that it had been an illusion. It was no more than a pile of furniture and junk covered by a tarpaulin. All the same it had been uncannily lifelike. I switched the torch off to recreate the effect, but the magic had gone. It just looked like a pile of junk covered with a tarpaulin.

‘Are you Okay, Danny?’ said Jill.

As a matter of fact I was shaking all over, but I said: ‘Come over here! Look what I’ve found.’

Jill was very excited by the old music hall bills; even Crispin was reluctantly impressed. I don’t know why—to please Jill I suppose—but I said I would do some research into the playbills and the history of the theatre. Then Crispin started offering me advice about how and where to research. I let him go on a bit; then I quietly reminded him that I had been quite a successful journalist for over a dozen years, so I did know a little about the techniques of research. Crispin shut up, and again I thought I saw Jill smile.

Finally the camera crew arrived and we did some fake shots of us arriving at the Old Essex and being amazed. Crispin repeated his line about it being an incredible space and his Matcham theory. He wanted me to ask him who Matcham was on camera, but I wasn’t playing ball. We were about to film my ‘discovery’ of the playbills when the crew started to get technical glitches: jams in the camera, gremlins in the sound system, erratic variations in the light levels. The sound technician was particularly jumpy. At one point he said he had got the noise of some animal crying out in pain, perhaps a cat, on his cans; but the rest of us had heard nothing.

I know camera crews: they can be very touchy and difficult when they want to be. Perhaps it’s because they think they are doing all the work and us guys in front of the camera are taking all the credit. I could see they were getting into a state, so I tried to calm them down, but it was no good. The sound man said straight out that the place was giving him ‘the willies’. At this Crispin started to be very sarcastic until I told him to shut the fuck up. It was all beginning to get a bit hairy so I made a cut-throat gesture at Jill to let her know that I thought we should wrap. She understood immediately, gave the word and we cleared out. I wasn’t sorry to go.

For about a week or so I put the Old Essex out of my mind. I was heavily into meetings with some producers about hosting a new Reality TV show called
Celebrity Dog Kennel.
Apparently they were finding it hard to sign up even the B and C listers who were asking silly money anyway. In the end it was Jill who spurred me. She rang me up and asked me how the research was going. I was vague but invited her to have dinner with me in a couple of day’s time when I would tell her all about it. The following morning I took myself off to the newspaper library at Colindale.

I had already got the bare facts about the Old Essex from Mander and Mitchenson, that the theatre had suffered a very damaging fire on Saturday December 1st 1888 from which its fortunes had never recovered and it had been abandoned as a place of entertainment very soon after. So I began my researches by looking in the newspapers of that period for reports of the fire at the Old Essex.

Most of the national dailies contained little more than a few lines stating that the fire had been started shortly after the Saturday night performance and that there were no ‘human fatalities’, but that one man, a Mr Graham, had been severely injured. I did, however, come across a passing reference to it in a letter to
The
Times
on December 5th, stating that: ‘the recent riot and conflagration at the Old Essex provides further evidence of the extreme unrest among the denizens of Whitechapel following the appalling murders recently perpetrated in that district.’ I presumed that the writer meant the Ripper murders, the last of which had been committed in November 1888. Rather fatuously the letter ended by urging the Metropolitan Police to ‘redouble their efforts in hunting down the person responsible for these unspeakable atrocities.’

Eventually I tracked down a more detailed account of the fire in a local paper called
The East London Gazette.
Monday December 3rd 1888
.
In it I read as follows:

‘. . . the evening’s entertainment at the Old Essex was proceeding as normal when, towards the end of the bill, there was introduced an act known as
Mrs Midnight and her Animal Comedians
. In it a lady by the name of “Mrs Midnight”, dressed as a gypsy vagrant (but in reality personated by a Mr Simpson Graham) appears on stage with a number of animals, including a cat, a Learned Pig, a miniature bulldog, a cockerel and a Barbary ape. These creatures under instructions from Mrs Midnight performed a number of astonishing mental and physical feats. Especially notable we are told was the “Learned Pig” Belphagor who was capable of solving elementary mathematical conundrums with the aid of numbered cards. On this particular evening, however, parts of the audience, especially those who had been drinking at the bars, became restive and took against Mrs Midnight. These vulgar objections reached their height while the Barbary ape, called Bertram, was performing the act of rescuing the miniature bulldog, Mary, from the top of a miniature tower of wood and canvas, designed to look like a castle keep. Coins and other small hard objects were thrown onto the stage, one of which hit Bertram, the ape. The animal was so provoked by this act that he became visibly agitated and having reached the top of the tower, instead of rescuing the bulldog, Mary, he bit her head off.

‘That disgusting incident, needless to say, only incensed the troublemakers further and a full scale riot ensued. The local constabulary was summoned and the theatre was cleared. The artists appearing on the bill, which included Mr Dan Leno, were led to safety, but Mr Graham remained behind because he was fearful of being set upon by the mob who were indeed calling for him. It was at this point that smoke was seen to be coming from one of the dressing room windows at the back of the theatre, though precisely when and how the fire was started has been disputed. Our reporter who arrived on the scene with the fire brigade was told by one member of the crowd that the reason for the animus surrounding ‘Mrs Midnight’ was that her impersonator Mr Graham (formerly, we understand, a medical practitioner) was suspected by many to have some connection with the Whitechapel Murders, though quite why he should have fallen under suspicion we have been unable to ascertain. The gallant members of the Fire Service, under their leader Captain Shaw, soon had the fire under control and were able to spirit Mr Graham away unseen by the crowd. However Mr Graham is understood to have sustained severe injuries from the blaze and his entire menagerie of “animal comedians” has perished in the conflagration.’

As I was coming out of Colindale with my photocopy of the article I had a brain wave. My last job before TV celebrity took me to its silicone-enhanced bosom was as Showbiz Editor of the
Daily Magnet
. There I got to know Bill Beasely, the head of crime news. We had worked together on the Spice Girl Shootings and rubbed along fairly well. He wasn’t a bad bloke if you could put up with his smoker’s cough, and the fact that he smelt of gin and peppermints at nine in the morning. One of his fads was his fascination with the Ripper murders: he’d even come up with a theory of his own about it and done yet another Ripper book. I think his idea was that it was Gladstone and Queen Victoria in collaboration, which is loony of course, but not as loony as that daft American bint who thinks it was Sickert the painter. (I happen to own a Sickert. I’m not a complete muppet.) I thought Bill might know about this Graham bloke if he was a suspect.

I gave him a ring and he asks me over. I suggest meeting in a pub, but he insists I come to his flat. I don’t want to go because Bill is a bachelor—well so am I at the moment, but you know what I mean—and a bit of a slob and lives at the wrong end of Islington.

My worst fears are confirmed. There is even some old gypsy tramp woman with a filthy plaid shawl over her head crouching on his doorstep. She holds out her hand, palm upwards for cash. Luckily Bill buzzes me up fairly quickly when I ring the doorbell.

His flat is on the top floor and is everything I had been dreading, and more. It is all ashtrays, booze bottles and books, plus a sofa and a couple of armchairs that, like Bill, were bulging in all the wrong directions. The books are everywhere. They look as if they’d spread out from the ceiling-high shelves like some sort of self-perpetuating fungus. It is ten in the morning and Bill offers me a Gin and Tonic. He’s barely changed in five years: a bit more flab maybe, a more phlegm-filled cough. I ask if I could have a tea or coffee.

He looks at me as if I’d demanded quail sandwiches and an avocado pear, but wanders into the kitchen to light the gas for the kettle.

‘Does that gypsy woman regularly camp out on your doorstep?’ I asked.

‘Who?’

I went to the window to point her out to him but she’s gone.

Bill managed to make some proper coffee in one of those percolator things, but it was still filthy. When I mentioned what I was here about, Graham and the Ripper connection, he became all excited. What is it about Jack the Ripper and some people? He started pacing round the room, talking enthusiastically and pulling books out of the shelves.

‘Ah, yes. Well of course Dr Graham is known to ripperologists, but he comes fairly low down on the list of possible suspects, mainly because we don’t know much about him. But this new stuff you’ve dug up is fascinating. Perhaps you and I could collaborate on a new Ripper book about it?’

Not wanting to put him off at this early stage, I merely shrugged. ‘You called him “Doctor” Graham?’ I said.

‘Yes. He was a doctor. Struck off, if I remember rightly. Of course being a doctor is always a plus when it comes to Ripper suspects. Anatomical expertise, you see. Knowing how to cut up bodies.’ He is leafing through a rather squalid looking giant paperback entitled
The A to Z of Ripperology
. ‘Where are we? Ah, here we are! “Graham, Dr Simpson S. Date of birth unknown.” That ought to be easy enough to find out. “Medical practitioner with eccentric theories. Devised a treatment known as
zoophagy
in which patients were treated by being fed organs from still living animals, by means of vivisection.” Bloody hell, that’s absolutely disgusting!’ Bill, the ripperologist, seemed genuinely shocked. ‘ “Wrote a book on the subject:
A Treatise on Brain Food, Or the Benefits of Zoophagy Explained
. . .” Etcetera, etcetera. “Struck off the register for misconduct towards a female patient. Thought to have been suffering from the early stages of tertiary syphilis . . .” Ah! Listen to this! “Became an entertainer known as ‘Mrs Midnight’ who performed with a troupe of trained animals. The times and locations of his appearance at various East London music halls were said to have coincided with some of the Ripper murders, but this has not been confirmed. It is believed that he died in 1889 or 1890 in an institution for the insane, having been injured by fire in an accident.” He gets two bleeding daggers out of five on the Suspect Rating. Wait a minute, there’s a book referred to here in the bibliography:
Quacks and Charlatans, Alternative Medicine in late Nineteenth Century England
by Harrison Bews. Might be worth a look.’

He then asked me why I was so keen on the Old Essex project. I tried to sound genuinely enthusiastic, but I think he saw through it.

After a pause he said: ‘The thing these restoration nuts don’t get is that some old things are best left buried and unrevived. Just because it’s old doesn’t mean it’s good; quite the opposite sometimes. I come from down that way myself, and my old Dad wouldn’t go near the Old Essex. He never really told me why, but he did say that just after the war they tried to turn it back into a theatre or something. I don’t know what happened exactly, but he said it was a disaster.’

That afternoon I rang Jill and proposed that we should meet for dinner in the evening at my local gastro-pub, The Engineer in Primrose Hill. I thought dinner at my house might seem a bit forward for her. She accepted.

Sometimes I’m a good judge, though that’s not what people say about me in
I Can Make You a Star,
but I thought Jill would like The Engineer and she did. The food’s well cooked and imaginative, all organic of course and that sort of rubbish; but it’s classy and modern without being pretentious and overpriced. She seemed in her element there.

You know how when you meet someone and you go away and start fantasising about them; then when you meet them again it’s a terrible let down? With Jill, it was the opposite. She was even better. I don’t want to go on about it but everything about her was somehow clear: clear skin, clear eyes, clear laugh. She dressed nicely but obviously didn’t worry much about her appearance. Her hair was mousy coloured, not dyed.

Immediately I wanted to start talking about her and me, but I knew this would be fatal, so I told her about my researches. She gave me her full attention and seemed thrilled by the information I gave.

I said: ‘You don’t think it’s all a bit sordid and sinister?’

‘Good grief no! Fascinating stuff. It all helps to raise the profile. There’s no such thing as bad publicity. You of all people should know that.’

I could tell she was teasing me, which I liked, but it was in the way you tease a favourite uncle, not a friend, or a lover. Still, I had done well, so I told her grandly that there were a couple of books I thought I would look out at the British Library which might help. She stretched out her hand and touched mine.

‘You know, when somebody suggested you to help raise money for the Old Essex, I didn’t like the idea. I thought you would be, well . . . I mean, your reputation, the kind of programmes you do . . .’

‘I know. A case of Pride and Prejudice on your part.’

‘Well, sort of. Not that I’d exactly describe you as Mr Darcy.’

‘You wound me, Jill.’

We both laughed, but she had wounded without knowing. Then we discussed the practicalities of fund-raising events, television air time, recruiting other ‘names’ to support the cause, and all the rest of it. I realised that by now it was far too late for me to bow out of the Old Essex project, even if I wanted to, but I couldn’t because it would mean losing her. Then at the coffee stage, she said something, though I can’t remember how it came up. Mature people are supposed to take these things better than the young, but I don’t think that’s true.