Free Twelve Minutes to Midnight by Christopher Edge Page A

on the details of Lady Cambridge’s career. A life described in a couple of lines, but she needed to find out more. She painstakingly reread the entry, searching for some clue that could help her –
    travelled extensively … research into exotic species of arachnids … appointed to the board of trustees of the British Museum of Natural History … author of numerous scientific papers.
    Penny clicked her fingers in a sudden rush of realisation.
    “Hush!”
    Ignoring the bookish chorus of shushes, Penny grinned in satisfaction. There was one place she could go to find out more about the mysterious Lady Cambridge. It was time to pay a visit to the museum.
     
    “This most remarkable specimen is a new genus of the Mantichora , the African tiger beetle. You will see, of course, the mottled green markings on the surface of its shell, a sharp contrast to the uniformly black colouring usually found in beetles of this genus. Note, too, the large curved mandibles which the African tiger beetle uses to seize and crush its prey.”
    The grey-bearded professor pointed with his brass-tipped cane to the image of the emerald beetle which shone from the screen behind him. As he prodded at its sickle-shaped jaws, Penny half hoped that the magnified image of the beetle would spark into life and snap the cane in two. Sitting on the desk at the front of the great hall, the episcope projector whirred noisily, its mechanical drone almost drowning out the professor’s dry as dust voice. Next to this, yet more insect specimens were lined up, ready for their turn in the spotlight.
    Penelope stifled a yawn. She glanced down again at the notice she had torn from the newspaper.
    A Public Lecture on the Entomological Discoveries of the 1899 British Empire Africa Expedition will be given by Professor Alfred Stebbing in the Central Hall of the British Museum of Natural History, on Monday 18 December, at 8.30 p.m. The Right Hon. Sir Edwin Lancaster will chair the lecture and the museum’s board of trustees will be in attendance.
    Peering back over her shoulder, Penny scanned the great hall yet again, searching for any sign of the enigmatic Lady Cambridge. Countless rows of chairs stretched back across the mosaic floor, their seats filled with bearded faces. Young men with dark, wiry whiskers, elderly gentlemen with white, fluffy beards; not a single face belonged to a member of the fairer sex. Above their heads, the hall’s high-vaulted ceiling was lit with an amber glow, sculptures of terracotta monkeys scampering across its soaring arches. At the front of the hall, behind the lecturer’s raised stage, a central stone staircase swept up to the galleries above.
    As yet another hideously enlarged insect filled the screen, Alfie sneaked back into the empty chair next to Penny at the end of the front row. He had dressed for the occasion, with a borrowed suit jacket and tie covering most of the ink stains on his shirt front. Tugging uncomfortably at this tie as he settled in his seat, Alfie turned towards Penny.
    “Have you found her?” she asked him, her voice low to avoid the hushes of the audience around them.
    Alfie shook his head.
    “I’ve been up and down every row. The place is packed to the rafters, but the only woman I saw was a charlady dusting the exhibits at the back of the hall.” A cheeky grin crept across his face. “I don’t think that could have been your Lady Cambridge.”
    “But she’s on the museum’s board of trustees.” Penny frowned. “The advertisement said they’d be here.”
    “Maybe she got bored and went home.” Alfie nodded towards the professor as he fussed over the episcope. “I mean that feller don’t half go on a bit.”
    On the screen behind the projector, the image of a large black spider with strange silver markings across its back slowly flickered and faded to black. For a moment there was silence as the whirr of the episcope died away, then Professor Stebbing stepped back from the machine and the