Lockwood & Co: The Screaming Staircase (18 page)

The chain was formed of twisted loops of gold, mostly clean and bright, except in a couple of spots where something black had clogged between the links. The pendant itself was roughly oval, about the dimensions of a walnut. Thanks to George’s galumphing boot, it had a slightly squashed look. At one time the exterior must have been lovely. It had been lined with dozens of flakes of mother-of-pearl – pinkish-white and glittering, and neatly embedded in a mesh of gold. But many of the pieces had fallen out and, as with the chain, the surface was tarnished in places with ominous black flecks. Worst of all (and again thanks probably to George), the entire oval had been ruptured down one side. I could see a clear split along a seam.

More interesting than all that, however, was a slightly raised heart-shaped symbol halfway down the pendant at the front. Here, a faint and spidery pattern marked the gold.

‘Oh!’ I said. ‘There’s an inscription on it.’

I held it up so it caught the light, and ran my finger over
the letters. As I did so, I caught a sudden sound of voices – a man and woman talking, then the woman’s laughter, high and shrill.

I blinked; the sensation faded. I gazed at the object in my hand. My curiosity had infected the others. Despite himself, Lockwood had got up and moved round the table. George had left off the dishes and, flourishing a tea towel, was peering over my shoulder from the other side.

Four words. We gazed at them in silence for a time.

Tormentum meum
laetitia mea

It didn’t make much sense to me.

‘
Tormentum
. . .’ George said at last. ‘That sounds cheerful.’

‘Latin,’ Lockwood said. ‘Haven’t we got a Latin dictionary somewhere?’

‘It’s from the man who gave her the necklace,’ I said. ‘The one she loved . . .’ The echo of the two voices still resounded in my mind.

‘How d’you know it’s a bloke?’ George put in. ‘It could have been a female friend. Could’ve been her mum.’

‘No way,’ I said. ‘Look at the symbol. Besides, you wear these things so you can have your loved one’s message next to your heart.’

‘Like you know anything about that,’ George said.

‘Like
you
do either.’

‘Let’s have a look at it,’ Lockwood said. He perched on the chair next to mine and took the necklace from my hand. He held it close, brow furrowing.

‘Latin phrases, a loved one’s gift, a long-lost girl . . .’ George flipped his damp tea towel over his shoulder and headed for the sink. ‘Bit of an exotic mystery . . .’

‘
Isn’t it?
’ Lockwood said. ‘
Isn’t it, though?
’ We looked at him. His eyes were shining; he’d sat up suddenly. The gloom that had enveloped him all morning had suddenly dispersed like white clouds on the wind. ‘George,’ he went on, ‘do you remember that famous case that Tendy’s had, a year or two back? The one with the two entangled skeletons?’

‘The Wailing Tree affair? Of course. They got an award for it.’

‘Yes, and masses of publicity. And the reason for that was they figured out who the Visitors were, didn’t they? They found a diamond tiepin on one of the skeletons and traced it back to the jeweller who made it, and that told them that the owner—’

‘– was young Lord Ardley,’ I said, ‘who’d gone missing back in the nineteenth century. Everyone thought he’d run off overseas. But there he was, buried in the family garden, where his younger brother must’ve put him, in order to inherit the estate.’ There was a pause; I looked at them.
‘Why so surprised? I read issues of
True Hauntings
too.’

‘Fair enough,’ Lockwood said. ‘And you’re spot on. The point is, it was a great story, and by solving that old mystery Tendy’s did very well. They became a much more prominent agency off the back of it; they’re fourth biggest in London now. So I’m just wondering . . .’ He trailed off, gazing at the locket in his hand.

‘Whether Annabel Ward might do the same for us?’ George said. ‘Lockwood, you know how many Visitors there are in London? Across the country? It’s a plague. People don’t care about the stories behind them. They just want them gone.’

‘You say that, but good cases make big headlines,’ Lockwood said. ‘And this one
could
be good. Think about it. A glamorous girl, brutally slain and lost for decades, two tragic lovers, a small but enterprising agency uncovering the truth behind the killing . . .’ He grinned at us. ‘Yes . . . if we play it right, we might make a splash with this. We could turn our fortunes round after all. But we’ll need to get moving. George – that Latin dictionary is on the first-floor landing, I think. Fancy fetching it down? Thanks! And Lucy,’ he continued, as George padded away, ‘maybe there’s something
you
can help with too.’

I gazed at him. His transformation from the grumpy, woebegone figure of a few minutes previously was utterly complete. His movements were quick and light, his injuries
forgotten; his dark eyes sparkled as he looked into mine. In that instant it was as if nothing in the world fascinated him as much as me.

‘Tell me something,’ he said. ‘I almost don’t want to ask this, given our experiences these last two days, but when you held the locket just now, I don’t suppose you . . . felt anything, did you?’

I nodded slowly. ‘If you mean a psychic residue, yes I did. Voices, laughter . . . Not much. I wasn’t trying.’

‘And do you think,’ Lockwood said, smiling, ‘if you
did
try . . .?’

‘You want me to see what sensations I can get?’

‘Yes! Isn’t it a great idea? You might pick up something vital; a clue that we can use.’

I looked away, embarrassed by the intensity of his gaze. ‘Sure, maybe . . . I don’t know.’

‘If anyone can do it,
you
can, Luce. You’re brilliant at this. Give it a go.’

Moments before, he’d been promising to incinerate the locket. Now it was the key to all our troubles. Moments before, he’d been giving me a rollocking; now I was the apple of his eye. This was the way it was with Lockwood. His shifts were sometimes so sudden that they took your breath away, but his energy and enthusiasm were always impossible to resist. I could hear George thumping eagerly around upstairs; and I too felt a sudden unbidden thrill – excitement at the
prospect of uncovering the ghost-girl’s story; hope at the thought of maybe helping save the agency somehow.

Despite myself, of course, I also couldn’t help being flattered by Lockwood’s words of praise.

I sighed heavily. ‘I could
try
,’ I said, ‘but I can’t promise anything. You know that with Touch it’s normally just emotions and sounds you get, not concrete facts. So if—’

‘Great! Well done.’ He pushed the pendant along the table towards me. ‘Can I help in any way? Would you like me to make you a cup of tea?’

‘No. Just shut up and let me concentrate.’

I didn’t pick it up at first. This wasn’t, after all, something to do lightly. I’d already had ample evidence of the ghost-girl’s wrath and hatred. I knew her fate had not been a pleasant one. So I took my time. I sat looking at the pendant and the coil of chain, and tried to rid my mind of thoughts as best I could. I set aside all the rushing, garbled feelings of the day-to-day.

At last I took it in my hand. The cool of the metal sank through me.

I waited for any echoes that might come.

And very soon they
did
come, same as before. First a man and woman talking; the woman’s high-pitched laughter, the man’s voice joining her as one. Then a sensation of fierce joy, of passion shared; I felt the elation of the girl, her feverish delight. A great bulb of happiness spread out to fill my
world . . . The laughter changed, became hysterical in tone. The man’s voice grew harsher, the sound twisted. I felt a cold, sharp jolt of fear . . . And then at once the joy was back, and all was well, well, well . . . Until the next reversal, until contentment curdled, and the voices rose once more in anger, and I was sick with jealousy and rage . . . And so it went on, back and forth, back and forth, the mood-swings flashing past, like I was on that merry-go-round in Hexham as a kid, the one time my mother let me go, and I was full of joy and terror mixed together, and knew I couldn’t get off no matter how I tried. And all at once came sudden silence, and a cold voice talking in my ear, and a final blaze of fury that ascended to a desperate shriek of pain – a shriek I realized was my own.

I opened my eyes. Lockwood was supporting me in the chair. The door burst open; George pelted into the room.

‘What the hell’s going on?’ he cried. ‘Can’t I leave you two alone for a minute?’

‘Lucy,’ Lockwood said. His face was white. ‘I’m so sorry. I should never have asked you to do that. What happened? Are you OK?’

‘I don’t know . . .’ I pushed him away and, in the same motion, dropped the pendant on the kitchen table. It rocked there briefly, glittering. ‘I shouldn’t have done that,’ I said. ‘It’s too strong. It’s completely bound up with her spirit and her memories. I felt I
was
her for a moment, and that wasn’t nice at all. Her anger is terrible.’

I sat quiet for a moment in the sunny kitchen, letting the sensations peel away from me like fading fragments of a dream. The others waited.

‘There’s one thing I
can
tell you,’ I went on at last. ‘Maybe it’s what you were after, Lockwood, and maybe it isn’t, but it’s something I
do
now know for certain. It came through in the emotions loud and clear.’ I took a deep breath, looked up at them.

‘Yes?’ Lockwood said.

‘The man who gave her this necklace? He’s the one who killed her too.’

Early that afternoon we took the short walk to Baker Street Underground station. It was good to be outdoors again, and in pleasant sunlight too. Each of us felt the change; our mood had lifted. We put on casual clothes. Lockwood wore a long brown leather coat that emphasized his slimness and easy stride. George wore a hideous puffy jacket with high elasticated waistband that emphasized his bottom. I had my usual gear: coat, rollneck jumper, short dark skirt and leggings. We all wore our rapiers (in my case a spare one from the hall). These – and the cuts and bruises on our faces – were the marks of our profession and our status: people moved aside for us as we went by.

The Jubilee Line train was busy and heavy with the sweet protective smell of lavender. Men wore sprigs of it in their buttonholes; women had them in their hats. All across the carriage, silver brooches and tiepins winked and glittered beneath the neon lights. We stood silent and serious as the train rattled through the tunnels on the five-minute journey to Green Park. No one spoke. The eyes of the crowd followed us as we alighted and set off along the platform.

During the trip George had been flicking through the Latin dictionary. As we went up the escalator, he took his pencil out of his mouth and made a last notation on a scrap of paper.

‘OK,’ he said. ‘I’ve done the best I can. It’s
Tormentum meum, laetitia mea
, right? Well,
tormentum
means “torment” or “torture”.
Laetitia
equals “joy” or “bliss”.
Meum
and
mea
are both “my”. So I translate the inscription in our locket as “My torment, my bliss”.’ He snapped the dictionary shut. ‘Not the healthiest of love messages, is it?’

‘Fits exactly with what I sensed,’ I said shortly. ‘It
wasn’t
a healthy relationship. It veered between extremes. Half the time it was sort of happy, half the time eaten up by jealousy and hate. And
that’s
what triumphed in the end.’

‘Don’t think about it any more, Lucy,’ Lockwood said. ‘You’ve done your bit. Now George and I will do ours. How long do you think it’ll take us at the Archives, George?’

‘Not long,’ George said. ‘We’ll go back to the local newspapers, starting at the date where I left off. If there’s any more about Annabel Ward – whether they ever arrested anyone, for instance – we should find it straight away. Then we can check the gossip magazines too – it said she was a society girl.’

We left the station and started up Piccadilly. Afternoon light lanced steeply between tall buildings; we walked from bright sun to blue shadow and back again. It being late autumn, preparations for evening were already under way. A salt-spreader pushed his cart along the roadside, scattering fresh grains left and right like snow. Outside the big hotels, attendants filled braziers with bunches of dried lavender ready for burning; others polished the ghost-lamps hanging above the doors.