Lockwood & Co: The Screaming Staircase (2 page)

Her eyes rose rapidly, met mine. ‘No. That’s quite impossible. I have the only key.’

‘I see. I must’ve been mistaken.’

‘Well, I won’t delay you,’ Mrs Martin said. ‘Mother’s completed the form you sent her.’ She held out the buff folder. ‘She hopes it will be useful.’

‘I’m sure it will.’ Lockwood tucked it somewhere inside his coat. ‘Thank you very much. Well, we’d better get started. Tell your mother we’ll be in touch in the morning.’

The woman handed him a ring of keys. Somewhere along the road a car horn blared, to be answered by another. There was plenty of time till curfew, but night was falling and people were growing antsy. They wanted to get home. Soon there’d be nothing moving in the London streets but trails of
mist and twisting moonbeams. Or nothing, at least, any adult there could clearly
see
.

Suzie Martin was conscious of this too. She raised her shoulders, pulled her cardigan tight. ‘Well, I’d better be going. I suppose I should wish you luck . . .’ She looked away. ‘So very young! How terrible that the world should have come to this.’

‘Goodnight, Mrs Martin,’ Lockwood said.

Without reply, she pattered down the steps. In a few seconds she had vanished among the mists and laurels in the direction of the road.

‘She’s not happy,’ I said. ‘I think we’ll be off the case tomorrow morning.’

‘Better get it solved tonight, then,’ Lockwood said. ‘Ready?’

I patted the hilt of my rapier. ‘Ready.’

He grinned at me, stepped up to the door and, with a magician’s flourish, turned the key in the lock.

When entering a house occupied by a Visitor, it’s always best to get in quick. That’s one of the first rules you learn. Never hesitate, never linger on the threshold. Why? Because, for those few seconds, it’s not too late. You stand there in the doorway with the fresh air on your back and the darkness up ahead, and you’d be an idiot if you didn’t want to turn and run. And as soon as you acknowledge
that
, your willpower
starts draining away through your boots, and the terror starts building in your chest, and
bang
, that’s it – you’re compromised before you begin. Lockwood and I both knew this, so we didn’t hang around. We slipped straight through, put down our bags, and shut the door softly behind us. Then we stood quite still with our backs against it, watching and listening side by side.

The hall of the house lately occupied by Mr and Mrs Hope was long and relatively narrow, though the high ceiling made it seem quite large. It was floored with black and white marble tiles, set diagonally, and flanked by palely papered walls. Halfway along, a steep staircase rose into shadows. The hall kinked round this to the left and continued into a void of black. Doorways opened on either side: gaping, choked in darkness.

All of which could have been nicely illuminated if we’d put on the lights, of course. And there was a switch on the wall right there. But we didn’t attempt to use it. You see, a second rule you learn is this: electricity interferes. It dulls the senses and makes you weak and stupid. It’s much better to watch and listen in the dark. It’s good to have that fear.

We stood in silence, doing what we do. I listened. Lockwood watched. It was cold in the house. The air had that musty, slightly sour smell you get in every unloved place.

I leaned in close to Lockwood. ‘No heating,’ I whispered.

‘Mm-hm.’

‘Something else too, you think?’

‘Mm-hm.’

As my eyes grew used to the dark, I saw more details. Beneath the curl of the banister was a little polished table, on which sat a china bowl of potpourri. There were pictures on the wall, mostly faded posters of old-time musicals, and photographs of rolling hills and gentle seas. All pretty innocuous. In fact it wasn’t at all an ugly hallway; in bright sunlight it might have looked quite pleasant. But not so much now, with the last light from the door panes stretching out like skewed coffins on the floor in front of us; with our shadows neatly framed inside them; and with the manner of old Mr Hope’s death in this very place hanging heavy in our minds.

I breathed hard to calm myself and shut out morbid thoughts. Then I closed my eyes against the taunting darkness and
listened
.

Listened . . .

Halls, landings and staircases are the arteries and airways of any building. It’s here that everything is channelled. You get echoes of things currently going on in all the connecting rooms. Sometimes you also get
other
noises that, strictly speaking, ought not to be there at all. Echoes of the past, echoes of hidden things . . .

This was one such time.

I opened my eyes, picked up my bag and walked slowly
down the hall towards the stairs. Lockwood was already standing by the little polished table beneath the banister. His face shone dimly in the light from the door. ‘Heard something?’ he said.

‘Yep.’

‘What?’

‘A little knocking sound. Comes and goes. It’s very faint, and I can’t tell where it’s coming from. But it’ll get stronger – it’s scarcely dark yet. What about you?’

He pointed at the bottom of the steps. ‘You remember what happened to Mr Hope, of course?’

‘Fell down the stairs and broke his neck.’

‘Exactly. Well, there’s a tremendous residual death-glow right here, still lingering three months after he died. I should’ve brought my sunglasses, it’s so bright. So what Mrs Hope told George on the phone stacks up. Her husband tripped and tumbled down and hit the ground hard.’ He glanced up the shadowy stairwell. ‘Long steep flight . . . Nasty way to go.’

I bent low, squinting at the floor in the half-dark. ‘Yeah, look how the tiles have cracked. He must’ve fallen with tremendous f—’

Two sharp crashes sounded on the stairs. Air moved violently against my face. Before I could react, something large, soft and horribly heavy landed precisely where I stood. The impact of it jarred my teeth.

I jumped back, ripping my rapier from my belt. I stood against the wall, weapon raised and shaking, heart clawing at my chest, eyes staring wildly side to side.

Nothing. The stairs were empty. No broken body sprawled lifeless on the floor.

Lockwood leaned casually against the banister. It was too dark to be certain, but I swear he’d raised an eyebrow. He hadn’t heard a thing.

‘You all right, Lucy?’

I breathed hard. ‘No. I just got the echo of Mr Hope’s last fall. It was very loud and very real. It was like he’d landed right on top of me. Don’t laugh. It’s not funny.’

‘Sorry. Well,
something’s
stirring early tonight. It’s going to get interesting later. What time d’you make it?’

Having a watch with a luminous dial is my third recommended rule. It’s best if it can also withstand sudden drops in temperature and strong ectoplasmic shock. ‘Not yet five,’ I said.

‘Fine.’ Lockwood’s teeth aren’t quite as luminous as my watch, but when he grins it’s a close-run thing. ‘Plenty of time for a cup of tea. Then we find ourselves a ghost.’

When you go out hunting wicked spirits, it’s the simple things that matter most. The silvered point of your rapier flashing in the dark; the iron filings scattered on the floor; the sealed canisters of best Greek Fire, ready as a last resort . . . But tea bags, brown and fresh and plenty of them, and made (for preference) by Pitkin Brothers of Bond Street, are perhaps the simplest and best of all.

OK, they may not save your life like a sword-tip or an iron circle can, and they haven’t the protective power of a sudden wall of fire. But they
do
provide something just as vital. They help to keep you sane.

It’s never pleasant, sitting in a haunted house, waiting in the dark. The night presses in around you and the silence
beats against your ears, and soon, if you’re not careful, you start to see or hear things that are the products of your mind. In short, you need distractions. Each of us at Lockwood’s has our preference. I do a bit of drawing, George has his comics, Lockwood himself reads the gossip magazines. But
all
of us like our tea and biscuits, and that night in the Hopes’ house was no exception.

We found the kitchen at the far end of the hall, just beyond the stairway. It was a nice enough room, neat and white and modern, and noticeably warmer than the hall. It had no supernatural traces of any kind. All was quiet. The knocking sound I’d heard was inaudible here, and there was no repetition of the nasty bumping on the stairs.

I got the kettle going, while Lockwood lit an oil lamp and set it on the table. By its light we took off our rapiers and work-belts and laid them out before us. Our belts have seven separate clips and pouches, and we went through these in silence, systematically checking the contents while the kettle wheezed and huffed away. We’d already checked everything back in the office, but we were more than happy to do it again. A girl at Rotwell’s had died the previous week after forgetting to restock her magnesium flares.

Outside the window, the sun was gone. Faint clouds choked the blue-black sky, and mists had risen to engulf the garden. Beyond black hedges, lights shone in other houses.
They were near, but also distant, cut off from us like ships passing across deep water.

We put the belts back on, and checked the Velcro strapping around the rapiers. I fixed the teas and brought them to the table. Lockwood found the biscuits. We sat together while the oil lamp flickered and shadows danced in the corners of the room.

At last Lockwood pulled the collar of his greatcoat high about his neck. ‘Let’s see what Mrs Hope has to say for herself,’ he said. He stretched out a long thin hand for the folder lying on the table. Lamplight glimmered darkly in his flop of hair.

As he read, I checked the thermometer clipped to my belt. Fifteen degrees. Not warm, but roughly what you’d expect from an unheated house at this time of year. I took my notebook from another pouch and jotted down the room and figure. I also recorded details of the aural phenomena I’d experienced in the hall.

Lockwood tossed the folder aside. ‘Well, that was useful.’

‘Really?’

‘No. I’m being ironic. Or is it sarcastic? I can never remember.’

‘Irony’s cleverer, so you’re probably being sarcastic. What’s she say?’

‘Absolutely nothing of any use. She might as well have written it in Latin for all the good it does us. Here’s a
summary. The Hopes have lived here for two years. Before that they were down in Kent somewhere; she gives lots of irrelevant detail about how happy they were. Hardly any curfews, ghost-lamps almost never on, how you could go for a walk late evening and only meet your living neighbours. That sort of thing. Don’t believe a word of it myself; Kent’s had one of the biggest outbreaks of anywhere outside London, according to George.’

I sipped my tea. ‘It’s where the Problem
began
, I thought.’

‘So they say. Anyhow, then they moved up here. All fine, no troubles in the house. No manifestations of any kind. Husband changed his job, started working from home. That’s six months ago. Still nothing funny going on. Then he fell downstairs and died.’

‘Hold it,’ I said. ‘How did he fall?’

‘Tripped, apparently.’

‘What I mean is, was he alone?’

‘According to Mrs Hope, he was. She was in bed. Happened during the night. She says her husband was a bit distracted in the weeks before he died. Hadn’t been sleeping well. She thinks he got up to get a drink of water.’

I grunted noncommittally. ‘Ri-i-ight . . .’

Lockwood flashed me a glance. ‘You think she pushed him?’

‘Not necessarily. But it would provide a motive for the haunting, wouldn’t it? Husbands don’t normally haunt wives,
except when there’s reasons. Pity she didn’t want to talk to us. I’d have liked to suss her out.’

‘Well, you can’t always tell by looking,’ Lockwood said. He shrugged his narrow shoulders. ‘Did I ever tell you about the time I met the notorious Harry Crisp? Sweet-faced man, he was, soft-voiced and twinkly-eyed. Good company and very plausible; he actually got me to lend him a tenner. Yet it turned out in the end that he was the most appalling murderer who liked nothing better than to—’

I held up a hand. ‘You
did
tell me that. About a million times.’