Lockwood & Co: The Screaming Staircase (25 page)

There was a profound silence, abruptly broken by an enormously loud rumble from George’s stomach. Plaster didn’t actually fall from the ceiling, but it was close.

‘Sorry,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Famished. I think I’ll have another doughnut, if you don’t mind. Any takers?’ No one
paid him any heed. He reached out for the plate.

‘The Red Room?’ I said.

‘The Screaming Staircase?’ Lockwood edged forward in his chair. ‘Please, Mr Fairfax, tell us more.’

‘I’m delighted to see that you display such interest,’ the old man said. ‘I can see that my high opinion of you was correct. Well, the Red Room is a bedchamber on the first floor of the West Wing of the house. At least, it
was
used as a bedroom once. No longer. It is completely empty now. It is one of those places where the supernatural presence is so potent that it spells disaster to all who visit it. No one can spend the night there and live – or that’s the story.’

‘Have you been in there, sir?’ Lockwood asked.

‘I
have
peered in. By day, of course.’

‘And the atmosphere . . .?’

‘Thick, Mr Lockwood. Thick with evil.’ The old head drew back; Fairfax looked down his great hooked nose at us. ‘And I have good reason to believe in the power of this room, as I shall tell you presently. Then there is the Screaming Staircase. To me, this is a more mysterious tale. The stairs wind from the Long Gallery, on the ground floor, up to the landing. They are made of stone and are very ancient. I myself have never experienced any ill sensation on these stairs, and I do not know of anyone who has. But it’s said that long ago they witnessed some great horror, and that the souls of those involved are trapped within. At certain times,
perhaps when the power of these Visitors is at its height, perhaps when they sense the presence of a new victim, you can hear their frenzied howling. It emanates from the stairs themselves.’

Lockwood spoke softly. ‘The actual staircase screams?’

‘Apparently. I have never heard it.’

‘About the Red Room . . .’ George was finishing his doughnut; he paused and swallowed. ‘You say it’s on the first floor? Would that be the same level as the window in this picture?’

‘Yes . . . I suppose it would be about there. Do you mind not spraying sugar on the photograph? I don’t have another copy.’

‘Sorry.’

‘This is fascinating,’ Lockwood said. ‘From what you’re saying, there is more than one Visitor in the house. More than one Source. A cluster of ghosts, in other words. You believe that to be true?’

‘Certainly,’ Fairfax said. ‘I can feel them.’

‘Yes, but how did it begin? There must have been some key event, some central trauma that started it all . . . It begs the question – which Visitor was first?’ Lockwood tapped his fingertips together. ‘Is the house empty now?’

‘The West Wing is certainly unoccupied, for that is where the danger is concentrated. My man, Starkins, has been caretaker for many years. He lives in an adjacent building.’

‘And where do
you
stay, sir, when you visit the property?’

‘I have a suite in the East Wing, which is relatively modern. It has its own entrance, and is separated from the main section of the house by iron doors on every floor. I installed them myself, along with the best defences money can buy, and my sleep has not been disturbed.’ The old man regarded us all fixedly in turn. ‘I am by no means a coward, but I would not for any consideration spend the night alone in the old wing of Combe Carey Hall. However’ – he fingered the iron bulldog lovingly – ‘that is precisely what I am asking
you
to do.’

My heart jumped. I made some small adjustment to my skirt, but was otherwise quite still. Lockwood’s eyes were shining. George’s were, as ever, expressionless; slowly he took off his glasses and rubbed the lenses on the front of his jumper. We waited.

‘You would not be the first to make this attempt,’ Fairfax went on. ‘The same questions Mr Lockwood has just articulated were on the mind of the previous owner too. Thirty years ago he decided to investigate, and hired a small team from the Fittes Agency – a youth, a girl and their adult supervisor – to conduct initial explorations. They agreed to spend the night in the house, focusing their attention on the so-called Red Room. Well, they followed standard procedures. The main door to the house was left unlocked, so they had a clear avenue of escape. They rigged up an internal
telephone in the Red Room itself; this was connected to the phone in Bert Starkins’s lodge, so that help – if necessary – might be summoned. They were all highly experienced operatives. The owner left them there at dusk. Some hours later, when he went to bed, Starkins noticed torchlight moving steadily in the windows of the upper floors. Around midnight the caretaker’s phone began to ring. He picked it up: it was the supervisor. He said that there had been some odd phenomena, and that he wished to check that the connection was working properly. Otherwise all was well. He was quite calm. He rang off, and Starkins went to bed. The phone did not ring again that night. In the morning, when Starkins and the owner met on the front steps, the Fittes group had not emerged. At seven-thirty they entered the Hall. The place was quiet; no one answered their calls. They knew where they had to go, of course; when they opened the door of the Red Room, they found the body of the supervisor lying face-down beside the telephone. He was ghost-touched and quite dead. The girl was on the far side of the room, crouched beside a window. I say
crouched
: she was so tightly curled up they could not unbend her to see her face or check her pulse. Not that there was much point in that. She was stone dead too, of course. I am sorry to say they never discovered what happened to the boy.’

‘You mean they couldn’t tell how he died?’ George asked.

‘I mean they never found him.’

‘Excuse me, sir,’ Lockwood said, ‘but when the man used the telephone at midnight, did he say what kind of phenomena they’d been experiencing?’

‘No. He did not.’ Mr Fairfax took a pocket watch from his jacket and consulted it briefly. ‘Time is passing. I need to be in Pimlico in fifteen minutes! Very well, to the point. As I say, your agency has caught my eye; I am surprised and intrigued by your capabilities. So: here is my proposition for you. I am prepared to pay your costs in the Sheen Road case. That will settle the damages caused by the fire, and keep DEPRAC quiet into the bargain. To earn your sixty thousand pounds, all you need to do is commit yourself to the investigation. In fact, I shall wire the sum to your account the moment you arrive at the Hall. Additionally, if you succeed in uncovering its mysteries, and locate the Source within it, I shall pay you a further handsome fee. What is your standard charge?’

Lockwood named a figure.

‘I shall pay twice that. Combe Carey, I can assure you, is not to be taken lightly.’ Mr Fairfax grasped the bulldog’s head and shuffled forward, preparing to rise. ‘Another thing: when I require something, I act quickly. I would want you there in two days.’

‘Two days?’ George said. ‘But we’d need time to—’

‘Let me tell you at once,’ Fairfax said, ‘that my proposal is not up for negotiation. You are not in a position to impose
terms. Oh, and I have another stipulation. No flares or explosive devices may be brought into the Hall, which contains a great deal of ancient and valuable furniture. It is not that I don’t trust you, but, forgive me’ – the silver-capped teeth glittered – ‘I do not want my property burned down.’ Squeaks of protest from the chair; he stood, towering over us on his brittle limbs like some kind of giant insect. ‘Very well. I don’t expect a decision from you now, of course. Let me know by the end of the day. You’ll find my secretary’s number on this card.’

I sat back in the sofa, blowing out my cheeks. Too right he wouldn’t get an immediate decision. Fittes agents were the best, we all knew that. And three of them had died in Combe Carey Hall! To follow them in, without time for proper preparation, would be bordering on madness. The Red Room? The Screaming Staircase? Yes, the money Fairfax was offering might save the company, but what good was that if we lost our lives? There was no doubt about it: we needed to debate this
very
carefully.

‘Thank you very much, sir,’ Lockwood was saying, ‘but I can give you our answer now. We’ll definitely take the case.’ He stood up and held out his hand. ‘We’ll make arrangements to be down at the Hall as soon as possible. Shall we say Sunday afternoon?’

IV

The Hall

It’s fair to say we’d had our differences, George and I, during the months I’d been at Lockwood’s. We’d bickered about the big things (such as when one of us had got a face full of salt or been nearly scalped by the other’s wildly swinging blade), and we’d scrapped about the small (the laundry rota, the tidiness of the kitchen, George’s habit of leaving the ghost-jar in unexpected places, like behind the toilet door). We fought about almost everything. What we almost never did was argue on the same side.

That lunch time, after Fairfax left, was one of those rare occasions.

No sooner had the Rolls-Royce purred away than we both rounded on Lockwood for not consulting us in his
decision. I reminded him of the deadly reputation of the Hall. George argued we’d need at least a fortnight, and preferably a month, to properly research its history. Anything less was probable suicide.

Lockwood heard us out in cheerful silence. ‘Are you done?’ he said. ‘Good. Three things. First: this is probably our only chance to save the company before we go bust. We can pay off the Hopes at a stroke
and
get DEPRAC off our back. It’s an extraordinary opportunity and we simply can’t turn it down. Second: I’m in charge here, and what I say goes. Thirdly: isn’t this the most enticing job any of us have ever had? The Screaming Staircase? The Red Room? Come on! At
last
we’ve got a mission worthy of our talents! Do you want to spend the rest of your lives snuffing drab Shades in the suburbs? This is the real thing at last! It would be a crime to turn it down.’

His reasoning, particularly the second point, did not completely convince us. George rubbed his glasses on his jumper in a passion. ‘The true crimes,’ he said, ‘are Fairfax’s outrageous preconditions. No magnesium flares, Lockwood! That’s completely mad!’

Lockwood stretched back on the sofa. ‘It’s certainly an interesting requirement.’

‘
Interesting?
’ I cried. ‘It’s outrageous!’

‘The man’s a fool,’ George said. ‘If this place is half as dangerous as he tells us it is, it would be insanity to go in without every single weapon available!’

I nodded. ‘No one takes on a Type Two without canisters of Greek Fire!’

‘Right! And this is a
cluster
of Type Twos we’re talking about—’

‘With a proven death-count to its name—’

‘Plus we’re not getting anything
like
enough time to do some—’

‘– research in the historical records,’ Lockwood said. ‘Yes, yes, I
know
, as you both keep bellowing it in my ear every thirty seconds. Will you two fishwives shut up and listen? As eccentric as he seems, Fairfax is our client, and we have to go along with his wishes. We’ll have our swords, won’t we? And plenty of defensive chains. So we’re not exactly going in unarmed.’ He flinched. ‘Lucy, you’re doing that stary thing with your eyes again.’

‘Yes, I am. Because I don’t think you’re taking this seriously.’

‘Wrong. I’m taking it very seriously indeed. We go to Combe Carey Hall, we put our lives at risk, make no mistake about that.’ He smiled. ‘But isn’t that what we do?’

‘Only when properly equipped,’ George growled. ‘And another thing. What Fairfax said about choosing us doesn’t make sense. There are fifteen agencies in London bigger and more successful than Lockwood and Co. Yet you don’t seem surprised that he came knocking on
our
door.’

Lockwood shook his head. ‘On the contrary, I think it’s
remarkable that he did so. It’s almost the most fascinating thing about the case. Which is why we should take full advantage and see what happens. Now, if that’s all—’

‘It isn’t,’ I said. ‘Not quite. What about Hugo Blake and the locket? Maybe it slipped your mind, but we got burgled twelve hours ago. What are we doing about that?’